Jenny had severe health problems and had tried everything to no avail. Being a practitioner in the alternative health realm already, she could not figure out what was going on. After years of trial and error, she began to heal subconscious thoughts she believed were related to her symptoms.
We discuss the multifaceted program she first developed for herself and then refined to be able to offer it to the public. She and her team work a lot with POTS, MCAS, Lyme Disease, Mold sensitivities, Food sensitives as well as other problems that the traditional medical community doesn’t have a lot of answers or treatments for.
Important points:
- · Root vs trigger memories
- · Comfort measures vs healing
- · Phases of chronic illness
- · Medical to holistic to functional
- · Clearing the slate and Rewiring beliefs
- · How 100% of her students finish the program
- · Daily support instead of periodic
About Jenny Peterson
Jenny’s primary focus is to help clients identify and release unconscious stressors that are preventing their body from healing and teach how to trust rather than fear their own bodies. She firmly believe that everyone can heal themselves, her team assists in providing the tools to make that happen. She has over 20 years of holistic studies, certification, and experience working with clients including
See more at https://www.themindbodyrewire.com
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About Dr. Liz
Interested in hypnosis with Dr. Liz? Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com
Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnosis, and neurodivergent supportive psychotherapy to people all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.
A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.
Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work.
Transcript
0:00:01 – Dr. Liz
Hi everyone, dr Liz here. My interview today is with Jenny Peterson, who created the MindBodyRewire program, the MindBodyRewire.com. Now I know listeners probably don’t realize, unless you’re a podcaster yourself, that we get pitched multiple times a day at least me at this point not when I first started, but definitely eight years later. Running a podcast, I get daily requests for people to be on it, and her email really caught my eye and so I went and checked out her website and then interviewed her, and she is fantastic. My instinct was right on this. It is pretty rare to find an online program that has daily support of somebody, and that’s what her eight month program offers is daily support, and the program sounds incredible. It really lines up with what I do in hypnosis in terms of rewiring subconscious beliefs so that you can lead a better life, so that you can feel happier, better.
Her program is specifically targeted to people with chronic health conditions who really want to live easier, less suffering, figure out what’s going on. As she says in the interview, she is often the last resort. Hypnosis is often the last resort for people too. So I get the same type of people that come to me. They’ve tried everything, but as a psychotherapist my practice is not set up to where I can do daily check-ins with someone, and her program offers that, which is phenomenal. So I hope you really enjoy this interview, which is all about her program, how she came up with it, how it works, who it’s for, and that it helps you or a loved one in some way. I hope you’re healthy and safe. Peace,
Hi Jenny, Welcome to the Hypnotize Me podcast,
0:02:10 – Jenny Peterson
thank you so much, Elizabeth, for having me here. I’m so excited.
0:02:20 – Dr. Liz
Absolutely.
0:02:21 – Jenny Peterson
So let’s start with the chickens.
0:02:27 – Dr. Liz
Okay, let’s start there. That’s a soft way to enter. Yes, do you have chickens? Personally?
0:02:31 – Jenny Peterson
yes, yes, I do. Yeah, I have 20 chickens. Yes, 20, yeah, it’s been. I don’t. I mean, for people that have chickens it’s called chicken math. It’s literally like you start with four and eventually it’s like, well, well, I had four and all of a sudden I had 20. I have heard that. Actually, it’s kind of crazy. My husband started it and I just kept it going from there.
0:02:56 – Dr. Liz
Awesome, and they’re backyard chickens.
0:02:58 – Jenny Peterson
Yes.
0:02:59 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, awesome, we have a couple of acres and it’s just.
0:03:03 – Jenny Peterson
It’s just so fun that I mean, if you ever need to just distress, like in the middle of my day, if it’s like, oh, I’m just stressed out right now, I just walk out by my chickens and hang out with them and it just takes all your stress away. It’s such an amazing little creatures to have in your backyard is a goal of mine, I will tell you. Yeah, I think it’s a goal of a lot of people’s, you know. But if there’s anything I can tell you, it’s more than what you think it’s going to be.
0:03:31 – Dr. Liz
Oh yeah, yeah, I help take care of my daughter’s school chickens.
0:03:35 – Jenny Peterson
Yes.
0:03:36 – Dr. Liz
It is a lot of work, right.
0:03:38 – Jenny Peterson
Well, I mean taking care of them, like feeding them and everything else isn’t, isn’t really that hard. It’s the part of like, when they get sick or something happens, you know it, there’s not much help out there and you learn as you go. You definitely learn as you go. I could write a book now.
0:03:53 – Dr. Liz
Yes, but I, I think they are, um, they’re far more affectionate than people realize. Yeah, there’s one that’s like so attached to her and wanted to cuddle up under her shirt, oh, wow, yeah, and they learn faces. they can learn up to 100 faces.
0:04:13 – Jenny Peterson
absolutely and their names too,
0:04:20 – Dr. Liz
and their names yeah and they’re just, they’re adorable. Yeah, yeah, so great wonderful. You don’t have an egg shortage like the rest of the country.
