by Megan Caper | chakras, energetic body, Neurology
Last week, I delved into glial cells and the intuitive insights I’ve gleaned about their function—insights that go beyond current Western scientific understanding. This week, our focus shifts to another pivotal component of the brain: the pineal gland.
Located deep within the brain’s center and nestled between the two hemispheres, the pineal gland is a small, pinecone-shaped endocrine gland. It occupies a critical juncture, connecting all major brain regions. Present-day research suggests that the gland’s primary function is to produce melatonin, a hormone pivotal in regulating our sleep-wake cycles and circadian rhythms.
However, my insights reveal a more profound role.
The pineal gland serves as a bridge between our physical selves and the vast expanse of universal consciousness. Those moments of transcendent experiences or feelings of deep connection with the encompassing “all that is”—they stem from the pineal gland’s activities, which include the production of DMT. a.k.a “The God Molecule”.. I believe the pineal gland can relay information from the universal consciousness field to every cell in our body. The fluid surrounding the pineal gland can form intricate chiral microcrystalline structures capable of both interpreting and producing electromagnetic (EMF) fields. These crystals send signals to each cell in our body, with every cell equipped with receptors to catch these EMF messages. This intricate communication allows cells to receive information from the pineal gland, which has already tuned into the universal consciousness field. Moreover, these EMF signals are also sent to our energetic systems, such as chakras and wei chi fields, instigating rapid changes throughout our entire body and mind.
The information relay isn’t unidirectional. Messages directed at the pineal gland can then be broadcasted into the broader consciousness field. By channeling our desired reality into the pineal gland, we can influence our very existence. The pineal gland plays a pivotal role in what many term as “manifestation”.
Historically, the pineal gland’s unique properties positioned it at the core of numerous mystical and spiritual traditions. It aligns with the axis of the 3rd eye chakra, mediating between the realms of energy (consciousness) and matter (our tangible world).
Recently, I’ve tapped into this power during energy healing sessions, using the pineal gland’s microcrystals to introduce new realities to the body. This process demands we recognize that our thoughts and beliefs are mere perceptions of reality. We must understand that our tangible reality results from specific vibrational energy patterns, which can be altered. Once this truth is internalized—that we are tangible manifestations of vibrating energy—the potential of the pineal gland becomes transformative.
How has the pineal gland influenced your experiences? I’m eager to hear your stories. Drop a comment and share whether your encounters resonate with mine!
by Megan Caper | healing, health, Neurology
It’s a challenge being educated in the sciences, with both a bachelor’s and Master’s degree in biological and health sciences, and simultaneously receiving intuitive insights about how our bodies and minds function that science hasn’t yet fully proven. Yet, time and again, I’ve applied these insights with clients to significant success, often before scientific research catches up.
So, it’s time for me to come clean with what I know. In the last couple of years, I’ve had two significant insights about our brains. Some aspects of these have already been corroborated by scientific research, so I know they’re emerging knowledge that most likely will be proven true soon. I’m sharing them in the hopes they can benefit other healers or anyone seeking deeper understanding.
Both insights center on the brain. Today, I’ll discuss the glial cells and next week I’ll discuss what I’ve seen about the pineal gland.
What does current science say about about glial cells? Traditionally, it was thought that these cells are like the backstage crew to the neurons, making sure everything runs smoothly. They support and protect the neurons, keep things balanced, and even wrap around neurons like a cozy blanket in the form of myelin. There are different types of glial cells, each with its own job. For instance, astrocytes are the brain’s helpers, giving neurons what they need to work properly. And then there’s the clean-up crew, the microglia, which act like a vacuum, picking up unwanted debris. And while all this is true, what I’ve seen intuitively is that glial cells do much, much more. In fact, I no longer believe neurons are the stars of the show, I think glial cells control much more of what goes on in our brains than neurons do.
While neurons are vital, forging connections and relaying information, glial cells are the brain’s dynamic orchestrators. They traverse our brain’s expanse, making real-time adjustments and guiding its operation. I’ve come to see that glial cells might be pivotal in understanding conditions like dementia, age-related cognitive loss, and the recuperation from brain injuries. To draw an analogy, if our brain was a skyscraper, neurons would be the building materials, but glial cells? They’d be the masterminds behind its design and function.
From what I’ve seen, glial cells seem to possess superior intelligence, interacting seamlessly with various body systems and adapting swiftly. They’re attuned to our external and internal conditions, from immune system status, to cardiovascular states, as well as nutrition, hydration and emotional states. Glial cells influence the intricate choreography of neurons in our brain and spinal cord in response to what’s happening in the rest of our body and mind.
Glial cells play a pivotal role in recovery from various cognitive injuries or diseases, ranging from brain fog related to chemotherapy, to brain injuries and strokes. These cells orchestrate the healing process, discerning the optimal pathway for recovery. If there’s damage to the brain or spinal cord, glial cells devise strategies to preserve functionality. Moreover, they aid in mending the structural and functional impacts of complex trauma (CPTSD), rewiring the brain to establish a foundation of safety and belonging, replacing feelings of fear and abandonment.
If you want to know more, or you believe delving into this might aid in healing an ailment or injury, please reach out. I’m happy to talk about this more! Like, good luck getting me to shut up about it! Glial cells are fascinating! (Yes, I know I’m a giant nerd.)
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Relationships, Spirituality
One of the most important things you can do from an emotional and spiritual perspective to begin healing autoimmune and other diseases is to establish good boundaries. Yet many of us find ourselves shackled to the opinions and expectations of others, hindered by a deeply ingrained fear of invoking anger. Life is a journey of self-discovery, and to navigate it wisely, we must set boundaries that honor the integrity of our souls. This article aims to guide you toward the empowering practice of setting boundaries without being held captive by the fear of other people’s reactions.
The Sacred Space of Self
Boundaries are not just invisible lines; they are the sacred spaces where your spirit breathes freely, nurtured by the values and principles that define you. Setting a boundary is an act of self-love, a statement to the Universe that says, “I am deserving of respect, and I honor the Divine in me by respecting myself.”
Understanding the Energetics of Anger
Anger is an energy, a vibration that can either consume us or teach us. When we step back to look at anger from a higher perspective, we recognize its dual nature—it can act as a barrier, but it can also serve as a catalyst for change and growth. While the anger of others may seem frightening, our own anger—stemming from feelings of being marginalized, trampled upon, or victimized—can ignite a transformative journey of change and self-compassion.
The Fear That Holds Us Back
Why does the potential to provoke someone’s anger paralyze our ability to set healthy boundaries? The answer often lies in old scripts, stories we’ve been told or that we tell ourselves about the dire consequences of displeasing others. If others’ anger was a terrifying experience in your younger years, it’s time to rewrite those scripts and replace fear with the courage to fully express ourselves.
The Cost of Living Without Boundaries
When we fail to set boundaries, we pay a high price. We not only betray our true selves, but also compromise our emotional, mental, and even physical health. This neglect drains our life force, much like a river losing its vitality as its banks erode. Remember, you can rebuild those banks; you have the power to direct the course of your life.
Embrace the Divine Courage Within You
Overcoming the fear of setting boundaries is not a one-time event; it’s a journey. It involves continuously aligning your life with the values that uplift your soul. Wisdom traditions teach us that courage is not the absence of fear, but the recognition that something else is more important than fear. That ‘something’ is finding and expressing your authentic self.
Practical Steps for Spiritual Empowerment
- Begin Small: Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Start by setting smaller, manageable boundaries and build from there.
- Speak Your Truth: Clearly articulate your needs and limits. Use “I am” statements to affirm your own experiences and perspectives.
- Respond to Others with Love and Firmness: It’s inevitable that some people will react unfavorably to your boundaries. When this happens, it’s crucial to stay rooted in your own truth, responding with a firm yet loving demeanor. Understand that their reactions are more about them than about you; hold onto your inner peace.
Your life is a sacred journey, and setting boundaries is an integral part of that journey. The fears and obstacles you face are not barriers; they are lessons that must be learned to live in harmony with your true self. You have the power to turn fear into freedom and transform your life into an empowering affirmation of who you really are. I believe in you. Now, it’s time for you to believe in yourself.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, Neurology, wellness
Life’s deepest truths often manifest in the whispers of the soul long before they find validation under the microscope. Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a new branch of modern science and it stands as a testament to this, unraveling the tangible connections between our thoughts, emotions, and physical health—a connection that ancient healing traditions have known about for eons.
In the intricate tapestry of our being, PNI highlights how psychological processes can influence our immune system and overall health. Studies have shown that specific brain regions, like the amygdala, activate in response to perceived threats, initiating a cascade of physiological responses that can influence immune function.
The dialogue between our emotional world and our cells is not merely poetic—it’s scientific. Neurotransmitters and the wisdom of our immune system bridge our feelings to our physiological responses. For instance, PNI research has shown that negative emotions can lead to a suppressed immune response, making individuals more susceptible to infections.
Parallels Between PNI and Traditional Healing
The parallels between PNI and traditional healing modalities are myriad and research backs up what mind-body healers have know for years. Here are some of the ways that ancient modalities are being studied via PNI:
- Mindfulness and Meditation: Each moment we spend in stillness and introspection reverberates with healing. PNI studies indicate that regular meditation can reduce inflammatory responses in the body, affirming ancient spiritual practices.
- Stress and the Immune Response: When ancient wisdom speaks of disrupted inner harmony, PNI research echoes, demonstrating how chronic stress can elevate cytokines that promote inflammation.
- Energetic Healing: The concept of energy or life force in traditional systems might seem abstract. Yet, PNI helps ground this, revealing how our emotional “vibrations” can influence molecular pathways in our immune system.
- Balance and Harmony: PNI, in its essence, underscores balance—a balanced mind fostering a balanced immune response. It’s no surprise that heightened cortisol levels, markers of stress, have been linked to decreased immune responses.
- Emotion, Thought, and Health: As PNI research emerges, it reveals startling truths: prolonged feelings of loneliness, for instance, can alter immune function, making one more susceptible to illnesses.
How can we integrate PNI findings with ancient healing techniques? Here are a few ideas of how merging the ideas of these two worlds can bring about even greater healing.
- The Power of Belief: The placebo effect, long a subject of wonder, showcases our innate healing powers. PNI research reveals how mere belief can modulate immune responses, resonating with the spiritual premise that our internal beliefs shape our external reality.
- Personalized Healing: Marrying intuition with PNI insights allows for holistic healing—after all, research has shown that an individual’s emotional state can influence their response to treatments.
- Holistic Lifestyle Emphasis: The age old wisdom of sages, combined with modern PNI findings, like how diet can influence mood and immunity, invites us to a holistic health journey.
- Mental Well- Being and Spiritual Health: Inner tranquility has always been revered in spiritual traditions. PNI now lends scientific credence, showing how practices promoting mental well being can enhance immune function.
As we align ourselves with the universe’s rhythm, the confluence of age-old wisdom and modern PNI research guides us towards holistic well being. This dance of mind, body, and spirit, steeped in both spirituality and science, invites us to a path of genuine health and harmony.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, healing, resilience
In a world that’s infinitely large and paradoxically small, our hearts are filled with constellations of emotions, swirling around a black hole of past pains and heartaches. In my recent healing sessions with clients, a recurring theme keeps presenting itself, begging to be dissected and understood: the phenomenon of the hardened heart.
You see, a heart doesn’t simply become stone overnight. It’s a gradual transformation, born from the crushing weight of betrayals and disappointments, often inflicted by the very people we’ve anchored our trust to. There’s an irony in the fact that a heart turns to stone not because it’s inherently cold, but because once upon a time, it loved too fiercely, too vulnerably.
When we delve into the anatomy of our hearts, it’s not just about ventricles and arteries. It’s about its chakra, the invisible torus shaped energy field it radiates, and the pericardium—its shield against life’s many adversities. These facets can all be wounded, not just by physical maladies, but by the invisible scars of emotional upheavals.
You’ve probably met them—the individuals who seem impenetrable, like fortresses. But behind those walls, their heartbeats tell tales of their past. It’s a silent, rhythmic communication. A coded message that’s felt, not heard. It’s in the hugs we share, the hands we hold, and even in the spaces between our words.
We’re taught to idolize independence and to wear our emotional armor with pride. Yet, beneath that facade, we’re all made of stardust, yearning for connections. To be authentically human, to truly feel alive, we need to let our guard down. We need to remember that our essence thrives on interconnection vulnerability, on being soft-hearted.
So, how do you un-break a heart that’s weathered many storms? The answer isn’t found in grand gestures, but in the myriad of small moments where we feel truly seen and cherished. Whisper to yourself, “In this vast cosmic expanse, I have a place, I am seen, and I belong.” Think back to those moments, perhaps laughing with friends under a canopy of stars or feeling the universe’s pulse while standing at the edge of the sea, where you felt like you were valued . Where you felt like you belonged.
Notice these fleeting moments. Hold onto them. They’re like fragments of shooting stars, brief but illuminating. Amidst the chaos of our existences, you have the innate power to mend your heart, stitch by stitch. Because, after all, we’re all just stories in the end, and yours is one worth living with an open heart.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | health, Neurology, wellness
Your brain is like the maestro of an exquisite symphony that is your body, with the limbic system holding the baton. This key player, responsible for our emotions, motivations, and memories, plays a significant role in the harmony between your brain and immune system.
Welcome to the Limbic System: The Command Center of Emotions & More
The limbic system is made up of several brain structures, including the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and cingulate cortex. Each member of the team plays its unique part:
- Amygdala: Meet the brain’s security guard. Its job is to protect you, keeping a keen eye out for danger and playing a big role in processing emotions, especially when fear is knocking at the door.
- Hippocampus: This one is your personal historian, responsible for creating new memories and linking emotions and senses to these memories. It helps you remember the good times (and the not-so-good times).
- Hypothalamus: The hypothalamus wears many hats – it keeps tabs on your hunger, sleep, body temperature, hormones, and also plays a part in emotions and memory. It’s your body’s personal assistant, always juggling multiple tasks.
- Cingulate Cortex: This cerebral team member helps in managing your emotions and pain. Consider it the sensible voice in the crowd.
The Neuro-Immune Connection: A Two-Way Street
The relationship between your brain and your immune system is indeed a complex one, and it’s more interactive than you might think. Think of it like a two-way street or an ongoing dialogue where one impacts the other and vice versa.
One fascinating aspect of this neuro-immune connection is how the immune system communicates with the brain, particularly when it’s activated. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re fighting off a particularly nasty cold. Your immune system goes into high gear, sending out an army of white blood cells to battle the invading germs.
As part of this immune response, your immune system releases cytokines. These tiny proteins act like messengers, sending out distress signals to your brain. This is your immune system’s way of saying, “Hey, we’re dealing with a situation down here. Can you help?”
Your brain, always willing to lend a hand, responds to these distress signals. It activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, leading to the release of cortisol, our primary stress hormone. Cortisol, in turn, is meant to suppress the immune response and limit inflammation.
But here’s where things can get tricky. If your immune system is consistently activated—due to chronic stress, past trauma, poor sleep, unhealthy diet, or persistent infections, for example—then those distress signals to your brain become more like a constant alarm.
This can lead to a chronic state of inflammation in your body and result in a perpetuating feedback loop of stress and inflammation. Your brain, in an effort to manage the constant “distress calls,” can end up maintaining a heightened stress response. This persistent stress state can exacerbate the immune response further, leading to even more inflammation.
This is where the concept of limbic retraining comes in handy. By working to retrain your limbic system, you’re essentially trying to teach your brain to better regulate the stress response, helping to break the cycle of chronic inflammation.
So, it’s not merely a one-way conversation from the brain to the body or the body to the brain, but an intricate dialogue between the two. The key lies in ensuring that this dialogue remains balanced and that neither the brain nor the immune system is constantly shouting over the other.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, illness, physical
Autoimmune diseases are conditions in which the body’s own immune system begins to attack healthy cells, like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, and Crohn’s disease. Statistics reveal that over 80% of those diagnosed with autoimmune diseases are women. But why is this? Scientists have long tried to figure out the factors that create this significant gender imbalance.
After 20 years of working with women worldwide suffering from various autoimmune issues, I’ve uncovered a crucial link.
In our contemporary Western culture, women are often trained from a young age to be “good girls” who are always kind, caring, and make sure everyone around them is comfortable and happy. However, society’s “good girl” blueprint subtly teaches us self-abandonment. After years of prioritizing others’ needs above our own, we come to diminish, or even forget, our own needs entirely.
By striving to emulate this idealized version of womanhood, we unintentionally inflict harm upon ourselves. The “good girl” mantra that tells us to be kind, pleasant, and put others’ comfort first, might paradoxically be the trigger point for autoimmune diseases.
In the holistic model I advocate, our bodies and minds are a unified system. By constantly demonstrating “good girl” behaviors and incorporating self-abandonment into our worldview, we instigate changes in our immune system. If self-abandonment is devaluing one’s own needs and prioritizing others’, autoimmune diseases mirror this at a cellular level. Just as self-abandonment represents an attack and devaluation of oneself, autoimmune diseases constitute a similar internal assault. Our immune system falters in caring for our own cells, just as we falter in caring for our own needs.
So, how do we begin healing? A significant first step is learning to establish boundaries. This means learning to say “no,” disappointing others, prioritizing your own needs, and acknowledging that adhering to the “good girl” norm can be harmful.
I advise you to practice self-care more assertively. Stop caring about others’ reactions to your actions. Ensure your own needs are fulfilled and you are comfortable before considering others’ feelings. Even though this seems like a significant shift, if you’ve been confined to “good girl mode,” being a bit more self-focused won’t transform you into a selfish person. You’ll just become someone who takes a moment to consider their own needs before attending to others.
This perspective shift and repair of cellular damage is integral to my client sessions. Using energy healing and coaching to reverse years of conditioning and associated dysfunction in the limbic and immune systems is essential for overcoming autoimmune diseases. If this approach resonates with you, I’d like to invite you to sign up for a consult call on my website. We can talk about your health issues and I’ll explain a bit more about how I work and what methods may be best for your next level of healing.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, illness, physical
The human body is a complex, interconnected system in which the mind and body cooperate to sustain overall health. If you’re dealing with chronic illnesses, you may have come across the term ‘neuro-immune connection’. But what does it mean, and how is it related to your health journey?
The Neuro-Immune Connection Simplified
The neuro-immune connection describes the relationship between your nervous system—the command center of your body—and your immune system, your body’s defense force. These two systems continually communicate to respond to threats and maintain balance in your body.
When everything is in balance, this connection operates seamlessly. However, disruptions in this communication can contribute to chronic illnesses, highlighting the critical role this connection plays in our health.
The Impact of Stress on the Neuro-Immune Connection
Our modern lifestyle often exposes us to prolonged stress, impacting the neuro-immune connection. Chronic stress disrupts this delicate balance, potentially triggering or exacerbating chronic illnesses. Furthermore, if you’ve experienced childhood trauma or emotional neglect, your body may be ‘primed’ to be more susceptible to everyday stressors disrupting this balance. In my work, I’ve found that this is particularly true for people with freeze or appease stress responses.
