We rarely hear conversations in healthcare that talk about the impact of energy and emotions on our health. Usually, the mind, body, and soul connection are taken out of the entire picture in exchange for prescription pills. Guest, Brooke Benincosa is tired of seeing this. As a Registered Nurse, Medical Qigong Instructor, foot zone practitioner, Tai Chi instructor, and holistic coach, Brooke values listening to your intuition and allowing movement to bring you in your body. She talks about how intentional movement cures chronic illness and provides other practical tips to prevent and manage them. Discover more about healing and body movement from Brooke as she shares how by disconnecting from the world can you reconnect to what your body is telling you all along.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Disconnect to Reconnect With Brooke Benincosa
Body Movement and Healing
My guest is Brooke Benincosa. She is a Registered Nurse, a medical Qigong Instructor, a foot zone practitioner, a Tai Chi instructor and a holistic coach. Brooke, welcome.
Thank you for having me on.
It would be an underestimate to say you are involved in health. How did you come to be heavily involved in this field?
In high school, I started out being in beauty school before I ever went to get my CNA. My dad is a nurse and he’s been in healthcare for a long time too. He was like, “Why don’t you go get your CNA and you might as well try it out while you’re doing beauty school too.” I did. I went and got my CNA and I ended up dropping out of beauty school for a while. I worked as a CNA in a nursing home for a long time before I even thought about getting my Registered Nursing degree. I was like, “I can do more if I get more education,” because I wanted to start making a difference. I went and got my nursing degree and I worked in all different areas of healthcare and I’m familiar with chronic disease. It was about a few years ago that I was struggling with my own health problems. When I go to doctors and nothing was working. I was starting to see a similar link with my patients and being like, “There’s something missing in healthcare. There’s something that we’re not doing. There’s more that can be done.”
I started getting into martial arts and I started learning a lot about energy work and how emotions are trapped in your body. We don’t talk about that in our healthcare about energy and emotions and how they directly impact your health. I have come to the realization that a lot of people in our healthcare now are stuck in survival mode. They’re stuck in this fear-based mentality that is making them sick. They’re not trained in a way to see the whole aspect of the body, mind and soul connection with how it affects your physical health. You don’t see doctors prescribing nature to people. You don’t see doctors prescribing silence or meditation and exercise. They are more geared towards getting a pill for people to help with their problems and it’s not getting to the root cause. I got frustrated with that. I got to the point where I can’t watch this anymore in hospitals because it’s not helping anyone. I was getting frustrated. I started doing Tai Chi to incorporate how people can have that connection with their bodies.
I have come to the realization that a lot of our problems come from a lack of connection with ourselves and denying our own intuition and shutting that down. When you go to a doctor, your body is screaming at you at that point. You’re screaming when you could have convinced your body, listened to your body and fixed it before it started screaming. When you go to a doctor, you tell them everything that’s wrong with them. They make their best-educated guess that they can but you’re going to be a better health advocate for yourself if you learn how to re-establish that connection with your own body, mind and soul. Where I do things like Tai Chi and breathwork and then the medical Qigong is fascinating. It’s a 5,000-year-old practice where martial arts comes from and it means life force practice. It is amazing what it does with the energy fields and learning how trapped emotions get stuck in the fascia of the actual body. It was interesting to me as a nurse because fascia is the connective tissue. It’s your ligaments, your tendons. It’s layered in between the muscles, the bones and every organ of your body, even in the lymph system.
Emotion means energy in motion. Click To TweetEmotion means energy in motion. Say you have an emotion, even excitement, you almost freeze up, you make a different type of muscle posture where that emotion gets trapped in your body and it starts building scar tissue around it. This is where we get pain. This is where we get cancer. This is where we get a lot of illnesses from these trapped emotions. Learning how to release that through movement and breathwork and learning how to reconnect with your body and listen to that intuition is what people need to start doing for healthcare, I feel. Simple things people can do on a daily basis is taking ten intentional deep breaths before every meal. That is something that is simple but it brings much awareness to check in with your body. If you’re super stressed at work, stop and take ten deep breaths. That alone regulates those hormones in your body and it reduces that cortisol and those stress.
The fight or flight hormones, it can be reduced by just breathing. What people also don’t know is your thinking can create a lot of cortisol and inflammation in your body by what you think. Where we are fear-based in the society, with the news, with everything else that is going on, it’s raising cortisol levels by even saying the word healthcare itself. Healthcare is a hot topic where people are stressed about it. People don’t know what to do with it. It’s expensive. It’s not affordable for everyone. The word itself is creating cortisol in your body. What cortisol does is it slowly breaks down cellular metabolism so you can’t regenerate your cells as quickly as you could. Learning how to train your brain like a puppy, we have to train our brain to sit and stay and to be aware of our thoughts can help reduce those hormones as well and regulate your body yourself. Our bodies do the things that medications do. We need to teach it to do those things instead of taking the medications because it’s masking the symptoms. It’s not getting to the root because of the symptom. If we learn how to slow down and breathe and be aware of what we’re thinking, we can come up with our own answers ourselves.