0:04:26 – Jenny Peterson
Oh, no, I never did, never had that, I mean mine even don’t even really slow down that much in the winter time either. So I mean we have a good, steady pace, and our neighbors know that as well, so we don’t have a problem getting rid of the extra.
0:04:38 – Dr. Liz
Nice, very nice, all right, so let’s jump into the real reason you’re here.
0:05:20 – Jenny Peterson
I thought it was on a chicken podcast, sorry, homesteaders podcast.
Dr. Liz
Yeah, why don’t you let the listeners know your story? I think when I was reading your material and I often go and check out material before I say, yes, let’s come on the podcast I was struck by the fact that it started in your teens. You had real chronic illness that started in your teens, so can you tell the listeners how this all started for you? Sure?
0:05:20 – Jenny Peterson
sure, and I do want to say the reason I love chickens is part of my healing story.
Chickens are part of the whole reason I have them. So I had, you know, I had chronic, chronic skin issues and a lot of like body pain when I was in my teens and maybe even well before that. And then I got in a bike accident when I was 16. And that I ended up having a cyst on my pancreas. So that was a that was a really big deal, not like just a little bit of acne we’re talking, you know, we have to major surgery here, and after my major surgery which the whole process was probably eight months long between them, you know, just they I was intravenously fed for a while just to see if the cyst would go away. That didn’t happen, ended up having the cyst removed.
And then, once I was done with that, I just had a lot of hard time digesting food, which makes sense. I mean, I didn’t eat for several months and then my whole digestive tract was thrown off with the surgery and I didn’t really get much help after that. The doctors were just like go eat a steak a day after my surgery. I was like I don’t feel like I’m digesting my food very well. So that did lead me my mom and I to more holistic type of help lots of enzymes and digestive things. And then that intrigued me because it was a whole new world for me and I started getting into holistic studies at a very young age. I was carrying around herbs and doing healthy diet that people are doing now. That is really popular now. I was doing 25 years ago when I was a teenager and it started there where I just became very interested in nutrition and herbs and how the body worked.
And then right after high school I opened my own health and wellness after I was certified in herbalism. High school. I opened my own health and wellness after I was certified in herbalism and that started a whole new journey of being a business owner and also trying to help people with their health. And I wasn’t really experiencing a lot of symptoms during that time. During the time of opening my business, I was young, you know, 19, 20 years old, and it wasn’t until I ended up probably five, six years into the business, very stressed out, where I started to experience symptoms.
And then I had my son when I was 28. And my store was extremely busy at that time and I just could not manage both the store and being a mom and ended up selling the store. And after that is when it went all downhill like the major stuff. You know, the stuff in my childhood was here and there, but the major stuff was after he was born and I ended up one night with a major panic attack and it went downhill from there. And I didn’t even know what panic attacks were.
0:07:56 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, most people don’t at first, yeah.
0:08:03 – Jenny Peterson
Once I learned that I was having a panic attack like I had many versions of that, even when I was a child and I didn’t know that that’s what it was, you know. So I did have anxiety, but no one told me that’s what it was or what I was experiencing in my body. And then, once I had the panic attacks, it just spiraled from there. It was everyday panic attacks and I had major rosacea, I had cystitis for two, three years, continuously digestive issues, food sensitivities, so I was sick chronically for three years.
My husband got a new job, we were moving and had my first panic attack and when he came home two weeks later I said I can’t drive, I am having panic attacks. I was in the ER you know he’s like what happened to you and there was just a lot of stress with the move and everything just came to a head. And that really started my journey of trying to figure things out. Despite what I knew, what I was trained in, nothing was working for me. So I went to go see other people that were like me and that was one of my questions like here you are trained in herbalism.
0:09:08 – Dr. Liz
For listeners who who don’t know, if you’ve never been in I don’t know, a store, let’s say facility, often acupuncturist or have a whole wall of herbs and sometimes massage therapists are also have that as an adjunct, but it’s really using the natural herbs to. Usually it’s like custom mixes for people, correct?
0:09:31 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah, but there were certain lines that I, you know, recommended and worked with, based on my training, okay.
0:09:37 – Dr. Liz
So it’s more like how do you describe it to people?
0:09:40 – Jenny Peterson
Like herbalism, is the study of herbs and what their you know constitutions are and what they all do in the body and how to grow them. But once you understand that, you know you really can move into using practitioner lines clients that are in capsules. So I didn’t make those. Of course I was using lines. I did make my own teas but you know it’s the study of herbs and herbs and really what they do in the body, the properties of them.
0:10:11 – Dr. Liz
Okay, so even though you’re trained in all that, that wasn’t.
0:10:14 – Jenny Peterson
That wasn’t doing it, it wasn’t fixing no no, and I mean it was not only that, but it was. You know I was trained in all this nutrition of this is how you eat. You know all the protocols that in the functional medicine, holistic medicine world that are followed. You know I was doing it and nothing was working. In fact, I was getting more and more sensitive to foods and just not able to eat very much at all because of all the limitations and symptoms that I had around that.