Harnessing the Neuro-Immune Connection for Health
Fortunately, the neuro-immune connection is not immutable. Employing strategies such as somatic therapy, vagal toning, intuitive movement to music, Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), energy healing, mental practice exercises, and mindfulness-based practices can help positively influence this connection.
The Role of Holistic Care: Maggie’s Story
Maggie, a client of mine, came to me with several ongoing issues. She’d been struggling with worsening gastrointestinal problems and was now breaking out in hives all over her body. Despite various allergy tests and medication for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), her condition didn’t improve.
Following a move to a new city with her husband, her symptoms had significantly worsened. Suspecting mold, she had her new house tested, found several strains, and spent thousands on remediation. Despite all this, her health continued to decline.
Once we began working together, it became clear that Maggie was holding onto old trauma stories within her body. The added stress from the recent move was the tipping point—her neuroimmune system was on high alert.
Over the course of about six months, Maggie and I worked together twice a month, employing a combination of energy healing, somatic work, and trauma release. By the end of that time, her health had completely transformed. She no longer experienced rashes, and her digestion normalized. In her own words, “My digestion is better than I can ever remember, even when I was young!”
I hope this exploration of the neuro-immune connection emphasizes the importance of considering the body as a connected system, especially when dealing with chronic illnesses. For those navigating these conditions, understanding this connection and taking steps to balance both the underlying immune and nervous system is key.
If you’re interested in learning more about the neuro-immune connection or need help managing a chronic illness, reach out on social media or send me an email. I’m always here to support your journey towards dynamic, vibrant health.
by Megan Caper | health, illness, meditation, mindfulness, wellness
If you appear to be highly functional and have your shit together, but suffer with chronic symptoms, this post is for you. Let’s talk about the connection between your type of stress response and your illness.
In the world of chronic illness, there’s a peculiar irony that it tends to strike the ones who appear to ‘have it all together.’ If you’re that high achiever who seemingly juggles work, family, and life with remarkable grace, yet secretly battles chronic symptoms behind the scenes, then you’re not alone.
What does this curious link between chronic illness and the ‘freeze’ or ‘appease’ stress responses look like? Picture this: under the ‘freeze’ stress response, you might be grappling with decision paralysis or fatigue, all while keeping a brave face, ensuring the world sees you as the competent, composed individual you’ve always been.
Meanwhile, the ‘appease’ response has you bending over backward to maintain peace, potentially neglecting your health in the process. Perhaps you’re the CEO constantly overworking to please stakeholders or the parent forsaking personal health to cater to family needs. Sound familiar?
It’s not a coincidence that the same people often labeled as ‘overachievers,’ also wrestle with perfectionism and the ever-looming cloud of imposter syndrome. Striving for the impeccable and fearing exposure, you exist in a perpetual state of stress. This relentless cycle amplifies your vulnerability to chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, Lyme disease, mold illness, or long Covid.
Here’s the catch though: the very resilience and determination that bring you success also serve as your barriers to healing. You’re caught in the paradox of ‘functional suffering,’ always pushing through the pain, disregarding your needs, and internalizing the belief that you don’t deserve to rest.
One of the key pieces to healing chronic illness is using practices that create a baseline experience state of love and safety. Imagine feeling that the world and people in it are safe, ready to support you in whatever way you need, and are waiting to tell you how proud they are of not only your achievements, but who you are as a human being.
One of the best ways to start doing this is through mindfulness and meditation. These tools help you stay present, recognize and challenge destructive thought patterns, and soothe physical and mental stress. Together, they’re your secret weapons to foster an environment of safety, acceptance, and love, ultimately setting the stage for healing.
So, dear high achiever, if you’re open-minded and believe in the mind-body connection, give mindfulness and meditation a shot. Don’t let your chronic symptoms be the plot twist in your success story. Instead, let your healing journey be the empowering sequel where you redefine success, not just in terms of achievements, but also personal well-being and self-love.
by Megan Caper | chakras, energetic body, healing, health, wellness
According to ancient Indian spiritual traditions, chakras are energy centers within our bodies, each with unique functions and characteristics. Interestingly, these chakras correspond to major endocrine glands, which also have unique functions and characteristics that align almost perfectly with the functions of each chakra. Understanding these chakra-endocrine correlations can provide a holistic perspective on health, balancing both physical and energetic aspects. I work with this interplay of energetic and physical body parts all the time in the healing sessions I do with clients. This is one of the things I love about energy healing – the ability to address these body parts as either their energetic or physical form in whatever way is needed for healing in that moment.
1st Chakra – Root Chakra (Muladhara) & the Testes
The root chakra, located at the base of the spine, represents our foundation and feeling of groundedness. Physically, it aligns with the testes, the glands responsible for sexual function and reproduction. (Yes, also for people without testes – about 50% of the testosterone in people with ovaries is produced by vestigial testicular tissue.) Just as the root chakra relates to our sense of survival and belonging, these glands govern the fundamental aspect of life – reproduction and continuation of the species.
2nd Chakra – Sacral Chakra (Swadhisthana) & the Ovaries
Situated below the navel, the sacral chakra governs our creative and sexual energies. Its alignment with the ovaries in women strengthens this connection, as ovaries regulate female reproductive functions and influence aspects of femininity and creativity – echoing the creative and generative functions of the sacral chakra.
3rd Chakra – Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura) & the Pancreas
The solar plexus chakra, located in the stomach area, is all about personal power, self-esteem, and our ability to channelize energy into action. It aligns with the pancreas, an endocrine gland crucial in converting food into fuel. The solar plexus chakra and pancreas both convert raw materials, whether food or personal will, into usable energy.
4th Chakra – Heart Chakra (Anahata) & the Thymus/Heart
The heart chakra, at the center of the chest, symbolizes love, compassion, and emotional balance. Physically, it corresponds with the thymus gland, vital for immune function, and the heart, our core life-sustaining organ. Just as the heart chakra harmonizes emotions and instills compassion, the thymus and heart work together to maintain physical vitality and balance.
5th Chakra – Throat Chakra (Vishuddha) & the Thyroid
The throat chakra stands for communication and expression. Its physical counterpart, the thyroid gland, influences growth, metabolism, and development. In essence, the thyroid regulates how our bodies express their physiological blueprints, reflecting the throat chakra’s focus on communication and authenticity.
6th Chakra – Third Eye Chakra (Ajna) & the Pituitary/Hypothalamus
The third eye chakra, located between the eyebrows, is the center of intuition and foresight. It corresponds to the pituitary and hypothalamus glands, the master regulators of the endocrine system. Just as the third eye chakra is considered the overseer of our spiritual system, the pituitary and hypothalamus guide our physiological functions, demonstrating a profound interplay between intuition and homeostasis.
7th Chakra – Crown Chakra (Sahasrara) & the Pineal Gland
The crown chakra, situated at the top of the head, represents spiritual connection and enlightenment. It aligns with the pineal gland, a tiny gland responsible for the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep patterns and seasonal functions. In many spiritual traditions, the pineal gland is considered the physical manifestation of the “third eye,” linking it directly to our spiritual awareness. Just like the crown chakra governs spiritual connection and universal consciousness, the pineal gland acts as our biological ‘third eye,’ regulating our internal rhythm and connecting us to natural cycles.
This synchronicity between the chakras and the endocrine system illustrates a profound connection between our physical and energetic selves. The chakras govern the flow of energy in our bodies, while the endocrine glands regulate the physiological functions that sustain us. Together, they create a beautiful synergy that echoes in every aspect of our existence – physical, emotional, and spiritual.
By understanding the correlations between our chakras and endocrine system, we gain a deeper appreciation for our body’s innate wisdom. Ultimately, the chakras and the endocrine system together form an intricate network that nourishes and sustains us, providing the foundation for a holistic approach to well-being.
by Megan Caper | Childhood trauma, energetic body, healing, health, illness, physical, wellness
After spending two decades in the field of health and healing, I have noticed an intriguing pattern: people with chronic or autoimmune illnesses frequently share three common characteristics. Far from being weaknesses, these characteristics are also inherent strengths once we understand how to navigate them. Transforming these maladaptive aspects into adaptive ones can lead to happier, healthier lives.
The Freeze or Appease Response
Under the pressure of stress, many individuals adopt one of two coping strategies: they either “freeze” or “appease.” Those in the “freeze” category might withdraw from stressful situations as a protective mechanism, they tend to walk away rather than get involved in an argument or confrontation. Those who “appease” may display an excessively accommodating nature, eager to diffuse conflict and maintain harmony even at personal expense.
This coping style can often lead to a person becoming an “internalizer” – someone more inclined to self-blame rather than attributing the issue to external factors. While this trait can foster a heightened sense of responsibility and introspection and lead to a lot of personal growth, when unregulated, it can also lead to undue self-criticism and anxiety.
High Empathy and Sensitivity
Another shared trait is a profound empathy, often present in those who are Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). This means they possess an extraordinary capacity to discern others’ moods through subtle cues, such as body language, tone of voice, or even energetic vibrations. You may not even realize you’re doing this and may think everyone has this ability, but I assure you, they do not!
However, being an HSP can make modern society’s demands challenging. HSPs often require more “tend and befriend” energy — nurturing and supportive environments — which our culture doesn’t always provide. While their heightened perception can make them excellent caregivers, educators, or counselors, the constant bombardment of stimuli can sometimes lead to overstimulation or emotional exhaustion.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
Finally, a surprising number of people with chronic or autoimmune illnesses have an ACE score of 3 or more. ACE studies refer to the exploration of how negative experiences during formative years can significantly impact a person’s health and well-being later in life. These adverse experiences range from emotionally immature parents to household dysfunction, such as substance abuse, mental illness, or parental separation.
A high ACE score often correlates with increased risk for chronic or autoimmune diseases. These experiences can alter immune and nervous systems, predisposing the individual to a variety of health conditions. Yet, understanding this link provides an opportunity for healing past traumas and working towards a healthier future.
Understanding these shared traits — the freeze or appease response, high empathy and sensitivity, and an elevated ACE score — can empower us to make essential changes. Recognizing these aspects within ourselves is the first step towards mitigating their potentially detrimental effects and harnessing their strengths.
Remember, we are not defined by our conditions or our pasts. We have the power to shape our futures, and by addressing these aspects consciously, we can influence our health positively.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, illness, meditation, physical, wellness
Living with a chronic illness can be a daily challenge. But what if there were a way to ease some of this burden from within ourselves? Well, buckle up, because we’re about to dive into the world of meditation and how it can help you manage your chronic illness by shifting the function of both your immune and nervous system.
Meditation is a diverse practice, with various techniques that all aim to integrate the mind and body, cultivating a state of deep relaxation and mental tranquility. These techniques might include focusing on particular sensations, such as the breath, a sound, a visual image, or a mantra. The ultimate goal is to enhance both physical and emotional well-being.
The benefits of meditation extend beyond a sense of calm and balance. Interestingly, meditation can also influence the neuroimmune system, our body’s intricate network that integrates neural, hormonal, and immune communication. Meditation is thought to counteract the effects of the sympathetic nervous system, which increases heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure during times of stress. By reducing the stress response, meditation initiates beneficial effects throughout the body.
Research has found that mindfulness meditation affects two different stress pathways in the brain, changing brain structures and activity in regions associated with attention and emotion regulation. There’s also preliminary evidence suggesting that mindfulness could boost the immune system, potentially aiding in faster recovery from illnesses like the common cold or flu.
But how does this apply to chronic diseases? Well, meditation has been shown to help manage symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, asthma, cancer, chronic pain, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, and irritable bowel syndrome.
A 2018 analysis supported by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) found that mindfulness meditation approaches were effective in managing anxiety, stress, and depression. Furthermore, meditation can strengthen the immune response, reduce anxiety, and improve sleep – critical components of self-care when managing a chronic illness. Mindfulness has also been shown to alleviate symptoms such as pain and fatigue in individuals with chronic pain conditions.
In fact, a research review published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that meditation was beneficial in relieving anxiety, pain, and depression, with its effect on depression being roughly equivalent to an antidepressant.
Although almost all types of meditation will be beneficial, if you’re looking to try a meditation that’s specifically for healing, I have one here that you’re welcome to try and see how it feels: Heal Your Health Issue Meditation by Megan Caper
So, there you have it – meditation might just be the key to unlocking a healthier, happier you and is a powerful tool for those managing chronic illnesses. And the best part? You don’t need any fancy equipment or expensive classes to get started – all you need is a quiet space, a few minutes of your time, and an open mind.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, Neurology, physical, wellness
Western science is finally beginning to understand what holistic practitioners have been advocating about chronic illness for decades: the mind and body function as a single interconnected system, and a dysfunction in one can lead to a dysfunction in the other.
Contrary to what we learned in school, our brains are not simply the “controllers” of our bodies, with every bodily function resulting from a directive issued by the brain. Instead, recent findings suggest that the brain acts more like a relay station, receiving information from the body, interpreting and synthesizing it, and then sending it back to the body. This relationship between the brain and body is more of a cooperative partnership than a hierarchical model in which the body strictly follows the brain’s orders. (It’s worth noting that this misconception may have arisen from cognitive biases towards hierarchical models prevalent among the primarily white male researchers of the past century.)
When we experience physical or psychological stress, our bodies relay the message to our brains that something is amiss. In response, the brain activates “glial” cells, triggering an inflammatory immune response. This reaction sets off a cascade of changes, with the brain altering the quantity and type of hormones and neurotransmitters it produces. These alterations, in turn, instruct the body to heighten inflammation, immune sensitivity, and make changes in energy production and pain signaling.
The issue arises when this response becomes entrenched in the brain. If our systems do not receive the “all-clear” message once the stressor has passed, we may end up in a chronic state of brain inflammation and immune response. Over time, this can lead to symptoms such as chronic pain, fatigue, IBS, autoimmune diseases, chemical and sensory sensitivity, brain fog, and mood changes.
Fortunately, this condition is reversible. By applying neuroplasticity principles, we can help the brain exit its stressed and hypervigilant state. One study demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach, as 74% of chronic fatigue/ME patients experienced a reduction in core symptoms after receiving a drug that helped regulate neuroinflammation and immune cell function.
However, I believe that drugs are not the only solution. Instead, we can harness the brain’s innate ability to modify its functions in response to different inputs. By providing the brain with different information from the body, the cooperative partnership between the two can shift dramatically. As a result, many symptoms may dissipate on their own, and a new state of balance can become the new normal.
If you’re interested in learning more, I will be offering a course soon to explain the underlying science behind this phenomenon and teach techniques for utilizing principles of neuro-immune plasticity to reverse brain inflammation and restore your health. If you would like to join the waitlist and receive more information, please feel free to send me a note.
by Megan Caper | health, physical, wellness
Your gut brain (or “enteric nervous system” if you want to be all sciency about it) is a whole other brain that exists in and around your digestive system, in the walls of your intestines and the surrounding tissues. This “second brain” is incredibly powerful, with 100 times more neurons than your spinal cord. It regulates many functions including immune function, quality of digestion, hormones and mood. In fact, your gut brain is largely responsible for the production of 95% of the serotonin and other “feel good” chemicals in your body.
Maintaining a healthy gut brain is crucial! Here are five things you can do today to take care of it:
- Eat whole foods. The more you can make whole foods a part of your diet, the more you’re giving your gut brain the fuel it needs to function well. By whole foods I mean minimally processed and resemble their original form: vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, nuts, grains, and even some dairy. So, olive oil is closer to a whole food than an oreo, for example. Whole foods contain not only the nutrients that our gut brains need, but also other important chemicals like phytonutrients and anti-inflammatory compounds. In addition, whole foods already contain these nutrients in the amounts and ratios that our bodies need to optimally process them.
- Avoid preservatives and food coloring. This is important for two reasons. The first is that foods with preservatives and/or food coloring are less likely to be whole foods. The second is that preservatives and food coloring are toxic to your gut brain and your microbiome. Think about it – if you’re eating something that contains a preservative that’s supposed to inhibit bacterial growth in your food, wouldn’t it also inhibit bacterial growth in your gut? And we NEED bacteria in our gut! That serotonin I talked about that’s produced in your gut? It’s made by gut microbiome bacteria that’s being directed to do so by your gut brain. Food coloring has been shown to be a neurotoxin in many studies, so it kills the cells of your gut brain.
- Keep your mucosa healthy. A significant portion of your gut brain resides within two layers of your intestines, called a “neural plexus.” These layers go all the way from your esophagus to your large intestine, the entire length of your digestive system. So, it’s important to keep these layers healthy! A good way to do that is to make sure your gut mucosa is vibrant and healthy. The gut mucosa is a layer of mucous (eww, I know!) that coats your intestinal tract and keeps the food from reaching those plexus layers. The good news is that eating mostly whole foods will provide you with what you need for a healthy gut mucosa. But if you want to supplement, some helpful things you can take include: L-Glutamine, zinc carnosine, immunoglobulins, polyphenols, and amino acids including L-proline, L-serine, L-threonine, & L-cysteine. Of course, always check with your doctor before adding any supplements. (Side note: Am I the only one that looks at the word immunoglobulins and reads it as immunogoblins? I always imagine these microscopic goblins running around in my immune system.)
- Promote the serotonin cycle. When we give our brain and nervous system certain input, it actually changes the structure and function of it to create more of that same thing. So, for example, if I live in war zone and am often anxious and afraid, the structure and function of my brain will change over time to one where anxiety and fear are the default state. However, the same is true of happiness as well. If you “feed” your nervous system with things that promote joy, the structure and function of your brain will change to a default state of joy. Since our gut brains produce most of the happy chemicals in our body, it’s important to give it happy chemicals to prime it to make more. So, spend some time doing things that make you happy! That could be dancing to your favorite music, spending time with happy memories or envisioning your dreams coming true in the future, or hanging out with friends doing fun activities. Try to spend at least an hour a day doing things that increase your happy chemicals and over time, you’ll see a change in your baseline emotional state.
- Gut massage. The movement of food and other substances through your gut (called “gut motility”) is an important part of the health of your gut brain, too. Since your gut brain produces neurotransmitters, hormones, immune cells and other substances that are vital to health, it’s important to keep things moving along. Here’s a link to a great handout from the NHS on how to do abdominal self-massage: https://www.wchc.nhs.uk/content/uploads/2019/12/Self-abdominal-massage.pdf
I hope you found this information helpful and as always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out and I’d be happy to chat more.
by Megan Caper | energetic body, healing, health, illness, meridians, Neurology, physical, wellness
In the past 75 years, our world has witnessed an unprecedented rise in chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases. Visionaries like Gabor Mate and Peter Levine have proposed that these ailments may be rooted in the accumulation of trauma and stress within our bodies and minds. The question remains, though, what is the precise connection? How do stress and trauma translate into long-term diseases?
Allow me to share my insights.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with countless individuals grappling with conditions such as Chronic Fatigue (ME), food intolerances, Lyme disease, MS, and, more recently, long COVID. A recurring theme has emerged from my energy healing sessions. When I establish an intuitive connection with my clients’ body-minds and inquire where the healing should commence, I consistently receive a message to harmonize the “Nervous-immune-digestive system.” Interestingly, this intuitive wisdom suggests that these are not three separate entities, as conventional medical science often assumes.