I would suggest for people to do breathing and even walking every day. A nice ten-minute walk is effective for getting rid of that cortisol. Being able to get out of your mind, being able to shift your focus and be more grateful and appreciate things and feel good in your body by a ten-minute walk. People don’t realize how important water is. Your body is 70% water and we have many triggers of things that we like to drink, coffee, tea, soda. Soda has so much sugar and that will also help feed the cancer cells, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, all of this can be reduced by increasing your intake of water. Learning how to breathe deep and going on even ten-minute walks a day. If people can learn how to do those simple fixes and that doesn’t even take a lot of time. Taking ten deep breaths takes about three minutes. You do that three times a day, that’s nine minutes out of your day and a ten-minute walk. That’s nineteen minutes out of your day that you could incorporate to build new habits of bringing awareness to your body and doing these healthy things to help you feel better.
Our healthcare society nowadays, I feel that they rely so much on other people to fix their problems. They’re not looking at like, “What can I do for me?” I read a quote that resonated with me and it sounds harsh but it’s like, “People cannot complain how much healthcare costs unless they are doing everything they can to take care of themselves.” I feel in our society we have given up our free will. We have given it to the doctors. We have given it to pharmaceuticals. We have given our power away and it’s time for us to take our power back and be like, “Body, I want to listen to you. I want to be there for you. I want to reconnect with you so we can figure this out.” That’s where I love doing movement because the movement is such an easy way to bring you in your body, whether it will be dancing or rollerblading or any type of movement that people can find to enjoy. It doesn’t have to be running a marathon or doing CrossFit and all this weight training. It can be gentle, easy and fun and it’s a great way of reconnecting with your body. It’s a great way of releasing that trauma inside of your body through the fascia, through movement.
You have taught Tai Chi classes in senior centers and they can do the movements sitting in a chair, in the hospital bed. Anyone can do these things that you’re talking about. I look up to you as more of an authority because you have seen both worlds. You’ve been a registered nurse and you know what the medical practice has to offer and then you’ve studied and researched all of these other modalities. How old did you say Qigong was, 5,000 years?
About 5,000 years old. It’s the oldest type of health practice that we know of. It’s very old. It’s where martial arts comes from. It’s where yoga comes from. It’s where a lot of different practices came from but it’s the original. They use the elements of nature to incorporate into your movement. People can do it in a hospital bed. The biggest thing I noticed in the hospital is people are not breathing. They are so sedated with medications that make it so they do not breathe and they are preventing themselves from healing. I do feel that we overuse medications, pain medications. Pain is there to tell your body your limits. You need to be able to listen to your body. Even after surgery, it’s normal to have pain. It’s not normal to dope yourself up to the point that you are not breathing. That is what the norm is nowadays as people don’t want to feel anything, they don’t want any pain. They’re like, “Drug me up.” That prevents you from healing because you need oxygen to have cellular metabolism to repair your body. A lot of people also are there for pneumonia and lung problems because they are taking so many sleep medications at night but they’re not breathing.
They’re killing their brain cells and then they’re wondering why they feel like crap because they are simply not breathing. It’s from a lot of medications. If you learn how to do the movement, you’ll be able to sleep on your own. You don’t need pain or sleep medications to help you sleep. I feel like that is a cop-out and I do feel people have to realize that a bit of pain isn’t necessary. You have to be able to listen to your body’s limits, otherwise you can push it too far or you’re not pushing it enough. We need to do that for each individual person, case by case, and be like, “You have the surgery, you’re going to have a little bit of pain and that’s normal.” Doctors are geared towards being like, “We’re going to do everything we can to take your pain away.” I feel that that is doing people a disservice because it’s not helping them heal any faster.
They don’t want anyone complaining. They’re like, “Let’s drug them up so they don’t complain.” You’re right, we lose touch with our bodies and we need to make that mind-body connection.
We don’t have that in our type of healthcare that we have nowadays. If you think about it, we spend trillions of dollars a year on chronic diseases that we can fix ourselves. 95% of diseases we can cure ourselves. There are few things like Type 1 diabetes, sickle cell anemia and those few that we don’t know much about, but 95% of things that we can take into account and fix ourselves. The action that we could do with that money and help in invest in schools, we can help with veterans that are suicidal. We can put more into mental health. Mental health will stiff as soon as people start connecting with themselves because that is the root cause of mental health problems as well as that disconnect from your body, your mind and your soul.