0:10:45 – Dr. Liz
That is really interesting. You’re getting more and more sensitive to foods. I mean, I’ll tell you, one of the reasons I took this interview was because my 19 year old is struggling with like some real chronic GI dysautonomia symptoms. She seems to be getting more and more sensitive to food, exactly how you say.
0:11:08 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah, and that will happen because the nervous system was heightened already. And then when you start eating and there’s even more fear around even one sensitivity, that nervous system just keeps going, going, going. And we hear people that start off with one sensitivity and all of a sudden, all they can do is eat three foods, and it’s a natural progression that happens especially when people have multiple chronic conditions.
0:11:34 – Dr. Liz
Yes, all right, so we’re getting more and more sensitive to food. And then what came next?
0:11:39 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah. So I just kept searching and I don’t even know what led me into searching for subconscious work. It was really I was searching for somebody to help me with my emotions Like I knew it was emotional and intuitively but I could never find anybody that helped me with beyond, just helping to release these emotions with tapping a little bit on my body or whatever it was like. But this just doesn’t feel deep enough.
So I literally got in the plane and I’m telling you I was not healthy enough to be getting in a plane and I went all over, all over the country learning about subconscious work. In fact I called the ER when I was in my hotel room by myself. I mean, it was a mess, but I was destined, or determined, I should say, to just find an answer. And I was in classes just trying to figure out. And once I understood the subconscious mind I want in biologically, how we’re designed for that subconscious to be the messenger for the rest of the body.
I was like this is it, this is it. And once I dove into that and started doing my own inner work, which I knew I had a lot of childhood stuff I needed to work on, but I even went to a hypnotist. I went to therapists and they’re like, well, you aren’t bad enough yet. And like what do you mean? I’m not bad enough. Like I had some major trauma when I was a child. How are these not qualified? You know, traumas for me to be working on? And a lot of times I just got pushed off, never really taken seriously.
So I just kept searching and once I learned the subconscious, I actually formulated my own kind of formula for identifying patterns, letting them go and rewiring my nervous system and created a structure for myself, which is now the structure I use with our clients, and rewired my nervous system to be in a healthier, safer space, you know, sending more messages of safety, and everything went away. Everything went away for me in about eight months after doing that work continuously, every day, every day, every day, because for that rewiring process there has to be something every day done.
It was, you know, I did a lot of sessions with practitioners working on subconscious stuff, but that’s session work and I would go back to being the same me when I left that office and no one was giving me daily work of what I needed to work on creating a 2.0 version of me that created that safety that my body was desiring. So every day I did little things and also stopped fearing my dang body. I mean, that was first and foremost is stopped fearing what was going on.
Once I biologically understood my body and its symptoms are actually an indicator that it’s working wonderfully and perfectly, and that is a whole reshift. That is when you start to see your body functioning normally, in the way it’s supposed to, based on how it’s biologically designed you don’t have fear of it anymore.
It’s a really nice reframe that instantly calms the nervous system. So for me it was stopping the fearing of my body. And you know, no matter if you’re in the medical which the medical definitely leans towards fearing your body and then even in the holistic world where I was, it was always taught to me there’s something wrong in the body, there’s always something to fix. When there’s symptoms, we need to fix them. That isn’t the mindset that you want to be in if you want to heal. So for me that was big.
0:15:04 – Dr. Liz
So okay, so it’s just shifting out and I agree with you, there’s always something to fix and it’s shifting out of that to the mindset of my body’s communicating with me. Yes, when you what I need to do, yeah, I don’t need to fear it because I yeah, I see that fear all the time. And my daughter, like even the food in particular, like I could eat this two weeks ago and today it made me sick. And now what? What next is going to make me sick?
0:15:33 – Jenny Peterson
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s a spiral that just keeps going into a deeper hole. Okay.
0:15:41 – Dr. Liz
And I was impressed when I was reading through your website you know I think it was a podcast, because you have your own podcast Right, and I had listened to a couple of episodes and then I was impressed that part of the message was like, yeah, there’s things you have to do every day, mm, hmm, like maintenance is how I saw that, and you said it is. I think you put it as a discipline, like there are things you have to do, you have to be disciplined. It’s not just like, oh, go to acupuncture once a week or hypnosis once a week or whatever that is. So can you talk about some of those disciplines?
0:16:21 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah. And so for me, I categorize it. It’s two things. There’s the discipline of the like, the maintenance, and then there’s the discipline of the specific patterns to you. So there’s the maintenance, that is, I do visualization morning and evening, upon waking up. That is going to tell your nervous system oh, the future is safe, not the future’s scary. The future’s safe Because, again, the messages that we send our body is how it’s biologically responding. So if I am fearing the future, my body is bracing for a future. I’m going to be in anxiety, I’m going to have nervousness. It’s preparing for protection. So that visualization is very important, to be visualizing where you want to be. So that was very important morning and evening. Those are things I still do now.
