When Willpower Isn’t Enough: How Yagerian Therapy Unlocks Real, Sustainable Change
Why Knowledge Is Not the Problem
Most people already know what they should be doing to feel better. Eat clean. Move regularly. Get more sleep. Breathe deeply. Focus on goals instead of obstacles.
And yet — they don’t do it.
Or they do, but only until the next wave of exhaustion, doubt, cravings, or inner resistance hits. And then they slip back into the exact patterns they wanted to leave behind.
This cycle is not about a lack of willpower. It is not laziness. And it is not a character flaw. It is self-sabotage and usually operates far below the surface of conscious awareness.
In my work as a holistic health coach, I see this pattern again and again:
Highly dedicated, capable people who know very well what they should do but struggle to follow through. Not because they do not care about their health but because some part of them is quietly working against their best efforts.
Mindset is the most fundamental lever on your journey to lasting health and vitality. No matter how good your nutrition plan, exercise selection, or sleep protocol is, if your subconscious beliefs and unresolved inner conflicts remain unaligned with your goals, you will get stuck in a fight against yourself. Or worse, you will sabotage your progress without even realizing it.
Yagerian Therapy is the most effective and efficient tool I ever encountered to resolve the subconscious roots of problems, and I use it with great success in my coaching. Because, in many cases, the root cause of our health challenges is not in the body. But in the subconscious mind.
This article is the second in a series introducing the methods and tools I regularly use with my clients. Each one addresses a different modality. Each one highlights a different aspect of overcoming your aches & pains, building lasting health & vitality, and reconnecting with your embodied wisdom.
The Missing Lever: Why Mindset Matters Most
Mindset is not just one part of the equation. Mindset is the lever that makes or breaks your efforts. But when people hear mindset, they often think of motivation, positive thinking, or discipline, but in the context of authentic, lasting health, mindset goes far deeper than that.
It is not just how you think. It is how your system is wired. Mindset includes your beliefs, emotional patterns, internal narratives, and the unconscious strategies you learned to stay safe, accepted, or in control. These patterns often develop early in life, influenced by experiences, relationships, and survival instincts. And while they have served a purpose at some point, many quietly sabotage our health efforts later.
You might know exactly what to eat but find yourself reaching for junk food under stress. You might plan your week to include rest but end up overtraining because slowing down feels unsafe. You might want to sleep more, but something keeps you up late at night. You might crave structure and yet keep breaking your routines.
These contradictions are not signs of weakness. They are signs of inner conflict. If those conflicts remain unresolved, you will continue feeling stuck and pulled in two directions.
What Is Yagerian Therapy?
Yagerian Therapy is a method to resolve the root cause of problems like self-sabotage by working with the part of you that runs the show behind the scenes: your subconscious mind. It is a precise and structured process that helps you access and resolve the internal conflicts that keep you stuck.
The model of Yagerian Therapy works under a few simple fundamental assumptions.
Everything you experience is remembered and stored as part of your subconscious mind. Every stored experience – or part – reflects the limited knowledge and wisdom of the moment of its creation. Each part might have programmed you to think, feel, or act in a certain way in response to the circumstances at that time and your desire to feel safe and seen.
This programming does not have to make rational sense in the light of your current knowledge and understanding. But it remains an influence over you from your subconscious to this day. Most of our core beliefs are not the result of logical considerations but subconscious programming and drive most of our daily actions, feelings, and thoughts on autopilot. They can even influence physical functions via the autonomous nervous system.
The human mind does not only have a conscious and a subconscious part. It also has an extra-conscious part too. While the conscious mind has the will to change, it lacks the tools to achieve it if parts of the subconscious refuse to. However, your extra-conscious mind can resolve the conflict between your conscious will and subconscious programming.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
A young boy of 4 years gets bitten by his neighbor's dog. It is the only dog he knows so far, and to no surprise, he subconsciously learns to fear dogs because 100% of all the dogs he has met have proven to be dangerous. This experience and the subsequent learning are written down in an imaginary diary and stored away as a part of the ever-growing library of his subconscious.
The young boy grows up to become a man. He meets many friendly dogs. But that does not change his panic, increased heartbeat, sweating palms, and shaking legs every time he sees one. The man consciously understands the irrationality of his fear yet can not change it. A part of his subconscious mind still thinks differently.
This man is at least half-lucky because he remembers the incident that created his programming. Most people can not even remember what causes them to think, feel, or act a certain way, let alone change it.
When we try to enter the library of our subconscious mind, attempting to find the old diaries containing our subconscious programming, we rarely uncover anything. And if we do, as in the case of the man, we can not seem to change it. Addicts know very well they are not acting in their best interest. Phobics know very well that their fears are irrational. And yet, it does nothing to help them change. You probably know this feeling.
Fortunately, our extra-conscious mind can do what the conscious mind is ill-equipped for. It can find all these old stories in your subconscious and update them with your current wisdom and understanding.
The old diary entry of the 4-year-old, who only knew one dog that proved to be dangerous, can learn about the many other benevolent dogs the man has encountered in the meantime. The part of his subconscious, convinced it is in the boy's best interest to fear dogs, can now be persuaded to let go.
In short, Yagerian Therapy resolves the root cause of your problem – the inner conflict between your old programming and new intentions with help from the deeper intelligence of your extra-conscious mind.
Patterns that once felt automatic start to loosen. The inner resistance loses its grip. Suddenly, the effort it used to take to push through disappears because you are no longer working against yourself.
