Healing the Traumatized Brain - Marly

Healing from Trauma. Rebuilding Brain Health. Boosting Resilience.

Burnout, chronic stress, and high-alert living take a serious toll on the brain and body. Neurotrainer and TBI survivor Marly Jones explains that trauma, toxins, and relentless stress overload the limbic system, resulting in brain fog, irritability, poor sleep, and inflammation.

In this episode, she shares practical strategies to reset the nervous system, including improving sleep, reducing inflammatory triggers, boosting resilience, and engaging in gentle neurotraining. As a naturopath and certified brain health expert, Marly leads Change Your Brain, a seminar that helps people rebuild strength and wellness from the inside out.

Connect with Marly:

Website:  https://harmonyneurofeedback.com

FB:  https://www.facebook.com/harmonyneurofeedback/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/harmonyneurofeedback/

Schedule your consultation: https://mindrenewalmethod.com/

Podcast: Healing Chronic Illness with Marly

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Book: Why I Survived; Where Survival Becomes Strength

The background music is written, performed and produced exclusively by Melissa Turri.
https://melissaturrimusic.com/

Transcript

Opening & Trigger Warning

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Imagine when you share your darkest hours, they become someone else's light. I'm Jennifer Lee, a global community storyteller, host, author, and survivor, guiding you through genuine unfiltered conversations. Together, we break the silence, shatter stigma, and amplify voices that need to be heard. Each episode stands as a testament to survival, healing, and reclaiming your power. Listen to I Need Blue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite platform. Learn more at www.eneedblue.net. Trigger warning, I Need Blue shares real life stories of trauma, violence, and abuse meant to empower and support. Please take care of yourself and ask for help if needed. Now let's begin today's story. How often do you really think about your brain, what it's going through, how it's working, or how it might be holding you back? My guest today, Marley Jones, knows firsthand how life-changing that question can be. She's a traumatic brain injury survivor and Lyme disease warrior who spent years battling brain fog and depression. For most of her life, she stayed silent until her research and drive to help her brother, a retired Canadian police officer struggling with PTSD, sparked something deeper. That passion grew into a purpose to help first responders reclaim their mental clarity and emotional strength. Today, Marley leads Change Your Brain, a free online seminar created by Dr. Daniel Amen and facilitated by her, specifically designed to support first responders in healing from trauma and brain strain. For over two decades, Marley has been dedicated to helping individuals achieve vibrant health and holistic well-being. As a naturopath, an advanced certified neurotrainer, certified brain health coach, and certified neuropsychotherapist, Marley specializes in addressing the profound connection between the mind, body, and soul. Her unique expertise focuses on supporting individuals in overcoming chronic stress, anxiety, autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and complex illnesses. When you change your brain, you don't just feel better, you get your life back. Marley, thank you so much for being my guest today, and welcome to the I Need Blue podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Thanks, Jen. I really appreciate it. I'm excited for today.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Of course. I'm excited too. And I know you said earlier today you're getting ready to start your podcast up again. What is the name of your podcast?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Healing Chronic Illness with Marley. Hey, that's perfect. I mean, I'm looking at a possible rebrand to keep it under my my protocol for getting through things, and it's detox stress. I have that whole protocol, and so it plays well together because I'm not just about, you know, avoiding stress and relieving stress. I'm about like how to clear the issues of stress in your in your overall health, you know, clear the root causes, but then look at building stress resilience because you can't avoid stress, it's everywhere, and actually get good at stress. So and it all starts with fixing your brain and addressing your brain health in order to handle stress before you can get good at stress. So there's like a whole process of recovery to resilience in that respect.

Brain Health Before Stress Management

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Absolutely. I love that. See, we're already getting educated in our first sentence of our conversation. I love it. Thank you. So you talked about root cause, uh, which is so important because many times uh doctors like to just treat the symptoms, right? Before we get into the first responders and change your brain, can you take us into a little bit of your journey? You were diagnosed with the TBI and the Lyme disease and how that influenced things like the depression and the brain fog, which many of us deal with. Sure.

