📍EEA: A Holistic Approach to Healthcare with Sophia Kupse

RJ Redden:

I'll oh, we are on. Hello, everybody. Grab onto those goggles. It is time for the epic engagement adventure. Today, I get to share with you A dear friend of mine from across the pond, you're gonna fall in love with her accent, but much more you're gonna fall in love with her, because she has got what it takes both to create a business and to survive in business and to thrive in business. Everybody please meet my friend. This is Sofia Coopsie. I hope I got opened it again.

RJ Redden:

They're right. I was I was, you know, I was doing the the stuff before. She taught me how to pronounce it, and I just I wanna open the door, Sofia. Tell us who you are, what you do, give us everything.

Sophia Kupse:

Hi, everyone, and hi, Angie. Thank you for inviting me on, your podcast today. Well I am Sofia Kutsi and I'm talking to you direct from the UK from a city called Bradford which is buried in the heart of Beautiful countryside in the region of West Yorkshire, England. So whilst I'm here, what am I doing? Well, for the last 30 years, I've I'm an innovator, social scientist, and holistic practitioner, and I specialize in preventative medicine which supports Sustainable health care. So my mission is really to offer a sustainable alternative to medication for Back pain prevention and treatment, which makes me, I suppose, a leader in the UK's, green health care movement. I do it through my innovative online programs. They're both award winning. It's called the mind body connection map And I've revolutionized the pain recovery, system by looking at pain from the psychological side, rather than just the physical reasons, whilst promoting a more environmentally conscious choices of Alternative eco friendly solutions to treating that pain.

Sophia Kupse:

So that's what I do here, transforming people's lives by Empowering them to take control of their pain with these natural alternatives.

RJ Redden:

And so when you say preventative medicine, you're not talking about just physical health. You're not talking about just mental health. You're talking about a Combination of both. Yeah?

Sophia Kupse:

Yeah. Because intrinsically we're connected the mind and body. You know, how we think and how we feel It feeds into our pain. And in a lot of, occasions, it creates our physical pain. But with even though we're here in 21st century sort of living proof of advanced medicines sometimes, People still, associate in their physical pain with a physical cause. And when You don't have a reason why you wake up one day and you have lower back pain, but you know it's stopping you doing your things you love. Where is that pain coming from? And 9 out of 10 people who when I asked, you know, how did it start, I don't know. I just woke up with it.

Sophia Kupse:

It must have been something I did when I was sleeping. I sat too long at the desk working. I've been driving too many hours And probably my back's just coming out in pain now, but they never think about the, what's been on the mind, the level of stress, The worry, the challenges they've been facing because they can't understand how thoughts become physical things. It's simple because it transfers through the body through a system called muscle memory, and, It starts to start and build up pockets of lactic acid that eventually come out as physical pain. So my mapping system over the 30 years I've been working in clinical practice and I developed the mapping system, it shows people What places, people, and events in their life, past or present, has created that pain Associate it with, you know, emotions and stress.

RJ Redden:

Well and I think in the Western world, we are really, it's not even that we're taught this, but we we just compartmentalize those things. Physical, I don't have anything to do with mental. That's ridiculous. You know what I mean? Like, we're we've got these things in in It's like the separated lunch plates when we were kids. You know? You know, dessert is here. Entree is here. I mean, and so that, I think that that really that disconnection is One of the reasons that we kind of we have a chronic illness problem. Would you agree?

Sophia Kupse:

Absolutely. And it's interesting, Ajay, you go back to Compartmentalizing things like which when we're children because that's where we first learn the learn the root of pain. So when you're about 4, 5, 6. You you fall down, you graze your knee, then you know it hurts. So then we need, to put plaster on it To feel better. So we know that it hurts when we fall down, and therefore, that's the creation of pain. That's how it evolves. But then as we get older and we start onboarding, the psychology of, you know, emotion and relationships than anything else that's going on in our life.

