For me, healing food sensitivities was my final step in recovering from the interrelated conditions of chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivities, food sensitivities, electromagnetic sensitivities, and fibromyalgia.

I was so eager to be part of the world again, that I first focused my retraining on the other aspects, and was willing to live with a lot of what I called discipline around food then, without acknowledging the level of deprivation I experienced.

As a teenager and young woman, I had an eating disorder, starting with depriving myself by increasingly severe dieting, alternating with times of bingeing. I learned that in order to stop the bingeing, I needed to stop depriving myself of enough calories, and sure enough, the urge to overeat became something I could  manage. Until I learned more skills for working with emotions, I would eat for emotional reasons at times, but was off that rollercoaster of deprivation followed by bingeing. I learned this approach from methods for healing from eating disorders in the late 80s, but did not follow guidelines to eat not only from hunger, but also from eating whatever I preferred. That’s because without realizing I was doing it, I transferred my control of calories and weight to control of eating the “right” foods. I developed what is now being called “orthorexia nervosa”–an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy, according to the National Eating Disorders Association.

For anyone who is already retraining their brains for some of the other conditions I too lived with, the word “nervosa” may jump out at you. We retrain the nervous system to shift the stress responses that have become conditioned to foods, chemicals, EMF, or lingering symptoms from infections or injuries.

I now make choices of healthy foods and make choices of environmentally healthier products, as a joyful path, rather than one fraught with fear over making a mistake and suffering consequences to my health.

If you too would like to eat with more ease and joy, then please register for the upcoming group coaching event on this topic. This event also serves as a general introduction to brain retraining and group coaching, so is also suitable for people who are not dealing with food sensitivities, but are interested in coaching.

Eating with Ease with Food Sensitivities

Weds., Sept. 27 by videoconference or call in by telephone

A 90 minute session starting at:

11 am Pacific 11 am Arizona  noon Mountain 1 pm Central 2 pm Eastern 7 pm UK

$30. To register, please go to http://deborahmayaan.com/events.htm

Group coaching serves as a way to more affordably learn skills and be supported in your retraining, and to connect with other retrainers. And for the limited number of spots I have for individual coaching, I give priority to people who are in group coaching. All group coaching currently takes place by videoconference, with the option to join in by telephone as well. I am also exploring options to hold some in-person events in the future here in southern Arizona at the Sonoran Desert Inn and Conference Center.

Shortly after a single-session event, a 5-part Foundations Skills series begins. The next series starts Weds., Oct. 4.

People who have attended a Foundation Skills series are then eligible to enroll in Topics in Brain Retraining group coaching, in which the participants choose which topics to cover.

The next Topics series starts Weds., Oct. 11. To see details about of group coaching events, please see: http://deborahmayaan.com/events.htm

About the Gupta Programme: New theories of the underlying processes of chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivities, fibromyalgia, and anxiety have resulted in highly effective tools. The Gupta Programme was developed by Ashok Gupta as he healed from chronic fatigue. The idea is that after an initial infection, the brain got stuck in a feedback loop, reacting to symptoms by revving up a fight or flight adrenaline response, which would bring on more symptoms. The brain is retrained to not be reactive to what is simply an adrenaline cycle. It has also been used successfully to retrain the brain to not overreact to chemicals, or to lingering pain signals in fibromyalgia, or to anxiety responses.

To learn more, watch the free webinar. If you are interested in purchasing the Gupta Programme home study set, if you do it through my affiliate link, I receive 20% of your purchase price and give that back to you in the form of a credit that can be used for group or individual coaching (use for individual coaching depends on availability since I often have a waiting list). When you make your purchase, please email me the date and time of your purchase.

From that link you can also navigate to other resources on the site, including videos of Ashok Gupta explaining how the hypothesis applies to specifically to chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, or anxiety.

For individual coaching, I give priority in my schedule to people who commit to working on a regular schedule–weekly, every other week, or monthly sessions. People who wish to schedule on an as needed basis then use a link that I give you to schedule themselves into whatever slots remain.   Because there is such a large demand for coaching, for new clients I give first priority to people who are attending group coaching (or attended a prior series). Group coaching serves as a way to:

• learn tools to deepen or supplement the Gupta Programme methods
• get some of your questions answered by me or members of the group
• build your support network
• Then individual coaching sessions can be focused on what else you need. This may include going through and checking how you are doing methods if you don’t think they are working as well as they might. Or having me hold the space for deeper work on getting clear on patterns or resolving issues that are adding to stress.

The Pima County Public Library now has a copy of the Gupta Programme home study set. While the set lives at the Main Library, you can place a reserve on it and have it sent to any branch. https://pima.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1817741091_gupta_amygdala_retraining People outside of Pima County may also contact their own library about requesting to borrow it through Interlibrary Loan.