Marley’s Early Health Struggles

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Well, it depends on how much time you have today and how far you want to go back. But really, my story with having health challenges started in the fourth grade. You know, I was diagnosed with like anorexia and bulimia because I couldn't eat. I was had GI issues, and um, I look back now and I know that it was due to toxic mold exposure. But I struggled as a kid with all kinds of immune and nervous system dysfunction. And then I had multiple concussions, a really bad one happened when I was 15. And back then nobody knew what depersonalization, all of those type of disorders that have when you have a brain injury, they didn't know what it was. And so I struggled with brain fog focus, being stuck in fight or flight from the time that I was young. And then it just got more complex because when I was 22, I was at horseback riding and just living out in the country of Oklahoma, I got riddled with a bunch of tick bites that, you know, had bullseye rashes. And then when I went to the doctor, I went to a specialist, they said, well, there's no Lyme disease in the state of Oklahoma, so it was left untreated, and then it triggered chronic Lyme. So it was a big, long journey for me. And there's a lot of people that have brain issues and neurologic neurological issues, and we could go on and on and on about how we kind of all kind of play in the same sandbox together. But mold and lime seems to kind of coexist because it all comes down to the body's inability to properly detox. Other people can get bit by mosquitoes or ticks and they're fine. But if you've got some certain predisposed genetic mutations, which many of us have, it affects our ability to clear toxins. And so you add in any type of brain injury to the mechs, and then you get a really complicated, complex illness. And funny that I'm looking back on the other side of it now, I was very alone in trying to figure things out. Of course, I went the allopathic route at first and realized that that was miserable for me. And so I switched to just doing naturopathic medicine and treating it that way. But it's not like I didn't integrate both medications as well as holistic therapies for supporting myself. But it's been a really, really long journey. And it wasn't until the last several years that I realized that I needed to work on my brain health in order to overcome to just be able to fight the Lyme and the Lyme itself and the co-infections that go along with it. I would not wish Lyme disease or even a TBI on my worst enemy. It's no way to live.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Right. And a few years ago, I also was diagnosed with toxic mold exposure and Lyme disease. And right before I had just given up thinking, okay, this is just gonna be my life because nobody seems to be able to figure it out. And it took a holistic doctor um to do the testing. Yeah, that detox was awful.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Wow, I didn't know that, Jen. Yeah, so you're a limey too, huh?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I am, and I I'm gonna tell you what, the detox from the mold, and then a couple, I think it was like a year later because I I didn't get completely better. And then uh there's the detox, like in bed for weeks, you know, with the body trying to get rid of whatever it could, and then you're still left with particular symptoms as well. So it took a while for me to get diagnosed. I'm so sorry that it happened to you when you you were so young and left untreated.

Lyme, Mold, And Misdiagnosis

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Well, yeah, just ignorance. And you know, at that time you were like, Well, they're the specialists, they know more than me. But I think my own innate intelligence knew like all the signs. I after I found bullseye rashes, I couldn't bend my fingers and I had a fever, and it's like, hmm. So I was misdiagnosed. They just said that I had lupus instead and then put me on medications for that. So, you know, it's a lot to process. There's a there's a lot of people that second guess their own innate intelligence and and their own health, because you know, they don't have a bunch of acronyms behind their names. And the sad thing is that once that damage is done, it's very hard to reverse because if I had addressed the Borelia infection early on, like you should, then I probably only would have been weeks in bed. But I spent decades in bed trying to deal with it. Because every time you go after trying to kill something like that, any of those pathogenic infections that burrow in and their stealth, they're hide they hide in the body, that you get so sick that you give up and you just go back to your baseline of misery instead of trying to have it clear from the host, you just kind of accept it because you go from like, I'm a seven to eight out of miserable to a 10 out of 10, I can't go on miserable. So you back off and then you just learn to live with it, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Absolutely. You adapt. Did what happened to your brother come before you try into and learning about brain health for your own Lyme disease?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