And then gratitude. Gratitude is going to help activate your brain to start looking at things in a positive way, rather than the negative, nancy, which our brains have a tendency to go when we have chronic conditions. We don’t start off that way, but all of a sudden we become like this big negative Nancy and we have nothing positive to say or even look at. So the gratitude is very, very important.
And then movement, and I’m not talking about like running, running or anything like that I’m talking like yoga or any type of somatic movement, um, in a Qigong or anything along those lines of slow movement, starting to feel your body and getting moving, which is important for also calming the mind and body.
So that’s the maintenance stuff, um, but the stuff that is on top of that, just as important is the specific, targeted work for you as an individual. So for me, for example, it’s going to be was in fear, I was going to pass out and die. So I had to train around that. I had to visualize I had to do what we call a sandwich for the mind-body technique. It’s a sandwich technique where I’m going in there and training myself around creating a safe space around the shower. It’s how are my behaviors throughout the day and how I’m responding to certain situations.
If I’m feeling overwhelmed, okay, back off, because overwhelm and palpitations go hand in hand, and I had palpitations nonstop, and so for me it was when I get overwhelmed, I need to be looking at what is causing the overwhelm, and it’s me, with my high expectations of I need to do 10 things right now and I am limited and I can’t get this all done and I feel rushed. So it was for me learning about why I had these high expectations on myself. So I do go back to memory, work of where this all comes from, to find those proofs. And then my daily work is going to be, when those moments come up, to be rewiring with new thoughts of, hey, if I’m feeling this overwhelm, I’m causing this. Nobody’s doing this but me.
And what have I done to create these high expectations or have this overwhelm? Probably not setting boundaries, those type of things. So it’s the daily work that we look and say what are your symptoms, what are the patterns connected to your symptoms? Where did those patterns come from? Which is important to know? That history, what led you to this place, doesn’t mean we sit in the past forever, but that’s the proof and that’s the proof your subconscious is operating from. So it’s important. And then, once we know that, we can then tell the subconscious it’s safe to let that go Now. We’re now going to respond this way and start that rewiring process.
0:20:11 – Dr. Liz
Incredible, I mean I have questions.
0:20:15 – Jenny Peterson
I’m sorry, I do a lot of talking, but I want to make sure everything makes sense, yeah.
0:20:21 – Dr. Liz
So part of what you’re talking about is the beliefs underneath, subconscious beliefs that got developed at some point that caused that overwhelm, maybe those high expectations. Rewiring those subconscious beliefs, first becoming aware of them through, is your program. Um, how so it helps with the specific, it’s not just like general.
0:20:45 – Jenny Peterson
We identify specifically what the patterns are for people you know the it’s. It will be very similar, like when it comes to palpitations it’s a hundred percent, always overwhelmed. So, biologically, we have to look at how is the body, how is the body made? What are the body parts? What is that body part designed to do? And the subconscious pattern is going to be connected to that. So your skin is a protector. So if we’re having skin issues, it’s going to be where do I feel separated or not want to be separated? So there’s always going to be like this underlying theme, but it’s going to be very specific to you In the case of digestive issues, how am I not digesting life very well, or what am I holding in that needs to be released?
So the body systems give us a little headstart to be targeted. If we don’t, we could throw that all aside and we can say well, just tell me how you feel about this particular symptom and that’s a subconscious pattern by having those description and then we go back to those patterns or that targeted work helps us say okay, now how does this relate somewhere in your life? Where have you felt this way before? And 100%, every single time we can find the connections.
Now there’s always going to be. There’s going to be the root memory and there’s going to be a trigger memory. Okay, memory is going to be before the age of 12 or everything was established, and then the trigger memory is when the body says, oh, time to spit out the symptoms. So that’s typically where we see the between like 30 years old, 40 is when it really starts to show, sometimes 20, but that root memory there’s really not a lot of symptoms that show up. For that. That’s the programming memory that the subconscious is like. I’m going to hold on to this for the future use, but there’s no reason to overreact right now. And so when it gets reactivated somewhere along the way, that trigger is when the symptoms show.
So everybody’s always like well, I don’t, you know, I just want to focus on what happened before my symptoms showed up. Okay, that’s important, but that’s not your root and your root is your childhood. So for me, I experienced those palpitations. Yes, I was extremely overwhelmed when that happened in in my uh, when we were moving, but when I was a child, it was the same exact feeling of when I was. You know, my, my dad is driving the car drunk and we’re in the backseat and screaming as kids because we’re scared out of our mind and we’re overwhelmed Same exact feeling.
0:23:14 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yeah, I had to work on both. An initial sensitizing event often ISE and it’s. It’s not always one event, quote unquote but it can be traced to one event and we do typically think that that starts very early in childhood, Although sometimes when people have traumatic events happen even teenage, adulthood, it can begin there. But I love how you address the both. So it’s like, okay, there’s this root, that happened, but then something happened later to trigger all the symptoms to come forth.
