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Losing weight should't be expensive or complicated. The ideal process would reduce our stress while driving results. Dr. Z weaves together his perspective on physical and mental health and the powerful way that fasting can connect these two spheres of our lives. Let's move toward total wellness and a holistic vision of health and healing. Learn more at SimpleFasting.com
I was thinking about regrets that I've had, things that I've been angry about, and I was thinking about
the flow
that that really regret is like a reaction.
And then it can flow in different directions. So
one of those ways that it can flow, I was coming up with a whole bunch of D's.
That it can flow into at discouragement, disillusionment,
depression.
regret can have us flowing in that direction.
And then I was seeing okay
regret can then flow into anger.
And that was leading to a space
of resentment. And as I was just thinking about it yesterday, I was like, well, resentment is like chronic anger,
like a deep seated, always present
anger at someone or something.
Some situation.
And then I was seeing that connection. Then, like we talk a lot about on the channel, the connection between our emotional physical state,
we did the talk, I think was one of my favorite talks that I put together on inflammation and chronic disease, because that's what really bridges the gap that we see, the connection that they're the same, our emotional states bridging in
to our physical body, in our experience of health, in the body, because we said it's only a construct that lets us split it out like it's two different things.
The body. The mind is the same thing. So it makes sense ultimately that these things, boil down to the same place.
So I felt like a natural flow to me to come out of that regret space and then flow into that anger space. I've personally had a couple things I've been angry about lately,
and so I thought it would be good, you know, both, personally and then for us to say, what?
What does that mean? What is happening here? So we'll, dig into that together today.
One of the things I've been exploring lately, just this fasting, a very simple process.
Simple doesn't mean easy,
but simple means we can describe what this is and only a sentence or two.
But then we can also dive really deep on it
fast and get into a deep emotional space. Anger in a very deep, emotional space.
So here I want to give you a couple quotes like I've been doing.
Here's where we start out.
Anger. Only one letter short of danger.
So this is, I think, the place really to start a reflection.
Anger.
We can externalize it to some degree. So anger is out there. We say we're angry at something. Something is is happened. Something is not right. Anger is like a warning. This is what I want
us to see.
Anger is warning us in some fashion. Something is not right. Anger, like danger should be telling us. But what we see as we get into it.
Anger is really internal. Anger is the emotional experience of taking some external thing that is not right and then bringing it inside. Now it can do something very good.
Start treating anger like a warning sign. That's what I was seeing yesterday when I was reflecting personally. Okay, on regrets and things. So here are some things I'm kind of angry about.
Anger can be useful to the extent like this is alerting us to a problem. Anger can be harmful when we don't let go of it, and we internalize it and we keep it with us. Just like yesterday, we're talking about holding onto regrets.
We don't want to hold on to anger.
Then it can spiral. Then it can set us on many different,
paths that are not in the direction that we want to be going. If we're on a weight loss path, if we're on a health path. Anger is one of those things. Just like regret, like we said yesterday, that can drag us down and get us stuck in a space.
But it can be a warning and warnings have purposes. I was thinking a lot about our discussions that we've had,
in previous streams about disease as a teacher, and this is a concept that I really love and I've found to be exceptionally
helpful medically. So what is the, communication that a disease is showing? What is the message from the body?
How do we interact with it in a way that brings things into balance? You can see emotions can be teachers also. So just like disease is teacher, we say we don't like it, but then it can teach.
We see a negative emotion,
anger return for it as a negative emotion.
Can be certain positives to it though. Can be a warning sign. Can be showing us where there is need for attention, where there is need for help and healing.
Look at this quote.
From tarot gold.
Let go of anger. It is an acid that burns away the delicate layers of your happiness.
Have you experienced this? Have you experienced anger like an acid?
I think this is such a thoughtful way to frame it. The delicate layers of our happiness. So easy
to
fade away. So easy to be dissolved. Dissolved. Happiness.
This is one of the the big things that I want for people to help people find a place of happiness.
To me, the deeper spaces of happiness is not, you know, entertainment,
or something superficial. Deep happiness is about finding an emotional space of peace and contentment.
This is the interface that we are at with fasting, where we're trying to find peace and contentment in the body without food. That's building a very strong, stable
relationship with food.