I have a strong passion for wanting to help first responders, but my own journey with all of this has been almost lifelong. And so knowing that my brother had the career that he had, and now that he is retired and has a chance to kind of unpack that, and I and I see that a lot in working with veterans and first responders now, that retirement kind of scares them because that's part of the stress response in the brain, is that you do have to distract yourself because as soon as you get quiet, then all of the dark thoughts start to come in. And so my whole health journey was an issue just in and of itself. Now that I understand the the brain better and the nervous system a lot better, and knowing what the tools are, now I'm like, yeah, I want to educate every first responder that is struggling because they're our heroes and they're the ones that need to be poured into and and the programs that are out there, a lot of people in that scope and industry, and they they don't go get help because the tools are just probably not the right match for them.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Goes back to that, you know, don't give up because there is something out there for you. The gist of our conversation today is for you to get the message out in regards to brain health, but also this online course that you are offering, that you don't have to suffer in silence, right?

Why Many Give Up On Healing

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, for sure. I'm pretty excited because I've kind of partnered with some organizations recently and they're first responders that are just on the heels of retirement and they've made it through, and God bless them. I love them. I'm like, please take the tools that you're learning and support yourself because they're already busy going, who can I help here, here, here, and here? And I'm like, you need to put your own oxygen mask on first for a while, buddy. So, and looking at toxic exposures and even seeing if there's a way to implement some of these brain healthy brain optimization programs in departments where when they're onboarding people and saying, listen, we want to get a baseline on where you're at. We want to look at all of your uh genetic factors, we want to look at your nutritional factors, we want to look at all your markers, and then we want to track that and make sure that we're supporting you so that you're not an absolutely having to take early retirement disabled, let's put you back together. Because, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure across the board, but especially when you think about the level of stress, um, emotional trauma, physical trauma, toxic trauma that first responders have to take on in a day, a week, a month, a career. It's beyond overwhelming. We're not wired for that.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

No. And how do you address the concern for first responders who, well, I can't ask for help because I might lose my job?

Purpose: Serving First Responders

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, and that's exactly it. They put a target on their back and you wear that scarlet letter of, well, HR's gonna send you your EAP providers and you're gonna go look and you're gonna realize, um, yeah, that's not a fit for me. And if you do, whether you're a nurse or your fire chief, like if they start looking at this person's gonna cost us a lot of claims, then that's that's an issue. You do, you put a target on your back. And so of all people that shouldn't suffer in silence, it's it's our front line, right? It breaks my heart.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

So is part of the thought behind having the free online seminar a way to reach those first responders who need help but are afraid to go to their boss and say, hey, I I need help. At least they can come to your seminar.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that training is something that Dr. Daniel Eamon did out in probably in Costa Mesa at his main clinic. I just facilitate it and make it available. And right now we're a small group just because I haven't done a lot of advertising for it, but we meet on Wednesday nights, 8 p.m. Eastern through Zoom, and we go through, you know, the need for it, what it looks like, how to support yourself, looking at lifestyle changes that you can do at home. We go through the whole bright minds protocol that Dr. Eamon does for everybody in his wellness clinics nationwide, but it's things that you can do at home. And not only just to support first responders, but it's for everybody, but they especially because of their levels of exposures and the load that they carry, need to get this information. And so it's free. I just had it on my heart to offer it because there's there's a lot of people that either feel marginalized because they are in a community that have doctors and specialists and people in behavioral health that they just don't relate to. And I see that all the time. I really do. And so they kind of suffer in silence, or they know that's part of the job, or they look to other things like we all do to calm and regulate our nervous system and try to escape what we're struggling with and that's troubling us so that we don't feel the pain. And those involve different types of anesthesias and ways to numb it that are not promoting health. And so that's what we talk about in the Change Your Brain, Change Your Life or First Responders online course is healthy ways to support your brain instead of hurt your brain.