Conventional Western medicine divides our physiological systems into distinct categories, such as the immune system, the musculoskeletal system, the digestive system, and so forth. This compartmentalization is so deeply ingrained that we consult a different specialist for each system: a neurologist for the brain, a gastroenterologist for the digestive system, and a gynecologist for the reproductive system. Yet, our bodies do not perceive these as separate systems; rather, they are human constructs intended to simplify and classify biological information.
Our bodies comprehend that we are a single, interconnected living system, with every part dependent on the whole.
Thus, when I psychically received the term “nervousimmunedigestive system” from my clients’ bodies, I understood it as a call to view these three systems as one. This realization led me to delve into the intricate connections between the brain, immune system, and digestive system.
What I discovered was truly astounding.
Our brains, immune systems, and digestive systems are in constant dialogue, exchanging information through hormones, electrical signaling, and energetic pathways (such as meridians). They continuously monitor our health and relay any changes to the rest of the body.
Chronic illness arises from a disrupted communication system that remains stuck in a state of hypervigilance (fight/flight/freeze/appease). This dysfunction generates inaccurate messages that can alter hormone levels, immune system activity, emotional states, brain processing, inflammation, and more. For instance, in clients with chronic infections like long COVID or Lyme, I observed a hypervigilant body purposely clinging to low-grade infections to maintain surveillance, like a physiological version of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Unfortunately, this vigilance comes at a cost: fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, depression, and a myriad of other symptoms. Only when we coaxed the “nervousimmunedigestive system” out of hypervigilance and into a state of calm safety did these symptoms subside.
The encouraging news is that by addressing the physiological changes within these three intertwined systems, we can heal the physical symptoms of chronic and autoimmune illnesses. I have discovered that once the “neuroimmunedigestive system” is healed, other symptoms dissipate naturally.
If this message resonates with you, I am developing a program in the coming months that unites energy healing, NLP principles, mental practice, somatic healing, and neuroplasticity to facilitate lasting healing for these conditions. If you are interested in joining the waitlist for this transformative program, please reach out, and I will ensure you are among the first to know.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, health, Neurology
It’s a common belief that our brains are the sole creators of our thoughts, which we then become conscious of and act upon. However, recent research on neuroplasticity has revealed a far more fascinating reality – not only do our brains generate thoughts, but our thoughts also play a role in shaping our brains. The previously held notion that our brains were akin to computer hardware, and our thoughts to output, no longer holds true. The lines between them are much more blurred than we initially thought.
Indeed, our brains create thoughts that govern our body systems, but it doesn’t end there. The thoughts and emotions we consciously focus on can also alter the structure and function of our brains. This relationship is cyclical, not linear – more like an ongoing dialogue than a one-way street.
This discovery aligns with what we know about psychoneuroimmunology – the study of how our thoughts influence our body’s cellular functions. The old mechanical model of disease saw our bodies as machines, similar to cars, with diseases as the result of breakdowns. Now, we understand that our bodies are far more complex. In fact, how we utilize our bodies can impact their overall functioning. Imagine complimenting your car every morning and witnessing it perform better and suffer fewer breakdowns as a result!
So, how can you harness this knowledge to improve your health? There are two main strategies to consider:
- Monitor the thoughts and emotions you’re feeding your brain. Be mindful of the content you consume, from the media you watch to the people you interact with. Consistently exposing your brain to fear, anxiety, anger, or sadness may rewire it to be more prone to those feelings. As Louise Hay once replied when someone at one of her talks suggested killing two birds with one stone, “Why would I want to kill two birds? That sounds terrible!” Be conscious that the information, emotions, and thoughts in your environment can alter your brain, influencing the thoughts and emotions that emerge.
- Mess with your brain to alter the hardware in a positive way. Our brains struggle to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Research on mental practice has shown that when we vividly imagine scenarios, our brains process them as if they’re genuinely occurring. Why not use this to your advantage? Spend time each day visualizing situations that evoke happiness, laughter, connection, and gratitude. Committing to this practice for six to twelve months can reshape your brain, leading it to generate more positive thoughts and notice experiences that align with these emotions.
Now that you’re aware of the two-way street between your brain and thoughts, how will you choose to positively reshape your brain today? Embrace this newfound understanding, and embark on a journey towards a healthier, more fulfilling life, guided by the power of your thoughts.
by Megan Caper | health, wellness
You know how they say, “You are what you eat”? Well, there’s increasing evidence from the world of epigenetics and psychoneuroimmunology that “You are what you think and believe” as well!
Epigenetics, a rapidly growing field of study, is revolutionizing the way we think about the relationship between our emotions, belief systems, and physical health. Influenced by the work of researchers like Bruce Lipton, mind-body science is evolving, demonstrating the interconnectedness of our thoughts, feelings, and the cells in our bodies. Let’s explore the fascinating world of epigenetics, the impact of emotions and belief systems on our cells, and the connection to psychoneuroimmunology – the study of how the mind influences the immune system.
The Power of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that occur without altering the DNA sequence. These changes can be triggered by various factors, including the environment, lifestyle, and even our thoughts and emotions. Through epigenetics, we are discovering that our genes are not set in stone; rather, they can be turned on or off, like a light switch, based on various factors and stimuli.
Bruce Lipton, a renowned cell biologist, has played a significant role in advancing our understanding of how emotions and belief systems affect cellular function. According to Lipton, the receptors on the surface of our cells are influenced by our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, ultimately shaping our health and well-being.
Emotions, Belief Systems, and Cellular Receptors
Our emotions and belief systems have a profound impact on our overall health. When we experience positive emotions and maintain optimistic beliefs, our cells receive signals that promote healing, growth, and overall well-being. Conversely, negative emotions and limiting beliefs can send signals that contribute to stress, inflammation, and even disease.
Lipton’s research suggests that our thoughts and emotions directly influence the receptors on our cells’ surfaces. These receptors act as gatekeepers, allowing certain molecules to enter the cell while blocking others. By altering the behavior of these receptors, our emotions and beliefs can directly affect cellular function, essentially “programming” our cells to respond to specific stimuli.
The Connection to Psychoneuroimmunology
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a multidisciplinary field that examines the interactions between the mind, nervous system, and immune system. It is a testament to the evolving understanding of mind-body science, as it delves into the ways our thoughts and emotions impact our physical health.
Epigenetics and PNI are closely intertwined, as both fields emphasize the role of emotions and belief systems in shaping our health. Research in PNI has demonstrated that stress, anxiety, and other negative emotional states can weaken the immune system, making us more susceptible to infections and diseases. Conversely, positive emotions and beliefs have been shown to strengthen the immune system, promoting healing and overall well-being.
The Evolution of Mind-Body Science
As our understanding of epigenetics and psychoneuroimmunology expands, so does our appreciation for the intricate connection between the mind and body. The idea that our emotions and beliefs can directly influence our physical health has profound implications for both medicine and self-care.
By harnessing the power of our thoughts and emotions, we can actively participate in shaping our health and well-being. Mind-body practices like meditation, mindfulness, and positive affirmations are becoming increasingly popular as people recognize the potential of these tools to improve their lives.
The fields of epigenetics and psychoneuroimmunology are revolutionizing the way we think about health and well-being. As we continue to explore the connection between our emotions, beliefs, and physical health, it becomes clear that the mind and body are deeply intertwined. By embracing the power of our thoughts and feelings, we can take an active role in our own healing through practices like meditation, yoga, and through holistic modalities like energy healing, EFT and positive psychology practices.
by Megan Caper | energetic body, healing, health, meridians
Energy healing is a form of alternative therapy that involves manipulating the body’s energy fields to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. This age-old practice has been around for thousands of years, stemming from the belief that everything in the universe is made up of energy, and that we can tap into this energy to heal ourselves or, for the gifted practitioners, help others heal.
You might be wondering if energy healing is purely a spiritual or new-age practice, but surprisingly, it has strong connections to science. In this post, we’ll delve into the captivating science behind energy healing and how it influences the body.
The Science Behind Energy Healing
At the heart of energy healing is the concept of the body’s energy fields. According to energy healers, these fields consist of different frequencies of energy that relate to various parts of the body, including the chakras, meridians, and aura.
These fields can become imbalanced or obstructed by stress, trauma, or physical disease. By using a range of techniques to manipulate these fields, energy healers strive to restore balance and encourage healing. Unlike traditional doctors, energy healers focus on stimulating the body’s own natural ability to heal, leading to a more holistic process that results in improvements in physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
While scientific research is gradually validating the existence of meridians, chakras, and other energy fields, we do know that we are all made of energy, manifested as physical form. Quantum physics reveals that everything in the universe is made up of energy, including the human body. This energy is constantly in motion, vibrating at different frequencies.
How Energy Healing Affects the Body
Energy healing is thought to impact the body in several intriguing ways. One of the primary benefits of energy healing is its ability to promote relaxation and reduce stress. When we’re stressed, our bodies release cortisol and other stress hormones that can negatively affect our health. Energy healing can help to lower these hormones and foster feelings of calm and relaxation.
Energy healing is also believed to boost the body’s natural healing processes. By restoring balance to the body’s energy fields, energy healers aim to remove blockages and facilitate the flow of energy throughout the body. This can help activate the body’s natural healing mechanisms and promote overall health and well-being.
Finally, energy healing is thought to nurture emotional and spiritual healing. By working with the body’s energy fields, energy healers strive to eliminate negative energy and encourage positive emotions such as love, joy, and peace. This can help heal emotional wounds and foster spiritual growth and development.
by Megan Caper | health, illness, physical, wellness
Migraines wreak havoc in people’s lives and are much more than a headache. Migraines cause pain (headache, or stomach ache in the case of abdominal migraines) and can also include symptoms like light and temperature sensitivity, dizziness, distorted vision or “floaters”, numbness in face or extremities, nausea, vomiting, and racing thoughts. Scientists are still unclear about what causes migraines, but current research points to a connection between serotonin levels and sudden changes in blood pressure and there appears to be a genetic component, as well.
However, the real reason for migraines isn’t just biological – people who are HSPs (highly sensitive people) and who tend to internalize stress and blame themselves (rather than blame the situation or other people) are the ones who will eventually develop migraines.
First, let’s look at the HSP link. People who fit the “highly sensitive person” profile are more finely attuned to both sensory stimuli and emotions. HSPs make up about 15-20% of the population and have brains that process more information than the norm and reflect on that information more deeply than others. HSPs tend to be more sensitive to sensory stimuli in their environments like flashing or bright light and noisy environments. They will often need to recharge with some alone time, preferably in a cozy Hygge-like environment. They also tend to pick up on details that others may miss – a brain that processes more information and reflects on it more deeply is not a bad thing after all, and can be a superpower. HSPs are good at seeing both the big picture and the little details, simultaneously. HSPs also have heightened empathic abilities as they are more aware of their inner emotional environment as well as the emotions of others. HSPs have more “mirror neurons” which are a type of brain cell that allows deeper social connections and greater awareness of the emotional state of others, which allows knowing more quickly and deeply what others are feeling, often more deeply than those others may know themselves.
As you can imagine from this description, HSP brains also tend to get overloaded more easily, and that’s when migraines can occur. If HSPs are constantly trying to operate in an environment or in social situations with high levels of sensory and emotional stimuli, it will eventually be more than they can handle. This tipping point of overwhelm is what can cause the neurological and blood pressure changes that can trigger a migraine.
But the overwhelm itself is not really the issue, it’s what we do with the overwhelm that matters.
There are two basic options for a brain that feels overwhelmed or stressed – we can blame the situation and other people (“That meeting was too crazy! I feel exhausted just from being in that room.”) or we can blame ourselves (“I should have been more prepared for that meeting. Everyone got upset and that probably could have been avoided if I’d had the information they were looking for beforehand.”) For those of us that tend towards the “freeze” or “appease” type of stress response, we usually will blame ourselves or put undue pressure on ourselves at work or school to try to avoid any feelings of shame or guilt. The changes in hormones and neurotransmitters caused by this type of self-blame, self-abandonment or self-gaslighting are the real culprits when it comes to migraines. When I made an effort to stop being a perfectionist (which is really a fear of the shame from disappointing people) my migraines reduced significantly.
When we can shift from thinking that there’s something wrong with us and we’re not doing a good enough job to realizing that our HSP sensitivity is just another type of neurodiversity (that is also a superpower) and that we are most likely doing plenty at whatever job or task is at hand, then our bodies will no longer have to stop us in our tracks with a migraine.
You are a sensitive soul, with the ability to think more widely and deeply than most, and that is a superpower. You are enough, and in fact people admire you and want to have you around just because you are you.
If you can start believing these two things, your migraines will diminish and you’ll find yourself on the road to true healing.
Xo Megan
PS: This post was by request! When I talked about digestive issues last week, someone asked if I could do one on migraines. So, if you have a medical issue that you’d like me to write about please let me know and I’ll make a future post about that topic.
by Megan Caper | health, illness, physical, wellness
I see a lot of clients that have digestive issues and so I want to address what I’ve seen as the common emotional correlations for issues with the stomach, small intestine and large intestine. What does it mean when you’re having issues with your digestive system?
Stomach: If you have issues with your stomach like gastric reflux, ulcers or stomach cramps it can be helpful to think of the saying, “I can’t stomach that.” Stomach issues often come up when we aren’t living in alignment with our ethics or values and we’re being asked, or are asking ourselves, to do something that we don’t feel good about. For example, maybe you have a job with a company whose corporate culture is toxic. Or maybe you’re in a relationship where you’re putting up with a lot of BS from your partner and you know you need to do something about it, but you haven’t. In Chinese medicine, stomach issues represent over-worry or stress, so what is it that you’re stressed about but haven’t done anything about yet?
Small intestine: The job of the small intestine is to figure out what parts of our food are nutrients to be absorbed and what parts are indigestible waste that needs to be passed on to the large intestine. Issues with the small intestine like leaky gut, food allergies, or issues with slow or fast digestion come from having difficulty with discernment around if things in your life are good for you (nutrients) or something you need to get rid of (indigestible waste). I see a ton of my people pleasers coming in with small intestine issues because they have trouble discerning what’s actually good for them and what they are doing so others stay happy. They take on (or absorb) everything for everyone. If you are someone who says, “I love making other people happy!” and you have digestive issues, then this may be an issue of discernment. The way to heal this issue is to practice having better boundaries around what is emotionally healthy and good for you, and get better at saying “no” to the things that are draining or consistently center others’ needs over your own. On the other end of the spectrum, I also see people coming in who do the opposite – instead of absorbing everything, they are too rigid and controlling and don’t take the chance of opening up to (absorbing) anything in case it might hurt them. The way to heal this is to work on feeling safe around other people.
Large intestine: Let’s talk about how you handle your $h!t. Are you someone who is able to let emotions come up in real time and process them? Or are you someone who is always on the ball, productive and damn near perfect but then needs a glass of wine at the end of the day to come down from the stress? The large intestine is all about how you handle being upset, disappointed or stressed and whether you hold on to these emotions or have healthy ways of addressing them. If you don’t have a healthy way of handling these as they come up, the energy in your large interesting can get backed up and that’s when trouble arises. The physiological function of the large intestine is intertwined with water balance – too much and you have loose stool, too little and you’re constipated. Emotions and water are BFFs, water is one of the main ways emotions move through our bodies. So if your water isn’t moving well, I can almost guarantee your bowels won’t be either.
If you’ve been working with digestive issues for a while and still aren’t seeing the progress you’d like, feel free to contact me and we can set up a call. Also, if you liked this article and you want to know more about the emotional connection with other body parts or systems, reply and let me know which ones! If there’s enough interest, I can make this into a series.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | emotions, healing, health, wellness
There is mounting research showing the massive effect on our health of a well-balanced psychosocial ecosystem. A psychosocial ecosystem includes things like our roles, our social connections, and our daily routines. If we are feeling stress or imbalance in any of these areas, it hampers healing, especially of chronic conditions. Let’s look at these three areas and how they impact our health and bodymind.
Our roles are the “parts” we play in our lives. If you think about the credits at the end of a movie where it says “mother” or “bank teller” and then lists the actors’ names, this is like the roles we play in our lives. We all have multiple roles, like “friend”, “daughter”, “co-worker”, “employee”, “crafter”, “film buff” and many more. Each of these roles brings some sort of meaning to our lives and each of them is fulfilling in a different way (some more than others!) The key is to look at where the stress lies. Which of these roles are stressful? Are there any of these roles that we simply hate? If there are roles that are causing you stress or unhappiness, then it’s important to look at how to modify them or get rid of them all together. For example, if being a “daughter” is stressful because your parents are toxic, how can you lessen the time and energy you spend on being with them? How do you lessen the role of “daughter”? However, if a role brings you calm and joy, then look at how you can increase that role in your life. For example, if your favorite part of your job is being a “co-worker”, how can you increase opportunities to interact with others at work?
Social connections are the people we have in our life. This could be family, friends, co-workers, pickleball buddies, online gaming friends, or our favorite waiter at that restaurant we go to – anyone who you know and have some sort of connection to. It’s been shown many times over that the quantity AND quality of these connections is incredibly important for our health. So, even if you don’t feel like you have a ton of good quality relationships right now, you can start chatting with folks at the dog park or in line at the store and even that will have beneficial effects, as the quantity and quality of social interactions are both health-promoting. When you make that connection with another person, even a short interaction, it starts a cascade of healing chemicals in your body that positively affect your nervous system, immune system, mood, and more.
Our bodyminds love routines because they love familiar things. We love to feel the calm predictability of something that we know is going to work out in the same way it did before. Bonus points if we know it’s something that will make us happy or fulfilled. Routines can range from where we drink our morning coffee or tea to what aisles we go down first in the supermarket to our daily yoga or meditation practice. When our routines get thrown off, we often become stressed because we don’t know exactly how things will unfold. So take a look at your daily routines at home and at work. Which ones bring you joy? What is it about them that makes you happy? Can you bring more of that into your life? And if there’s some part of your day that seems to feel chaotic or unpredictable, can you bring a routine to it so that it feels more predictable (and therefore less stressful)?
Where can you make some changes to your roles, social connectivity and routines in your life? Remember to start small and build from there, even small changes can make a big difference over time and we only start making bigger changes by starting small, getting positive feedback, and then wanting more.
What one thing can you change today?
by Megan Caper | Empathy, failure, healing, life lessons, resilience, Self-compassion
This is for all the people out there who are having a hard time right now. This is for all the people right now that don’t feel like they are at the inspirational part of their life story, they’re in the fire swamp battling the ROUSes. This is for all the people that are finding it challenging to wake up each day and do the basic things they need to do.
You are not alone. Many of us are right here with you in the swamp.
You are worthy of care and you deserve to have your needs met.
You deserve to be celebrated, no matter where you are in the cycle of your life.
You are worthy of healing, connection, love, and support.
I don’t know you, but I can 100% say I’m proud of you. I see what you’ve been through and it was A LOT. I admire how you’ve made it through, imperfectly perfect.
