You and Your Health
Meet Stefan Chmelik
Integrated Healthcare Physician, Sensate inventor, Nature Connection facilitator. MRCHM MBAcC MSc DipCHM LicOHM DipAc DipCHM (Dermatology) ClinAc
About Stefan
Nature disciple, physician, philosopher, writer, health visionary, pilgrim wayfarer, somanaught, early Punk ‘musician’, journeyman explorer, recovering narcissist, ardent coddiwompler, humane technology advocate, neurodiverse creative, and aspiring elder, wizard and Druid-Shaman.
What do I teach?
I am a vagal tone enthusiast, as pretty much everything else of interest is downstream of this.
There are three ways I interact with the mind-body:
1. Nervous System Training
2. Sensate Biophilic Sound Therapy
3. Nature Connection Experiences
What is Nervous System Training?
This is my specialist area and earned me the nickname of ‘Vagus nerve whisperer’. The Vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body and the largest part of the autonomic nervous system (which controls the organs and how we feel). When you hear people talk about the ‘Gut-Brain superhighway’, this is what they are talking about, and this speaks to the instinctive understanding we all have about the connection between the body and how we feel.
If your nervous system and Vagus aren’t firing properly, then everything is harder than it could be and it’s difficult to fully get over anything. Given how human beings are wired, feeling better often comes down to improving anti-fragility (the biological version of resilience) and that nearly always involves better Vagal nerve tone, as this controls most systems, including the brain-gut pathway, blood pressure regulation, heart and
breathing strength, stress hormone regulation, stress tolerance and emotional balance. This is how the Vagus nerve has a direct impact on common problems such as inflammation, weight issues, gut health, mood, fertility and more. Working directly with the Vagus increases your ability to ‘roll with the punches’ in all aspects of your life.
I’ve been working with people’s nervous systems for decades, and I developed the Sensate technology to make it easier for people to work on this at home and between sessions as well. The things that increase Vagal nerve adaptability (tone) and stabilise the nervous system are well understood but hard to do without support and guidance.
That’s where the things I do come in. This approach works very well alongside other treatments and can help them work faster and more profoundly as well.
Nervous System Training may include
Helping you define your personal Meaning & Purpose
Breathing retraining for O2/CO2/NO regulation
Guided Mindfulness & Meditation training
Anti-fragility training (resiliency for humans)
Eating, nutrition and cooking support
Bespoke Herbal prescribing
Guided Sensate sessions
Nature Connection Experiences
These are profound nature retreats for individuals and groups that are ready to find connection with their inner world and learn how to make this a force for good by using nature and connection as the container. Reconnecting to Nature is perhaps the greatest healer, and it’s right there if we know how to connect to it…
Conditions that can respond particularly well to my approach
So many problems are made worse by stress and the wrong kind of nervous system response. None of these are likely to see you off overnight, but they can make life pretty miserable for years.
We can get used to feeling bad, but it doesn’t need to be like that:
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Problems made worse by stress and tiredness – IBS, IBD, headache, allergy,
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autoimmunity, etc;
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Biochemical dysregulation issues – hormonal, mood, metabolic, etc;
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Dysregulation of PNS/SNS – sleep issues, labial mood, etc;
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Generational – ancestral trauma, compromised epigenetics, etc.
Online Consultations
Health appointments with patients is a reciprocal process and a very important part of what I do. I help people to change their lives and feel better and people help me to earn a living doing something I love. That’s a wonderful thing.
I offer online, global contact. I’ve worked exclusively online with patients for the last 5 years and it works very well. It’s easy for people to attend and schedule and to fit around other commitments. It also keeps the cost affordable for consultation at this level.
With over 35 years of clinical experience and with a special interest in integrated healthcare, I am especially good at helping people identify ‘the one thing’ that will have the single biggest impact on their wellbeing.
My work can happen within a 360° assessment – every part of your history is important, but some parts are more important than others – and then focus on the method/story that speaks most directly to your worldview.
My Long Path Vision
To live a simple, low impact life, reducing chaos in my world, providing essential guidance to my children and community.
“To have the maturity and courage, wisdom, bravery to ask the question”
- Martin Shaw
Born in London into a house of generationally traumatised Slavic-Gaelic parents, I was exposed to great benefit at an early age to Sufism, Buddhism, mysticism, alchemy and alternative healing. Dad taught me and my brother to mediate from a young age, which later informed 35 years of clinical experience, including as founder and gatekeeper of New Medicine Group Harley Street, creating the UK’s best integrated health team. I practice Integrated Healthcare, bodywork (Tui Na, Cranial, Rolfing, etc), acupuncture, herbal medicine and nutrition, with mentoring and coaching as part of my Nervous System Training) and with a clinical focus on stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, poor sleep.
Near death experiences
My own NDE had to happen three times before I took the hint. No tunnels with a bright light at the end and disembodied voice calling me back. For me, the experiences were situations where I would have died under slightly different circumstances and where I was faced with the likelihood of my own death. The realisation for me was about the impermanence of all things and the fragility of life, and that it is too short not to be focussed on what matters most.
A good life
If the question is ‘what makes a good, long, happy life’, then the science is pretty clear, and we can all benefit from knowing how to get the most from this. I know I have.
Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at University College Berkeley, says he is most often asked “How might I find deeper happiness?”. He says the science is clear - deepen your connection with self and others and use rituals to organise positive life habits. This will boost your happiness, give you greater joy, and even add 10 years to your life expectancy.
Keltner is the global thought- leader on happiness, awe and the Vagus nerve and believes we can cultivate higher Vagal Nerve Tone (VNT) through deceptively simple practices. The essence behind this research supported finding is straightforward enough: activating the combined power of the mind and body in cohesion makes us, to put it simply, better people.
Note
I’m use the term Nervous System Training for this, because that’s shorter than saying: The Vagus nerve is the largest branch of the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which is half of the Autonomic Nervous System, which controls the body from the brainstem downwards and regulates, along with specialist sensors and fascia, the functions of the organs and the internal body senses (interoception, proprioception, neuroception, enteroception, alteroception and more that we probably haven’t categorised yet) which give us information about how our body is feeling inside and adapting to change (stress). This is compared to the ‘classic’ five senses, which are mostly focussed on giving us information to make sense of the outside world as we move through it.
I talk about this a bit more in this article