Fear Of Asking For Help

SPEAKER_00 16:08

So as you've dug in more with these first responders and gotten to kind of understand a little bit more of what they're going through, what has surprised you the most in regards to what they go through or what they're carrying today, you know?

Free Change Your Brain Seminar

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, that you could be a fresh graduate and on your first day have a baby die in your arms. Like I've heard some pretty horrific stories, and there's no way that you're ready for that. You don't learn that in a classroom. But also too, um I actually after the training the other night, one of the one of the guys that was on, we finished the training and I was just chatting with him because he's always strategizing on ways to help other people. And so he was actually on duty and he got a call. And so I'm on a Zoom call with him and he's suiting up and hops in the truck, and they're responding to a motor vehicle ass accident out somewhere in their county. And I watched the whole thing happen. I watched how fast they were. It was crazy because it was poor lighting, but I, you know, I could see out the window and they were going down the highway really fast. And then they got the call that uh somebody else had responded because it was further away, and then they turned their truck around and and I asked him, I was like, okay, now where do you put all that cortisol and adrenaline norepinephrine that's curse coursing through your body right now? And he's like, honestly, I don't even notice it anymore. And so that kind of surprises me, but again, at the same time, that's stress resilience for you. Or it's a matter of what else is going on in the nervous system that kind of is numb and not aware of those cues that come through as symptoms, even though it's just our nervous system saying, hey, pay attention to me. There's there's action that needs to happen right now. And so here's the tools, here's all the extra neurochemicals that you're gonna need to face whatever it is you're facing. It's a little different for everybody, but I think what most of them struggle with that I've seen across the board is sleep. And you cannot feel better, your cells cannot detox, you cannot replenish, you cannot have your brain drained from chemicals that you've been exposed to during the day if you don't sleep. And so addressing sleep and ability to rest is really hard because they just have lost their ability to have an off switch or a dimmer switch. Because if you're a first responder, you're on. And um, you know, I even see it in my mom. Today is National First Responders Day. Yay, that's awesome. So it's kind of funny that we're recording this, but even my mom, she was an ER nurse, and she still has reflexes like a cat. She's 78 years old. And if you enter a room and she doesn't know you're there, she will jump out of her skin because she is just in hyper-vigilant mode all the time. And that's a hard thing on the body and the nervous system and your quality of life to always be where your on button is stuck in. And if it's like that for long enough, you end up having problems in your in your brain. You end up having limbic impairment, you end up having issues with your hormones and your metabolism because your hypothalamus is the breaker box in the circuitry of your brain that controls your body, it can go offline at times. And then you start developing problems where you can't sleep, you can't regulate your cortisol, your melatonin doesn't activate whenever it needs to be. And so you're, you know, you're you're not sleeping. So that I've seen across the board is just that a ability to rest and digest, it's like it doesn't exist. And we have to have it.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Uh even if you're not a first responder, you have to have that, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

So the first responder, when you asked him what he does with all that cortisol, etc., and he said that basically nothing because he doesn't really feel it anymore. What is one suggestion you would have given him if he said, I don't know, what what should I be doing with it?