And the most remarkable thing? You do not need to relive any trauma. You do not need to explain or understand your story. You do not even need to know what the original cause was.
It is not talk therapy. It is not hypnosis. Therefore, it avoids the common problems associated with those methods.
Common Patterns Yagerian Therapy Helps With
Most health challenges are not a matter of understanding better lifestyle habits but applying them. If more information could solve your problems, you would have resolved them three podcasts ago or before you started the next self-help book.
Here are some of the most common patterns I see in my clients who struggle to commit to their best intentions. Yagerian Therapy has proven to make the change every time:
Self-sabotage despite best intentions: You follow the plan until something in you pulls the brake. That happens again and again.
Resistance to change: You want to change, but every time you start, it feels like a battle against yourself. You can hear a quiet No inside you that blocks your progress.
Unexplained anxiety or shame: Emotions that arise without any explainable cause. Lingering feelings that do not respond to logic or willpower.
Chronic fatigue or pain without an explainable diagnosis: You have tried everything, but your body still feels heavy, tight, or inflamed.
Feeling stuck: Even though you do everything, nothing seems to change. You sense that something deeper must move, but you do not know what.
Emotional blocks from past experiences or relationships: You might not remember the specifics, or you might not want to talk about them. But they still shape your reactions, fears, and limitations.
Further than that, Yagerian Therapy has also been used successfully for a wide range of chronic physical health issues, including:
Allergies
Asthma
Digestive issues and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
Chronic pain and muscular tension
Migraines
Sleep disturbances
While it may sound strange to some, most physical symptoms have at least a subconscious component. That does not mean the symptom is imagined or just in your head. But some unresolved, probably unnoticed, inner conflict contributes to it.
If you have seen the Roadmap to Health video – my 25-minute masterclass about how I work – you might remember my client Vincent, who resolved various food allergies. Yagerian Therapy is the method we have used to achieve what some deem impossible.
Why and How I Use Yagerian Therapy in Embodied Education
Yagerian Therapy is not a standalone tool. It is one of several precise interventions I use to support lasting transformation. But it plays a pivotal role because it often clears the path for more health-affirming lifestyle changes.
In Embodied Education, we address health systemically. We explore how your mind, breath, nutrition, recovery, and movement interact and how hidden dysfunction in one area can ripple through the whole system. But in many cases, the most subtle block is also the most powerful: unresolved inner conflict.
That is where Yagerian Therapy comes in. It does not replace breath retraining, nutrition coaching, or postural alignment. It prepares the ground for them to take root. Let me give you an example.
I work with many clients who struggle with asthma. Without exception, they show signs of chronic overbreathing and low CP scores. (The CP reflects your body's ability to tolerate and utilize carbon dioxide, a key marker of respiratory health. I explained the CP score in my previous blog post on the pivotal role of breath retraining in a holistic health approach.) But here is the interesting part: Not everyone with poor breathing develops asthma. There must be a specific emotional or psychological trigger, a deeper imprint that causes the system to react with an asthmatic response. That imprint lives in the subconscious, and most people do not even know.
Yagerian Therapy helps us find and resolve that trigger quickly, precisely, and without needing to revisit traumatic memories. Once the subconscious block gets lifted, asthma attacks disappear.
But that is just the beginning. The person might still breathe poorly, leading to their digestion being slow, their sleep disrupted, and their energy low. But something essential has shifted: they no longer live in fear. They are no longer reactive. They no longer depend on an inhaler. That freedom releases trapped energy we can now use to retrain their breathing patterns and improve their digestion, sleep, and energy levels.
With the internal conflict removed and the nervous system no longer in survival mode, the body becomes receptive. That is how Yagerian Therapy fits into the bigger picture. It aligns your internal system so the lifestyle changes in breathing, rest, nutrition, and physical activity can take root and flourish.
We can not build sustainable health on top of unresolved conflict, nor should we attempt to.
Client Example: Pieter
Pieter is a young and ambitious man with big dreams and goals. He wants to conquer the world and knows he is well-equipped for that journey – intelligent, educated, and good-looking. But first, he had to conquer himself. Although he knew what he wanted to do, he had great difficulties taking the initiative and gaining momentum. At times, he would struggle to even get out of bed.
Through Yagerian Therapy, we quickly and efficiently removed the subconscious programming that was holding him back. The internal resistance fell off. He is no longer standing in his own way.
What once felt like effort became momentum. Now, energy flows where his intention goes, and action follows naturally.
🎥 Watch what Pieter has to say about Yagerian Therapy:
Conclusion: When Willpower Is Not Enough
We all know what we should do. Eat well. Move often. Sleep better. Breathe gently. And yet, we often fail to follow through. Not because we are lazy or uncommitted but because something deeper stands in the way.
When that resistance comes from the subconscious, discipline will not fix it. You will feel stuck. You will feel frustrated. And you might start to question yourself. But the problem is not your conscious will. The problem is your subconscious programming. Yagerian Therapy helps realign them. It resolves the inner blocks that create friction, sabotage, and resistance so that change no longer feels like a fight against yourself.
Health comes from wholeness. It is the integration of all aspects of yourself, your mind, body, and soul.
If you want to know more about my integrated, holistic approach, I encourage you to watch the Roadmap to Health. Discover how mindset, breath, nutrition, and recovery work together to help you build lasting vitality.