Person-Centred Neurosciences Society

14/01/2026

At this time of year, there are so many messages about renewal, fresh starts, & setting intentions for the year ahead.

They’re well-meant — & for some people, genuinely helpful.

But we’ve also been noticing something quieter that often sits underneath.

As the weeks go by, the energy of “new beginnings” can fade, & many people are left feeling tired, overwhelmed, or wondering why they’re not feeling the way they think they should.

Not because they’ve failed — but because they’re human.

Many of the conversations I’ve had recently circle around quietly holding things together, caring for others, or carrying worries that don’t easily fit into a resolution or a plan.

Over the past few weeks, a number of conversations — including those sparked by the TV show 'Live Well with the Drug-Free Doctor' — have shone a light on how lifestyle changes can support health & wellbeing.

What struck me most wasn’t just the changes themselves, but how often improvement seemed to follow when people felt listened to, supported, & safe enough to change.

Through the work we do at Person-Centred Neurosciences Society (P-CNS) we've come to believe that much of what we call “emotional” or “mental” difficulty isn’t a fault, a weakness, or a lack of motivation. It’s often a very understandable response to experiences, environments, and pressures that have built up over time — especially when people don’t feel properly heard.

That’s why we keep returning to a simple idea:
Change tends to happen more easily when people feel safe — not when they feel pushed, judged, or fixed.

Lifestyle changes, coping strategies, even treatment plans work best when they reduce pressure rather than add to it.

When people feel listened to, understood, & taken seriously, capacity for change often follows naturally. So as this new year continues, it felt important to start less with advice — but with listening.

If you’d like a quiet way to add your voice, I’m sharing two surveys below.

They’re not about labels or right & wrong answers. They’re simply an invitation to share lived experience, so that health & wellbeing services can be shaped in ways that meet emotional health needs more humanely & more wisely.

If this feels relevant to you, you’re very welcome to take part.
And if it doesn’t, that’s completely okay too.

Survey links:

My Diagnosis Survey - questions related to a diagnosis of non-neuro longterm conditions e.g. diabetes, asthma, Arthritis, Crohn's disease, PCOS
https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/FRLSQDW

My Neuro-Mental Health Diagnosis Survey - same questions relating to conditions seen as either dysregulated brain function, such as ADHD, Epilepsy, MS, Parkinson's, Migraine, Brain Tumours, Parkinson's or generally labelled as mental health condition e.g. depression, schizophrenia....
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GMKTKPP

Sometimes the most important first step toward better health
isn’t trying to fix ourselves — but feeling properly heard.

06/01/2026

🌿 Environ-MENTAL Health

Much of what we now label as mental or neurological difficulty may be better understood as a human nervous system responding to environments that have become too fast, too loud, too dense — and too disconnected from nature.

Modern life asks us to project constantly: to speak, perform, react.

But how often are we asked questions that allow us to settle rather than defend?

What happens when the questions change?

When environments are chronically stimulating, unpredictable, or emotionally demanding, nervous systems adapt.

Those adaptations may later be named as symptoms or diagnoses.

But what if, before naming or fixing anything, we simply asked:
• When in your day do things feel easier?
• Where do you notice yourself not needing to brace or push?
• What situations leave you with energy rather than taking it away?

These are not diagnostic questions.
They are orienting ones.

Our bodies are constantly responding to surroundings — long before we explain what’s happening.

So we might also ask:
• When do you feel most like yourself, without effort?
• Who, or what, allows you to exhale — even a little?
• What environments help you soften rather than stay alert?

Often, the body answers before the mind does.

And long before illness, exhaustion, or burnout appear, there is usually a quieter question waiting to be heard:

“Why does this now require so much effort?”

Rebalancing our environments — toward spaces that are calmer, greener, more spacious, more relational — is not a luxury.

It is a foundation for individual wellbeing, community resilience, and sustainable health.

Perhaps the next step forward is not doing more,
but asking better questions —
and listening more deeply to people, to bodies, and to the environments we are all shaping together.

⸻

04/01/2026

🌱 A quiet reflection on colour blindness, neurodiversity, and “symptoms”

The way a society responds to difference quietly shapes health.
Cultures that make room for variation tend to nourish it.

This reflection arose during a period of quiet — walks in nature, moments of stillness — and from thinking about my (Neil Bindemann) own experiences of seeing “with” colour blindness, and that it is not as a defect, but as a reminder that human beings do not all sample the world in the same way.

Some people see “the number” immediately.

Some see something different.

Some don’t see a number at all — but notice pattern, texture, or space.