If you’re not currently receiving these feelings of support from the people and circumstances around you, it’s not your fault. It’s not because you did anything wrong or that there’s anything wrong with you. It’s because today’s hyper-individualistic society is designed not to provide those things. It’s a feature, not a bug.
It takes a village to live a life. It takes a village to celebrate wins, help people feel proud of who they are, and feel the deep comfort of intimate friendships and connections. It takes a village to give people the space and time they need when things aren’t going well to rest, reflect, and recover.
We don’t live in that village right now. We live in a system that intentionally and systematically isolates us from that connection that we need, and studies show that connection is a vital ingredient to living a mentally healthy and well-balanced life.
Because we’re all in living a fucked up system, it may feel like you are failing. It may feel like you could be doing a better job than you currently are. Don’t listen to the lies, you are not failing. You are a soul temporarily residing in a body, during a particularly isolating time in history, doing your best. You are resilient, kind, deeply compassionate, and worthy of help when times are tough. I mean, here you are, getting up each day, doing one thing at a time, and getting through. I am proud of you, my friend. You are a miracle, and deserve to be celebrated, just as you are.
by Megan Caper | healing, health, wellness
There’s an unspoken epidemic happening right now and I want to address it. You’ve probably heard of long Covid, which is when people have lingering symptoms after a Covid infection, but I’m seeing a deeper and more complex story with my clients than is not generally being reported in the news.
Long Covid is one of many “post-viral” syndromes that can cause a whole host of issues that may seem unrelated. Post-viral syndromes have been around for years, they’re what cause Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue), and are suspected as one of the factors in other diseases as well. Long Covid and other post-viral illnesses happen when the body still has some of the virus circulating in a small amount, or when the body gets stuck in a cycle of inflammation from fighting off the illness, or both.
This is why you can have long Covid even if you never actually “got” Covid – we’ve all probably been exposed to the Covid virus at this point, and while some people didn’t get exposed to enough virus particles to cause full-blown Covid, they did get enough to cause long Covid. These people probably never tested positive for Covid because you need a certain amount of antibodies to test positive, and their antigen/antibody levels were too low to detect.
In addition, I think that the same people who have a higher risk of autoimmune issues from being in the freeze/fawn (aka people pleasing) nervous system response are also at a higher risk of getting long Covid. This is borne out somewhat by the data, which shows that the rate of long Covid among those that tested positive is 10.1% of men and 17.9% of women (women tend towards freeze/fawn more than men.) Although, I think the rate is even higher when you take into account that people can get long Covid without ever testing positive for Covid.
The symptoms of long Covid are varied and can look different in each person. Post-viral syndromes often have a few things in common, like fatigue and brain fog, but because Covid is an RNA virus and can cross the blood-brain barrier, there are a host of weirder symptoms that doctors may not think of as the typical post-viral issues. (If they even know about post-viral issues at all! This has historically been an area where medical gaslighting is rampant.)
Here are some of the symptoms of long Covid:
- Tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life
- Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort
- Brain fog (trouble thinking clearly or finding words)
- Headaches
- Short or long-term memory issues
- Depression or anxiety that often comes on quickly and then leaves
- Chills and night sweats or other sudden changes in body temperature
- Sleep problems
- New allergies to foods or your environment
- New sensitivities to odors, chemicals, light, touch, or noise
- Change or decrease in taste and smell
- Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, especially when climbing stairs or hills
- Fast-beating or pounding heart (also known as heart palpitations) that comes and goes
- Muscle weakness and joint pain
- Pins-and-needles feelings in your arms and legs
- Warm or swollen legs or feet (if this is the case, please see a doctor immediately, it could be a blood clot)
- Digestive issues like diarrhea, stomach pain, or acid reflux
- Changes in appetite or types of food you crave
- Menstrual cycle changes
- Hair loss
- Weight gain or loss
- A general feeling of being “inflamed”
Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, but if you’ve noticed any of these popping up in the last 3 years, it could be long Covid. Since long-covid affects so many body systems, I’d suggest finding a holistic practitioner to help you out, like a functional medicine doctor, a naturopath, or an energy healer (like me!) There are steps you can take to improve your symptoms and get your body into a better balance so that it can oust the Covid virus and start the healing process.
by Megan Caper | Happiness, healing, health, wellness
If you’re someone who struggles with depression, anxiety or mood swings, I’ve got some news for you.
Your struggles aren’t all in your head, in fact they’re most likely in your gut.
Recent research shows that 95% of our serotonin (the happy mood regulating chemical) is made by bacteria in our digestive system. Surprisingly, our gut microbiome is responsible for much of our mood cognition and mental health.
It turns out that the state of our intestines and the health of the critters that live in them (our bacterial and fungal microbiome) can affect everything from hormone regulation to our immune system and most notably, our mood and cognition. Research shows that fluctuations in our microbiome cause changes in all of these systems and severe fluctuations can even cause disease in the long term.
There have been multiple studies that show that chronic depression and anxiety are linked to what’s called “gut dysbiosis” or an imbalance in the type, number, and location of various microbiome species. When researchers provided treatment that balanced the microbiome, levels of anxiety and depression decreased.
What does this mean for you? If you’re someone that tends towards anxiety or depression, the cause may not be all in your head. Of course, our past experiences and daily lives can affect our mental health, but it appears that even those experiences and trauma reactions affect our gut microbiome as well. Our head brains and gut brains work as one system when it comes to mood and cognition. Changes in our mood or stress level alter the makeup of our microbiome, and those alterations can in turn affect our mood and stress levels. Like much of our physiology, it’s not so much cause and effect but rather homeostasis (or balance) that’s important.
How do I keep my gut critters happy?
Here are 4 ways to keep your microbiome’s critters happy and healthy:
- Eat lots of plants. Our gut critters need to eat, too, and their favorite foods are what are called “prebiotics” found in vegetables, grains, and fruits. Make sure you’re eating a variety of these foods so your microbiome will have plenty to chow down on.
- Eat or drink fermented or cultured foods. There are plenty of foods that contain the healthy bacteria and fungi/yeast we need. Things like sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kiefer, yogurt and miso are all good sources of bacteria that our guts love.
- Avoid preservatives, artificial sweeteners and food coloring. All of these have been shown to decimate our microbiome. When possible, avoid these additives in your food. Some common food preservatives to look out for on nutrition labels are: nitrates/nitrites, sulfites, parabens, cellulose, and MSG.
- Meditate regularly. The list of health benefits from meditation keeps growing! There’s a study that recently came out which shows that the gut microbiome of Buddhist monks was healthier than that of neighboring residents in the same town. (I want it noted that the study states that, “All samples were collected and measured by professionals,” meaning that someone had the job title of “monk poop collector” for the duration of this study.)
If you suspect that your mood issues are gut related and you’ve tried all of the above without success, you can always reach out to me. I’m always happy to answer questions, and energy healing is another great way to address microbiome issues. I have many happy clients who have balanced their gut health through our sessions.
by Megan Caper | Childhood trauma, illness
I’ve noticed a pattern over the years in many of my clients with chronic illness, especially those with autoimmune diseases like MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and IBS. Most of these clients have strong “appease” or people pleasing nervous system responses in times of stress or conflict.
The appease response is about avoiding or defusing a potentially dangerous situation. When you grow up in a household with a lot of unpredictable anger, you develop the appease response as a way to avoid the anger (an attempt to keep the other person happy at all times) or defuse it (calm the person down before the anger reaches the lashing out stage).
When this becomes integrated into our nervous system, we become appeasers all the time, even when we’re no longer in the dangerous situation. In day-to-day life, this looks like making everyday decisions based on what will make others happy, choosing your words and actions to avoid making other people uncomfortable, or making sure everyone is happy and has what they need before you tend to yourself (if you ever even get to yourself!)
This is especially true for women, because a lot of the “appease” response looks a lot like what’s expected of us culturally: be a selfless mom, loving wife, supportive and agreeable employee. We get treated more favorably by society if we do these things and punished if we don’t. (See Kate Manne’s brilliant Down Girl if you want to know more about how this works.)
When the appease response becomes a constant way of being, we’re constantly focused on the needs of others and lose track of what we need, which creates “messy boundaries.” Boundaries are a form of self-care that helps to create clear guidelines, rules, or limits of how we’d like to be treated. But if you don’t ever focus on yourself, how do you even know how you want to be treated? How do you even know what’s truly important for you to be happy? To feel safe? Or fulfilled?
One thing I knew for sure after helping hundreds of clients is this: our physiology mimics our belief systems. If we have messy boundaries in our minds, then we have messy boundaries in our bodies, as well. When we’re in appease mode, we have a hard time knowing where our needs start and others’ needs end. We’ve convinced ourselves that making other people happy IS what we want, even when that leads to self-abandonment of our own needs in small ways, every day.
How does this relate to an autoimmune condition? Autoimmune conditions are where your body gets confused about what is “self” and “non-self” and your immune system starts attacking your own cells rather than invaders like viruses. It’s basically messy boundaries in our body’s physiology. We don’t know where we end and others start, and our immune system starts to develop self-abandonment on a cellular level, attacking ourselves out of confusion and messy boundaries. I see this time and time again in the clients that I treat – the folks that come in with chronic autoimmune issues are almost always the people pleasers. Once we work on releasing that trauma from their nervous system and releasing or replacing the appease-based belief systems, they are finally able to heal.
If you want to start healing this in your own life today, it’s important to start centering yourself and your own needs. This way you’ll start to learn what healthy boundaries look like for you, and your body will learn the same. Asking yourself, “Who am I and what do I want?” can be the most important question on your road to healing your illness.
by Megan Caper | Happiness
It’s that time of year again, when we all decide that we need new year’s resolutions to overhaul our lives, our exercise plans, or our eating habits. I always had a love/hate relationship with new year’s resolutions until I realized why they rub me the wrong way.
New year’s resolutions are positioned as a way to “fix” or “improve” something that you’re not doing well enough. They are rooted in self-improvement, productivity, and perfectionism ideology.
Let me tell you two things:
- You don’t need improving. You shouldn’t be anywhere other than where you are in your life, and you are perfect at every moment, growing and evolving in the perfect way for your unique soul.
- Guilt, shame and perfectionism has never healed or improved anything.
Let’s look at another way to do new years resolutions that isn’t rooted in shame, guilt or compare and despair. I want you to use the following journaling prompts to find out what will truly make you healthy and happy.
- The type of support, love and emotional nutrients I need are … (this could be emotional, practical, spiritual)
- When I think about the good I want to do in the world, I want to (do, start, make, help)….
- When I think of the moments when I feel cared for, safe, resourced and relaxed, I think of…
Once you’ve identified one or more things from these prompts, I want your resolution to be to manifest more of this in your daily life. Manifestation is one part action and one part magic. If you put yourself in situations where you can find those things you identified (or you ask people around you to help) AND you sit in the feelings of how good these things feel to you, then you’ll find the world softens in a way where these show up in your life more and more.
If you try this method, let me know what you think! And as always, reach out if you have any questions or comments, my virtual door is always open for you.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, healing, health, illness, physical, wellness
One of the most common questions I get from potential clients is “Can you help me with X condition?” and the answer is most often, “Yes, I can!” The medical intuitive healing system that I’ve created works with your body’s own healing systems on all three levels of body, mind and soul. I meet you at the healing edge of what you’re ready to balance, release or heal next on any of those three levels, and we move forward from there.
Over the next few months, I want to share some case studies with you so that you can understand the power of medical intuitive healing. I’ve changed the names and identifying details of these clients for privacy purposes, but the symptoms, treatment and results are all directly from my client notes.
Julia came to me with severe food and environmental allergies. For years, she’d become increasingly unable to eat any foods without breaking out in a rash or having shortness of breath. When we first started working together, she was down to only being able to eat 5 foods. She couldn’t eat out or to a friend’s house for dinner without bringing her own food. She also was suffering from environmental allergies and sensitivities that made it difficult to be in many public places without developing shortness of breath and headaches.
When I asked what she most wanted from our sessions, Julia said that she wanted to be able to go to her daughter’s house and babysit her young granddaughter. In the past, Julia had been her granddaughter’s regular afternoon babysitter, picking her up from daycare and spending the afternoons with her while her daughter and son-in-law were still at work. In the last 12 months or so, Julia’s environmental and food allergies had become so severe that she hadn’t been able to be in her daughter’s house or prepare the foods her granddaughter liked to eat for afternoon snacks.
Julia and I worked together for about 4 months, slowly bringing her digestive and immune systems back into balance and addressing trauma held in her body from both her own experience of childhood emotional neglect and her contentious divorce 10 years earlier. We worked on everything from her gut microbiome to past life karma, and even epigenetic changes that were causing her allergies.
Slowly, she began to eat more foods. Slowly, she began to be able to go to shops and restaurants without allergic reactions to the chemicals in the environment.
By the end of four months she was ecstatic — she could order food off of a menu and eat without fear! And she was able to prepare snacks for her granddaughter without getting a rash.
And best of all, Julia was back to babysitting again several times per week. I could hear the absolute joy in her voice when she told me about the games she and her granddaughter had played together that week. Julia was finally able once again to do the thing she loved the most, those things that brought so much meaning and satisfaction to her life.
I’ve had so many clients like this, who have suffered for years with unexplained allergies or sensitivities, which really can keep you from doing the things that bring you meaning and joy. If this sounds like you or someone you know, don’t give up hope! Energy healing can bring about healing that sounds miraculous, but is really just your body tapping into its own natural desire to be balanced and joyfully whole.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | energetic body, Happiness, healing, life lessons
A few weeks ago I finally got on the bread baking train. I know, I know — I’m late to the game, most people started in mid-2020 at the height of the pandemic, but I was living in a warm climate at the time and the idea of baking bread just wasn’t that appealing. Now that I’m living in the cool Pacific Northwest of the US, the idea of warm bread out of the oven sounds amazing.
I’ve been a baker for most of my life (My chocolate chip cookies will Change. Your. Life.) but I’d never ventured into breads, until now. I found a beginner bread recipe, gathered the ingredients, and found a dutch oven on the clearance shelf at HomeGoods. I was ready to BAKE.
I filled a bowl with water, measured out the yeast, added the four, plunged my hands into the dough, and started to mix.
And then the magic happened.
One of the weird things about being an empath and an intuitive is that I am finely attuned to life forces. I can sense the life force in people, animals, plants and even bacteria and viruses. Over the years as I’ve practiced this skill, I’ve grown to not only sense it but I can communicate with it as well, sending and receiving information and emotions.
You guys, do you know why you love making bread? Do you know why we all started baking bread during the pandemic and not cookies or casseroles or quiches? It’s the YEAST.
As soon as I started mixing the dough with my hands and gave the yeast some water to drink and carbs to munch on, I could feel it — the life force of the yeast coming back “online” after being in dormant form for so long. I could feel that pure joy, excitement and love that is at the core of all of our life force, bubbling up in my hands as I massaged the dough and gave the yeast life, once again.
I’ve felt this before when I’ve leaned against a big tree, or sat in front of another human being looking deeply into their eyes as we traded Tonglen, or freed the roots of a plant as I repotted it. It’s the feeling of the pure joy of life, the bliss of existence. And it’s healing AF.
During the pandemic, we lost so many opportunities for connection. We spent most of our time indoors, without the opportunities for interaction and interdependence that we normally have. No wonder everyone took to baking bread, that resurgence of the life force of yeast was a way to feel connection in a time of great isolation.
Here’s one thing I know, we’re part of a living system and because of that, we’re wired for connection and care on all three levels: physical, emotional and spiritual. When we are connected to people, animals, plants or any other living thing, we are healthier in mind, body and spirit. Numerous studies show that without connection, our physical and mental health starts to deteriorate very quickly. But the opposite is true as well, when we feel connected, we start to heal. In one study, people who had survived a heart attack and owned a dog were 600% more likely to still be alive one year later than non-dog owners, even when other factors like exercise and nutrition were taken into account.
The experience of connection is healing.
Nurturing, compassion, and care are healing.
Helping the little yeasties come alive again is healing.
As I sat and communed with my ball of flour, yeast and water, I knew one thing. This is what healing feels like. When we break down the walls we’ve put up to protect ourselves from being hurt or ashamed, and can simply feel the life force of another being, what we’re left with is connection and compassion. And that’s at the core of healing — feeling connected, loved, whole and worthy.
Xo Megan
My first attempt at baking bread
by Megan Caper | Childhood trauma, illness, physical
If you have an autoimmune illness, there’s an important emotional connection you need to know about. In my years of work as a medical intuitive healer, I’ve seen hundreds of cases of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, leaky gut, endometriosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, MS and more. Over time, I’ve seen the same emotional pattern playing out in all of these diseases.
Most of my clients that come in with autoimmune issues are women, and the one thing they have in common is their stress response type. The way they respond to stress almost always includes the fawn/appease reaction. (If you want to know more about the different types, head over here.) The fawn/appease stress response type develops from growing up in a family where the emotional needs of the parents were centered over those of the child. This could be a result of parents with emotional immaturity or numbness (aka never went to therapy to deal with their s&*t), narcissism, BPD, or autism. In addition to family dynamics, women also tend towards this response type because we live in a patriarchal society that centers on the emotional needs of men, so women learn to fawn/appease in both family and in the culture at large.
You might have an appease response if any of these sound familiar: If your boss/child/partner/friend isn’t happy, is it because you didn’t do enough? Do you feel like you need to show up as your best self all the time or you’ll disappoint people? Do you feel extra good when everyone around you is having a good time but you’re not even aware if you’re having fun?
In other words, people pleasing and unclear boundaries.
Appeasing, fawning, and people-pleasing are chronic conditions of self-blame and self-abandonment. Like any other trauma or stress response, what starts out as a very clever adaptation to stay emotionally or physically safe ends up being an unhealthy emotional pattern over time. At its core, the appease response is about trying to manipulate the situation so that other people are happy and see you in a good light, so that you can stay safe and remain valuable in their eyes.
So, how does autoimmune illness arise from the appease response? Our immune system is all about what is “self” (our own human cells) what is “not-self” (like bacteria, viruses, etc) and what we should do about it. This determination of self and not-self and how to approach it is the essence of boundaries. And if you have unclear emotional boundaries, you very well might have unclear immune system boundaries, as well.
For example, let’s say your immune system encounters a bacterial colony. It first identifies it as “not-self” but what kind of colony is this? Is it a helpful bacteria that is part of a healthy microbiome? Is it a harmful bacteria from eating that cheese that was just past its expiration date? Our bodies need clear ideas of not only what is self and not-self, but what to do about it.
If our default fawn/appease reaction is to blame ourselves, then that’s exactly what our immune system does, as well. Autoimmune illnesses are errors in identifying which cells are self vs not-self. Our body attacks itself, “blaming” the self cells, labelling them as harmful, and sending other cells out to attack them.
Over time, our fawn response and our autoimmune response become one and the same, and that’s when physical illness emerges.