I’m thinking of all of the people in the world who don’t get enough to eat. If we could invest more in providing appropriate proper nutrition and how much more beneficial that would be. As you were talking about these chronic diseases that we could cure ourselves, are you talking about preventing them or addressing them once we have the problem or both?
Medications are just masking the symptoms. It's not getting to the root cause of pain. Click To TweetIt’s both. A lot of diseases even like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, things like that are all environmental so you can start to heal your body with awareness. What are you putting into your body? It starts with breathing. It starts with walking because diseases can be reversed. Your body is super resilient and it wants to heal and it absolutely will heal. A lot of us are stuck in that survival mode and you’re barely maintaining versus if you were able to give yourself those conditions where you could thrive. People have come to this conclusion that it’s normal to feel crappy all the time and that’s not the truth. We can feel energized, we can feel clarity, we can feel all these amazing things by doing simple changes and it’s great for preventative. It also can help cure when you are in a sickness state. Even with cancer. Cancer does start in mind and how you think and what you are putting into your body. We can learn how to reverse that as well with awareness and connection with our body.
If you take a global view and not just looking at our culture but at all cultures, you will find people in their 80s and 90s who are active and work a full day. Sometimes, I think in our culture we expect, “I’m 70 so I’ve got to slow down. I’ve reached this certain age so I can’t do these things I used to do.” That’s another mindset that’s hurting us.
That is a story we absolutely do tell ourselves. Another thing that I noticed in the hospital is lack of movement causes pain. You have to continue to move your body, do a range of motion, do the walking, do all these gentle, awesome things to flush out the toxins, to lubricate your joints, to reestablish the communication in your body. When I got back from Italy, the teacher showed us this video. He was 118 years old and he was more flexible, more energized and likely than me. That is because he moves and he does these daily practices. He does specific breathwork, he does the mindful movement. Nowadays, we do a lot of things that are lateral. We sit at a desk, we type, we’re sitting a lot. Even when we walk, that’s one movement. When your body is meant to be moved in a 360-degree movement and we do not think about that. What’s important to maintain health and reduce pain is moving our body in a variety of directions, helping flush out the pain. We can flush out arthritis with movement. You’re doing the breathwork and that’s going to flush out toxins, that’s going to flush out and break up stagnation of anything that’s preventing that joint from the mobility that it could have. We can absolutely heal and age backward if we think about it. We got to put a little more effort into it.
You were in Italy and you went there to get more classes, research training. Can you tell us a little bit about what you learned there?
I went there for my medical Qigong prescription training. What that is you prescribed movement to help open up what they call meridian. Your body has meridians and different energy centers that run along the lines of your fascia and your connective tissue. A lot of people who don’t move and they have these sedentary lifestyles, they get the energy blocks and that’s when you start having toxins build up and you build pain, back pain, hip pain, knee pain, every type of pain. It can cause hormonal imbalances from lack of movement because you’re not flushing out the toxins and getting oxygen in. This is a specific form that works specifically on the meridians and energy centers to help reestablish communication. They’re beautiful movements mimicked after nature, different animals, different wood elements, metal elements. It’s all Chinese medicine-based and this is the 5,000-year-old practice. This guy who was 118 years old did this type of movement every day. A lot of it is a gentle movement that you could tailor from doing to a wheelchair, to a hospital bed.
Pain is there to tell your body your limits. You need to be able to listen to your body. Click To TweetThere are all these walking movements with it and it helps to build muscle and it helps to do a thorough range of motion. It’s almost like a mixture of yoga and weightlifting because you’re doing so much more than stretching and moving but you’re bringing out organs because a lot of people don’t think about that. You have to massage your internal organs to get some of the junk out of there and flushing new blood flow into those organs. For hormonal imbalance, for example, a lot of that comes from your liver. Your liver holds anger and it holds a lot of toxins. If you don’t move and your liver is clogged up with all these toxins, you’re going to have hormonal imbalances and autoimmune diseases. These movements wring out, like you’re wringing the water out of an old towel. You’re doing that with your organs, with these movements. That’s going to help your body run more optimally so it can regulate its own hormones.
You can get rid of the blood pressure and get the toxins out and clear out your arteries too because you’re going to be wringing out the arteries as well, the blood vessels, the fascia and even your bones. People don’t think about this but in Chinese medicine, they see your bones as flexible because you have so much blood flow into the bones that they’re more able to be flexible with impact. You can walk a lot lighter versus where I see a lot of people in America, we walk like it’s such a hard impact. It’s not graceful. It takes a lot more energy to walk like that. Doing movements like these, I call them functional movements because it’s going to make your regular day-to-day life. You’re going to have more energy and stamina from doing your normal things by taking the time to do some of these movements and breaking up that stagnation and getting rid of scar tissue, arthritis and all these other things by wringing out your organs.