0:23:51 – Jenny Peterson
Yes, yeah.
0:23:52 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, love that, and that has been my clinical experience as well. Like people don’t come to. I mean, sometimes obviously there’s child therapy, that parents will take kids to, yeah, adults, and so they’re like. This seemed to come out of the blue.
0:24:08 – Jenny Peterson
Exactly, that’s the most common thing I hear. It came out of the blue. No, it didn’t. Technically, if we put this timeline together, it makes 100% sense. Yeah.
0:24:16 – Dr. Liz
My other question is do you get a lot of POTS patients? Oh yeah, okay, because a lot of the symptoms you’re describing sound like POTS. Correct, yes, okay, yes.
0:24:28 – Jenny Peterson
A lot of POTS, a lot of MCAS, mold sensitivities, lyme I had Lyme lots of digestive issues, food sensitivities I mean food sensitivities is probably our biggest one. Palpitations would probably be right up there with being the top. But you know, when people come to us they’ve got many, many symptoms. I mean we work with people that only have one, but majority of people it’s going to be three or more.
0:24:56 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yeah, they start to overlap and all come out they do.
0:25:00 – Jenny Peterson
It’s oftentimes very much connected in a lot of ways.
0:25:04 – Dr. Liz
Yes, okay, how does herbalism fit into this Like, do you find that it can be helpful for people Like that’s part of their journey, or is it more like that’s something?
0:25:20 – Jenny Peterson
you did in the past. It doesn’t really fit now A hundred percent. It was. It feels like a different lifetime for me. I don’t do anything at all anymore, not to say that there isn’t a time and place, but everything that I do I teach, even for myself. I am using the work that I use now and I very rarely pull anything out because it sends you in a spiral, because your body is every day working to come back into homeostasis and those symptoms are part of that process.
So if I’m taking something to stop it, that really doesn’t make any sense because I’m telling the body stop what you naturally are supposed to be doing. Now there might be a time where I take it for helping with the comfort level. If I’m majorly congested, you know with a snotty nose or something like that, I might take something to help relieve that, just to be more comfortable. But it’s a comfort level now that I’m grabbing those things for rather than a fixing Got it.
0:26:18 – Dr. Liz
And so you know my cabinet. It used to be yeah it’s.
0:26:22 – Jenny Peterson
I’m not doing this to fix this, because I know my body already knows what the heck to do. I’m just trying to be more comfortable right now and within that comfort also, I don’t want to stop the healing process. I want my body to keep doing what it’s doing. So I’m not going to take something that’s going to interfere with that, but I’m going to take something that supports me right now.
0:26:49 – Dr. Liz
So I’m going to take something that supports me right now, so I’m just supporting the body during that time. Got it. Got it Cause there are like a million supplements that people will recommend, even for one condition.
Sometimes it’s like have you tried that, have you tried that? And I understand like that is, um, sometimes I see it as a phase of chronic illness, correct. Sometimes I see it as a phase of chronic illness, correct. It’s that trying phase, like when you’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on, why am I having all these symptoms and how do I fix it. It’s like that’s.
0:27:16 – Jenny Peterson
It’s a natural trajectory that we see that we are typically the last on the list. There is the medical, and once the medical doesn’t work, then they’re going into more of the holistic. Then from there it’s to the functional and then they come to us and it’s hard because they’ve gone through like three phases and we have to unwire all that bullshit. I mean there’s a lot of stuff there. There’s a lot of okay, we have medical beliefs, then we have the holistic beliefs, then we have the holistic beliefs, we have the functional medicine and all these labels that you’ve been given. We have to say we’re going to clear the slate Act as if you know none of this and we need to start fresh. So it is a whole rewiring process just to start doing the work.
Like a lot of people are like, when am I going to start working on my symptoms? We have 30 days of working on this up here before we can even get to that, because there’s so much there that we have to debunk and get rid of. Otherwise your symptoms just aren’t going to move. You’re going to be in fear of it. You’re going to be reaching for a supplement. You’re going to think it was the food. We have to unwire all of these beliefs that you were given. So I wish it wasn’t that that they had to go through that entire process. We do have some people that went to the medical and then come immediately to us because of a friend or a referral, but that’s very rare. It’s always going to be that journey Not to say it’s wrong, it’s just it does create a lot more work to create the shifts before we can actually start doing the work on your symptoms.
0:28:43 – Dr. Liz
Got it. I mean, I think there’s some value of checking out like all right, you don’t have cancer you know Sure sure. Do you think the labels can be helpful, like this is what we’re starting with, or do you really see that as, like the Western model, that isn’t really useful here?
0:29:04 – Jenny Peterson
I don’t find that it’s helpful. I mean it’s helpful in the eyes of. I know what for me was like. I just want to be told what I have and then it makes me feel better and it did for a short term. But after that I still was left with what do I do now? I don’t, I still don’t have any answers, and then the label becomes your identity and that’s when it becomes a big problem.