If you want to break this cycle, especially if you’ve been working on your people-pleasing tendencies but still have autoimmune symptoms, then I’d love to chat with you. This is exactly what I do as a medical intuitive healer, I find where your body is storing emotions, belief systems or other blocks and help work with your whole system to bring you back to health in body, mind and spirit.
by Megan Caper | health, illness, mindfulness, physical
- Mindful awareness and communication
Your body has a ton of intuitive information to share with you, all you have to do is listen. But how do you do that? A big piece of that puzzle is learning how to bring your attention mindfully to that spot and seeing what arises. To do this, bring your gentle attention to the body part you want to talk to and notice what physical sensations or emotions come up. The key is to be still and notice without trying to interpret, figure out, or make a story about what is happening. Start to notice any sensations or feelings and simply watch them. If anything sticks out to you, you can open a communication about it by gently asking your body, “Tell me more,” and seeing if there is a response or a change.
- Ho’ponopono (forgiveness and gratitude)
There is a Hawaiian practice of forgiveness and gratitude that can absolutely change your relationship with your illness and the energy around it when you practice it on a daily basis. It’s a simple 4 sentence mantra that has profound power. When you are mindfully sitting with your illness say the following: “I’m sorry. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.”
“I’m sorry” is about taking responsibility for the way we’ve mistreated ourselves throughout this illness. Perhaps we push ourselves too far, or don’t ask for help when we need it. Perhaps we blame ourselves for getting sick and our inner critic pops up and says things like, “If you’d only eaten better and exercised more, this wouldn’t have happened.” Regardless of what it is, this gives you an opportunity to make amends with yourself and apologize for being anything other than understanding and supportive of your body, whether it’s healthy or ill or anywhere in between.
“I forgive you” is about allowing yourself to feel okay about whatever you were sorry for. You are doing your best and learning as you go, and that’s okay. Forgive yourself for any way you have not treated yourself with the utmost care and respect.
“Thank you” can be used here to appreciate your body and all it’s doing. Even if you are ill, there are parts of your body that are working well and you can send appreciation toward those parts. And even the parts that are ill or out of balance are trying their best to heal, so send appreciation their way for all they do to try to bring you back to health.
“I love you” is all about sending unconditional love to our body, no matter what state it’s in. Just like I can be frustrated with friends or family but still love them, we can feel upset or frustrated with our body or illness and still love our body at the same time. When we sit in the energy of unconditional love, magical healing can occur.
- Look at your relationship with your illness
It’s almost impossible to have an illness or chronic injury and not have it affect your daily life in some way. We all develop coping strategies, feelings and make meaning out of having an illness in order to get by. In order to heal, we have to not only address the symptoms, but also let go of the coping strategies, emotions and other ways we’ve incorporated that illness into our lives. This may sound strange — who would want to keep the coping strategies and emotions around their illness? But our brains are hard-wired to stay with the familiar and avoid change, and if healing also involves a change to how we live our lives, there may be some resistance in our bodymind to that change. This is especially true if your income, type of work or relationships revolve around your illness. For example, if most of your close friends are also people with the same illness, what will that mean for your support system if you get better?
- Understand you’re part of a larger quantum field
There are numerous studies showing that when people become aware that they are not in this alone and that in fact they are part of a larger field of consciousness, miraculous healing can occur. Take some time to sit in the awareness that your body is not separate from all the energy of the universe, it’s a part of it. So, even if you don’t have all the answers, you’re connected to the “worldwide consciousness web” that has more wisdom than you do. Allow yourself to feel that expansion, feel how you are greater than just your mind and body.
- Acceptance
One of the most important parts of healing is accepting where you are. If you can think, “This is where I am right now, how can I be more accepting and compassionate towards my body and illness?” it can do a world of good. We all know that no one ever makes lasting changes out of shame, guilt or feeling like they should be somewhere they’re not, and the same is true for your health. Practice having an intention of feeling better without attaching the desire to get there in any particular time or fashion. You are where you are, and you will probably be in a different place tomorrow, and the best thing you can do today, tomorrow or at any point in your life is to be compassionate and accepting, right now.
by Megan Caper | Childhood trauma
Determining Your Sympathetic Nervous System Response Type
If you’re looking to recover from childhood trauma or C-PTSD then I want to know what kind of F*er you are.
No, not that kind of F*er! I mean, yeah, sometimes even I’m the asshole, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
Your particular F*er type is derived from the 4 types of sympathetic nervous system response, also known as the “4 Fs” in physiology.
When we’re in a stressful situation, our nervous systems switch from calm parasympathetic mode into stressed-out sympathetic mode. Stressed-out sympathetic mode is super useful for getting us out of a potentially harmful situation, like almost being hit by a car or seeing a rattlesnake on a hike.
But what happens when most of life is a potentially harmful situation? What happens when you spent your childhood feeling neglected, scapegoated or silenced? It turns out, your nervous system acclimates to this and decides “stressed out” is just how it is. So instead of having your normal state be the calm, serene parasympathetic mode, your “normal” state becomes a stress response.
This is what causes the true damage of C-PTSD. Over time, this stress response becomes a trauma response, and we experience much of life as if it’s unsafe or harmful.
One of the pillars to healing trauma is to retrain your nervous system to have a more healthy baseline, a “normal” that looks like being in parasympathetic (calm) mode most of the time instead of sympathetic (stress) mode. So, it’s really important to know what kind, or type, of stress or trauma response you tend to have.
This is where the 4 Fs come in.
The stress or trauma response is divided into 4 types:
- Fight
- Flight
- Freeze
- Fawn (aka Appease)
To determine which kind of F*er you are, take a look at the following descriptions, and see which one(s) fit you best. Sometimes, we tend toward two response types, so there may be more than one that fits.
Fight: If you find yourself having a short fuse or easily getting annoyed at people or situations, then you may have a strong fight response. A healthy fight response is designed so that we can attack when threatened, like when someone fights back when a mugger tries to grab their purse or wallet. But when the fight response becomes a trauma response, we tend to go into anger/fight/annoyed/dismissive mode whenever we feel slighted, ignored, or threatened. It sometimes even surfaces to preemptively avoid a potentially triggering or stressful situation, aka “strike first and ask questions later.”
Flight: Are you someone who finds a good reason to suddenly leave your new job or break up with the new person you’re dating? Do you find that the thing you *knew* would be the right next step for you never seems to be right and isn’t what you thought it would be? Then you might have a flight response.
The flight response is designed so that we leave a potentially dangerous situation, like when someone yells “fire!” in a movie theater. However, if most of life was a dangerous situation, then the flight response can become a trauma response. This is especially true if the dangerous situations you were in as a child were emotional abuse, gaslighting or manipulation. You learn that emotional closeness is inevitably followed by betrayal or heartbreak, so you learn to leave as soon as something starts to feel good or emotionally nourishing. While this is an unconscious response (nobody thinks,” this relationship is awesome! I think I’ll sabotage it.”) it is something that you can often see as a pattern in hindsight.
Freeze: Many predatory animals (including humans) are much better at perceiving movement than form or color. So in order to avoid being caught or attacked, many prey animals (including humans!) have developed a hide and freeze response where they become very still, hyperaware, and try blending into the background in the hope that the predator won’t be able to perceive them, and will eventually give up the hunt and go away. When this becomes a trauma response it can look like introversion, dissociation (depression, ADHD, or frequent daydreaming), or shyness (social anxiety or agoraphobia). Many times, this is a preemptive freeze response, where if we check-out-before-we’ve-even-checked-in, we can avoid any potentially dangerous or triggering situations.
Fawn/Appease: So in keeping with the “F” theme, the 4th F is fawn, but TBH I like appease better — it’s a more accurate descriptor. Have you ever had a creepy guy say something that felt awkward or kind of freaked you out? Like, your spidey senses say, “let’s get away from this guy and make sure he doesn’t follow?” but instead of punching him in the face and running away (hello, fight and flight!) you smile and say, “Yeah, haha. You’re totally right. Thank you!” and then you say it was nice to meet him, and you gotta go meet your friends or something like that? Then you have experienced the fawn/appease response! (Interestingly, this 4th sympathetic type of response was only added a few years ago when researchers started studying how women respond to stress and found that it was different than men’s response.) What happens when this normal stress response becomes a chronic trauma response? It can look like people pleasing, HSP or high empathy, sensory processing issues, codependency, or a fear of conflict or confrontation.
My F*er type looks like freeze with a big side helping of fawn/appease. What does this look like in my life? Here are three examples from yours truly.
When I was little, I was painfully shy. I was scared of meeting new people (especially adults), and I would run behind my mom, grab onto her leg and start to cry if anyone talked to me. This shyness was a trauma response of both freeze and appease. The “freeze” part was running, hiding and refusing to speak. The “appease” part was putting my mom back into the center of attention as the “good mom” who was protecting her child. (A good survival strategy for being the child of a narcissist is to always put the focus back on them, in any way you can.) Fortunately, I’m not shy anymore, but I can easily see how this could have become social anxiety or even agoraphobia if I hadn’t addressed it.
I’ve also noticed that my hearing is really damn good, I can often hear sounds that are too quiet for most folks. I know this is from “freezing” and listening very closely (hyperawareness) from my bedroom whenever my parents came home. I became an expert in listening to determine their mood: How were their footsteps sounding on the floor? How forcefully did they open or close the door? Which room did they go to and what were they doing in there?
I’m still working on the appease response of people pleasing and fear of conflict. This is a big one for me as the fear of retribution or angering people is still embedded in my nervous system, and I don’t want to do or say anything that could potentially upset or disappoint people. I call myself a “recovering perfectionist” because this used to mean always being as perfect as possible and never making a mistake in order to minimize the chance of retribution, but I’ve been working on allowing myself to be a messy human and sometimes miss the mark without fearing repercussions.
Why is your F type important to know? There are two main benefits.
The first is you can more easily and quickly recognize and address the trauma response when it comes up. For example, if I know that I am avoiding sending an email because I’m worried about the recipient’s response, I can say to myself, “Ah! That’s my appease trigger” and I can use one of my tools to comfort, soothe and care for that inner child part of me.
The second is that it helps you figure out how to “complete the stress response” so you can get back into that calm, parasympathetic mode. For example, after a stressful day I often pick solitary “freeze” activities to reset my nervous system where I can be quiet, still and alone, like meditation, reading, watching movies, or crafting because I know that my nervous systems feels most safe in these activities and will be able to unwind and clear out any residual stress. If I were more of a “flight” type, then going for a long drive might help me reset into parasympathetic mode.
I hope this helped you identify your mix of parasympathetic responses and I’d love to know what type of F*er you are!
Drop me a note, and let me know because I like hearing from all you F*ers out there.
And don’t forget — while you may be shy or short-tempered or a chronic daydreamer, YOU ARE AN AMAZING GOD(DESS) WHO HAS SURVIVED SOME EPIC SHITSHOWS. I see you in all your human, messy glory and I love and admire you all the more for it. Rock on, my warrior friend.
xo Megan
by Megan Caper | health
Before I became a medical intuitive, I was on my way to becoming a doctor. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that western medicine was lacking in some way, and it wasn’t until I found energy healing that I could see why. Now, don’t get me wrong, I use western medicine all the time. If I brake a bone, I’m heading straight to the ER and not to my acupuncturist. But you’d better bet that after the bone is set and the pain medication is in my system, my follow-up is going to be with alternative health practitioners who work with the body to help its natural healing process.
Here are 5 limitations of western medicine that I see after a decade of experience as an alternative healer:
- There’s very little awareness of the mind-body connection
It’s only been in the last 10-15 years that western medicine has got on board with what other medical and healing traditions have known for centuries — your mind and body are part of one system, and they can’t be treated as separate. For example, we now know that a great deal of our emotional regulation is done by the microbiome in our gut, and that the health of that microbiome can be a large part of our sense of well-being. We also know that when we dull pain receptors (with Tylenol) we also dull our ability for empathy. Mental and physical health are one and the same and separating them makes western medicine less effective.
- Only treats what it can observe
Western medicine relies solely on the scientific method and the scientific method is limited by what we can observe and measure. What this means is that if we can’t use a scientific study to observe and measure it, then doctors aren’t trained in it. For example, it’s hard (but not impossible) to observe things like meridians, chakras and other aspects of the energy body and so these are often dismissed by western medicine as “unproven” ways of healing. I don’t have any problems with scientific methods, but it often misses out on methods of healing that can’t be easily observed and measured.
- Medical science is evolving, and sometimes the treatments can do harm as well as good
In the last 170 years since the age of scientific reason started, science has “proven” a lot of things that have later been disproven or shown to not tell the whole story. For example, once antibiotics were discovered, they were given to people all the time. Twenty years ago, it was common to take a course of antibiotics 3 or 4 times per year for various infections. We now know that these antibiotics harm the delicate balance of bacteria that keeps our digestive system, lungs, reproductive systems and even our skin in healthy, working order.
- Western medicine operates within the limitations of the imagination of the human mind
One of my favorite quotes is from Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” Our human minds can’t possibly understand all the intricacies of the universe. Just like it would be impossible to teach a hamster calculus, there are things our human minds just can’t conceive of. So, if you’re relying on only your human mind and its ability to reason, then you’re missing out on a LOT of possibilities. Healing traditions that know this and defer to the body’s wisdom for healing, like energy medicine, acupuncture or craniosacral work to name a few, can achieve results that would be considered impossible for western doctors. But your body has knowledge that your brain does not — it’s connected to “all that is” and can operate with wisdom beyond that which our brains can conceive of.
- It has a one size fits all approach
If three people walk into a doctor’s office with gastric reflux, there could be three different reasons why. One may be an epigenetic issue causing too much stomach acid. Another may be anxiety causing peristalsis paralysis in the esophagus. And the third could be a malformed esophageal sphincter. But most often, the doctor will send all three away with a medication that reduces stomach acid. There’s a reductive approach to western medicine that says “If symptom A is occurring, then do treatment B.” But the complexity of the human system is too great for a reductionist model— it needs a model of emergence and constant change. This rigid reductionism too often fails the patient, and leaves them feeling like there’s no treatment option for them.
by Megan Caper | intuition, Neurology, Uncategorized
Welcome back to my series on your intuitive brains. We’ve looked at how to get intuitive info from your heart brain and your gut brain, and now it’s time to get primal.
We’re gonna look at your pelvic brain.
As a quick recap, you have “brains” (aka dense neural networks) in several areas of your body, including your heart, your gut and your pelvis. These brains work just like the one in your head using neurotransmitters to communicate and interact with your other systems like your immune and cardiovascular systems. Each brain is also wired to receive certain types of intuitive information. Take a look at my posts (linked above) for info on your heart and gut brain if you’re interested.
So, what kind of intuitive information can we get from our pelvic brain? Our pelvic brain is tied into our creative longing and what we are meant to do and make in this world. Our pelvic brain gets fired up when we think about something that’s in alignment with what we’re supposed to do in this world, what we desire to make, create, or interact with.
When we bring to mind something that is in alignment with our soul path, the pelvic brain says, “Yes, I want that so I can create magic with it.”
Our pelvic brain gives us information on what kind of transmutation work we are here to do. We each have a special sort of magic that we’re here to harness and use. Some of us transmute words into prose, some of us transmute love into a family, some of us transmute work into money.
Now, anyone can perform any of those things, and even be successful at them, but each of us has an area (or two or three) where we can sense that we’re doing so with the help of a muse, with the support of something more than just our human powers, with a sense of an almost magical support behind our efforts. We’re supposed to bring that unique, individual magic to the world, and intuitive information from the pelvic brain can help us do just that.
Here’s how to tune into your pelvic brain’s intuition – think of a problem or an issue you are trying to move forward on. Bring to mind the various options you have. Now, bring your attention to your perineum (aka your “taint”) and the area just above and around it. Go through your options one by one and notice if the quality of feeling in your perineum changes. Are there options that make you feel more lusty, more desire, more like you want to go after it and make it yours? The ones that do are more in alignment with your pelvic brain.
Check-in with your heart brain and your gut brain as well (directions for this are in the linked posts). How do they feel about this option? Are all 3 of your brains telling you something similar, in their own way?
Getting in touch with your pelvic intuition can be a very powerful thing, especially if you’ve been in a culture or part of a marginalized group that has been taught to deny your own desires. Let me know how this goes for you. I’d love to hear your experiences – send me an email and let me know!
And if this exercise has been helpful for you, I’m teaching a free class on Zoom, “Harness the Power of Your 4 Intuitive Brains” on September 22, 2022 at 5pm Pacific Time. (I’ll be sending out the recording after for those who can’t make it live.) Sign up here and I’ll keep you in the loop with all the details:
https://megancaper.com/4brains2022
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, intuition
Welcome back to this continuing series on your four intuitive brains. Today we’re going to look at your heart brain and how to tune into intuitive information coming through your heart complex.
Last time, we looked at your gut brain and how it can give you information on whether something is right or wrong for you and your life path. This time, we’re going to take a look at your heart brain which gives you information on whether a decision will bring more joy, love and peace into your life.
Your heart is the epicenter of the emotion of love and all its ancillary emotions — joy, acceptance, belonging, etc. When we tune into the intuitive info of what our heart wants, we head down the path of what will bring us these emotions in our lives. Whereas our gut brain looks at, “Is this right for me?” our heart brain looks at, “Will this make me happy?”
Heart intuition speaks to us of fulfillment, excitement, and connection. Just like with intuitive information from our gut brain, information from our heart brain is often not logical. Think of the saying “the heart wants what the heart wants” — this implies that the decision isn’t logical but is compelling and fulfilling.
Our heart brain gives us information on what would help us feel happy, connected and loved, which may not be the most logical or well reasoned-out decision. In fact, heart brains are notorious for telling us to follow our passion, which can sometimes mean a radical and sudden departure from the path you were on.
Here’s an example — the first time I visited Italy I knew I had to go back and live there. I came back from my trip, changed my major in college from chemistry to Italian Studies, and started taking Italian language and culture classes. Two years later, I was living in Rome, studying film, art and history and I could feel the joy, love and connection in my heart the whole time I was there. It was the first time I’d fallen in love with a place. This sort of love affair can happen with places, people, careers, creative endeavors and more.
When looking at day-to-day decisions (that don’t involve picking up and moving halfway around the world) here’s how you can tune into your heart brain intuitive energy:
- Bring your attention to your heart brain complex. If you have trouble tuning into that energy, think of something or someone that makes you feel all loved and/or connected. This could be a person, animal, or even a place.
- Bring to mind all of the options you’re considering. One by one, tune into each option and notice how you feel about them.
- Which one brings more of that heart brain emotion? Which one feels in alignment with bringing more love, joy and connection into your life? Which one are you drawn to with a sense of emotional excitement, longing and fulfillment?
Your heart brain gives you valuable information on what will make you fulfilled. This can be such powerful information as we make our way through life and attempt to find a way of living that will bring us the most happiness. I’d love to hear some examples of when you followed your heart — what was the intuitive hit and how did you follow it?
If you liked this post, I’m teaching a class in September about your “Four Intuitive Brains” and I’d be happy to put you on the list to get more info about it. Message me or reply to this post and I’ll make sure to get you that info as the date gets closer.
Now go forth and follow your heart!
