Vex King on his new book, Healing is the New High

Virgin Radio

13 May 2021, 10:39

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Best-selling author Vex King joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about his new book, Healing is the New High: A Guide to Overcoming Emotional Turmoil and Finding Freedom. 

The author’s new self-improvement book follows his Sunday Times Best Seller, Good Vibes, Good Life, which was released in 2018 and sold over half-a-million copies worldwide. When recapping what his first book is about, he told Chris that it’s, “an easy-to-digest guide, that shows you how you can love yourself and how loving yourself is the key to creating a life you love. Now, there is a bit of spiritual woo woo there, but it’s really kind of digestible and accessible and it’s really hands-on and practical, so you can start applying those things in your life right away.” 

When discussing the “woo woo” spirituality of his books, Vex said, “I was put off all of that language. I grew up homeless for three years, my dad died when I was six months old. I face a lot of racism, lots of trauma, so some of that language wasn’t necessarily well received by me and I thought, ‘well, there is no point to this, because I’m suffering and I’m staying in my suffering.’”

He went on, “Then I opened myself up to these ideas... I like to think of things as a science experiment, and even when you read some of the spiritual texts, they say, ‘look at the scriptures, don’t reject them, but go and sit with them, and experience them, and only then will you acquire real wisdom, because wisdom is the result of a lived experience, rather than you reading and reciting other people’s wisdom.”

Following on from his hugely successful debut book, Healing is the New High is a guide to inner healing, with step-by-step techniques, as well as motivational practices to discover newfound freedoms and confidence. He teaches you how to become your own healer and raise your vibration, make positive changes to transform your life, create an effective belief system and respect your own boundaries. One of the issues he deals with is trauma. He told Chris, “I think there are a lot of things that help when it comes to trauma but, a lot of times, the approach is the band aid approach, so you just place it over the symptom and pretend everything else is ok, but we don’t actually realise that there are other things. There might be a pain pattern deep within the recesses of our subconscious mind or even in some of the energetic layers of our existence that we need to address.

“Our body records every single thing that we go through and leaves an impression, so sometimes we might feel a certain pain in our body and not realise that, actually, that’s linked to some form of trauma or something that we’ve gone through in the past that we need to address. 

“So it’s just working with all the layers of our existence, rather than thinking, ‘I just need to go to therapy to speak to someone about this,’ or, ‘I just need to take medication.’ It’s, ‘what can I do to look at myself as a whole, beyond the physical body, and take care of my emotions, take care of my mind, take care of my body and everything else?’

Continuing the conversation with Chris, Vex spoke of the ways in which we try to find highs in life. “We seek highs through either synthetic drugs, or sometimes it’s by feeding an addiction. It could be an addiction to work, it could be an addiction to social media, because there is instant gratification. You receive a Like and it releases Dopamine, and you want more of it and you continue to feed that cycle. The problem with those highs is they’re temporary, they temporarily make us feel like we have transcended our troubles until we need more of them. 

“When you actually go and heal yourself, you experience a more sustainable, truthful, organic high that you can return to no matter what you’re facing. You’re not getting rid of all your problems, all you are doing is building that mental resilience and confidence, so when things do challenge you, you start to remember, actually, there is a self inside of me that’s my innate nature, that’s my core, this equilibrium that I can return to, and everything is going to be okay.

“A lot of the time, we are looking to feed our joy externally, and there are a lot of things that contribute to our happiness, but really happiness is based inside of us, it’s based on our perception, and that’s why the same event can be subjectively experienced differently by two different people. For example, if I’m at a train station, and the train is late, someone might be really annoyed and be like, ‘Oh my god, the train’s late and I’m going to get home late,’ whereas the other person’s perception might be, ‘Well actually, the train’s late but at least I’m going to get home.’ So who is going to feel better about the two?”

During their conversation, Vex told Chris about performing a body scan, which is a simple thing that all of us can do. “It’s basically laying down when you’re completely comfortable, or having your knees raised towards the ceiling, and it’s just literally going through every part of your body, starting with your toes and working your way up, and just feeling, observing and seeing and feeling if there is any tension within your body.

“It’s not that you’re going to heal your body in that moment, but it gives clues. If there is any tension, or if there is something in your mind that says, ‘actually, I don’t want to spend too  much time in that area’ that resistance is a clue that there is probably some form of energy blockage there.

He went on to explain the best way to do a body scan. “Maybe do them first time in the morning, away from your bed, on the floor. Lie down and literally just pay attention. This isn’t about judging the pain that you might feel, or any stress that you might feel. It’s just becoming aware, and once you are aware, you might then think, ‘Right, I can invest some effort, maybe through yoga, qi gong, Thai chi’, whatever it is. Just some kind of movement or something that nurtures your physical body, especially in those particular areas, because there might be some kind of trauma that you’re holding in that particular area, that needs to be cleared.”

Vex also spoke about the importance of engaging with helpful thoughts. “The mind is just this mental capacity. It’s this space, and within this space, all your thoughts exist and you can literally watch them fly past and think, ‘That’s helpful, I’ll hang on to that. That’s not helpful.’

“Us just engaging with unhelpful thoughts keeps them in that mode of survival. And that’s why it’s important to engage with the thoughts that actually help you move forward; something that empowers you, inspires you, and just kind of evokes a creative energy, makes you want to do more and be curious.”

Healing is the New High: A Guide to Overcoming Emotional Turmoil and Finding Freedom, is out now.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.