Hi, I’m Mike Gilbert
If you’re feeling stuck, I understand.
I support people in recovering from chronic illness, fatigue, and stress-related conditions by helping them reconnect with the natural intelligence of their bodies.
My path into this work began with my own recovery from Long Covid and immune system dysfunction.
That experience taught me—on a deeply personal level—just how profoundly our thoughts, emotions, and physical health are connected. It also ignited a lifelong interest in the neuroscience of change and the mind-body systems that support healing.
Being Stuck
Our unhelpful behaviours and thought patterns often have good intentions.
The anxiety that keeps you awake at night is trying to bring you peace. The fear that holds you back from love wants to protect you. The fatigue that stops you from engaging with the world is attempting to help you recover.
It’s painful to feel at odds with yourself, but it’s never your fault. We do the best we can with what life throws at us. In my case, the stress of the pandemic and my mum’s terminal illness overwhelmed my system, building up ‘allostatic load’—the cumulative wear and tear of chronic stress. When I got Covid, it was like a bridge that had been carrying too much weight, my body just collapsed.
Many people with chronic health issues can trace their decline to a stressful life event.
For me, it was the combination of Covid and losing my mum. That’s why I crashed—but why did I stay sick? How did I end up in a place where, over a year later, the chronic fatigue was so bad that I would struggle to walk for longer than a few minutes or hold a conversation with someone I loved?
Something was keeping me stuck.
My body no longer felt safe, and even simple activities triggered a stress response. I remember when the everyday act of going into the kitchen to prepare dinner put me on high alert. Something my body wasn’t sure it could do. It was an extreme example of a reaction my nervous system had been doing since childhood, trying to keep me safe by pressing the alarm. But no matter who I turned to, no-one seemed able to help me, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I was told, was ‘incurable’ and ‘lifelong.’
Feeling Better
Our bodies are designed to heal.
We don’t have to think about a cut closing or a bone mending—our internal system naturally repairs cells, reduces inflammation, and restores balance.
In the same way, we’re born knowing how to sleep well, digest properly, and feel calm. But life can push us off course, trapping us in cycles of anxiety or illness. When we’re stuck, it feels impossible to break free. Yet, just like a switch rail changes the direction of a train, a shift in nervous system regulation can put us on on the path to recovery —no matter how long we’ve been struggling.
This is what The Lightning Process taught me. It was the most incredible experience to be trained in something that I could use to influence how calm I felt, how much energy I had, and how well my immune system was functioning. There were immediate changes to how I felt and, over the coming months, getting my health back was like stepping into life again. After so long feeling trapped in exhaustion, the simplest things became a source of joy—walking through nature and feeling the air on my skin, cooking a meal and savouring the smells, even doing the washing up with a sense of ease rather than struggle. Meeting friends wasn’t just possible: it was energising.
My world, which had felt so small, started to expand again.
Every day brought a new moment of freedom, and with it, a deeper appreciation for the life I got back. But my journey didn’t stop there. As I regained my physical health, I began to look more closely at the problems I’d had before Covid—my struggles with sleep, anxiety, and stress. I realised that these, too, were patterns I could shift. I became increasingly fascinated by the mind-body connection and how powerful it truly is.
What began as a recovery journey turned into a deeper exploration. I immersed myself in learning more about the relationship between our thoughts and physiology and the impact that beliefs have on our health and wellbeing. Through this work, I discovered how to quiet the restless patterns that had kept me wired for years, how to release old emotional tensions, and how to live with a sense of ease I hadn’t known was possible. It was another powerful awakening—one that transformed not only my health but also the way I experienced life.
Doctors had labelled my condition as “incurable” and “lifelong,” but that wasn’t my reality.
The Lightning Process showed me that so much more was possible, and I knew I had to share what I had learnt. Helping others discover this potential has become my passion—because once you understand how to calm the stress responses that underlie many chronic symptoms and replace them with processes that support energy, clarity, and wellbeing you really can live a healthier and happier life.