Relaxation takes energy

Your Grey Hair Might Actually Come Back I was watching Dr. Martin Picard, a mitochondrial researcher, on Diary of a CEO. He said something that caught me off guard: grey hair can return to its original colour without dye. When the stress underneath drops, the pigment starts coming back on its own. Everyone wants their colour back, me included. But the bigger point is what it says about your body tracking your stress levels the whole time and responding to it. That leaves the real question: where’s the stress actually coming from, and how do you stop it from wearing you down? It isn’t coming from your actual life. It comes from a pattern you treat as real without noticing you’re running it. Your mind spins it like a hamster wheel you never get off. Take the Right and Wrong one. On that wheel, being wrong doesn’t feel like a simple mistake. It registers as danger. So your body does the logical thing and dumps cortisol and adrenaline into your system. Nothing outside is actually threatening you. The threat is old code running in the background that says being wrong equals unsafe. Your body can’t tell a real predator from that old pattern, so it just reacts to the signal. Once you spot the wheel, everything shifts. Being wrong was never dangerous. The pattern just convinced you it was. The moment you catch it, the alarm cuts off because there’s nothing left to defend against. You don’t manage the stress. You see through it. That seeing is the switch. Get better at it and the wheels lose their hold and fade. Why you miss the wheel Seeing takes energy. When your body is wiped out, it has one priority: survival. Not inspection. So you end up in a loop where you need energy to notice the wheel, but noticing the wheel is what gives the energy back. You stay blind to what’s draining you, and the blindness keeps you drained. The way out starts small. One bit of fuel or one clear look at a single pattern is enough. That energy buys you a moment of seeing. The seeing shuts off an alarm that was wasting fuel. Now you have a bit more energy for the next look. It becomes a flywheel going the other direction, building instead of draining. Three simple ways to break in Spot the wheel. The second you can name it and say “I’m on the Right and Wrong wheel,” you’ve already stepped off. The stress signal drops, and a pattern you’re watching can’t grab you as hard. Feed the recovery. If you’re running on adrenaline, give your body materials to repair: warmth, light, real food with sugar and protein. A fed body has spare energy to look around. A starved one doesn’t. Catch it early. There’s a short window before the hormones kick in and the wheel locks. Getting in there early costs way less than digging yourself out later. Seeing is what actually fixes it You don’t fight the pattern. You see it for what it is and it releases on its own. One wheel runs on a threat that was never real. It burns your energy for nothing and pulls you down. The other turns energy into seeing into more energy and lifts you up. The difference isn’t effort. It’s whether you can see. Your grey hair was showing you how hard you were running. Your colour is ready to come back once you start spotting those wheels. If you want help catching them quicker, book a Zoom call with me. Rob

Elite athlete - stressing the body is not using the optimal energy system which ultimately damages the cv system. Excess Stress both physical and most definitely mental is ruining us.

New read just arrived in the post 🕺

worth a watch - fascinating guy and massive balls to take on scientific dogma

Two ways to be trapped. Left siders of the hamster wheel, live in contraction. Frozen. Unable to expand into life, even when nothing is actually stopping them. Right siders live in extension. Always having to be able. Never allowed to stop, never satisfied, always slightly in fight or flight. Neither one is calm. Both are running the body on an inefficient fuel pathway, lactate instead of proper oxygen use, and it wrecks the metabolism over time either way. Three ways to start reversing it. Observe. Watch your thoughts and behaviour run without reacting to them. Just see the pattern. This is Admin Mode, the seat outside the wheel. Check your body. Low temperature, low heart rate, that's a left side signal, look into thyroid and metabolic support, Ray Peat's work is the place to start. Running hot, wired, can't switch off, that's cortisol and adrenaline driving the right side. Feel the contrast. Sit quietly. Bring to mind a moment you felt genuinely strong or at peace. Now bring up something that worries you, or the side of your wheel that troubles you most. Feel the difference for a moment, then go back to the peace. Repeat as many times as feels manageable. Become aware of the contraction within you. (then feel the expansion) Nothing here needs new equipment or a course. Pick one and try it today. Freedom is waiting. #peatstr #psychology #spirituality

My new article on substack On learned helplessness and how to get out of it

Learned Helplessness

The Mind, Body and... Aether?

Great morning of research. Been focusing on serotonin elevation in the Unable / learned helplessness, the left side of the hamster wheel, compared to the adrenergic response to stress seen in right siders. I get so excited by this building out of the framework and have to observe my tendency to switch levels and lose threads. But that's a natural part of grappling with a complex system. Interestingly I was watching Steven Maier's Stress, Coping, Resilience and the Prefrontal Cortex presentation on YouTube and was surprised at how he kept mentioning how clever neuroscientists are. And how little awareness he had of that behaviour. 😜 I think his work is an important part of the puzzle. He'll probably create a drug for it eventually. But serotonin's effect on thyroid suppression and what that does to the energy system is going to be more actionable for people suffering right now. #peatstr #hamsterwheels #glitch

Synchronicity and high metabolic rate @Lyn Alden pentagon lockdown #stolguardincident 😎

You can't fix the log by standing on it better. The log is the problem. The mind that created the struggle cannot solve the struggle. It can only spin faster, bakcwards or forwards, searching for safety. The only move is out. Not better balance. Not more effort. Just seeing the whole thing from the shore.

So good to be a bitcoiner

I've spent my life being the helper. Always the expert. Always achieving. Always doing, because somewhere along the way I learned that being useful was how you earned love. I've realised I don't know what I actually enjoy. I'm in that right now. And it's the most uncomfortable and honest place I've ever been. The drive has gone. Not dipped, gone. And I can't go back onto the wheel because I can finally see it for what it is. A fake life. The trade offs no longer work. What I'm left with is an emptiness. It feels so alien to not strive, not be constantly doing in order to be seen as special or to be someone. I don't know what I enjoy and I now have to wait to feel what that actually feels like. A driven life without enjoyment is a prison, a hellish hamster wheel. It took me a while to see that truth and now I cannot unsee it. Yesterday I danced to some old tracks by the pool. I went for a walk in the beautiful countryside which filled my senses so fully. Most of what I do right now is nothing. I'm just fully present. Maybe that's where it starts.