Wellness by Designs - Practitioner Podcast
Wellness by Designs is a place for healthcare practitioners to expand their knowledge base. A place to deepen your nutrition, herbal medicine, naturopathic, integrative medicine and business management expertise. Sit back, grab a cuppa. Wellness by Designs has your continuing education covered. Tune in as fellow practitioners, and researchers share their expertise and clinical pearls, taking you on their professional, sometimes personal journies. For show notes and references: www.designsforhealth.com.au
Wellness by Designs - Practitioner Podcast
Biohacking the Gut-Brain Axis with Sarah Gilmour-Mayne
Explore the groundbreaking gut-brain axis with clinical Nutritionist Sarah Gilmour-Mayne. Uncover how Sarah uses applied kinesiology and quantum healing to unlock neuroplasticity for optimal patient wellness. This episode offers vital insights for healthcare professionals integrating psychoneuroimmunology and functional medicine into their practice.
Episode Highlights:
- Mind-body integration: Neuroplasticity in clinical practice
- Quantum biology and epigenetics in health optimisation
- Muscle testing for vagus nerve tone and HPA axis balance
- Neurotransmitter balance and vagus nerve stimulation via gut microbiome
- Neocortex stimulation vs. limbic system regulation in healing
- Microbiome modulation for cognitive function and emotional resilience
About Sarah:
Sarah Gilmour-Mayne is a seasoned clinical nutritionist with over 20 years of experience in integrative medicine. Her expertise spans kinesiology, nutritional medicine, homeopathy, NLP coaching, and hypnosis. Sarah has developed a unique, bio-individual approach to empower clients to tap into their innate healing potential. As a respected educator, she has trained many of Australia's leading professional kinesiologists and continues teaching practitioners and individuals. Sarah's practice uniquely blends scientific foundations with metaphysical medicine, offering a holistic approach to wellness that bridges conventional and alternative therapies.
Connect with Sarah:
Website: Sarah Gilmour-Mayne
Instagram: @sarah_gilmourmayne
Shownotes and references are available on your local Designs for Health website
www.designsforhealth.com.au
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DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health
Shownotes and references are available on the Designs for Health website
Register as a Designs for Health Practitioner and discover quality practitioner- only supplements at www.designsforhealth.com.au
Follow us on Socials
Instagram: Designsforhealthaus
Facebook: Designsforhealthaus
DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health
Music. This is Wellness by Designs, and I'm your host, andrew Whitfield-Cook. Joining us today is Sarah Gilmore-Main, who's a nutritionist and a kinesiologist, and today we're going to be discussing how we can biohack our gut-brain connection. Welcome to Wellness by Designs, sarah. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm well, thanks, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me on today.
Speaker 1:It's so lovely to have you on Now. Can you take us through a little bit of your career, Because you were sort of exposed to the natural medicine professions from a very early age, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I was really blessed to know what I wanted to do from the time I left school. The time I left school, so at 17 years old, back in 1996, I enrolled into my diploma of nutrition naturopathy at Nature Care College and, you know, loved it, was so passionate about it, and got the opportunity to, at the same time, whilst I was studying, to work with an amazing practitioner. I got an apprenticeship to work with her and during this time of working with her, I was not only working with clients, working with patients, but I was exposed to the world of vibrational medicine and the world of the mind-body connection. She was a very holistic practitioner, you know, some would say a little esoteric, and you know, this was my first exposure into the power of the mind and the power of the energetic field and the impact that it can have on a patient's healing journey, and this absolutely fascinated me. It really blew my mind, so started a quest for me, I guess, in how could I integrate more of this into what I did as a naturopath and how could I help other people to really understand the power of this and how they can use it in their own lives of this and how they can use it in their own lives to really take more control of their own health. And so I looked around and it was one of those things.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes things pop into your path. Every person I met, every place I went, people were talking about this thing called kinesiology and I was like, okay, this must be a sign for me. There's got to be something more in this for me. So went back to nature care and, as you do, was just going to study a weekend workshop or a couple of workshops and three and a half years later came out of a kinesiology diploma with so much passion because I had been continuing my professional practice during this time and really started integrating what I was learning in my classes into what I was doing and so graduated from kinesiology and really hit the ground running and, you know, in my practice was just so blown away with the results that I was seeing and really the impact that this was having on my patients' lives that this, very quickly for me, led into me teaching kinesiology, me wanting to share this amazing modality with others.