Sophia Kupse:

We don't learn that pain can come from, You know, our feelings and our thoughts and our stress, but subconsciously we're aware, but not consciously Because it's like we don't want to, face that it could be emotional rather than just physical so we're always looking for The brain defaults into, its its physical cause. It's always going there because the brain's trying to protect you. So it's trying to show you, oh, it must be a physical, and we get stuck in that message rather than saying, well, what's the alternate If it's not physical, is it something I'm thinking about that's been on the mind that's hurting me emotionally And then it's getting stuck in the body because through, you know, in the muscle and that emotion and that because we're all energy At the end of the day and that energy becomes stuck in that muscle group and what happens is when you're feeling upset, You produce chemical changes in the body. So you're pumping out adrenaline and cortisol, which is your fight and flight. And if you're not burning it off quickly, What's happening to that adrenaline? Well, it gets converted to lactic acid, and then it starts to build and block in the muscle tissue. And over time, that's days, weeks, months, or even years, we suddenly have a chronic problem on our hands And the go to is what? Opioids and painkillers which are addictive and then cause another set of issues, doesn't it?

RJ Redden:

Yeah. A whole different slate of problems. Absolutely. It does. Well, gosh. And I I think that, you know, just the the simple it really is simple when you think about it, That things that hurt here eventually kind of work out to hurt here as well. And If we we're not really, you know, we're not really folks who kind of listen when our bodies speak. It's more like, oh, I just assume I'm getting old here.

Sophia Kupse:

Yeah. Absolutely. It's about I like that listening to the body And translating what the language is what what what it's saying to me. So if I've got a stomach pain, it's it you straight away say, oh, it's because I've eaten something. But if it's a persistent stomach pain and then you haven't eaten anything and it's still going on, what is that pain associating with then? And we know now that the brain is is very strongly connected to the gut gut. We talk about the microbiome and the gut response. And in research, we think about is the is the stomach now the gut the primary brain and the brain secondary, What comes first? Because as soon as you think in a millisecond, that thought lands in the gut, it it Has an effect in that stomach area. So but we we're not looking at the big picture here.

Sophia Kupse:

We're just sat in, like you said, The same old, responses, and therefore, we're gonna have the chronic pain and problems start to develop. And we're living longer, so we better start looking at it's best to start looking at more natural solutions Because the body has a natural way of healing itself if you give it a chance, but I don't think we do. We We're rushing to the medication side because we're desperate to get on top of that pain without thinking it through, especially when it's When the doctor's diagnose, there's nothing on the X-ray. You can't see emotions on the X-ray, by the way, or scans. There's There's no illness or disease. The blood tests come up fine. So what is it? The pain's still there. So why is it showing up? Yeah.

RJ Redden:

What what led you to get into this type of work?

Sophia Kupse:

Well, that was my 1st journey into, a head on collision with a drink driver On Christmas Eve when I was, 23, so over 35 years ago, so, I, You know, I was doing a normal day to day job, came out of midnight mass, got into the car, put the seat belt on, set off in 1st gear, And then a pair of headlights came in front of me. And before you knew it, I took the impact and the car was crushed And my chest was crushed, and I lost the use of my legs. I didn't I was given a 3% chance of walking again. I'm told by the medics back at 1987 you know this is it if if medication and physical intervention doesn't help you get back And your sciatic nerve working again, you know, you you're gonna have life in a wheelchair. So at 23, I've just got married. I wanted a family. I believe doctors and doctors, you know, are like gods to me back then. And this still, you know, I think medicine should work together integratively With the natural medicine, but anyway, that's a different story.

Sophia Kupse:

And so I I went into a deep depression. I've never felt that before because I Couldn't walk, and I didn't know what to do, and I believed what I was told that, you know, this is it. And then I got given 2 books, Louise Hay, You can heal your life. And Susan Jeffers, feel the fear and do it anyway. And I realized that I had everything within me And within here to make it to start making a difference in my own healing. And over 3 or 4 months every single day Visualizing and starting to change the language, I was talking to myself internally. Started to change the way my body was responding to what was going on, and I started to move and walk. And even though after 3 months I was walking with a walking stick, I was walking but I had empowered my mind through A change of language and saying, I you know, what I can do rather than focusing on what I can't do.

Sophia Kupse:

That's what my body needed to trigger that change and and that's what got me into this because when I presented Myself to the consultant really excited about if I've done it so many other people can do it and he wasn't interested. Don't have a nice life you said, you're 1 in a million, I'm not bothered. So I walked out the office and I started, I changed my career. I went to study and got my master's in research and practice And built 2 successful practices, 1 in Harley Street, London and 1 here in West Yorkshire where I could educate people and empower people To understand it's if you change that self talk and that inner language you can you can start to heal more than you think.

RJ Redden:

He it is it really is more, than than what you think. It really is. There are so many answers out there that are, you know, a bit different, you know, than than what we've taught been taught sometimes. Holy moly. Well so that's kind of what got you got you in there. What keeps you going? What lights you up about being able to help people transform their lives, help people We'll transform their pain.