Using that as a pattern more broadly in life to find happiness, peace and contentment in life, something that is, is very, absent in general in our modern society. Think of news, think of social media, think of all the pressure.
Think of consumption culture. We talk about that a lot. Think of all the ways that people are trying to bring in something a distraction, a purchase, some type of consumption of food or something, trying to bring happiness
and really
happiness resides inside of us. And a lot of it is like it's not bringing in more things to try to consume.
Happiness is like, how do we get rid of stuff?
How do we get rid of the regret? How do we get the anger out if that's struggling? And so many things that flow out of that? The discouragement and the
anxiety, the depression, the anger, the frustration, resentment, all these things, you take those things away and you find that happiness was there all along.
This has been my experience. We're on a weight loss path.
See, you just hypothetical person comes in for a weight loss consult.
What are we what are we trying to do? Like remember we said happiness isn't just a number. We aren't just trying to get a scale in a certain place. Of course, that's part of it. We want that these things are connected.
To me, what has been the most meaningful experiences is to try to say, how do I build a way of being in the world where I'm letting go of these things, finding peace and contentment? When we're finding a mental space like that, it makes any weight loss process easier,
whether that's an exercise path. Someone says,
you know, I'm I'm doing a fasting based, thinking here, but nobody has to do it.
I want people to have wellness in any fashion that they want someone says, hey, I've let go of these things. This is helping me to get more active. So I don't really want to do fasting. If you can find a weight loss path that works for you, I'd love to help you do it. If it's not, fasting is no problem at all.
The default for me though, has been
that this is actually the path of least resistance. It's counterintuitive to start, say, all fasting sounds difficult. Sounds like that would be adding something to it. Then when we see of this with anger, these are giving mirrors. Oh, I see, happiness actually is residing in here. Do you believe that? Have you experienced that?
So we have to let go of these things to find happiness is the same thing. Happiness is in here. Health is inside of us.
Remove the anger.
Remove these chronic negative emotions. Do you see how that's feeding into the state of the body? The chronic stress and inflammation that then is upstream of so many of the things that we struggle with,
like eating to cope with an emotional state?
Okay. It helps, right? We've described food as like medicine, right? For to make you feel better helpful in the short term. But then you can develop a dependency on it that is not healthy. Obviously, we're physically dependent on food we have to eat to run this system, and so we're dependent on food physically for our nutrition and nourishment.
But emotionally,
are we depending on food in an emotional way that is covering over some deep emotional work that we need to do inside to let go of the things that are weighing us down? Maybe anger is one of those things that is weighing you down in so many different ways, that we can be angry both at ourselves, at other people, at experiences that have happened or haven't happened.
So as reflecting on this yesterday and a quote came into my mind, it took me quite a while to find it. I had read it a while. But I want to share this with you, because this is
something that, that I have really found personally
to be quite profound.
I want you to really think of this, this
metaphor.
I think is really profound.
When we are upset, it is easy to blame others.
The true cause of our feelings, however, is within us.
For example,
imagine yourself as a glass of water.
Now imagine past negative experiences as sediment at the bottom of your glass.
Next, think of others as spoons.
When stirred, the sediment clouds your water.
It may appear that the spoon caused the water to cloud, but if there were no sediment, the water would remain clear.
The key then, is to identify our sediment and actively work to remove it.
I found that to be a really profound thought.
It's a difficult thought. I think it is a difficult thought
when we are struggling with anger
or any negative emotion, any negative emotional state.
Look what it says. Easy to blame others is taking responsibility off of self for it. And you know, maybe someone else started say someone did something wrong to us. Easy to blame them for it and perhaps they are deserving of you.
Say some amount of blame,
but that's not the emotion. That might be the thing that happened, but it's not the actual emotion.
Look what it's saying. The true cause of our feelings.
Not that the event was okay. Remember the talk we did on forgiveness? When you forgive someone, it's not about, you know, blessing someone with forgiveness. It's about taking the emotional weight off of ourselves.
True cause of our feelings is within us. This is something I really struggled with when I I heard it,
I was like, is that really true?
But I've I've come to believe it really is true.
We have to be able to personally let go of the emotions of the negative experiences we have. Otherwise we keep them with us like sediment down at the bottom of the glass.