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | intuition
I’m starting a revolution and I want you to join me.
For too many years, the art and science of intuition has been maligned as nonsensical, silly, invalid or even dangerous and evil. I want to change all that, and I want to help women learn how to use this invaluable source of information to make decisions, lead happier lives, and remember their true power.
I’ve developed a method called the “Four Brains” to help women learn to tune into and receive information from their intuition. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to go through each brain and talk about how each one receives intuitive information and what that info looks and sounds like in your body.
This week we’ll dive into your gut brain, look at what kind of intuitive information it contains, and see how to tune into that information so you can hear it for yourself.
Your gut brain is also called your “enteric nervous system.” It’s a dense, semi-autonomous neural network that contains neurons, neurotransmitters, glial cells and similar structures to your head brain. Your gut brain is responsible for a lot of your emotional regulation and your baseline happiness or well-being. Your gut brain is also the seat of your third chakra, which is all about your sense of self, your self-confidence and your personal power.
So, what kind of intuitive information can we get from our gut brain? Gut brains are tied into our sense of instinct and intuition. Primarily, it tells us if something is right or wrong for us (which may not be right or wrong on a logical, head brain level). Since it’s grounded in that 3rd chakra energy of individuality, our gut brain is about what’s right for ME, not necessarily what I “should” do or what would make the most sense.
The way to tune into your gut brain is to bring your attention to that part of your body, the area spanning from about 2 inches above to 2 inches below your navel, and ask your bodymind a question you’ve been pondering. Our gut brains synthesize and provide information almost instantaneously, usually in a feeling of being pulled towards something or being pushed away or slightly disgusted by something. Gut brain information is usually a “yes” or a “no”, meaning “yes, this is right for me” or “no, it’s not right for me.” Oftentimes a feeling of deep knowing or a sense that something is the right decision comes from our gut brains and it’s not always the most logical decision. If you think of the phrase, “I had a gut feeling” it means you intuitively knew it, without needing the facts or logic to back it up.
If you’re having trouble feeling the “yes” and the “no” from your gut brain, then try this. Think about something or someone you KNOW is right for you. It could be a dream job, a dream travel spot, or a creative endeavor or activity you’ve always wanted to try. (Make sure it’s not something you think you “should” do, like have a mansion in the city or a high paying job. If what you’ve always dreamed of is a cabin in the woods or to get paid to read books, think of that.) That feeling you have in your belly? That warm, excited, satisfied feeling? That’s your gut brain “yes.”
Now think of something that you KNOW is not right for you. For me it would be a life making tons of money as a corporate executive for Perdue Pharma or living in a sterile, minimalist, all white loft space. I feel slightly repulsed or disgusted by both of these things and I know that’s my gut brain’s intuitive “no” that’s not right for me.
I like teaching about the gut brain first because that “yes” or “no” is pretty easy to tune into and so it’s a good place to start learning to listen to your intuition. (I’ll teach about your other three brains in upcoming weeks.) I also like it because if you only ever practice and develop this one aspect of your intuition, this alone can completely change your life. If you can learn to tune into that Third Chakra information about what is right for YOU, what your soul’s life path is during this incarnation, that’s the basis for a happy and meaningful life.
If you like this post and want to know more and get some hands-on practice, I’m going to be teaching a workshop on your “Four Brains” in September. Send me a note and I’ll put you on the list to get more info as we get closer.
In the meantime, the intuition revolution starts with you. Get out there and start messing with the status quo — listen to your gut brain and do what’s right for YOU, not what you’ve been told you should do. I’ll be here cheering for you every step of the way.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | welcome
Hello! There have been quite a few new folks joining us lately and I think that means it’s time to do a little intro/re-intro post and let you know who I am and what I believe.
I’m Megan Caper and I’m an intuitive who works with complex medical issues, healing trauma, and supporting people in doing shadow work so they can find happiness, connection, and meaning in life.
I offer a few ways to work with me – medical intuition sessions, intuitive shadow work coaching, and group workshops and classes. Let me know if you have any questions about how I can support you in any of these ways.
I came to this work through my own life experiences of both emotional and physical trauma and healing, and along the way realized I have psychic gifts that most people don’t naturally have (although I believe everyone can develop this with practice!)
Here’s what I want you to know – all of us are worthy and whole already, there’s no such thing as a person who “will be good enough once they do X” or who is broken in any way. Being in process and figuring it out is not a prerequisite to being worthy and adored. You are already where you are supposed to be. My deepest desire is to help others have those lightbulb moments where they realize they are worthy and good now, and they don’t have to do anything to be deserving of love right where they are.
I want you to know healing is not a linear process. It’s more like a spiral where we work on the same lessons or issues for years by revisiting them again and again from a place of greater and greater wisdom and compassion.
I want you to know that your physical illness is complex and multifaceted and involves physical, emotional, and spiritual issues. Treating symptoms through medication or surgery doesn’t get to the root of the problem and won’t bring balance or harmony to a system, it will only cover up the issues temporarily.
I want you to know that all of your fears and doubts are because of stories that you’ve absorbed about yourself, oftentimes to keep yourself safe and well, but that your true nature on a soul level is someone who belongs completely and does not know anything other than love and acceptance.
I want you to know that it’s not your fault that f*^%ked up shit happened to you, but that same shit is also your doorway to find out how to build compassion and deep understanding of both yourself and your fellow humans. We all suffer in similar ways, it just looks like different circumstances.
I want you to know that I don’t believe in spiritual bypassing, and that you can’t heal solely through being in a place of love and vibrating at a high frequency. I believe we feel happiness and joy as a natural byproduct of doing shadow work and looking at where we can break down barriers inside and outside of ourselves. These barriers once kept us safe like high castle walls, but now they wall us off from connection and love in all its multitudinous forms. Break those walls down in a compassionate and caring way and you will come back to your natural state of love and joy.
I want you to know that there is no “one size fits all” approach for how to heal or how to live a good life. We are all different for a reason, we have different life lessons to learn and different ways of expressing how we are a creative expression of source energy. My job is to help you find your way back to that place of love and acceptance, in whatever form that takes for you.
Hopefully some of this resonates with you. And if not, that’s fine too. We each need to hear different messages of healing and spiritual growth, and I’m not the right guide for everyone.
And please let me know what parts of this made you stop and think and what it is you thought. I’m no guru, I’m learning as I go, as well, and this is a two-way conversation. You are my teacher as much as I am yours.
You are already worthy. You are already a good person. You are in the process of figuring some shit out, which is exactly where you should be.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Childhood trauma, emotions
Earlier this week, a video made the rounds on TikTok of Lillie, a 13-year-old getting arrested at an abortion rights protest because she used a megaphone and violated a noise ordinance. The video made a splash not only for the fact the police are arresting 13-year-olds for protesting (Hello, first amendment right to assemble and protest?!) but for Lillie’s mom who was filming and can be heard in the background.
As Lillie’s being taken into custody, we can hear her mom, Lauren, who is following just behind her say, “Lillie don’t resist honey, it’s okay. I got ya. Lillie, you’re okay bug. I got you. Mom’s right behind you!!”
So many of the comments on the video talked about Lauren’s words of support:
The “I’m right behind you” is what broke me 😭😭😭
If that isn’t the most public display of MOM I’ve ever seen. Way to go momma.
The pride in mamas voice and the “I’m right behind you!” Oh my gods 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 STAY STRONG BABYYYYYYYY!!! 💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾
“Just don’t resist” “I’m right behind you” wrecked me 😭😭😓
And I have to admit, this video broke me, too. I’ve watched it a bunch of times in preparation for writing this post and I still find myself in tears each time I watch.
So, what’s going on here?
I’m crying not because she was arrested (in fact, that makes me angry, not sad) it’s the idea of having a mom who would be so supportive and say such reassuring, loving things in a time of crisis.
I never had that, and I know a lot of you never had that too.
I know for me, when I see scenes of moms being loving, kind and supportive, there’s a part of me that’s reminded of my loss. It’s grief for the emotional nutrients I know I needed, but never got. Just like a starving person might break down at the sight of an all-you-can-eat buffet, those of us who had emotional neglect or abuse will also break down at the sight of emotional sustenance.
However, my friends, there’s a way to turn that grief into a powerful tool for healing.
When I see something like this that “breaks me” and find myself crying big time, that’s a signal. It’s a sign – here’s an emotional nutrient that I really need.
This is what I do when I see examples of loving parenting and it makes me cry:
- Sit with the sadness. This is another chance for grief to come up and be acknowledged, so let it come and meet it with tenderness and validation.
- Recognize that this type of emotional care is something you need. Be grateful that you found this out, because now you can give yourself this exact, wonderful type of care.
- Internalize this voice of support. I talk about this in my post on your inner caregiver if you need more info on how to do this. For me, the line, “Mom’s right behind you!!” especially with Lauren’s tone and emotionality was the thing that really hit me hard. I’m adding this to my repertoire of supportive messages and Lillie’s mom is now another one of my inner moms, I can hear her voice saying just this, right when I’m going through something scary and hard.
Once you’ve gathered a few of these inner caregiver voices, they act as powerful tools to use when times are tough. Or even when they’re not, I know we all need to hear “Mom’s right behind you!!” as we go about our lives, because adulting is hard, amiright?
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | intuition
I’m on a mission. It’s a mission to help you feel deep connection, wisdom, and know who you really are.
It’s a mission to bring back a lost art — one that’s been maligned, dismissed and vilified. One that’s even cost people their lives because it’s so powerful that it scared the bejesus out of the people in charge.
I want you to know your connection to source consciousness, I want you to be able to access information directly from your higher self, your spirit guides and the ascended masters that have come before you.
I want to empower you with full, unfettered access, to your intuition.
Buț first we have to take a look at what we’ve been told about intuition and how societal conditioning has led us away from this valuable way of knowing.
When the mainstream culture talks about intuition or psychic information, it’s often dismissed, belittled, invalidated or worse. It’s also often feminized (aka “women’s intuition”) which is the most surefire way in a patriarchal society to get something dismissed as second class or not as rigorous, serious and significant. We’ve been taught that the “gold standard” of how to know the truth is through the scientific method. Now, I love the scientific method. I have a whole-ass graduate degree in biological sciences, but it has flaws, limitations, and opportunities for oversight and failure just like any other way of knowing. Many scientific discoveries have later been found to be flawed, incomplete, or incorrect. So why is intuition any less valid? If we are really connected to a web of consciousness that has all the information of the universe embedded in it, why wouldn’t we want to develop our connection to that web as much as we can? (I’m asking that as a rhetorical question here, but I could very easily get on my feminist, anti-imperialist soapbox here and explain exactly why the powers that be have tried to belittle, dismiss or even burn these ideas at the stake. But that’s for another blog post…)
I believe we’re all intuitive, it’s a skill you can practice and perfect like playing a musical instrument. Like with musical talent, some people may be born with more inherent skill, but anyone can practice piano and get good at it and the same is true of intuition. (If you want a place to start, you can take a look at my post on accessing intuitive information from your Four Brains. I’ll also be offering this as an expanded workshop in September 2022, so if you’re the type that learns better in a class setting, be on the lookout for an announcement about that soon.)
My mission is to have people connect to a higher wisdom, either through developing their own powers or with me as a conduit. All of this is in service of having a world where people are connected to universal consciousness, and awake to our true reality as a hologram of source energy. Can you imagine a world where we all have access to the connection, unconditional love, and wisdom of our higher selves? So many of the social structures built on fear and false power would be unable to withstand that type of revolution.
Are you in? If you want to know more, message me and let’s talk about how to get you connected to your higher self and start accessing your own intuitive information. It’s time to know deeply why you’re on this planet and what kind of world you’re here to help build.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | emotions, Self-compassion
I’ve been outlining the chapter in my book on mindfulness and self-acceptance (Did I mention I’m writing a book?!) and it occurred to me that many people have the wrong idea of what acceptance and self-acceptance really mean.
I hear people say all the time, “I should love myself more” or “I should just accept my job/relationship/life and be grateful for what I have.”
That is not the right way to do acceptance.
Any thought about your life that starts with “I should” or “I need to” isn’t self-acceptance, it’s self-abandonment. It’s pushing aside your own feelings, desires and intuition for the sake of trying to be happier.
Let me suggest another way.
Acceptance (or self-acceptance) is when we accept or notice what’s coming up for us right now, without creating a story about how it should or shouldn’t be. It’s also accepting what comes up without any ideas of how or why it should be any different.
It’s like a combination of noticing, acceptance and embodying. It’s thinking, “This is what’s happening right now” with no further commentary or evaluation, just embodying the feeling, sensation or thought that’s coming up and being in it.
Here’s an example:
Many women I know (and some men) don’t like the look of their bodies for one reason or another. I’ve heard so many well-meaning people talk about body acceptance as learning to love your body just as it is. While I don’t disagree with this in theory, if we try to jump straight from “I don’t like my body” to “I accept my body as it is” we’re going to be bypassing a lot of important feelings and thoughts for the sake of how we “should” think about our body.
Here’s what I propose instead. When you have a thought or a feeling along the lines of, “I don’t like my body” just notice that you are thinking that. That thought isn’t bad, or wrong, nor should it be any different. Simply notice and accept, “I am having a negative thought about my body.”
When you’re able to have a thought like that without a judgment that you should be thinking something different or feeling another way about your body, when you are able to be who you are right now, without any judgment that you should be thinking any other way than you are, it opens the portal for true healing.
Not bypassing healing or “should” healing, but real healing. Compassionate healing.
When I think the thought, “I don’t like my body” and accept that I am feeling shame, I then can tend to and care for that part of me that feels bad. I don’t need to change it, I just need to care for it. I can sense into what I need to hear to comfort myself in that moment and say the exact right thing to myself. I can say, “Well of course you don’t like your body, Megan, there’s a billion dollar ‘beauty’ industry and a whole patriarchal culture invested in you feeling unworthy. They lie. They make money and retain power off of those lies. You are amazing and your beauty is so much more than the shape of your body. Anyone worth their salt will see that, and you should, too.” (That’s just what I needed to hear in that moment — your version of comfort and validation will sound different. But feel free to steal mine if that works for you!)
In that moment, I start to genuinely feel better about my body. It’s not bypassing or platitudes, it’s a genuine shift in what I think about not only my body, but the world my body exists in.
I’m not accepting my body, I’m accepting the thoughts about my body and through that acceptance, I can find what I need to think or hear to heal that shame I feel.
Let me give you another example. I recently moved to a new city where I don’t know many people. It takes time to develop friendships and create routines and I’m still in that process. Even though I know that’s true, I still feel lonely sometimes. This week I had a friend visit for a few days and after they left, I found myself alone in my apartment and my feelings of loneliness got intense. Rather than try to change it or think of all the good things about my new situation in this place I’ve wanted to move to for years, I simply accepted the feelings of loneliness.
“Okay, I’m lonely.”
I sat with the loneliness for a while. I observed it, noticed what it felt like in my body, where it sat and where it moved to. I kept thinking, “Here I am, I’m lonely” or, “I am feeling loneliness right now” without trying to fix or change it. And eventually, I was able to bring some love and compassion to myself. I thought, “This is okay, I just moved here. This loneliness is signaling to me that I need connection, I need community. I’ll find it. It’s important to me, so I know I’ll keep making small movements towards caring for myself this way.”
In that moment of sitting with the loneliness and accepting it, my view towards it shifted. It’s not that I felt any less lonely, but I saw it as a signpost for what’s important to me — connection and community — and I then felt the peace of knowing myself and the pride of making moves towards caring for myself and meeting my vital needs.
Only after pure acceptance can we crack open the door for compassion. If we jump to judgment or a “should” statement, we leave no room for self-compassion. And the door to true healing is compassion, both for ourselves and others. So I invite you to accept what comes up for you, even if it’s not pleasant. Sit with it, don’t try to change it, and accept that you are a human being having this thought or feeling, that’s it. Pure acceptance, just being in the moment of what’s arising. After a while, you’ll sense into what you need to know from that. What message is important to heal you and bring you even closer to that beautiful state of self-knowing and self-acceptance? There’s no greater love than knowing, accepting and validating where you are, right now.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, intuition, Spirituality
Last week, I went to the World Domination Summit, a weekend conference in Portland for people who want to “live a remarkable life in a conventional world.” I’ve been going to this conference for several years now (with a 2-year hiatus for the pandemic) and the reason I keep going back is that it fills my bucket in a way that no other activity or event can. The power of spending time with people who are open-minded, creative, and compassionate rekindles something in me that often becomes dormant in our work-a-day world.
I don’t quite know the name for this thing that rekindles. Maybe it’s my creative spark? Joy of being alive? Feeling connected and seen by my fellow humans? Whatever it is, I always feel extra motivated and inspired after my WDS weekends.
One of the things that the World Domination Summit does so well is to combine motivation and play. I think we too often forget that the best type of motivation doesn’t come from deadlines or to-do lists, but comes from a sense of play, creativity and passion. If I feel passionate and playful about something, then the creativity flows. If I am excited about something, then I don’t mind doing even the mundane aspects of it because it feels like it’s in service of something big and important.
But how do we connect to this sense of passion and play in our everyday lives? I have a few ideas:
- Check-in regularly with your intuition. I taught a workshop at the conference on how to tune into your intuition and it was a big hit. I’m realizing more and more that this is a lost art. We are so used to using our brains to come up with a logical, well-thought-out plan for things that we forget to check in with what resonates with our soul. Sometimes a “good decision” will also be what’s right for our spiritual path right now, but sometimes we have to listen to that inner knowing and do something that sounds crazy or illogical to feel that sense of joy and awe.
- Find your weirdos. One of the things that help me stay connected to my own unique purpose is to spend time with other people who are weird like me. When I surround myself with folks who are creative, intellectual and kind in the same way I am, it starts to build on itself. I find myself getting increasingly more inspired and when I share my ideas, my weirdo friends riff on them and mirror them back to me in even more creative and interesting ways. Creativity is an emergent property –it’s more than the sum of its parts. So, if you can get a bunch of creative people together, magic will happen.
- Remember this is all a play and we’re supposed to experiment. When I’ve traveled to the place we go between lives via meditation or astral projection, I see that we come here to have an EXPERIENCE. It’s like we’re signing up for an 80-year, round-the-world vacation where we get to feel, taste, see, hear and discover so many unique and amazing things. From our soul’s perspective, there is no danger and no fear, because this is all temporary. The more spiritual work I do, the easier it becomes to remember or lean into that aspect of my awareness and let go of the “small stuff” that usually stresses me out. I ask myself, “What would I do today if I knew this was just a time-limited adventure and my only job here was to have amazing experiences?” I invite you to ask yourself the same question – what would you do today if you knew this was all a grand adventure that would end sooner than you realize? How would you spend your time if really, the point of this “humaning” thing was to have memories and experiences just like you do on vacation?
I’d love to know if these resonate for you, or what your ways are for connecting to that creative spark. Reply and let me know!
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | wellness
Want to know why you’re still stressed out despite all of the stress reduction techniques you’ve tried in the past? If you’ve taken 500 bubble baths and go to yoga every day and you’re still stressed out, here are 4 things you need to consider to find more ease and balance in your life.