Speaker 2:And so I had the opportunity to work for some of Sydney's leading natural therapy colleges. I taught for Nature Care. I taught for AC&T, ackm for about 15 years and then about five, six years ago, decided it was time to start my own college, to really take everything that I had learned from working with these fantastic colleges and integrate that into my own pathway. And so, together with my beautiful colleague and dear friend you know we studied kinesiology together 20 plus years ago, therese Mudgway we have now developed the Nadana Collective and you know we really have the honour of creating something really, really special together.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you learnt naturopathy first yes, you learnt about herbs and nutritional medicine first, then integrating kinesiology into that. Have you found over the course of your career that the more you, the more expert you become at kinesiology, the more you find there is a vibrational issue going on with patients? Vibrational issue going on with patients. To ask the question in a more succinct way, in a more example way, an old practitioner who I greatly admired, alan Profke, who unfortunately died a few years ago 20, forgive me, 2020, or 2019, forgive me. Alan told me and he was a very well-respected practitioner of many decades, and he said the more I learn about vibrational qualities, the more I realise you must include that into your prescription.
Speaker 2:It was quite daunting to me, quite A man of great wisdom, andrew, by the sounds of things, but I believe the two are completely indivisible. You know what has science learnt? That on the quantum level you break us and everything in our universe. You break herbs down beyond the subatomic level. You break the human body down beyond the subatomic level. You break a mineral down beyond the subatomic level. What do you find? Energy, vibration, resonance. So I truly believe that.
Speaker 2:Know all of the different modalities that we have are different levels of vibration. So the more I learn as a kinesiologist and you know a mind body practitioner, the more I learn that these aspects of self are completely indivisible. They're completely integrated and connected. You know our vibrational being is connected to our mind. Our mind is connected to our physical body. Our physical body is connected to the biochemistry. You know, in kinesiology we use a term called the triangle of health or the triad of health. I mean say obviously there's a physical, emotional and biochemical aspect to us. I mean say obviously there's a physical, emotional and biochemical aspect to us and that the I guess the vibrational is the integration, is the connection between all of these.
Speaker 2:And in kinesiology the model we use for the energetic is the traditional Chinese medical model of the acupuncture meridians, meridians, but all of these really are founded. I believe everything is nested inside of the scientific understanding of quantum physics that we, andrew. We're all just resonating blobs of vibration and whether we're giving a herb or whether we're working with a meridian, or whether we're using acupuncture or whatever it is we're doing, our nutritional products, it's all just different levels of vibration to help the body come back to a space of homeostasis where it's in the best position to heal itself. You know, none of us are healing our patients. We're just all helping to give the body what it needs to be able to heal itself.
Speaker 2:And that's what I love so much about kinesiology is that we use biofeedback from the body. We use a modality called muscle testing. You know, you can test somebody else, you can learn to test yourself, and this enables us to plug into the bio-individual healing blueprint that all of us have, because we could all have a similar or exactly the same set of symptoms and presumably you could say, well then we would all have the same treatment process. But in my experience, and I'm sure in your experience and every practitioner listening and watching here today would know that that is not the case that each of us perhaps require different things and you know, when we use the term biohack, we're really saying that we can tap into the each and each individual being's unique innate healing blueprint and help them access what it is they need specifically and in what order. They need that for the body to be able to heal itself.
Speaker 1:Now, you and I have spoken prior to this podcast and I've explained my struggles that I've had with the energetic sort of approach to things To give the example for our listeners, our viewers, is. I will always remember sitting next to this young lady in vibrational medicine class. In that when I started naturopathy god, those many, many years ago, um, and we were laughing at the lecturer, we were goffering, you know, sniggering, uh, snidely, I might that and um, because we were saying, oh, we can't believe in this. But her, this late young lady and I were talking and she was about to get married. She was having a real struggle because she loved her dad so much and she had a real connection to her family name and her struggle was she didn't want to give up the family name. And I said, well, you can hyphenate it like I did, and she was still had this struggle.