What Surprised Marley: Sleep And Hypervigilance

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Well, I you know what, being that I don't really know all of the stuff that he deals with, I I have a generally a good idea. He puts it somewhere, and it's always in helping other people. He's a really intelligent person. He has a heart for bringing healing and hope to people. You know, I even talked to a lady the other day, and I'm kind of jumping to a different thought here, but she had her husband um serve on several tours. He's a veteran, and they do all kinds of cool biohacking at home. They've got their sauna and their cold plunge and trying to get them one of my neurotraining machines to have in their home. But her husband doesn't struggle with PTSD. He came back from serving and re and is in retirement now and helping her with her business. She's actually a very, very, very successful entrepreneur. She sells franchises all over the country. She said that he has more like post-traumatic resilience than he has PTSD. And I was like, you know what? That's really interesting. A lot of it has to do with like what kind of brain you had going into the military, or what kind of brain you had going into serving as a police officer or a um social worker, or any of those kind of frontline roles. It depends on your ability to regulate as well. And if you've had a traumatic brain injury, or if you played sports and got knocked around playing football, like how well your brain is working going into it. But I think for him, his story is that it's bigger than him. Like he feels like he's he's got a spiritual purpose to take suffering and you know, know that it produces character and perseverance and hope so that he can help other people. So I think he has a self-awareness of what that looks like. Not everybody does.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Okay, that's fascinating because I was like, what is post-traumatic resilience? I was like, not a term I'm familiar with.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yeah, it was kind of new to me too. And I I'm like, I like it. It's a shift, right? So, because when he came back, she said that, you know, he has running water now and it's not 98 degrees at night, and he's not got bombs blasting around him anymore. So, like, he came back, but his nervous system and the cognitive executive function of his brain knew that he was safe again. A lot of people with PTSD, they can't flip that off because they don't know the difference between actual and perceived. But again, it's a brain issue. So you got to look at like it's not a matter of strength and resilience that you get on your own. A lot of people are resilient, but if it is a brain issue, they can't help it.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

So would you say your brain health is even more important than your gut health?

Post‑Traumatic Resilience Explained

Limbic System Vs Executive Function

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yes. I'm big on gut health and the gut brain connection, but the brain and the and addressing the survival brain, the inner regions of the brain where your hypothalamus, your amygdala, your hippocampus, uh, all of those things are basal ganglia, that's your emotional survival brain. And when that is activated, they have found that the executive function of your brain, where you actually have logical thought, your prefrontal cortex up here, it can actually atrophy. What does that mean to atrophy? It means that it what it shrinks and it lessens. So if if your limbic system is in the driver's seat all the time and you're stuck in fight or flight, you can't think straight because that part of the brain has possibly impeded blood flow, or just that because the limbic system is fired up and it's in the driver's seat. So it's like that's what's hard and complex about PTSD is like you know you're back from war, you know you're back from a horrible shooting in downtown city that you're in, and you know that it's over, but you're you're still processing, right? We're always trying to like overcome our feelings and be grown up, right? And it's not the natural design of things. We're taught that you man up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you deal with it. But where does that stuff go? And so one of the books that is on most people's reading lists that deal with this, and if they don't, I'll point it out, you probably know it. But you know, Dr. Bessel's work in trauma in the book, The Body Keeps the Score, it addresses those things that like it doesn't go away unless you address it. You need to feel the feeling till it no longer serves you, so that the nervous system isn't still going, I need you need to address this. You you need to pay attention to me. Isn't it fascinating too, Jen, that if you go to a cognitive behavioral therapist and you're dealing with anxiety and you're talking to them about um your triggers. If you're having any type of anxiety or panic attack, the more that you try to fight that, the worse it gets. So acceptance goes a long way, right? And so that's the whole thing. It's like, okay, I can take a bird's eye view of what's going on. I'm self-aware that my hands are sweaty, that I'm shaking, that I have a shortness of breath. Oh, now my heart's racing, and now my mind's racing. But if you just accept it and don't fight it and let it burn off and feel it until it no longer serves you, my passion, Jen, is to just let people know that before you do any other healing protocol or run to another doctor or buy a cold plunge and a sauna that you don't have room for in your house, that you should address your brain health first because your brain is the central processing unit of not only your body and all of the things that your body does in a day, but of your entire life. And if you really can fix your brain, you can fix your life, and it should be your number one healing priority. Yeah, I'm a bit of a neuroscience geek and I research a lot. Um, a lot of people binge binge Netflix. I kind of binge other things. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

You know, it's uh I had a conversation earlier with somebody uh today and they were having gut health issues, right? And I was like, you know, look at the past, even the past 10 years of your life before you even get into childhood and all of the things that you've experienced from moves to marriages to loss to new job to COVID, right? We underestimate what COVID has done. And then, you know, where you are today, continually worrying about other people and wanting to help. I said it it doesn't necessarily mean there's a pill or a prune that you need to be eating to help with your gut health. I mean, it it could be like you said, the nervous system, something deeper inside you that needs to be addressed or or regulated.