- PEO:
PEO stands for “Person, Environment, Occupation” and it’s a concept that comes from the world of Occupational Therapy. (BTW — “occupation” here refers to anything that occupies your time, not just work. So it could be your occupation as a mother, or a crafter, or a student.) When looking at stress reduction through the PEO lens it’s important to consider three factors.
The “person” part refers to who you are as a person. What are your skills, strengths and relative weaknesses? What are your preferences and dislikes? What’s your personality like? (Something like the MTBI, enneagram, human design, or Gallup strengths finder can be useful here if you don’t feel like you know this info well enough.)
“Environment” refers to the place you’re in when you’re trying to function. Maybe your home environment feels more relaxed than the office (or vice versa). Or you prefer the mountains to the desert. Why is that? What is it about the environment that’s a better fit for you? Different environments are also better for different tasks, for example, an energizing environment would be better for work, while a calming one would be better for sleep or meditation.
The big “O” is the occupation you’re performing. What are the demands of the task at hand? Do you have the resources for that task? Do you have the skills? The right tools? Proper instructions, guidance, and support?
Try looking at one of your routine tasks (either at work or home) through this lens of PEO and see if you can make any adjustments to the environment or the occupation in order to make it easier for you. For example, maybe you work better in a bustling environment full of energy. Or maybe you function better when you don’t have access to your phone to distract you. Maybe you can only fully relax in nature, and so the crowded yoga class in the gym doesn’t help you de-stress.
Take a look at your daily occupations and see how good of a match it is between who you are, the environment you’re in for that task, and the task itself.
- Sensory Profile:
Every single human on this planet has a unique sensory profile, it’s like a fingerprint. Your sensory profile looks at each of your 8 senses and your preferences and awareness for each. Do you like bright, vibrant, crazy designs? You’re probably a visual sensory seeker. Do you like calm colors and less clutter? You are probably visually sensitive. There are quizzes you can take to find out your specific sensory profile, but you can also think about each of these and ask yourself if you’re a seeker (you like it big and bold), avoider (you’d rather stay away from too much of this type of input), sensitive (you don’t hate it, but too much will grate on you) or low registration (you’re not even aware of those types of sensations).
- Visual (sight) like bright colors and busy environments
- Auditory (hearing) like music and talking and louder environments
- Olfactory (smell) like strong scents
- Gustatory (taste) like bold flavors
- Tactile (touch) like strong touch or softer touch
- Vestibular (sense of head movement in space) like swings, rollercoasters
- Proprioceptive (sense of body position in space and feedback from joints and muscles) like dancing, moving around, lifting weights
- Interoception (sensations related to the physiological/physical condition of the body like hunger, heart rate, breathing, and more) like needing to pee, being hot or cold, or ASMR tingles.
If your environment is not a good match for your sensory system, it can cause some serious nervous system dysregulation. Your body will release cortisol, you’ll have trouble concentrating, your emotional regulation system will become depleted and you might get cranky or depressed, and you’ll be exhausted at the end of the day.
- Interoceptors and Mindfulness:
Interoceptors are the sensations we feel related to the physiological/physical condition of the body like hunger, heart rate, breathing, etc. When you’re are stressed, your body shuts down information from the interoceptors (who needs to know that they’re hungry when a lion is chasing them?!) and you become what’s called “low registration” for that type of sensory information.
If you’re chronically stressed at home or at work, your interoceptors can become permanently set in the low registration setting and you lose touch with what you may need on a basic, physiological level. This is why mindfulness doesn’t work for so many people. If you aren’t aware of what your body is feeling, how can you pay attention to it? That’s like giving someone noise-cancelling headphones and then asking them to tell you about the noises in their environment. If you can’t hear it how can you pay attention to it?
Personally, I love mindfulness as a stress reduction technique, but before I got any benefit from it I had to heal my interoceptors from years of stress and shut down. Only after slowly cultivating my awareness of these types of sensations was I able to really tune into myself and be fully aware in the present moment.
If you think you may be low registration for interoceptive sensations, start by concentrating on one sensation, like the feeling of your belly moving in and out as you breathe, and observe it with gentle curiosity, not trying to change it, just trying to befriend it and bring it back to your awareness. Once you start to be able to feel that sensation, try another one, like tune into your thirst and see what it says. Is it there at all? How intense is it? How do you know – what does that feel like in your body? From there you can start to play and experiment with other sensations and emotions and see what they feel like in your body.
- Boundaries
Oh, how I love boundaries! Boundaries start with an awareness of what we like, dislike, will tolerate or won’t. It’s a compendium of the things that make us sing with joy, the things that trigger us, and the things that are neutral. As you learn this stuff about yourself, putting boundaries in place means communicating compassionately and firmly with yourself and others about what works for you, what your needs are, and what will set you off. Having your boundaries ignored or not tended to, by either yourself or others, can be a major cause of stress.
The first step is to get clear on our boundaries through observing what stresses us out or triggers us, what brings us joy, and what we don’t really care either way about. The next step is to learn to feel comfortable (aka not ashamed, bad, unworthy or fearful) about communicating those needs to yourself and others. Some examples could be giving yourself a 10 minute break when you feel overwhelmed or asking a coworker not to come by your desk for a chat when you’re working on a project.
Boundaries are a life-long project, both because we get to know ourselves better over time but also because our joy and triggers change over the years, in different environments, with different people, and different tasks (Oh look! We’re back at PEO, where we started.) Having a practice of observing and identifying our boundaries can be a huge step towards a more joyful, stress-free life.
Honestly, I could write SO MUCH MORE on all of these topics. If you’d like to learn more about these, please comment with your questions and I’ll do my best to write about them in a future post!
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | emotions, Spirituality
Let’s talk about what’s missing for many people as they recover from their childhood trauma. For me, doing the typical emotional and physical healing work alone was not enough. When I finally added spiritual awakening to the process, I went from being a hot mess of anxiety, depression and ill health to the more balanced, grounded version of myself that I am today. (Although I still reserve the right to be a hot mess sometimes. Hot mess is an important stage of any growth process!)
I want to outline why I think BOTH traditional modes for healing from CPTSD + spiritual awakening are important and how you can start to use each of them in your own life.
CPTSD is a collection of emotional and physical symptoms that stems from prolonged periods of stress without the ability to periodically reset to a state of safety and rest. For most people, this comes from developmental trauma during childhood. (If you’re not familiar with CPTSD, I suggest you read this post, then come back here to read on.) For many years, the focus of CPTSD treatment was only psychological, addressing the emotional and behavioral components of developmental trauma. More recently, because of things like ACE research (adverse childhood experiences) and books like The Body Keeps the Score and Waking the Tiger, we’ve started to expand the discussion of CPTSD effects to include physiological aspects, as well.
The mental-emotional effects of trauma are the most widely known and are usually where people start when they first start to heal themselves. There are many ways that the mental-emotional aspects of CPTSD can show up in our lives, but the most common are anxiety, depression, perfectionism, people-pleasing, anger outbursts, ADHD, difficulty following through, quitting things when they get too hard, a harsh inner critic, or feelings of worthlessness or inadequacy. All of these are a direct result of your particular nervous system response: fight, flight, freeze or appease and the mental patterns you created in order to protect you from your particular set of traumatic experiences. There are many ways to help heal the mental-emotional damage from CPTSD. Some of the best ways I’ve found are therapy, energy healing, coaching, meditation, self-help books, shadow work, self-compassion, plant medicine, and making friendships and other healthy relationships a priority.
The physiological effects of CPTSD can be more sneaky. Trauma and stress get trapped in the body and cause imbalances in our immune system, hormones, and other physiological processes, which eventually can lead to illness and disease. This can look like chronic fatigue, autoimmune issues, digestive issues, headaches and migraines, or even things like heart disease and cancer. There are a number of ways to address the physical aspects like yoga, TRE (trauma release exercises), forest bathing, chi gong, massage, acupuncture, vagal nerve reset, and energy healing.
Addressing our health, both physical and emotional, is vital to healing CPTSD and it’s what most experts recommend as the best way to find healing from past trauma.
But there’s a second aspect that’s just as important.
For me, my healing didn’t really get supercharged until I started on the path of spiritual awakening. Let me explain why I think spiritual awakening is the secret sauce that’s missing in current discussions of developmental trauma healing.
One of the primary reasons for all of the deleterious effects of developmental trauma is the lack of safe, consistent parents or caregivers. Whether your caregivers were dealing with addiction, were emotionally immature or distant, or had other mental health issues, the resulting trauma was the same: a stressful childhood that felt unsafe or unkind. When our primary attachment style is created in this sort of environment, we end up with dysfunctional relationships with ourselves (inner critic and bad self-esteem) and/or other people (friends, partners, bosses, etc). It’s really hard to trust yourself or other people after spending your formative years bathed in gaslighting and emotional abuse or neglect.
Spiritual awakening is the antidote to those formative, traumatic experiences. In therapy and other mental health practices, we learn that we need to move through the fear to learn how to trust the kind, caring people in our lives. But it often takes years of developing relationships with people until our inner child deems them safe enough to fully trust with our hearts and vulnerable, soft places. However, in a spiritual practice, as soon as we connect with source consciousness, we feel an immediate rush of love, acceptance, safety, and peace. This doesn’t take years to develop, it’s instantaneous. All of those feelings that we’d missed out on in our early development are there for us, ready to be experienced. When we return to our spiritual home through meditation, channeling, and plant medicine ceremonies, we’re easily able to find a model for the caregiving we never received as a child.
These experiences of being loved and cared for unconditionally by my source consciousness have healed me in ways unlike any other practice. There’s a saying that we change our views of how our world works through “time and evidence,” meaning that it takes repeated experiences over a long period of time for us to believe something is really true or has really changed. Having a spiritual practice means that anytime we want to access those healing experiences of unconditional love, we can — all we have to do is meditate! (I’m joking about that part. Nowadays all I have to do is meditate, but it took 20 years of meditation practice along with an NDE and various plant medicine ceremonies over the years, and even so I still have days where I just can’t find that spiritual bliss during meditation.)
This is why both mind-body healing and spiritual awakening practices are vitally important in finding balance and peace as we recover from developmental trauma. If you’re interested in learning more, please write to me and ask! I’d love to know what further questions you have on these practices and what I can do to support you through them.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, life lessons, Spirituality
As a channel and mystic, one of the things I’m asked most often is, “If it’s so wonderful in the place we go after we die, why would we ever choose to incarnate again?” I have to admit, it’s a question I often ask myself, too. When things are tough, I find myself thinking, “Why did I sign up for this!?”
Here’s my best understanding of what’s going on and why we choose to incarnate again and again.
As I explained in a previous post, after we die, we rejoin all of consciousness (aka source, God, universal consciousness, etc) and experience a feeling of unconditional love, acceptance, and oneness.
So, why would anyone want to leave that and become a human being again?
First, it’s important to understand that our perspective on existence is completely different there. In that place, we exist in all time, space, and awareness simultaneously, so deciding to spend a mere 80-100 years as a human doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. My guides have said it’s like choosing to go on an adventure vacation, like planning a few weeks of hiking in Machu Pichu or exploring the Pyramids in Egypt. You wouldn’t think it was that big of a deal to go see the Pyramids, right? I mean, it’s only a few weeks, so any inconveniences or suffering would be worth it for that awesome experience! It’s way too hot? Smells like camel pee? Sore muscles after a long day of hiking? Those things seem minor in comparison to the experience of being able to see the pyramids!
When I’ve looked at my life from the perspective of universal consciousness, even the things that (from my human perspective) feel huge and horrible like heartbreak, shame, or even cancer seem like camel pee and sore muscles — just minor inconveniences that are part of the larger experience. In fact, the experience wouldn’t be the same without those inconveniences. A massage at the end of a long day of hiking feels absolutely amazing! But without the hike, a massage would just be…nice.
From your soul’s perspective, things like living in a timeline with only one direction or having a bodymind that feels emotions and physical sensations sounds like a grand adventure. If you think about it, so many of our human experiences come from the fact that a) there are beginnings, middles and ends to things and b) we are separate beings, able to feel connection, disconnection, change, free will, etc. After eons of floating around as All That Is, your soul gets almost giddy to be able to incarnate and have the full spectrum of human experiences, both what we would consider good and bad. As part of universal consciousness, you don’t get to experience any of those things, and a few decades with a new perspective sounds just like the adventure you crave.
Even though I know all this and have guides that are constantly reminding me, sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. I often get lost in the purely human experience of this incarnation, especially when times are tough and I just want it to get better. But then I remind myself that this is all a story, and I am the creator of worlds. As I ease back into the awareness that I am a spiritual being having an experience as a human, a sense of deep peace and a connection to that greater awareness washes over me.
You are connected to this larger consciousness, too, I see it in every person I encounter. This means you can access that deep sense of peace and connection for yourself. Some are more aware of it than others, but it’s always there, waiting for you to remember that you are a spiritual being having a human adventure. So, enjoy both the wonder of pyramids and the stench of the camel pee, it’s all part of the plan. And if you’d like some help finding that place of peace and connection, send me a note, and I’d be happy to help. Think of me like your spiritual sherpa, I know the way and I can show you how to get there.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Spirituality
Have you ever had an experience where you realize something that seems so obvious once you’d thought about it? Well, That happened to me the other day. I was meditating, having a conversation with my guides, and I asked what I should write about next. They said, “You should write about us, write about the truth behind reality. Write about why we incarnate, and what happens when we die. Write about the esoterica.” (I admit, I had to look up what esoterica means, it’s one of those terms that I vaguely knew, but felt like I didn’t have a good handle on.)
“Oh, right!” I thought, “Not everyone can just pop into a meditative state and communicate with spirit guides.”
Yeah, I know. Should have been obvious.
So, I’m starting a series of essays about esoterica, that truth beyond the truth, the “Great Mystery”. Esoterica is defined as “knowledge having an inner or secret meaning” but honestly, it’s no big secret. In fact, it’s right there in front of us, waiting for us to remember it. It can feel like a secret if you haven’t stumbled on how to communicate with it in your own life but it’s right there, waiting to be revealed.
In mystical traditions, it is one’s own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric.
The secret isn’t that you’re not being told.
The secret is that you’re not able to hear.
~Ram Dass
One surefire way to get closer to that Great Mystery is to listen to other people talk about their experiences or awareness of it. There’s something inside you that will recognize, remember and resonate with what you’re hearing, and it will open up a part of you that’s ready to know more of the mystery.
I’d like to be one of those guides, or mystics, and talk about my experience with the mystery, or the true reality of who you are beyond this human body and mind.
Are you ready? Good! Let’s explore the mystery! I’ll be your cosmic Nancy Drew! Or maybe I’m more of a Veronica Mars? (I’m certainly not a Jessica Fletcher, as much as I’d love to be.)
I’ll note that all of the following is information I’ve seen through my NDE, meditations, and channeling. None of this is new information, mystics, holy folks, and artists have been saying this same thing for eons, but I know for me, sometimes I have to hear the same message from different sources and in different ways, and each new perspective unlocks another aspect of the mystery.
Where should we start? I think we’ll begin at the ending, and start with death.
What happens after we die? My first encounter with what I now call my “guides” happened when I had a near-death-experience in the middle of cancer treatment. I was on the brink of death from the chemo drugs and I was given the option to die. I was so weak, miserable and in so much pain that I didn’t know if I could go on. I heard a voice say, “You can let go” and I knew in that instant I was being offered the choice — did I want to die or did I want to keep living? Since that experience, I’ve had additional downloads about what happens when we die, and what the dying process is like.
I’ll start by saying that there are some similarities for everyone and some differences. For all of us, there is an experience of becoming disconnected from or leaving behind our human body. There is a part of us, an awareness, that continues on without our body or mind to house it.
Some people have a similar experience to what I did during my NDE, where we suddenly are aware of being a part of this larger consciousness matrix that feels loving, accepting and all-knowing. There’s a feeling of relief there, too. For me, it felt like finally coming home after a long journey. I’ve heard others say it felt like finally taking off an uncomfortable shoe.
Once we have reconnected with our guides and all of consciousness, there is a period of reflection on this life. It’s sort of like if you were an explorer and have come back to tell your village what you saw and experienced while you were away. This is so that you, and all of consciousness, can process and learn of its experience of itself that was the “you” that incarnated. Since there is no time in this place, I can’t exactly say how long this takes, but there are differences. Maybe it’s more accurate to say some are more intricate and complex than others. Or that some are unravelled and examined piece by piece, rather than all at once, in order to be better understood.
After the period of reflection, we get to bop around as unincorporated energy of consciousness for a while. It’s a place with no time and space, no emotions, no beginnings or endings, just an experience of acceptance and oneness. How long do we do this? It depends! It’s until we decide to incarnate again or have another type of embodied experience. Believe it or not, floating around as all of consciousness can get boring after a while, so we want to incarnate again and spend some time as a “separate” being (I put separate in quotes because we’re never really separate, that’s just a handy illusion, but that’s a topic for another essay) who has highs and lows, beginnings and endings, and can forget their true nature at birth in order to go on the spiritual journey of remembering again, if they so choose.
I think that covers the basics, but as with all of these topics, there’s so much more I could write. I’d love to know what esoteric, mystical questions you have about life, death, incarnation, time and space, where we go between lives or anything else about the Great Mystery. Let me know, I’ll ask my guides and then write about it in a future post!
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | emotions
It’s been an angry week for me (both feeling my own anger and being on the receiving end of someone else’s) and I’ve been thinking a lot about the two types of anger, healthy anger and trauma response anger. Let’s look at ‘em, shall we?
Healthy anger moves you forward in a positive way, one of my mentors even called it the most spiritual of all emotions. In the five-element cycle, anger is the Wood element and it precedes Fire, which is joy. This means that in order to get to joy, we have to go through anger first. What does this look like in real life? I’ll give you a personal example from this week. As you probably know, this week a draft of a supreme court ruling that would end access to abortion in the USA was leaked to the press. I could go on and on about why this is horrific both in terms of women’s control of their own bodies and in how this is a huge step towards the crumbling of personal freedoms in the US, but there are people who can speak to that much better than I can, so for the sake of this post, I’ll stick to talking about anger.
When I heard the news, I was furious. It felt like a slap in the face to everyone who has been working on social progress in the last 50 years. I felt an anger welling up inside me and I knew I had to take action to change this. This is the hallmark of healthy anger, it drives you to change something for the better, it makes you strive to create a world for yourself and others that contains more joy, acceptance, compassion, freedom, or understanding. This anger drives you forward to do something that is in alignment with your highest values and that makes a positive change in your world. Positive anger leads you to create positive changes that lead to better things.
Trauma anger feels very different. Earlier this week, I was on a call with a client and I sensed she was repeating a trauma response pattern (appeasing) that I had seen before, so I voiced my concern. Pretty quickly, she got angry and said she didn’t like what I was accusing her of and she felt attacked. She let me know she didn’t like being yelled at and was done talking about it. It was pretty clear this was a trauma response — I was not yelling and hadn’t attacked her at all. By the end of the call, she was able to see how her anger had been a trauma response, how it had clouded her judgment of what I’d said and how I’d said it, and process through it.