Speaker 1:So what happened was she was called up to the front of the class to give a demonstration of kinesiology and the lecturer, meridy, asked her name and I saw, and we were laughing, we were going to show her up and I saw her sternocleomastoid muscle tensing like you wouldn't believe, trying to resist. But there was no power in that answer. It was like I was shocked. I was like hang on. And yet prior to that, you and I have spoken about this off air. Prior to that, I had seen a kinesiologist who had an agenda, um, and you know, did the muscle testing and you and I have spoken. She moved instead of uh, pushing down with just two or three fingers. She almost grabbed my wrist and forced it down. So there was an agenda there. Tell us about how you have to prepare yourself as a kinesiologist to be totally for service to your patients.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I mean your mindset, your intention as the facilitator of the process is extremely important. My role as a kinesiologist is not to heal anyone, to fix anyone, to prove anything. I'm a conduit for that person's body to bring forward the information. And we really think of the body as part of the deep subconscious. You know, our body really is our subconscious mind and so it's bringing forward from the unconscious self to the conscious mind the information needed so that the, the client can choose to create change and we can find the resources needed to create that change.
Speaker 2:So the practitioner being impartial, the practitioner having no vested interest, even the interest of really want you to get better is a vested interest. So you know, one of the things we really focus on training our practitioners on in our sessions, in our classes sorry is um neutrality, coming at each session from a space of neutrality. The only space I hold for my clients is a space of unconditional love, a space of open neutrality. For them to be able to get whatever it is, they need to be able to move wherever it is they choose to move in their lives.
Speaker 1:It's almost like kinesiology would be perfectly practised by cats, because they don't care. Maybe, that's my next course, but take us through. If we're dealing with the mind-gut connection, which is what we're talking about today, Obviously it's got to do with the types of questions that you ask. You have to ask the correct question to get the correct information back. That's biofeedback, right.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm it is. And I think, look, let's come back and again look at it from the perspective of the quantum field, because one of the most powerful electromagnetic I'm gonna say mechanisms involved in the quantum field is the human mind. So you know we have a saying where focus goes, energy flows. So when we're doing a kinesiology session and you know whether it's on the gut, brain connection or whatever it is on, we're always working with a context, an outcome, we will call it a goal. It's helping the client be focus on where it is they would rather be, what it is they would rather have in life. Because we know on the quantum level we've all heard of the law of attraction. So we'll get patients coming in where they're so fixated on their symptoms or on what's wrong or what's not working for them in life that that becomes their sole focus, and so of course it becomes bigger in their world and their symptoms become exacerbated. So the first thing we're always doing is helping the client first of all think about what it is they'd rather have in life, focusing on that, and then it's almost like reverse engineering from there. What are all of the things physical, emotional and biochemical that we need to help them create structure or create a strategy around, have tools or resources, shift energy, shift patterns, shift neurology in the subconscious mind to help them be completely aligned with achieving that goal in their life.
Speaker 2:And we know, everyone knows, the impact of the gut on the brain and sometimes, you know, we can't focus on what it is we'd rather have in life because we're so entrenched in our perception of where we are currently or, as I said, what's not working, the symptoms we're currently experiencing. And so you know that, having working first and foremost, for me as a practitioner, one of the first things that I will often put a lens on in sessions when helping the client work out what it is they need to get, where they choose to go in their life, is looking at this gut brain connection. Because we know how can you feel good, how can you start focusing on the positive things in life, if your greatest serotonin producing machine in your body is not functioning as it needs to be? So you know, we really find that working on the gut and working on the mind concurrently is such a powerful way to help people achieve their outcomes, and you just notice that symptoms miraculously disappear in the process.
Speaker 1:Sarah, how do you find that kinesiology dovetails in with more? You know, physical based therapies and orthodox testing, for instance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question Again. Coming back to you know the power of the mind, to you know the power of the mind and you know, the big thing I like to always think of is that, andrew, nothing means anything until we give it a meaning. It's just sound data, sight data, kinesthetic data coming into our, coming into our brain and then our brain based on our subconscious filters. These are our beliefs, our fears. You know our family's beliefs and fears, limiting decisions we've made at different points in our lives societies, limiting decisions and fears. We then make that sensory data mean something. Now, whatever we make it mean is then what is fed into our body via the.
Speaker 2:We know the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that regulates our homeostasis, and so if I grew up in a world, in a childhood, where I made the world mean that it was a scary place, then incoming sensory data is going to be filtered through that.
Speaker 2:My hypothalamus is going to then talk to my pituitary gland who's going to tell my biochemistry how to regulate to maintain inside of this belief structure that I have created.
Speaker 2:So I find that, you know, we can put all the greatest herbs, homeopathics, nutrition into the body, but if I'm still holding that mental framework, then it's almost like you know, putting your finger in a hole in a leaky boat.