Acceptance, Anxiety, And Brain-First Healing

Gut, Vagus Nerve, And Toxins

SPEAKER_01 27:46

No, I think it I think it all it's all at peace. And I I do think that your microbiome and all of that stuff has to be online and be working. I just think that it should come with you having a regulated stress response. And sometimes when your gut health is wacky, that's another difficult thing to do because we know that your vagus nerve and all the ventral and dorsal branches that run from your gut to your brain. And just think about it, like your body is designed to like protect your vital organs, right? Your gut and your psoas muscle are all intricately connected and have to be protected. I mean, even especially for women in that whole area, like you like life comes from there, right? So women have a horrible time with their gut health. Why is that? Is it hormone related, diet-related? I think it's all the above. I think it's toxins. We have so many toxins. I don't know about you and friends and colleagues of mine, but same. You know, I have mast cell issues because of Lyme and because of living in Florida where mold is everywhere. But I'm not as triggered as I was before since I have built this ability and this capacity for stress resilience. But when I was in Europe this summer and eating all the gluten and drinking, I'm not a drinker because the histamines in the wine bother me, obvious, you know, but they don't have sulfites and all the stuff over there. And it's not only that, it's what they spray on their crops. And whenever I was in Tuscany, all of the um beautiful jasmine flowers were in bloom. And so we had this gorgeous terrace and we left the window open. And guess what happened? 50,000 mosquitoes came in and they descended on me. And I'm typo blood type and they love me. And I woke up and I counted just on my cheek 25 mosquito bites one morning. And if that would have happened to me with the super bugs that have learned to outlive Roundup here had hit me. I'd have been in the hospital. Instead, I was just itchy like I was when I was a kid. So I know that's a little bit of a rabbit trail there, but I'm just pointing out that the source of our food has directly affected our gut health because we are not eating out of grandma's garden anymore. And unless you're really intentional with your food supply, I'm I'm kind of weird. Like I grew up in southern Alberta, Canada. My dad was a hunter and an outfitter and a fisherman. And so I grew up living that way. And so that's just my happy place where I go to get along with God and be in nature. And so it has turned into my intentional way of foraging and hunting for food, too. So I try to fill my freezers with venison. I have a garden tower. It's not hydroponics, but you know what I'm saying, you know what I'm talking about. So try to being to where is the best I can in our modern high-past, high-paced, high everything, fast, fast, fast society is to be intentional about food and enjoy nature and how it grows and enjoy the process. Like every time I pop a pineapple top off, I have pots all over my courtyard. I've got pineapple. We're poking around in pineapples all the time here. And I've got fruit trees in my backyard that bear things, and we have other properties that we have that bear fruit. And so just going back to, I mean, it's enjoyable. We need to connect with stuff like that. And our and our guts and our brains need it because all God's given all of that to us, and we thought we'd outsmart it all by convenience, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Well, and and laying in the garden in the dirt is so grounding. Yeah, I grew up in northern Michigan.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

