The Mindful Injury Recovery Talks with Dr. Maya Novak

Send us Fan Mail ‘Dying’ is probably the absolute worst-case scenario of any health issue. There are those people who believe that nothing happens after death, because it’s the end, and then there are those who believe that we either go to heaven or hell, or some other form of afterlife. Who’s right and what is the truth for each and every one of us is something we’ll only know when we experience...

Send us Fan Mail Depending on who you listen to, almost any food can either heal you or make you worse. Food and nutrition might be the most confusing topic of all. There’s so much different information available that it’s very easy to just throw your arms up in the air and go, “I give up. I really don’t know who to believe.” I understand this because sometimes it seems impossible to figure out th...

Send us Fan Mail If everything has its frequency, is there a frequency for healing different parts of the body? The way we perceive our reality is as if every object or person is a solid thing. How could it not be? If it weren’t we wouldn’t be able to tear a piece of paper, or cut down a tree and even injuries wouldn’t be possible, right? But when we start breaking down the tissues, cells, the cel...

Send us Fan Mail Tapping feels like one of those things that shouldn’t work, but do. Of course, a lot of the things that are covered on this podcast fall in that category. But I remember first learning about it and not being quite sure how or why this would work. But it does, and it can be an invaluable tool when you’re healing. If you’re a long-time listener, you’ve heard Brad Yates on Episode 6...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine every doctor you see telling you, “We can’t help you. You’ll never get better.”   I remember lying in the hospital back in 2012 when I received my diagnosis and prognosis. Neither of these two looked promising and by the words of my doctors I should have said goodbye to the life I had known thus far. It takes courage to follow that tiny voice within yourself when people ar...

Send us Fan Mail Brain injuries are scary for most people. And the sad part is that they are often undiagnosed and unrecognized so more people (not just the injured ones but their families as well) suffer for way longer. Every injury is challenging in its own way. I know that many people have the tendency to compare their physical traumas or downtalk them and say “Well, I shouldn’t be complaining...

Send us Fan Mail There are many things people believe about healing.   Some beliefs help you get better. And some, even though they are incredibly common, can actually prevent you from doing so.  In this solo episode with yours truly, I’m sharing some of the things that made the biggest difference in my recovery (although, as you should know by now... no magic pills. #sorry )  In this episode, you...

Send us Fan Mail Anxiety is not necessarily fear. Over the years, talking with hundreds of injured people around the world – one thing became very clear to me. A lot of injured women and men who are experiencing anxiety that started after they sustained their injury are sure that their recent physical trauma is the cause of this. In my experience, for a majority of people that’s not the case becau...

Send us Fan Mail What’s better – knowing what to do, or knowing what not to do? I’m still amazed when I hear stories from people whose doctors don’t even prescribe physiotherapy after an injury, because when it comes to recovery, there’s an enormous amount of value in knowing what to do – and also knowing what to avoid doing. Of course, physiotherapy goes beyond that, especially when you’re workin...

Send us Fan Mail Popping pills isn’t always a bad thing. I’m a huge fan of getting your nutrients from whole food. But there are many reasons why that isn’t always ideal; the quality of food you can get (which can vary depending on location, time of year, etc.), the diversity, and of course, your body’s needs, which can vary based on your own makeup and conditions such as injuries. So nutritional...

Send us Fan Mail We often have a tendency to view the body as an opponent . Or we even hate it when we think it’s preventing us from doing the things we want to be doing. And especially if we’re used to moving and enjoying what the body can do. So there can be a lot of frustration and anger after an injury, when all of that gets taken away – and that, too, even if sometimes difficult to understand...

Send us Fan Mail Looking very simplistically, your brain has only one job, and that is to keep you alive. Fear, as much as we don’t enjoy it, performs that function as well. It helps us remove ourselves from dangerous situations or not put ourselves into danger in the first place. But often (especially in our modern world) being afraid, or feeling anxious or depressed has nothing to do with danger...