Trauma anger isn’t driving you to take action towards a better world, it’s purpose is to shut down an uncomfortable situation that reminds you of a similar, traumatic situation from your past. It could be a situation where you felt misunderstood, or like you were “bad”, or unheard, or trapped. Trauma anger is a way of derailing the conversation and making it about something else — your anger — instead of the issue at hand. It’s an escape, and works quite well to get us away from traumatic situations. But now that you’re not in a dangerous place anymore, it’s preventing you from being present with uncomfortable situations, even if you are with safe people that can give your body mind a different, safer experience and help you grow.
The way to identify trauma anger is to check in with your body and ask, “is there fear or shame beneath this anger?” (To do this, you must be familiar with what the sensations of fear and shame feel like in your body, so doing mindfulness + somatic work is a vital prerequisite here.) If you can answer yes, then it’s trauma anger. Another sign is when, after the event you think, “Wow. I was really angry. I’m not sure why that made me so mad.” There’s a saying “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical” and the awareness that you were more angry than the situation warranted can be another good clue that it’s trauma anger.
I want to stress that neither type of anger is bad. Heathy anger drives, inspires, and motivates us to create a better world. Trauma anger helps us see areas where we still live in shadow and illuminates where we can do more healing work with ourselves. It’s through our own healing work that we lessen the harm we do in the world and simultaneously act as a model for others of what healing looks like. As Ram Dass says, “I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn’t create more suffering. I help people as I work on myself and I work on myself to help people.”
With gentle noticing and acceptance, take a look at your anger when you are able to be present with it and ask, “Is this healthy anger or trauma anger?” If it’s healthy anger, go out there and change the world! (Or at least your small corner of it.) If it’s trauma anger, know that you made it as far as you have today because you were smart enough to protect yourself this way. But now that you are safe, you can work on doing it another way, if you’re ready.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Neurology
I want to talk about your brains. Yes, brains plural. All four of them. Most of us know about one of them, maybe two, but in fact you have FOUR separate brains.
Let me explain what I mean by a brain. There are different areas in our bodies that have dense, semi-autonomous neural networks. One is in your head (what we commonly call your “brain”) but you also have dense neural networks in your heart, your gut and your pelvis.
Up until a couple years ago, medical science thought that there was only one brain (the one in your head) but recent research has definitively shown you have another one in your gut (your enteric nervous system) and there is mounting evidence for neural networks in your heart and pelvis too.
Each of these brains has different abilities and access to different ways of processing information. For a balanced bodymind, it’s important to be able to use and rely on all four brains equally.
Let me go through the information gathering and decision-making aspects of each brain so you can learn how to access that information for yourself. BTW — Each brain can do way more than what I’m describing here, but here’s a summary of the capabilities of each one for the purposes of information gathering and making wholistic decisions.
Our head brain, or what we commonly just call the brain, is very good at logical, deductive reasoning. This can come in handy when we’re trying to figure out the possible consequences of each possible decision, weigh the pros and cons, or using executive function skills to figure out the best solution. Basically, this is the brain that gives us rational, logical information and can compare and contrast the possible outcomes of that information. This brain is very helpful for interacting with the rational, ego-driven world that we live in. Most things that people would call a “good decision” (aka well reasoned, low risk, etc) come from this brain.
The heart brain considers things from an emotional perspective. How do I feel about each of these options? Which one feels in alignment with bringing more love, joy and connection into my life? Which one am I drawn to with a sense of emotional excitement, longing and fulfillment? Our heart brain gives us information on what would help us feel happy, connected and loved. Heart brain information is often not logical, for example, think of the saying “the heart wants what the heart wants” which implies that the decision isn’t logical but is compelling and fulfilling.
Gut brains are tied into our sense of instinct and intuition. Our gut brain can tell us if something is right or wrong for us (which may not be right or wrong on a logical, head brain level). Gut brain information is more grounded in that 2nd and 3rd chakra energy of creativity and individuality. If you think of the phrase, “I had a gut feeling” it means you just knew it, without having the facts or logic to back it up. Our gut brains synthesize and provide information almost instantaneously. Oftentimes a feeling of deep knowing or a sense that something is the right decision comes from our gut brains.
Finally, there’s your pelvic brain. This brain is tied into our creative longing, what we are meant to do and create and be in this world. Our pelvic brain gets fired up when we think about an option that is in alignment with what we’re supposed to do in this world, what we desire to make, create or interact with. The pelvic brain says, “Yes, I want that so I can create magic with it.” Pelvic brain gives us information on what kind of transmutation work we are here to do and how we’re supposed to bring our unique, individual magic to the world.
When you have a decision to make or are thinking about taking action (or not taking action) make sure you tune into all four of your brains and see what they have to add to the conversation. It may be challenging at first to hear the wisdom of your heart, gut and pelvic brains because we’ve all been trained by modern society to only ask our head brains for an opinion, but I promise you those other brains are there, waiting for you to ask for their input, happy to give you the best possible guidance you can get — the wisdom of your own multifaceted ways of knowing.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | life lessons, mindfulness, Spirituality
I’ve been going through a rough patch lately. My physical and emotional health hasn’t been the best and most days it’s felt like I’m having to push through. I think that’s true for a lot of us — I’ve heard from friends near and far about how burned out we all are and how it’s affecting so many areas of our lives. And while I’m reaching out to my network of healers, friends and family for support, it still sucks to go through a rough patch.
So, today I want to talk about suffering. Why do we have to suffer? And what can we do about it?
Let’s look at suffering from a macro, spiritual POV level and then relate it to what we can do on a more micro, daily, human basis.
Ram Dass has two quotes about suffering that seem at odds with each other at first glance, but taken together are actually one of the great esoteric secrets of enlightenment. Here are the two quotes:
“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”
― Ram Dass
“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
― Ram Dass
In the first quote, Ram Dass is alluding to the rule of contrast, or the yin and yang. A classic example of this is that in order to understand the concept of darkness, you need to have experienced light. If darkness is the absence of light, then you can’t understand what darkness is without already having experienced what light is, or vice versa. In the same way, you’d find it harder to appreciate and deeply experience joy unless you’ve also experienced suffering.
Suffering creates gratitude for times of peace and joy.
One time, I had a particularly hard health challenge where I was basically bedridden for months. When I could finally walk again and first went outside, the sight of the trees, the sky, even the miracle of a sidewalk existing so I could walk on it (with all of the technological history and people needed to create it ) was so awe-inspiring that it brought me to tears of gratitude. I don’t think that without a few months of being inside and immobile, I would have cried at the sight of a sidewalk. The suffering shaped me into someone who appreciated things I hadn’t before. Things that we would take for granted as “normal” become a source of joy after we feel their absence. And the cool thing is, that sticks with you. I don’t cry tears of joy at every tree I see nowadays, but I remember that feeling and I can invoke levels of gratitude for things that I never would have before. That is sandpaper that has shaped me for the better.
Suffering also helps us develop compassion for those who have gone through similar experiences.
Compassion is the root of nonjudgemental love and divine action. If we can have compassion for someone, we can see suffering at the root of their actions rather than judging them for those actions. From this place, we can meet them with our common humanity. We are all learning and remembering what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. Who we are in the world (a.k.a. how we love and care in the world) is shaped by our suffering. In a world where our culture, corporations, and even our genes encourage us to try to “otherize” those who are different from us and “find our tribe,” compassion reminds us that all humans, animals and even the planet are all “our tribe.”
The second quote, “The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering,” is a bit more esoteric and harder to practice in the moment. I’d heard some version of this concept for years before I finally got it on a level that I could use to find peace in times of stress. I’d read the saying “desire is the root of all suffering” in many Buddhist texts and at first I thought it meant desire for material goods, people or situations that we coveted. But it’s not that kind of desire. It’s more like the desire for things to be different than they are in this moment, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant this moment may be. The key is to accept whatever is happening and not desire it to be any other way right now. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t desire things in your life. In fact, I think that intuitive, inspired desire is one of the ways we figure out our life’s purpose. This is why I like this version by Ram Dass. “The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering” means that if we can accept whatever is happening right now and not wish it to be different or better, then our suffering is greatly diminished.
Let me give you a few examples (like I said, this one is harder to grasp as a practice). When I was going through cancer treatment, I had some of the worst days of my life. My body was so weak and damaged that I almost gave up and died. However, this is also when I first started the practice of giving up resistance to what was happening. When I would get bad news from the doctor I thought to myself “Now, this is happening” and find the calm grace of acceptance even in the face of terrible news. I started using it to mark the good things, too, like when my puppy would curl up next to me in bed I thought, “Now, this is happening.” (Side note: I got this phrase from Jack Black in the movie Anchorman, proving that you never know who your spiritual teachers will be.) As I used this mantra more and more, I started to develop a powerful mindfulness, a part of my body-mind that could observe the situation without judgement and with full acceptance of what was arising.
Here’s another example. Recently, I started on a new medication that started causing anxiety attacks after a few months of use. It took a while to figure out that it was this particular medication that was the cause, so for months I was having unexplained bouts of severe anxiety attacks for hours at a time. One of the tools I used to get through was mindfulness meditation. I would lay down, close my eyes and do my best to simply observe the anxiety in my body as it was happening. At one point, I felt my consciousness almost split in two. There was the part of me that was anxious, with my heart racing, panicked thoughts, hot and cold chills and the painful feeling of adrenaline pumping through my chest, and then there was another part, a part that transcended that human experience as I had the thought, “this body is experiencing anxiety right now.” That second part of me suddenly felt so peaceful and all-knowing. I found that I could shift my awareness, or almost lean in, to that peaceful, wise part of myself. In that space there was no suffering at all, there was simply the acceptance of what was happening, which somehow dissolved the desire for it to be any other way. In that moment, acceptance was peace. Even in the face of a panic attack.
Which brings us right back to the first quote — suffering is the sandpaper that shapes us. Without this anxiety, I wouldn’t have been able to deepen my meditation practice and wouldn’t have discovered how deeply I could find peace in acceptance. Those few months of anxiety were the sandpaper that shaped me into someone who practiced mindfulness enough to find peace and calm somewhere that I never thought it could exist, in the midst of a panic attack.
So while I do not wish suffering on myself, you, or anyone else, I do understand a bit of why it’s part of our incarnated human experience. However, even though I know this as true, I routinely forget it and fall back into the desire for things to be different than they are. But the key is remembering at some point — if it’s 2 seconds or 2 days into the pain — that you can experience the pain without resistance, and therefore without suffering. And to become aware that this pain is shaping you into a more compassionate, loving and understanding person. As you understand pain, you will open your heart to others and take this newfound understanding and compassion with you into the world from this day forward, helping those who could use a bit of it directed their way as they make their way through their own pain and suffering.
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, mindfulness, Self-compassion, Spirituality
It’s been a chaotic last couple of years, hasn’t it? Global pandemics, the rise of fascism, and disconnection from so many of the people and things that keep us sane and grounded. So many familiar things are falling apart, and I know that I’ve had to figure out new ways to find happiness and connection in these unpredictable times. As with anything new, it’s been a bit of trial and error.
But there are 4 things that I know will help and that I keep coming back to over and over.
- Mindfulness. The ability to be in the present moment and have the ability to access two parts of me (the part that is having the experience and the part that is compassionately observing the experience) has been invaluable. When things are rough or when things are good, I can witness myself having that experience from a place of wisdom and compassion. When I am feeling scared I can be scared and at the same time, send compassion and love to the past of me that’s scared. When I’m feeling joy I can actually register that joy and make a mental note of how happy I am, which rewires my brain to seek happiness. It’s sort of like a magic trick – being two places at once – and it’s one of the best tools I know for coming back and caring for yourself in hard times. It can create a new perspective that’s different from the trauma reactions you’ve had in the past.
- Learning to love your pain. I know, I know. That sounds terrible. But hear me out. I know mental anguish sucks. Anxiety, loneliness, feeling out of control, it all sucks. But those places where we feel pain are signposts to where we need to let in love. Doing shadow work and finding the places where you’ve been hurt can also be seen as finding the places where you can open up to love. This can be self-love (goodbye inner critic!), love from others like friends, pets, etc, or a connection with source, the ultimate field of unconditional love. It’s not easy, and we often put up barriers in those shadow places because we’ve been burned in the past, but as Rumi says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
- Being kind to yourself. I don’t know about you, but I say horrid things to myself that I would never dream of saying to anyone else. Years ago, I made a vow to myself that I would not say anything to myself that I wouldn’t say to my best friend. I’ve found that when times get tough and we feel like we’re not doing a good enough job, those voices can get stronger. Anyone feel like they’re not doing enough when really, it’s a pandemic + past trauma + late-stage capitalism + a society focused on disconnection under the guise of hyperindividualism? Coming to love ourselves takes work in the face of all of this is an intentional act and takes patience, love and care.
- Having a spiritual practice. You can call it God, source, the universal field of consciousness, or the flying spaghetti monster, but the ability to tap into this energy and feel it in your bones and feel how much love and support there is for you out there is key. No one can do it alone. But sometimes we don’t have the perfect people around at the perfect moment to help us. That’s when a spiritual connection and a deep knowing that all of this will be okay can come to the rescue. You are part of something so much larger than whatever is going wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a pit of despair and the only thing that gave me relief was the sense of grace I get when I meditate and intentionally connect to that field of consciousness. We’re all just little holograms of God, running around having incarnate experiences. And those incarnate experiences can feel BIG and overwhelming at times, but it is not all that we are. We are so much more than that and you can access that expansive feeling anytime you want through your spiritual practice.
If you want to know more about any of these 4 tools or want help learning how to use them in your own life, I’m teaching a course all about them and it starts next week. If you’re curious, drop me a line or check out the webpage here: https://megancaper.com/uth
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, meditation, mindfulness, resilience, wellness
Feeling disconnected and unmoored is one of the most insidious aftereffects of trauma. Whether it’s 2+ years of pandemic isolation or the result of a childhood in an emotionally detached family, feeling disconnected and alone is such a common experience.
I know that personally it’s been a lifelong work in progress to feel the support and care around me after growing up in a family that was emotionally disconnected and spiteful. Even with good friends, loving partners, a solid found family and a community around me, that feeling of disconnection or like I’m going to have the rug pulled out from under me can come on at any moment.
A few years ago, I was meditating through this feeling and I felt myself sink into a warm, soft energetic embrace. There was a feeling of calm and safety, and in that moment, I knew everything was alright.
And it was. In that moment, as with most moments of my life, I was safe. But I usually can’t access that feeling.
The problem arises when my brain reverts to a pattern of hypervigilance and anticipation – after experiencing so many moments where I had to look out for emotional or physical danger, my brain and body have been trained to be prepared. And that state of hypervigilant preparation certainly does not feel like calm and safety, and it doesn’t feel like everything is going to be alright.
But in meditation, I can drop the worry and sink into the moment of what I’m doing – being still, observing my body and mind, in a place and time of my own creation, which is free from any potential threats.
There’s a form of meditation called Settling the Mind in its Natural State where “the activities of the mind gradually subside so that the mind comes to settle in its ‘natural state,’ which manifests three core qualities: bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality.” I would add the word “connection” to that list of effects because in that state I found the connection I was looking for. It wasn’t dependent on a particular person or circumstance, but was already a part of who I am. Since my “natural state” is being connected to universal consciousness, I am always connected to the one consciousness that runs through all of us.
In those moments of meditation, that connection becomes real, and (if I meditate daily) it becomes a part of my daily reality, as well. As a result, my nervous system changes, my brain rewires, and eventually my experience of being connected and safe become the baseline instead of something I have to strive for.
I still experience those post-traumatic moments of disconnection at times, but having a meditation practice where I know I can bring myself back to that natural state of bliss and connection at any moment has been such an important part of my healing.
If this practice of feeling connected, safe and cared for sounds like something that you’d like to learn, then I’d love to invite you to join my group program Unconventional Tools for Healing starting April 25. It’s one of the many tools I teach in the class to help you cultivate the emotional balance that we all crave.
See you there!
Xo Megan
by Megan Caper | Happiness, Inner critic, Self-compassion, Uncategorized
How do I love me? Let me count the ways.
Ask anyone who’s been in a long term relationship what the secret to success is and they’ll likely mention two things: You have to work at it every day and you have to make your partner feel special on the regular.
That’s sound advice, but it’s advice we rarely do in our relationship with ourselves.
Do you work on making yourself feel special every day? If not, why not? We all need to take time to celebrate and love on ourselves daily. It’s important because if we’re only relying on other people to make you feel special and loved and it doesn’t happen, it can trigger self-critical thoughts of being undeserving.
You (yes, YOU) deserve to have something happen each day that reminds you of how lovable, worthy, special and awesome you are. You are a beautiful ball of sentient stardust (shout out to @domesticblisters for that description) and you absolutely should be reminded of this, daily.
Let me tell you a trick for how I started doing this for myself. First, if you don’t already know your love languages go here to find out your top two or three. My top three are acts of service, words of affirmation, and receiving gifts.
Next, figure out ways that you can do these things for yourself! You’ll have to get creative here. How can I perform acts of service for myself? Well, I can hire someone to clean my house every few weeks. Or order food delivery once per week. What about words of affirmation? I can make a list of all the things I’m proud of myself for that week. Receiving gifts? Easy – I make sure if I see something I like when I’m out, like flowers or a yummy smelling candle, that I either buy it at the moment or add it to a list I have on my phone of stuff to get myself later.
If I find that it’s been a few days since I’ve done any of these things, I make a point to do it. And when life is especially sucky, I make a point to schedule them in. After my last break-up, I scheduled weekly flower delivery for myself for a few months and wrote myself encouraging notes to be included with the delivery. Every damn time I looked at those flowers, I smiled.
Now, I want you to pay very close attention to your inner critic when you start to do this practice. If I’m at the supermarket and I see something I’d like as a treat (a gift for myself) and I think, “Oh, that’s a nice thought, but I don’t really neeeeeeed it,” then I stop and take stock. If I saw my best friend’s favorite candy bar in the whole world at the market right before I was about to meet up with her, would I buy it for her? Of course I would — I would be so excited to do that for her! So, why wouldn’t I be equally as excited to do that for myself? If there’s any part of you that tells you you’re not “worth it”, there’s some shadow work to do, right there. I recommend bringing in your inner caregiver or protector to help you work through feeling undeserving or not worthy.
Because my friend, I promise you that you are worthy of that and so much more.
I hope you try this out and let me know how it goes. Like any change to our belief systems of self-concept you may have to “fake it till you make it” and almost force yourself to do small acts of love for yourself at first as the inner critic “I’m not worthy” voice comes up. But once you make it part of your routine, and part of who you are, then your daily practice of letting yourself know how special you are becomes one of the best parts of your day.
If you want to know more about how exactly to translate your love languages into things you can do for yourself, then check out my group course starting on April 25th, Unconventional Tools for Healing. We go into this in-depth and you can get personalized coaching from me on how to do this to make the most positive impact on your well-being.
Xo Megan