None of these are mistakes.

This feels increasingly relevant when we talk about neurodiversity
and what we so often label as “symptoms”.

Very often, those outward signs are not signals of illness, but signs of an environmental mismatch — a nervous system responding intelligently to a world that speaks too loudly,
moves too quickly,
or recognises only one way of processing meaning.

Just as colour blindness reflects a different way of interacting with light,
many neurodiverse expressions reflect different ways of interacting with language, sensation, tone, and pace.

When environments only recognise one version of “normal,”
difference can begin to look like difficulty.

Perhaps part of our work now is not to keep fixing people, but to become more curious about the conditions
we are asking nervous systems to live within.

Not because anything is broken —
but because diversity has always been here. ❤️🙏

01/01/2026

Sharing a few thoughts for 2026 with our followers.

A New Year reflection

As the first day of a New Year arrives, I’m thinking of how snowdrops quietly appear —
not forcing their way through winter,
but responding when conditions allow.

I’ve come to see that our bodies are like that too.

What society, and many cultures across the world, have come to call illness may not be something broken,
but a whole, intelligent system that has been protecting for a long time —
staying braced, holding its breath, keeping emotional responses small in order to remain safe.

Many of these protective patterns are learned quietly,
through the social, cultural, and environmental worlds we grow up in —
long before they ever become conscious choices.

When safety begins to return —
through understanding, kindness, connection, and time in nature —
those patterns can soften.

The nervous system can recalibrate.
Emotional health can rebalance.
And the immune system, guided by the same quiet intelligence,
can begin to respond with less defence and more discernment.

Not because the body was wrong,
but because it was doing its best with the conditions it had.

Perhaps this is also a message worth carrying forward —
for younger generations learning who they are in a fast, demanding world —
that nothing needs to be forced for growth to begin.

Like the snowdrop,
nothing is rushed,
nothing is broken —
and yet, something new becomes possible.

22/12/2025

For many people, a neurological or mind-related diagnosis affects far more than symptoms alone.

We’re inviting people to share — anonymously — what their diagnosis has meant for them, emotionally and personally. There’s no rush and no pressure; many choose to return to this during a quieter moment.

🧠 My Neuro Diagnosis – What it Means for Me

Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

18/12/2025

A contemplation…

This is a time of year when the “magic in the air” can sometimes overshadow a quieter, deeper kind of magic.

The magic that fuels the giving of gifts across the world, beginning with those brought by Father Christmas, is familiar and visible.

And yet — there is another kind of magic.

And that magic?

It is the quiet, deeply human feeling that arises when family and friends travel long distances simply to be together at this very special time of year.

Perhaps, as we all begin to wind down in the run-up to Christmas and through the New Year, you might take a moment to pause.

To reflect.

To feel the presence of those whose physical touch may no longer be with us, but whose emotional presence remains.

Sometimes, presence is the most enduring gift of all.

06/11/2025

is not separate from the body.

It is part of the same self-regulation system that supports recovery, balance, and adaptation.

This becomes especially clear in the lived experience of .

We often talk about Parkinson’s in terms of dopamine and movement.

But the body is always regulating itself — responding to stress, to support, and to relationship.

The systems involved in Parkinson’s — movement, energy metabolism, inflammation, sleep, and emotional expression — are not separate.

They are linked through the body’s self-regulation and recovery network.

This means that lifestyle-based approaches — movement, nourishment, emotional expression, breath, rest, meaningful connection — are biologically active.

They act on the same underlying physiology that emerging medications in the EJS ACT-PD platform trial are designed to support.

So this is not about willpower.
And it is not about “staying positive.”

It is about supporting the conditions through which the nervous system restores itself.

Medication and lifestyle are not competing models.
They are two ways of accessing the same recovery mechanisms.

In the article linked, this shift is explored in more depth — alongside parallels with the reframing that occurred in Type 2 diabetes when lived experience and research began to align.

If the way we understand Parkinson’s is changing…
then the way we support people living with it needs to change too.

And if both medication and lifestyle influence the same recovery pathways, should future drug trials also compare their effects with lifestyle-based approaches, not only placebo?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lifestyle-parkinsons-neurophysiological-regulation-model-bindemann-wuw4e/

Parkinson's UK Parkinson's Centre For Integrated Therapy Parkinson's Foundation Best Practice Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust Best Practice Matthew's Friends Ketogenic Therapies charity Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council Neuro Convention Avicenna Pharmacy Tonbridge Cottage Hospital League of Friends Medway Neurological Network KetoCollege - Medical Ketogenic Dietary Therapies training Community Catalysts Kent BBC Kent Young onset Parkinsons Medscape Neurology

A growing body of research points to neurophysiological regulation and recovery as key influences in Parkinson’s progression — linking emotional expression, movement, inflammation, and cellular energy systems through shared brain–body pathways. (Hornykiewicz, 2017; Evans et al.