And this is the thing about sediment, right? The sediment. Think of it in the glass. It could just be a thin layer at the bottom. You don't even see it. And so then in the normal experience you say, well, the glass looks clear.
But then it gets stirred up. Realize it it it is still with us. This is what happens when we don't let go of these things.
Maybe we're pretending that they're gone. We're in denial. We've buried them deep. Everything is kind of subtle down there. But then they come to the surface. Something gets stirred up.
I got angry the other day and I was reminded of this, and then I felt a little convicted.
I was like, oh, there's obviously some sediment here. That's what I was thinking.
Wouldn't it be great to be in a perfect state? That's what I was thinking, like, oh, I wish I was in a perfect state. No sediment. Some upsetting thing happened. Swirled up the water. It remained clear this would be the perfect goal.
So do a little check in for yourself. Do you experience that? Do you get swirled up in a space?
Is there sediment that is coming into your glass?
That's like the other quote, the warning sign, the danger. Anger is so close to danger. It's a warning. They're saying there is a problem here. There is an emotional issue here that has not been resolved. Maybe we haven't been realizing it. Maybe it's been like sediments sunk down at the bottom of the glass.
But when we become aware of it, then the key
identify it. Don't blow it over. So many times you say, oh, we get angry. We just try to bury it again.
Use the anger as an opportunity to ask a question, maybe a deep and profound question.
Like here would be a question that I was thinking of yesterday that I never thought to ask. Like, how is this anger trying to help me?
We interpret anger is being negative. Here would be a way to turn on how is the anger trying to help me or teach me?
Show me
what needs healing, what needs emotional work and attention?
Michael, this quote ends
actively do the work of removing it.
Remove the sediment. Help bring the system back into a peaceful state.
Less reactive. Less impulsive. The burden of this gone. This is how we bring that chronic stress level down.
Help to bring inflammation down in the body. This is then feeding through into the rest of our cycle. Less inflammation, better hormonal state in the body, less insulin resistance, easier access to body fat because the hormones are not conflicted in that space.
We're trying to get into a flow state. This is the thing we want, right? Where everything we have been saying has been going. We want to be able to flow through a state, flow through a space in our life without struggling.
We say losing weight isn't easy. If it was easy to do, we say everybody could just do it.
It wouldn't be multibillion dollar market for pharmaceuticals. There would not be any kind of struggle
is a challenge on many levels.
And so we're in a space where we say we look at this reality, we recognize this reality. We don't run away from it.
But the purpose then of it is to say, in the face of the challenge,
we want to make the process as easy as possible. We want to find a way to move through that space.
As easily, simply, gracefully. Peacefully, thoughtfully as possible.
This is why I spend, you know, a lot of my time and these emotional sort of things.
You see, for some season, for some path, say we can brute force our way there.
That would be like
just get the scale, look at the scale, start a spreadsheet, track the calories, ramp up the exercise, dieting these things. Try to brute force our way into a weight loss path. Can work for the right person. For the right amount of time.
Nothing wrong with it per se.
Fasting. Showing us a little bit of a different perspective though,
which is to say, all so much of that practice brute forcing, weight loss, forcing it in a in a direction.
Creep can create an adversarial relationship with our own body, like we're fighting it and struggling against it. Can lead us itself into a place of anger. We're talking yesterday about regret, about how it's a punishment that we inflict on ourselves.
A health pass can become a punishment. We, you know, we this is when we get into a space where the mindset is conflict.
The mindset is punishing the body. You know, exercise can become like a punishment. Restricting of our eating can become like a punishment. Trying to force the body anything can drive a lot of anger, frustration, resentment just in that space.
And that's the sort of dynamic in a health space
that to me is not healthy, is not a healthy mindset at all to have.
I really tell people
practice or a process of health should be like a joyful exploration, should be healthy, positive and encouraging. It should be about building a healthy,
thoughtful, joyful relationship with the body and with food. All these things should be positive. And so if if we're feeding on an anger, an emotion of anger to drive progress in weight loss,
not not a pleasant way to go through.
I love the analogy of like a sailboat. I keep saying because I love it, especially on just a nice day with a gentle breeze just blowing across a lake, not doing a lot of work, not struggling.
A path of anger toward health is like a path of struggle, and I definitely see a lot of people with that. A lot of people, you know, at the gym struggling with it.