This practice you became trained in could help someone with arthritis. I know that this is a common problem a lot of people have to deal with.
The thing with arthritis is you have to reduce the inflammation in your body. Arthritis is caused by your body attacking itself. It’s the type of autoimmune disease. Anything that you can do to reduce inflammation like learning how to breathe and then move in a gentle way will help break up some of that arthritis and help relieve some of the pain and help keep some of the mobility. Everyone’s different and people are going to heal not maybe 100%, but you’re going to be able to have a lot more longevity in your life than you did before if you continue to do these movements. Especially with arthritis, reduce the inflammation and reestablish gentle movement.
You teach Tai Chi, the Qigong training you’ve received and I know you’ve taken clients on a retreat. Talk about the services you offer.
I’m formulating a three months coaching program that includes the medical Qigong, Tai Chi, and it includes foot zoning, energy work and mindset coaching. All of that you have to have to get healthy. You have to have the body, mind and soul. I do three months because I want people to commit. You’re not going to have results overnight. It took years for you to destroy your body. It could take years to get it back. What that does with the Qigong is I will do a full health assessment with my nursing background so I can tailor movements to what you need specifically. Not everyone’s going to need the same thing. If you come to me with high blood pressure, we adjust the movement and the breathwork for high blood pressure because it’s different from treating someone with high blood pressure versus chronic fatigue.
They’re going to need two different things. It is personalized and you could teach a whole class and people would still get benefits. I like to do the one-on-one training so people can get the benefits and I can meet their needs, talk to them and do a thorough assessment. I also make a couple of retreats a year where I call them Disconnect To Reconnect because we go into nature. We do movements by the lake and we include all the elements of water and air. It does give your body a chance to like, “I can rest and give me chance to relax.” It lets you disconnect from your phone, your regular world, your jobs so you can see the results of reducing that cortisol in your body. When people submerse themselves in the retreats, they get many benefits from it.
The retreats you do the one-on-one coaching. How do people contact you? What’s the best way for them to learn about you and how you can help them?
On Facebook and Instagram. On my website, SustainableSoul.guru are good ways to get ahold of me. I also have my email address, it’s BBenincosa@Gmail.com.
I’ll have it on my web site too. Is your email on your website or a way that they can contact you?
Yes.
They can contact you through your website, to Facebook, to Instagram. I have much respect for what you’re doing. I totally agree that in our society, give me a pill. I still remember to this day, it was a chiropractor who said this to me. He said, “What you do with your body is more important than what I do.” It’s how we take care of ourselves that matters. Being willing to make a few lifestyle changes to improve that quality of health, being able to do all the things you wanted to do. I’m at this stage in life where I’m a grandmother and I desperately want to be able to do things with my grandchildren and enjoy that time with them. This is invaluable. I agree. This is what we need to do. We need to take charge of our own health. Our body will heal itself if we let it.
We spend trillions of dollars a year on chronic diseases that we can fix ourselves. Click To TweetReleasing the ideas of what health is meant to be because on media, everyone’s like, “You need this to be healthy.” I like people to think for themselves and you can research the pros and cons of everything. No matter what it is, if you’re pro vaccines, cancer, whatever, there’s going to be research articles for and against. That’s up to you to decide what is right for you and your family instead of comparing it to the ideas of society that they give you. Once you have that connection with your body, your mind and your soul, you can be like, “That’s not for me.” You can be okay with that. You’re like, “I’m going to take this piece because that is for me.” Deciding and defining what health means to you. I feel that people would have a lot of freedom with being like, “I can decide what is healthy for me. That’s awesome.”
That’s true too. Maybe we do have this idealized notion of young and fit and I agree. That is wonderful. Brooke, thank you so much for your time. You’re going to do a lot of good and change a lot of lives.
Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It’s such a pleasure always chatting with you.
You have a great day.
You too. Thanks.
Important Links:
- Brooke Benincosa
- Disconnect To Reconnect
- BBenincosa@Gmail.com
- Facebook – Brooke Benincosa
- Instagram – Brooke Benincosa
- SustainableSoul.guru
- https://www.Facebook.com/brooke.benincosa
- https://www.Instagram.com/brooke_benincosa/
About Brooke Benincosa
Brooke Benincosa is a Registered Nurse, Medical Qigong instructor, foot zone practitioner, Ta Chi Instructor, and Holistic Coach.