So you feel me.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

And so walking barefoot. Yes, we had a garden, venison, all of that other stuff. So uh yes, I get it. And there there is something so simplistic. It's about uh being aware and changing your behaviors, and that's you know, that's a constant, constant thing that you have to do. But okay, great. I love that conversation. Now let's talk a little bit about um you, what you do, change your brain, how you can help people specifically, how they can find you, all of that good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Wow, okay. I'm actually in the midst of revamping all of my websites because I have too many and I need to get them housed under one. I think the landing spot for me is my actual local clinic, but I'm gonna be developing when I do my website, you'll see that I've got online coaching program and I provide neurotraining, not just for individuals and families, but also for functional med doctors, behavioral health therapists that want to add the neurotraining to their practice. But you can just go to harmony neurofeedback.com. My podcast is just healing chronic illness with Marley for now, unless I change it to the detox stress podcast. I'm still trying to figure it out. All of this, just like you, Jen, probably has just been a very organic odyssey because I just wanted somebody else to be doing what I'm doing, but nobody was doing it. So when I found some things and some tools that actually finally worked for me after spending 20 years and$200,000 in addressing Lyme illness, that if I have a platform now, I'm gonna share what I know so that I can get people from the fastest point from A to B without all of the struggle and the suffering and all the stuff that I went through. Because, you know, I was told I wasn't supposed to have kids' gen. My labs were terrible. I was told if I had a baby that they would need a pacemaker when I delivered, and by the time I'd be 30, I'd be in a wheelchair. All of that is mostly why I stopped going to family practice and specialists and switched to naturopath because I just couldn't handle all of the doom and gloom that they were sharing with me. And so I went back to school and I worked on it, it took me from 2000 to 2005 to graduate. I work as a naturopath, which is very simple. Like I'm just gonna teach you to honor your body that it knows how to heal itself. You give it the opportunity and provide it the tools to self-heal, then I'm gonna help you put those tools in your toolkit. So um I have an online coaching program. It's you can go to mindrenewalmethod.com. There's very simple information out there, but I'm happy to you know connect people with whatever it is that they need. If it's something that is like they want to ask about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, I know people. And if they want specific line treatment, then I'm happy to connect. I kind of feel like God's given me a gift to connect people with resources and people with people. And so um I'm happy to do that in whatever capacity that looks like because I need to stay in my lane.

Food Quality, Nature, And Resilience

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Yeah, there are so many lanes. I know how that is. Yes, and as far as the whole process, yes, this podcast and this journey, it's fluid. I don't control it, it just kind of goes and I'm led and trust in it and lean into it wherever it is supposed to be. Yeah. Now, if somebody were to come to your office, um, what does that process look like?

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Um the office that I'm at locally, it's in a very zen, relaxing, natural space. There's no clinical feel to it at all. But you would you would just come in and there is some paperwork and some intake forms, and we want to get a baseline of where you're at, how you're feeling, what your brain is perceiving that your symptoms are, because that's what matters. And there's no QEG test, there's it's non-invasive, it's a brain training system. And so we're all about wellness and training versus medical and treatment, which is really important as a naturopath to honor the body because it knows best, give it the opportunity to heal. Because you can't force health on the body. The more you try to intervene and the more you try to force yourself in, the more the nervous system starts to build walls, and then you don't have the cooperation that you need to heal, and you further stress out the individual. So I love working with people of all ages. Kids respond really, really well to the neurotraining because their synapses are firing so quickly and learning so much. And, you know, when you come in and you run a neurotraining session, you're really just learning. That's all it is. It's like you come in and you you do a neurofeedback and neurotraining session and it's relaxing, and you listen to music and you can take a nap if you like, but then your brain continues to learn and process and self-optimize because it can see the areas that it needs to improve and that and the rigid patterns that it wants to move away from because you finally have given it the opportunity to do so. And so I love to come alongside and watch that process happen. And we say that we're diagnostically agnostic, so it doesn't matter what your condition or issue is or your diagnosis, you can come and you can train the brain to help the body heal.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

And then it is there a particular number of sessions you recommend or is it individually based?