I love going to the gym. I'm a big exerciser. I want to inspire people to do a lot of exercise. Okay. Is so good for the body.
Human being is meant to move, so good for our emotional and physical space. Like please do it, but don't inflict exercise on yourself as a punishment. For goodness sake, don't be angry at the body. Don't come from a place of anger and then take it out on yourself. It'll only work until you've burned out and and it won't be a joyful exploration that can sustain a lifelong,
process of health.
So that would be another space to look in for the sediment. You know, just our actual health practice
is our health practice. Bringing joy and helping to burn through the stress, or is it causing it? So if a health practice is causing stress, no, no, no fasting giving us a perspective of openness,
saying, hey, here is something I like to say, let fasting do the work.
Now you don't have to burn yourself out in any process. To me, this is how we turn the whole thing around. You're just coming to it, you say, oh, fasting seems intense. Seems like something I wouldn't want to do until you see, okay. Fasting is openness. Fasting is giving my body just open space. The body knows what to do.
Body knows where energy is in the body and how to access and use it. It's like, okay, we can like the only thing we have to do is nothing. That's like taking a big deep breath.
That's the connection. How do we bring down anxiety, stress, frustration? Taking a big deep breath?
That's opening up emotional space in the body.
Just like fasting, opening up physical space in the body. The two hour merge, you say I talk about opening up space. Okay, that just inspires the system. Take a deep breath, bringing the stress level down.
These are the processes that help bring us into a flow state.
We're not brute forcing anything in there. We open up a space the body can move through. That space body is always needing energy. We can run off the energy that we have
also in an emotional space, then same sort of thing. You open up that space
takes work to hang on to anger.
We talked yesterday about how we hang on to regret, how regrets that we have that we haven't released. They're taking up slots, you know, we have only so many slots that can be filling up our mental, emotional,
bandwidth.
We want to be moving in a healthy direction. We want to have all of our mental faculties, all of our abilities available to be able to make the healthiest choices, to navigate the difficult reality that we have, of trying to move toward health in the middle of an unhealthy society, say it takes a thoughtful, strong, powerful mindset to do that.
Want to clear out every negative distraction that is holding us down
and see, see if we're spending energy like this, holding on to anger.
The process of releasing that
is freeing up resources, freeing up energy,
mental energy, mental bandwidth to be able to move toward health, in a positive and joyful way
that where do I find the energy?
Where do I find the things to move on this path?
There's energy here.
We have to find a way to release the things that are keeping us from being able to access it.
Hanging on to the anger is just keeping us grounded in it. It's like the chain that is keeping us attached to anger.
Maybe that's the type of thing that we feel chained. We feel stuck. Maybe it's emotional eating or starts that process or feeling angry. We feel stuck in it. We're in this cycle.
I really like this, idea of taking a negative emotion and fasting through it,
using the mirror, the body and the mind, the body and the emotional experience.
We've discussed in other videos about the autophagy effect.
When the food intake stops,
the GI system is shutting down. The hormonal state in the body is coming back into balance. Insulin level is dropping counter regulatory hormones coming out, telling the body, hey, no more food is coming. Time to flip on
the energy storage system that triggers what are called autophagy pathways in the body and autophagy.
Is about burning through the excess, turning on like the cleansing pathways in the body, burning up the dysfunctional.
Is garbage day on my street here in Madison. A day we took the bins out. Okay, we're going to clear out the stuff we don't need. That's like autophagy space in the body, except in in autophagy in the body. It's like a fire. The body takes the garbage. It just puts it in a big bonfire, burns it up.
So things that are accumulating in the body, dysfunctional proteins, broken parts of the cell get piled up.
And when we get the space to do it, body will burn through it. So that's physically what's happening in the body with the physical parts of the body. On a cellular level, we open up a fasting level. We burn through things we don't need anymore. Look at the mirror, then to the emotional space,
anger, something that came to us.
It's a can be a broken or dysfunctional process emotionally, that we're hanging on to until we have the space to burn it up. Just like the autophagy we need in an emotional mental autophagy space where we can burn up the things that are no longer serving us so that we can be rid of them, free of them, let them go, burn it up.
And then the the ashes, it just float away like ash into the wind.