Sophia Kupse:

I think it's because, Ajay, it's seeing The face of the person when you become when when I work with somebody, they already have an idea that it's it's more than, just a physical. But they wanna be proven right, so they don't give Too much away. So we get to know about the physical story and the medication and how long their chronic pain's been going. And then when They start and I measure the pain score, so I use a system called the MyMop and the MyCore, Which, accredited tools in the NHS that measure pain. And I see someone week 1, and I can do it over Zoom or I see them in the face to face clinic. And then by the 7 7 days later, I rescore them again and I see them and their pain has improved by 50% without Medication are starting to reduce their medication. So how's that possible? Because in the 1st clinic session, We're talking. We're not I'm not physically touching them.

Sophia Kupse:

We're talking about what is what's been going on in their emotional world, And then we start plotting from the map a timeline and then suddenly you see their faces lie open and think, oh gosh. Absolutely. And they connect the the the death of the mother and, the the the or the the issue at work, the bullying with the boss, They've struggled with their personal relationship has led to the pain and then By starting to change the way they look at their, problem, the issue, And see in a different way, they reverse that pain is the pain just reduces and I think to me that lights mute knowing that I've enabled someone to see a different side in dealing with pain that helps them reduce or come off medication that they no longer need because they're using eco friendly solutions that are natural. It's it's simply a mindset Change to change behaviour and and it it's that that drives me to this very day from to continue to do it. So instead of retiring or reducing my hours because I had a big birthday last week, I'm actually Signed new practices, like like to inform people through my Vlogs and through my social media streams of YouTube and my new well-being radio show. So, that's what drives me, I think, To see somebody get out of pain quickly because when you're pain free, you have such an improved quality of life. And and I think if you've ever been in pain, you'll know that when you're in pain, there's very little you can do.

RJ Redden:

Yeah. Yeah. It's the truth. You know, I mean, whenever I whenever I get sick, I, It's just brought very painfully sometimes front and center about how much if you do not have health, mental, physical, you you do not have much, and cannot do much. So yeah. Well, so talking talking about, You know, kind of your, you know, social media and and your the new, the radio. What do you do to engage your audience? How do you, you know, they first hear of you? How do you, how do you engage them beyond that?

Sophia Kupse:

I think I think it is the way forward now. I mean, I've got a I'm a published author. I've done three Self care books now that, become bestsellers on Amazon and but we know now that people aren't just It's gonna be relying on books because we're time poor and people need you to be out there visible on platforms, on your Instagram. You know, this isn't my day. I mean, I just learned PowerPoint 5 years ago. I mean, I wasn't brought up in this, in this level of social media but you know what? I've gotta get with it. So I took on board, the local, BCB Radio in Bradford Looking for new presenters, and I thought, yeah, go for it. Present my own health and well-being and educate 40,000 listeners or whatever.

Sophia Kupse:

And so that's new. I do a virtual clinic once a month that's absolutely free for anybody. They just come on to my website. They register for a free ticket and they've got 60 minutes of education and can ask me anything they want about their pain and how I can help them change Change it. So it's proactively engaging on daily 62nd did you know If you've got pain in x, y, zed here, that you can do this and it's gonna work quicker than a paracetamol. I mean, these little top tips and shares, how I keep people, informed on my social media, as I said, and the radio and, the virtual clinic.

RJ Redden:

I love that virtual clinic idea. I absolutely love it because It's you know, I I have found in, you know and I've been to a lot of college. Let me tell you. I got 3, 4, 5 degrees over here and, and the loans to prove it. And, education is not necessarily an event. It is a journey. Learning about How to listen to when your body is talking to you is not a an event. It is it is a journey.

RJ Redden:

And so You are supporting that by saying, yeah. We're time poor. You know, We have a 3 or 4 hour thing we could do or we'll just give them a little bit, you know, a little bit at a time. That's how people are Really folding knowledge into their existence now. It used to be, you know, oh, do a half a day, you know, workshop or something like that. Okay. Those are good. Nothing against them, but what you are doing now is so important.