How Marley Works: Neurotraining

SPEAKER_01 37:30

You'd hit the nail on the head on individually based. I can always give people a general idea. We've been doing this for 25 years. We're in 87 countries, and so if I haven't ran across it before, I'll tap into our forum and find out hey, I've got this person with tinnitus, and this is why they have the tinnitus. How many sessions have you noticed that it makes a difference? Every everybody is different, and for me to look in a crystal ball to tell you it takes this many would be not true. For the most part, we can get a general idea, but we usually say it's between 12 and 15 sessions for you to notice your first significant shift. The good, the good news is, Jen, they people don't have to come into my office because I rent systems and I sell systems. And so you can have a system for 30 days and train on it twice a day, get 60 sessions in and have multiple, multiple, multiple shifts and absolutely transform your life in that time period. And then if you're like some people like me that are like, man, this is the bee's knees. I never want to stop doing this, and then you buy your own. They're not, they're a high-ticket item, but it is what I think everybody should have in their wellness toolkit. If I I always say that if I could have this in prisons, schools, hospitals, and churches, we can have world peace because everybody's brains would be optimized and our nervous systems would be regulated. We all be getting along, we all be leveling up. Stop bumping into each other and having road rage all the time, getting through our day. We would we would be able to do better, perform better, focus better, be better motivated. So I just make it available for however it best suits people. And it's 30 minutes to train, so it's quick and easy, and you can multitask while you train. So that's nice too.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

And I'm assuming this is nothing where insurance is gonna help you to cover the cost.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yeah, you're assuming correctly. Because of FDA compliance, we are a wellness training device. Um, you know, neurofeedback's actually been around for 100 years. Our system's been around for 25. Maybe give it time because there was a time when chiropractic wasn't covered, and even acupuncture is now covered. And so give it time. I take um health savings, so that's nice, but it is not considered an insurable service. And if you're like me and you've had to go outside the box for complicated issues, you know you're gonna be doing self-bay anyway. So sadly, that's just where we're at right now.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

It's like the things that could be really effective without taking a pill are never covered by insurance.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Right. No, they're not. And why is it that organic pesticide-free food is more expensive? Like, because we've industrialized everything and it's low quality high production, and so less is more, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Okay, so I know less is more, but I could definitely continue this conversation, but we can do a part two sometime. Absolutely. Who knows? I might come try it or I might send my husband, and it'll be a great thing to um keep track of. But anyway, before we end, is there anything that I have missed that you want to add?

Sessions, Home Systems, And Access

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Well, I just really would love to see if this circulates amongst your audience and you have a lot of people that are struggling with stress or emotional things or any type of heavy things. We all have it, but just even if you're not a first responder, reach out to me. They're running in six weeks increments, and so this will be our fourth week. It's Wednesday nights, 8 p.m. Um, if you send me an email, just send it to marley.jones at neuroptimal, n-e-u-r-o-p-t-i-mal.com, and I will send you a registration link to sign up. It's absolutely free, but you do have to sign up so I can keep track of you and give you notice and send you a link to get online to watch it. It's all through Zoom. But I mean, anyone in the world, because we have first responders all over the world, can can hop on even if you got to get up at 3 a.m., it would be worth it. Just to garner the information, learn about the tools. Even if you don't want to turn your video on, I don't care. Just get the information, be encouraged with it and put it in your wellness toolkit.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

And sometimes showing up is the bit is the hardest step. So just the fact that you showed up is kudos to you. Like it's gonna be a very supportive group, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Yeah, I think so. And sometimes you might feel like your bandwidth is just like, oh my gosh, I have no space to learn anything. But honestly, for so many reasons, learning new material and inching forward that you're progressing and you accomplish something that you never did before, you get a little dopamine drip, right? So start with signing up, registering, getting on the call, and then you don't have to eat the elephant one all at once, just one bite at a time, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Absolutely. Marley, thank you so much for being my guest today on the I Need Blue Podcast. Thank you, Jen. It's been a pleasure. You're welcome, and thank you for listening today. This is Jen. If you want to learn anything and everything about the I Need Blue podcast, visit my website, Ineedblue.net. And remember, you are stronger than you think. Until next time.