Emmanuel Iwuh's Key Ideas from How to Do the Work
by Dr. Nicole LePera

You head to work at the same time every day, and the routine to get out the door is more or less memorized. You shower, eat breakfast, get dressed, drive to work, and so on. You barely have to think consciously about doing any of these things because you’ve done them so frequently that your mind is on autopilot. 

When you are running on autopilot, your subconscious mind drives your reactions. Scans of brain activity have revealed we are only operating in a conscious state for roughly 5% of the day. Our subconscious run the show during the rest of the time.

To move out of your autopilot mode, you will need to actively practice consciousness and improve your self-awareness. By being aware of your activities, you can become what you want. When you are conscious about what you are doing, your subconscious mind cannot overpower you with its autopilot mode. This will then allow you to make changes in your life.

The present tests taken for measuring the severity of trauma do not fully capture it. They do not consider the range of emotional and spiritual traumas, which are caused due to consistently denying or repressing the needs of your authentic self. This typically occurs due to being consistently treated in a way that makes you feel unworthy or unacceptable. 

Traumas make us vulnerable to physical and psychological conditions, all leading to one common denominator: stress

Stress is an internal condition that threatens your state of physical, emotional, and mental balance. Whenever we encounter a threat, either real or perceived, the brain’s fear center, i.e., the amygdala, lights up. Once activated, this area of the brain then sends messages to the rest of our body to mobilize the responses to help us survive.

When you are in a perpetual state of stress, your adrenal glands release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. This will lead to continuous and overactive fight or flight responses, which present physically as a racing heart, dilated pupils, balled fists, etc. These overactive responses use a high level of glucose in the brain, which ultimately knocks our body off balance.

Healing ourselves via our Gut: If our diet isn't healthy we will not be physically and mentally healthy either.

Healing ourselves via sleep: Inadequate sleep is incredibly damaging. When we sleep, our body repairs itself.

Healing ourselves via breathing: we cannot tell our heart to beat properly or our liver to detox our body faster, but we can slow or deepen our breath.

Healing ourselves via movement: Activities such as running, swimming, and hiking help us increase our tolerance to stress.