So for me, like a lot of people come to me and they’ll give me a list of their, their labels and symptoms and I’ll say I don’t want the, the, the blanket labels. The blanket label is the, the autoimmune, it’s the POTS, it’s the Lyme, it’s the Mass cell. Those are all blanket labels because it’s usually somebody has multiple symptoms. So they have this label that covers this multiple symptoms and that doesn’t tell me anything. What tells me is your body, what symptoms are you having? Your body system is going to tell me where we need to do the work, not a label. So it can be helpful to help maybe ease people’s mind in the beginning, but I see it can lead to problems because it becomes an identity.
0:30:07 – Dr. Liz
Got it Got it. Yes, okay. So how long have you been running this program?
0:30:11 – Jenny Peterson
Seven years I’ve been doing this business, yeah, this business seven years.
0:30:17 – Dr. Liz
Okay, I imagine it’s evolved from when you first started A lot. Why did you decide to put it online?
0:30:26 – Jenny Peterson
Well, seven years ago I was running it by myself. I did put it online. Then I was working out of my home with people that were in the area a little bit in the beginning, but then I took everything online and ever since then that’s where it’s been. We’ve grown. I have a coaching team that have coaches that work for me. I couldn’t do it all by myself and do the marketing and everything else.
As a business, there’s so much behind the scenes stuff that all of a sudden you’re no longer the practitioner, you are the CEO running the stuff behind the scenes. So I created the structure of the program and that’s where I believe my expertise is is understanding how the brain creates changes and we can’t just jump right in because our nervous system is going to freak out. And then I created that structure and I’m a big process person, so I see things of. This is the first step, this is the next step and I’ve laid out. Our program is eight months long, one for those that are have more than three chronic symptoms, and every single day I laid that out and that still that has evolved to have like.
I created it based on my own experience when it first started Well, obviously me and other people are very different. So when people started to join was like, oh, I never thought about that. So then I add that piece in and if you talk to my team they’ll say Jenny’s always changing and evolving the program, because every student that joins us actually helps us to make the program better, because they give us feedback at the end and we’re like, oh, we didn’t think of that or we saw that this particular situation, we need to do things differently. So it’s evolved and, yeah, I’m just extremely proud of where it’s come and the people that get the transformations that they do with it.
0:32:08 – Dr. Liz
Okay. So originally you started working just with people in your area and then you said, okay, let’s take this a little bit larger and help people whoever can find us. Let’s say, the world really, yeah, okay. And then it evolves from there. I tend to be very systems oriented, to like processes, and you know this is a step by step Right.
Who would you say is not appropriate for it? Like, let’s say, someone really wants to sign up, but they’re like I know I’m never going to do that. You get a certain percentage of people who just never finish the program generally. But most online people will tell you People who have an online program will tell you you get a certain percentage who just never finish or never even look at it.
0:32:55 – Jenny Peterson
You don’t. We actually don’t have that problem. We have everybody finishes. And here’s why. It’s not a self-paced course. You are required to show up every day.
0:33:06 – Dr. Liz
It’s an eight month program with you every day?
0:33:10 – Jenny Peterson
Yes, you have a coach to check in that is checking on you and we hold you accountable to doing the work. And that is that is why I created. What I did is because I was taking these programs and I hold myself accountable pretty well. But I also found that when resistance hit in those old patterns that I wasn’t doing the work like I should have and it took me a while to get back going and there was no accountability and there was no structure in any program that I found and DIY, I hated because I had no coach to support me or if I did, it was just weekly group calls.
So I took all of that experience and said I didn’t feel supported and I didn’t have the structure. And that is key to rewiring and also feeling like you have the support along the way.
So whether a person takes our eight week program or eight month program every single day, like you have the support along the way. You have to show up. It is not a self-paced and we have never had anybody not complete. I shouldn’t say that I think I had one in the seven years leave the course, but it was due to a medical issue. That’s really impressive.
Dr. Liz
That’s really impressive.
Jenny
But other than that, when they sign up, we tell them we, we’re going to hold you accountable every single day. You have to show up for yourself. I mean, there might be some days that they are more lax, you know, but they still are showing up in the system, literally tells you this is what you have to do today. Check it off. And that was. The other thing is, I took all these programs and no one told me what I should be doing every day to rewire my old patterns. I was. It was a guessing game. So I took that and said I don’t want this to be a guessing game for people. I want them to know exactly what they need to do.
0:34:40 – Dr. Liz
Fascinating, yeah, I’ll often get. I mean, in psychology we call it resistance. But there’s another word that’s sort of escaping me right now, where someone will sometimes ask me what to do every day, and gratitude is a very easy in my mind. You know it’s not so easy actually. Right, discipline, um, an easy assignment, let’s say let’s just start with some gratitude. But you come back the next week and they haven’t done it and it’s like why not? You know? Like what stopped you? We troubleshoot, like what’s going on that stopped you. But often people don’t want the like in between, they just want to forget. I think your clients are probably with the chronic conditions or at a very different kind of place in life. Like, please somebody help me, is how they end up at you.