29/10/2025

And just following on from the previous post about As Prescribed, is this one.

17/10/2025

Why we support services to rebalance a person's

Both these images, posted on an Facebook support group, relate to the most remarkable living experience of a man who attends our in Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council supported by the likes of Community Catalysts Kent Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust Tonbridge Cottage Hospital League of Friends

It all began 3 years ago, when Hugh and I (Neil Bindemann) sat down in a local coffee shop, after I'd met Hugh at our first Neurocafetonbridge.org.uk.

There, he shared he had been living with a diagnosis of for 51 years. He experienced a first seizure only a few days old following a .

I was curious to better understand his significant anger and what seem to be, considerable fear.

It was during that first, more in-depth conversation that learn more about his current stresses and worries along with his prescribed medications.

Next stop, the local neurologist to request a change in medication.

And that was the start of a very gradual transformation into a man who no one, including me, new was 'in there'.

That transformation coincided with a very, very gradual reduction in the dose of epilepsy medication, along with non-epilepsy medications, he had been prescribed.

To keep a long story short - 3 years to be exact; I took Hugh up the largest and conference held at the NEC Birmingham, Best Practice to be contribute to a panel with 3 Lifestyle Medicine Practitioners

And who the audience got to meet is a dramatically different man to who I first met, with very different emotions.

Not only has this experience with Hugh been an absolute joy, it has highlighted other vitally important points, including:

That a diagnosis of epilepsy can be temporary and is reversible, through great care, which includes reducing the dosage extremely slowly and over an agreed time frame.

That introducing any chemical (including medications, as prescribed) into the body impacts a person's emotions, with the level of impact likely dependant on a person's state of emotional health - as clearly shown through the work of Hardman with her power film As Prescribed

The need for more people to learn of alternative, more lifestyle orientated approaches including how foods we eat, and relaxation therapy, deliver great measurable outcomes.

For instance - we have known, ever since the time of Sir Ernest H. Shackleton Appreciation Society that a low carb diet can control seizures.

Tonbridge Old Fire Station The Pup Cup British Neuroscience Association Basil Wholefoods Martin Gillespie Tonbridge Old Fire Station Finch House Yummzy - Sinfully Guiltless Desserts Matthew's Friends Ketogenic Therapies charity Tonbridge Daily Avicenna Pharmacy brainstrust Medway Neurological NetworkNeuro Convention Neuroscience News and Research Barrow Neurological Institute Epilepsy Research Institute Epilepsy Ireland Epilepsy Action KetoCollege - Medical Ketogenic Dietary Therapies training Keto Food Therapy Ketobakery.co.uk

01/10/2025

Neil Bindemann PhD, P-CNS Exec Director and Neuro-Immunologist, in this short article first posted on LinkedIn, shares some of the evidence-based research, highlighting a very significant ‘hidden cost’ associated with antidepressant medications. To read the short post and why this needs urgent attention visit our website at https://p-cns.org.uk/the-hidden-sensory-cost-of-antidepressants-and-the-therapeutic-value-of-fasting/

26/07/2025

This post may not be about what you were or are thinking.

26/07/2025

There is something striking about this (& the science in this) very well respected, and rightly so, book.

And that “something” may well be a reflection of a shift to being :

How does the body manage to “keep the score”, when , despite the millions of £$ spent on research, still cannot “find” where in the brain our memories are “kept”?

Perhaps this is why memory should not be regarded as simply a function of the brain; And that there is so much more to the than "meets the eye" or should that by "I"?

What if memory is simply a concept created by “pattern” activity in the brain, stimulated via the likes of sensory information.

Then of course, when a memory is experienced, is it not always in that “moment” the memory “appears” ie “always now”?

To give you a sense of how this can translate to a common experience:

Let’s take the high street of a town you first visit, which is one you are planning to move to.

Have you ever noticed how your first ever experience of that high street, never seems to match what you experience the next time)?

Or the first time you meet someone and then meet again?

Your brain has created a pattern of electrical activity through all the senses. Next time you visit, that pattern is repeated - it isn’t “new” anymore. Therefore that “newness” has “gone”.

However, what will be going on, is that more detail gradually gets noticed and added.