Send us Fan Mail Pain is something that way too many people are resigned to live with. Or at best, live with while treating it with not very effective methods like anti-inflammatory drugs. Most information that you can find on osteoarthritis says it can't be reversed because cartilage cannot regrow and thicken, and the treatment involves taking medication to help relieve the symptoms. This is...

Send us Fan Mail It takes courage and confidence to trust your intuition when it’s telling you to quit a career you spent years building. And it takes wisdom to know what that inner voice is trying to tell you when it’s time to heal so you can choose the right path. You might have noticed that I love talking to medical professionals who effortlessly bridge the gap between science-based modern medi...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes, it’s the simple things that are the hardest. And also most effective. For many of us, that split second, when we sustained our injuries, changed everything. But change, even though we many times prefer not to experience it, is not always bad. Sometimes we discover things, get into practices, and start listening to ourselves better because of that moment. And it’s true t...

Send us Fan Mail The saying ‘Let food be thy medicine’ may be old... but it’s also true. One of the most common statements that many doctors say to their patients is “Your diet doesn’t play a role in this,” or “No, you don’t have to change your diet because of your condition.” Nutrition plays a huge role in healing and food played a significant role in my own recovery from my ankle fracture as wel...

Send us Fan Mail Fighting pain away may not work, but thinking it away might. We’re always fighting so many things, aren’t we? We fight climate change, we fight diseases, and naturally we fight pain as well. But this is one of the reasons why so many people struggle for so long with it. Because fighting doesn’t work and pain is not something you need to conquer. But that’s exactly how most people...

Send us Fan Mail Your body is always, always observing what’s happening in your mind. You can fool others but you cannot fool yourself or your body. Your mind affects your physical body and your body is always, always observing what’s happening in your mind. And it’s not just visualization that can greatly improve any recovery. At a more basic level, every thought you have can affect your physical...

Send us Fan Mail Kindness. It’s true that most people are much better at being kind to others than they are at being kind to themselves. Sometimes we think that we’re kind to ourselves, but when things get hard, or we don’t do something right, or we gain a bit of weight, when we stand in front of the mirror or sitting with our thoughts, we perhaps notice that we’re kind but only to a degree. Somet...

Send us Fan Mail Your mind (conscious and subconscious) controls your actions. What if it controls your healing, too? At any moment during the day, you probably have dozens of subconscious processes that are running as much as 95% of your actions. But what if that goes even deeper than your actions? Your beliefs and your subconscious programming don’t just affect the way you act, but also the way...

Send us Fan Mail Different types of vibration can be healing, but they can also be detrimental to your health. If you saw a device with a note attached that read: “Using this can (among other things) cause irreversible back pain, disc rupture and/or detached retina,” would you use it? Probably not! And you’d make a very wise decision. However, countless people use such devices every single day wit...

Send us Fan Mail There were times, many years ago, when I didn’t completely understand why some injured people struggle and others don’t. I was wondering why sometimes the healing process feels like torture and other times as something that is completely doable. I became really curious how to help people by understanding the state they were in in those moments. So throughout my years as a healing...

Send us Fan Mail For most people, the go-to method for dealing with pain is taking pain medication. There’s nothing wrong with this approach and sometimes it’s very necessary to take some kind of medicine to ease the suffering. I mean, I’m still very grateful for the morphine that I got after my ankle surgery where they put 2 screws into my talus bone back in 2012. However, pain can be treated wit...

Send us Fan Mail Today I’m sharing another vulnerable episode with you. At the end of March, I did my first Short and Vulnerable episode. If you tuned into that lucky number 13, you’ll remember how anxious I was about publishing it. It’s never easy to ‘offer’ my heart on a plate for the whole world to see it with the awareness that it can be crushed. My heart was pounding so fast and loud when pre...

Send us Fan Mail You have to change from the inside out to see the results that you desire. Many years ago, I came across a type of workout that gave me really fast results in a short period of time. It was in 2009 when I found Zuzka Light on YouTube (this platform was barely 4 years old and very few people even knew about HIIT.) And although my own training and ways of movement changed a lot over...