RJ Redden:

And so and it just, it just kinda goes to show, you're demonstrating what you're talking about by folding it into what people can handle and and focusing on, and, you know, the the right way to deliver this knowledge. I just think that's

Sophia Kupse:

awesome. Yeah. Because and and that's why I did the 3 course, the 3 online support Digital tools. That means people can inexpensively, have a lifetime access to it. They can do it in the luxury in their own comfort, their own home. They can listen to the the role in 5 minute segments. They can just click and learn about How to triage their pain, how to deal with acute pain quickly or chronic pain or what emotion is connected to that muscle in my body. And and and it all tells a story so they can have these quick fix solutions now that only take a few minutes, at their fingertips, and I think that's what people want now.

Sophia Kupse:

Not like sitting like you said for a full day workshop. That's exhausting. Or trying to access me, you know especially if I've got you know a waitlist so I think it's important that these tools are available and resources because that's the way forward. Isn't

RJ Redden:

it? It really is. You'll you'll give me some of these links so that I can, put these out to people, won't you?

Sophia Kupse:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I'll share the link to my website so people can go to, MBH training.com And then look at the resources or access virtual clinic. And I absolutely adore your car, Cam. I watch all your of cassace. And you always have that sneaky, and they're always wanting to get in on the show just like mine. But the thing is, yes, I will because I think it's important that people if you don't start to, I don't wanna see people when they're being reactive.

Sophia Kupse:

I like people to be Proactive because when we get proactive, we prevent pain and chronic disease. And like you said earlier, your health is your wealth. And once you start buying into pain, it's gonna start to disempower you and your quality of life is impacted. And then the low mood, the poor sleep, the stress happens, and you you're accelerating aging. So If people wanna stay youthful on the outside, they have to take care of the inside, and that means start telling a different story mentally. So physically, they can really start to live the best life, optimize

RJ Redden:

themselves. Optimize. That's the word for it. Optimizing being able to listen and respond to what your body is saying. It's not just I'm getting old. You know? I mean, there's there's lots of things that can happen, and there's lots of things that that can be done. And we've been, You know, we're not helpless when it comes to our health. And I think that that's I'm so glad you're out there Spreading that message and letting people know, you know, that it's not you don't have to change everything all at once.

RJ Redden:

But maybe this coupled with this and and maybe this little mindset right here, you can start to enjoy a better life right now today. I think that's

Sophia Kupse:

Yeah. And my show's called One Small Step on radio, and the reason is because at the end of every session, I work with people. They only have to take 1 small step every day, and that contributes to their wellness. I mean, if you live in the UK, it's very difficult Cool to get to a doctor nowadays because since COVID, everything's changed. So people have got to do it more and more, Starting better care. And if if my processes can help and solutions, that's a win win for me, but for them as well.

RJ Redden:

And you help people

Sophia Kupse:

all over the world. Globally. Yeah. When I did it, when I was in clinic in Harley Street, used to see my global, you know, clients, but now I work, you know, full time online and people can connect with me, from the Emirates. I've got people in Australia and the US working and Europe. So, as long as you can speak English, I I I I I I'm happy to work with you across there because, I'm not bad with Italian. My mom was Italian, but other than that There you There

RJ Redden:

you go. We we

Sophia Kupse:

we we're okay. I can access anyone, and then we can buy into my programs.

RJ Redden:

Man, I I just Sofia, it's so nice to have you here. It's so nice to hear different perspectives. It's so nice to hear that we really are so much more powerful than we think we are, and and, a brilliant accent to boot. Thank you for coming on the show today. You just been a rock star for us.

Sophia Kupse:

Thank you so much for having me and for the listeners for listening. And don't forget, the only person is to trust yourself first And, believe in yourself, and anything and everything is possible.

RJ Redden:

Oh, I can't. There's no better closed than that. Well, you you have it here, epic engagement adventures. You you have it here. You have the truth and wonderful people to bring it to you. I will see you next week. Same bot time. Same bot channel.

RJ Redden:

You know where to find me. You know? We'll be doing more more interviews then. If you have the time and have the inclination, come stop by the wekickbot.com community, where we kick butt. I mean, it's it's in the name. And do take advantage of of the clinics. Take advantage of everything she has to offer. It's important. It's important to take steps.

RJ Redden:

The day that you start is the day that you should have started. Don't worry about it. So that's all I have. Thank you again. And, any final All words of wisdom, my friend.

Sophia Kupse:

Yeah. I mean, as I said, it's, Everyone serves everybody every day, but the most important person to start with is serving yourself. Because when you serve yourself, you can serve everybody else even better.

RJ Redden:

I needed to hear that today. Okay. Now the cat is just on the camera as you could Goggle we see by the whiskers there, so we're gonna go.