0:35:29 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah, absolutely yeah. I mean you have to want to do the work. You definitely have to be a person that says I’m willing to do anything to get better and I’m willing to show up for myself. I mean, we had one woman that had 10 kids and homeschooled and still did the program, which blew our minds, you know. But but again, like they’re, committed.
0:35:48 – Dr. Liz
So do you, do you have an eight? You said you have an eight week. Do they go through that first and then do the eight months if they want to continue or do? Is it two separate programs?
0:35:58 – Jenny Peterson
You can start at eight weeks and see if you like it and then you can always upgrade. Eight weeks is more ideal for someone that has one to two symptoms, cause we can actually work on it in that length of time.
Someone that has three or more, I always tell people like the biggest thing is I tell people, don’t lie and cheat yourself out of saying, well, I really only have two symptoms, just so you only take the eight week and really you have five. Don’t do that because you’re really it’s a disservice to yourself, because someone that has five symptoms versus one or two symptoms is wired completely differently, like someone with five symptoms is in fear of their body and always thinking about their symptoms nonstop. One to two symptoms that’s still the case, but it’s not nonstop and they’ve got different belief systems that are not as strong as someone that has several. So it’s a different protocol for that. So don’t cheat yourself out on that.
But our eight week is kind of a introductory to our eight months. So someone says I’m not, I don’t really want to do the eight month quite yet. I really want to see what’s it about, which I a hundred percent understand, because there’s so many programs out there now that people are taking programs and they’re getting, you know, no results, or over-promised and they’re getting burned. So this eight week is kind of to show you this is what you’re going to do and it’s a short experience of what the eight month is.
Or someone that has one to two symptoms. At the end of eight weeks you will have already worked on those symptoms and then you can continue with additional support in a different way. We have a community that graduates go into, so it really just depends that entry level is what. What are you ready for and how many symptoms do you have is really important. We also have qualifications around medications, so that’s on our form too. Certain medications interfere with the changes in the brain, so we want to make sure that any type of depression, anxiety or even cortisol those are all going to interfere with our process.
0:37:50 – Dr. Liz
What do you mean by that? Like they need to go off their antidepressants?
0:37:54 – Jenny Peterson
You know I’m not going to tell you to go off of that. It’s got to be a plan you want to do for your own self with your doctor, but if you’re on the medications you cannot join our program. You know we’ll recommend something else up until you’re off of that. But of course we want you to be working with your doctor with those medications. But it can’t be where you join us and be on those at the same time. There’s just too much going on in the brain with those medications for us to actually do effective work.
0:38:22 – Dr. Liz
Interesting I mean. How did you discover that?
0:38:26 – Jenny Peterson
It’s what the chemicals are doing in the body biologically. So if it’s going in and deactivating certain parts or moving you into what we call a sympathetic state versus a parasympathetic. So let’s say, for an example, cortisol, Cortisol naturally goes in and it activates the sympathetic nervous system, which when we’re in sympathetic, we don’t have symptoms, and that’s why symptoms go away when you take cortisol. But that’s also telling the body stop the healing process. So then when you stop the cortisol, the body goes back into the healing process. The symptoms come back and that’s when people are like but you know it’s not working.
How can the symptom? Because the body never finished the healing process to begin with. So when you’re on these medications they are essentially pausing the healing process and turning centers off in the brain that are required for us to rewire. You know we need to feel emotions, we need to be able to go back and look at our experiences from a perspective that is healthy, and a lot of these medications interfere with the processes in the brain for that. So it’s really looking at what is the prescription doing in the body and how is that interfering with the healing process biologically.
0:39:47 – Dr. Liz
There’s a story my mentor tells, actually, of a young couple he was seeing. They came in for couples therapy and they had a wedding that was about eight months away or so and they were there because the man said I’m not in love with her anymore, like I don’t think I can marry her. And this is, you know, shocking to someone playing with someone right, and they’ve been together for a couple years or so. And so he asked him any recent medication changes and he had very recently gone on an antidepressant. And what the antidepressant? The whole purpose is to blunt feeling. That’s the whole purpose of an antidepressant, exactly not anti-antidepressant. I will tell you straight up, some people really, right, need them to function. But once he went he said you know, of course he he’s like you gotta check with your doctor but you might try and see if the feelings come back, if you go off of it and sure enough they did. He was like oh, very much in love with my wife, my future wife, fiance. It was the antidepressant that was really blocking the feeling.
0:40:57 – Jenny Peterson
And that’s exactly what it is. I mean, how are we going to work on this stuff if we aren’t able to access that? We have to access that part of the brain and even the dopamine we could work on all day long of trying to, you know, do gratitude, do our visualization and all our methods that we do, but that’s going to be limited because it affects the dopamine levels. So I mean, and that’s what we need, so the body feels safe, you know. So it’s like well, I know as much as you want to get well, these things are interrupting and in order for us to help you get results, they can’t be there.