Speaker 2:It's only going to we're just going to consistently be topping up, consistently be sustaining, but if we can get to the core of what is creating that belief, help the client realize that they have all the tools and resources they need to shift that old belief and then work with some specific processes that we work with in our kinesiology sessions to transform that. We know, through our understanding now of neuroplasticity, that the brain can change itself and it can change itself very rapidly. So you know what, when we can shift these old patterns and shift these old beliefs, then we find that the physical therapies that we are working with, the ingestive therapies, whatever other types of natural medicines or Western medicines then, are integrated into the body from a much more powerful place. The body can come back to a place of homeostasis and heal itself. So they dovetail in with each other beautifully.
Speaker 1:Look, I totally get your point about enabling the body or removing blockages in the psyche. Does that translate to physical body? Yes, we know this, so. So it seems to me that it's sort of like helping the patient to remove a is it an energetic blockage or or an esoteric blockage? But um, that when? And that will enable the physical interventions to work better because there's nothing impeding them. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:correct, absolutely and for each person it can be a little different. You know, for some people, sure, there might be a meridian that needs to be worked with to allow the chi to flow, a memorial well versed in the power of acupuncture, and you know so we might need to shift some blockages in these energetic pathways to allow the chi to flow, to allow the body to be in a space of homeostasis. For other people it may be shifting a subconscious pattern and I mentioned before that, the subconscious mind. We truly believe a massive component of the subconscious mind is in the body. I mean amazing doctors like Dr Bruce Lipton, dr Candice Pert. They're proving, they've shown the mind-body connection.
Speaker 2:So it's not just theory any longer, but that we know the cytoplasm of the cell contains receptor sites that pick up the neuropeptides. You know, when we release emotions we release neuropeptides. You know, when we release emotions we release neuropeptides. So the cytoplasm of the cell has little receptor sites where these um neuropeptides click into and then the cell has a physiological, defined reaction to those emotional molecules. So if we can help the client through whatever means are needed to shift their emotional reaction to their perception of reality, then it starts to enable those cells when they mitose and create daughter cells. It enables those daughter cells to be produced with a different we could say a different mindset, a different brain. You know, and science is really proving now, that the cytoplasm of the cell is the cell's brain.
Speaker 1:Can we shift that permanently though? Like, for instance, your positiveness just shines, you can tell that you are an innately positive person. But when you're dealing with patients who come to see you, let's say, with an emotional issue, with physical manifestations IBS is a classic right. So when we're talking about somebody that has an entrenched psychological behavior response to the world, as you we were talking about earlier do you find that you have to constantly nudge and and re-engage with these patients to say it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, until they finally go? Oh no, it's okay, it's okay. What does that look like? When you're talking about therapy, and how long are we talking about to?
Speaker 2:you know, break old habits yeah, look, I mean, how long is a piece of string? Every person is so completely bio-individual and it's really not about telling anybody what they have to do. It's about helping them be empowered with the information they need to choose that themselves. And so, you know, in all of our kinesiology sessions, clients will always leave with home reinforcement. You know and this is where we're muscle testing for all of this, to ask their body what it is they need, to help them be in the best position to be able to choose the outcome that they want to move towards.
Speaker 2:So for some clients, yes, it is a lot of education. It is a lot of helping them understand why it is they've created these patterns in their life and then what it is they need to do to unwind that pattern, to help them move towards their goals, to move towards their chosen outcome. It's not about me telling the client they have to believe in my model of the world. It doesn't matter what their religious beliefs are or what their spiritual practices are or what their model of the world. It doesn't matter what their religious beliefs are or what their. You know what their spiritual practices are or you know what their model of the world is. We're always working inside of the client's model of the world. But it's really about helping them find their own unique formula.
Speaker 2:And, yes, education, educating them really about their subconscious mind. You know, know, because our subconscious mind I keep talking about that but that is really our part of our primitive brain, it's part of our survival mechanism. So it's helping them really understand that there is a difference between their neocortical thinking, their logical, problem solving, creative solution focused thinking, versus their survival-based thinking. You know, we might also call this the chimp brain. You know it's about all of our basic human needs. And when we're making decisions in life, when we're constantly reacting to the world from our chimp brain rather than proacting and being able to create from our conscious, solution-focused neocortical brain, you know we tend to find then we keep attracting these same old patterns, we keep repeating the same old survival patterns and this is often where we find.