So there’s some people that say, absolutely I’m going to get off of them, go talk to my doctor right away. And it could be it might take six months to get off of them. Follow what your doctor tells you, because these medications can cause major side effects. So I’m not saying immediately stop these. You have to get help in the proper way with that. But if it’s your goal to get well, which we have a lot of people do, I mean it blows me away. Sometimes people will say this is what I’m on and I’ll say, okay, I can’t work with you quite yet. Is it your plan to get off of these? Yes, come back to me when you’re done. And they’re back to me six months later and they’re wanting to do the work, which says a lot you know, right there, I have the same experience.
0:42:13 – Dr. Liz
sometimes, when someone’s not ready and I say you think about it, you go away when you’re ready. I’m here, when you need me, and they do often come back. Sometimes it’s, you know, four or five months, sometimes it’s a year.
0:42:25 – Jenny Peterson
Right, right, if you want the help, you’re going to continue having the drive to do that and be motivated to do that.
0:42:33 – Dr. Liz
What kind of safety do you create when people are going through this, because you’re talking about pretty intense emotional experiences sometimes. How do you make sure that they’re safe emotionally?
0:42:46 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah, I mean that’s going to be different from client to client. But again it’s about how quickly we go into doing the work. So you know we’re not going to work on memory work two days into the program. We’re going to get you prepared in your nervous system, calm down enough to go there. And then our protocol that we do while we’re in session with you provides that safety.
We’re not going in reliving that is actually going to just reactivate the sympathetic we kind of make a medium level of. We’re going in there, we are working on the experience, but not enough to go back and actually cause the body to have a response. So that creates an environment where we can still do the work but we’re not reactivating the problem in the body. And then, of course, from client to client, just depending on what their environment is, like getting to know them personally. I mean our clients are working personally in the eight month program with their coach for that entire time. They get to know each other very well. So we have to know how to read the client. Like there’s some that are ready to get to work and their nervous system is able to handle a little bit more, and others we have to go a lot slower. So we have to really be able to read who we’re working with and make good decisions based off of that.
0:43:59 – Dr. Liz
Okay, got it. What kind of training do your coaches have, then to do that they train with you? Do they come with training?
0:44:04 – Jenny Peterson
Yeah, okay, they train with me. they’re all mini me’s of me.
0:44:12 – Dr. Liz
Okay, got it. Yeah, is there anything I haven’t asked about that you would like the listeners to know more about your program.
0:44:18 – Jenny Peterson
I think the best place to start is really, if a person is interested, go to my podcast. You’re going to really get a gist of what I teach there and have a deeper understanding of what it is. I did forget to talk about what the chickens were and part of the healing yeah.
Yeah, well it is.
It’s actually it’s a part of my healing story because once we moved, I was like six months, eight months into living in our new place where we were, and not really getting that much better, and I told my husband, when I get better, I’m going to get chickens.
Well, that must, men, don’t listen right. He heard I want chickens now and he went and got four of them and put them in this shed in the back. That was not even close to being ready for having chickens, and so what it did is it forced me to get up off the couch or out of the house every single day and go outside, even though I was scared to death of what was going to happen when I was walking from the house to the chicken coop, and it forced me to take action. It forced me to get a little uncomfortable and move through that, and so essentially, the chickens were part of me getting well I mean big time because it just forced me to do things I normally probably wouldn’t have done, because I had somebody to take. I had to take care of these babies, right? Yes, so I can thank my husband for that. And then, since then, it just continued to grow.
0:45:35 – Dr. Liz
So I love it. I love it. I will share that the chickens were a big part of my daughter’s comfort when she yeah she went into her freshman year of high school during covid, and that was a disaster, and so I pulled her out. We did homeschooling for a while, which was a disaster for me. Schooling for a while, which was a disaster for me, yes, yes. So 10th grade she went into a private school and it was part of her let’s call it accommodations for a better term that she could go and sit with the chickens whenever she needed to, whenever she needed a break from the classroom, from everybody else, and she did. She took, took advantage of that. She’d have lunch with the chickens and it was, oh my goodness, huge part for her. Yeah, healing and being comfortable in that new school and doing right. So similar experience there. I love it, yeah, great. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I think you’re just a wealth of wisdom and I hope people do go and check out your program. Tell them where they can find you as well as the name of your podcast.
0:46:39 – Jenny Peterson
Sure, the name of the podcast is the Rebellious Healer and my website is themindbodyrewire.com. On Instagram I’m mindbodyrewire and then Facebook is themindbodyrewire. So those are where I’m at right now. I do have a TikTok channel as well. I’m not very active on there, and we do have a YouTube as well. My podcasts are on there and some shorts as well, and that’s the MindBodyRewire as well.
0:47:04 – Dr. Liz
Great Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with everyone, absolutely. Thanks for having me, elizabeth.
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