Fasting. That's how fasting has gotten itself, is sitting right in between those two spaces. It is literally the physical space in the body that drives the autophagy process, so that we can lose weight and cleanse and rejuvenate the physical system. It's sitting right in the middle also of that emotional space where we clear out space free of any distractions.
What is giving space to the body for
the deep work? Like we said in a quote, do the work to rid the sediment.
I was thinking about that yesterday. Fasting through anger.
If you feel called to do it, never as a punishing sort of mindset, but when you see it, to see, oh,
fasting this sort of space emotionally help to cleanse the system just like it is helping to cleanse the body, bring things back into balance.
Anything that you're hanging on to anger that you have about yourself, about past decisions,
maybe cycles you've gone through, dieting, cycles, weight and regain
things that you perceive as failures in the past. But really we're seeing we're just learning and stepping stones that are bringing wisdom and experience. They're going to help propel you forward.
And that sort of space that you can reframe it, burn through it, bring things back into balance.
Any negative experiences, anytime someone coming into a weight loss space can bring up okay, that can be like stirring the
spoon, right? Of struggle and experiences that you've had frustration. Maybe you've had conflict, family members. Maybe you have had conflict with other people, maybe medical providers. You know where it is because it's touching,
trying to lose weight, touching an emotional space along with the physical space.
Anger. Frustration can be in that space.
This is a sort of space where we want to move toward that. We we don't want to sweep any of that under the rug. We want to help use our practices, our wellness practices, to let go of all those things. Are there things like that that you have struggled with?
Journal for nobody else but you. You can write that out. That can be such a good thing. You say, how do you get an anger,
a resentment, a discouragement, a frustration? How do you really get it out? You say, I see what you're saying.
I see the the sediment in the glass like you've been, saying on this quote
that we want to
get rid of it, a journal, a way you can write it, different ways to use a journal, one way to use a journal
specific type of journal.
You can write that stuff out and then throw it away or burn it if it even feels better.
If you have the ability to do it.
Take those emotional experiences. Get them out when you can see it, then you see it external so many times even to talk about it,
you say, well, that can
can be very, very helpful. Speak it out. To write it out and actually see it can make it more tangible, either in a journal, just to have it or in a journal to get rid of it.
The goal of getting rid of it.
Lightness. Right?
Not to let it drag you down anymore.
Such a great metaphor we're going for with weight loss, right? We're trying to be physically lighter in the body. Weight loss, like the number on the scale is going down. We're lighter. The bigger process of that, right? Just emotional lightness.
You're moving toward the light. I loved that one that we did.
Look toward the light. The shadows are far behind you.
We're looking toward the light. We're trying to create
more broadly than just a number on a scale. We're trying to create a health experience, wellness journey of
positivity
and contentment that we bring across all areas of our life
where we can encounter difficult experiences without anger as a personal goal that I, you know, have.
Hopefully we all share that there's a there's a dose of something we could use in our broader society. Right? So many people
so angry
at everybody about everything, almost. It feels like I do my best studies day is to keep all the social media off, try to minimize my exposure to news. We've talked about that
these are huge places where anger is coming at us.
I would say if you have a health goal, you're you're on the challenger path with me here in December. You say we're approaching the very most difficult month of the year to lose weight.
Hopefully, in my experience, one of the most joyful, positive, happy months of the year. This can be the juxtaposition. This is what can lead it. So frustrating. You say December may be a favorite month might be my favorite month. I love holidays and I love snow. I love connecting with friends and family and good food. And so this, is something that we want to keep top of mind looking toward the light, looking toward the joy and the positive.
So we want to keep that framed. But if you're on a health path, if you say, I'm struggling to lose weight, you know, a lot of people can also gain a lot of weight during the holidays. And then, you know, so many things in the mix. We would talk to a lot of different people. Holidays, especially if you are dealing with loss and trauma, you lost a family member over the years, something terrible like this.
You aren't able to connect with those that you most want to. Then we can be in an even more deeply emotional space, and we turn to food and things that can drive a lot of weight gain and discouragement. And it can really cycle in this season.
And so we got a lot of space like that to navigate.
We're going to take the most difficult month of the year for weight loss,
focus on the light
and use every positive thing that we have to stay away from anger, minimize the anger, deal with it and release it. In this sort of space.
We've been walking through, this beautiful psychology book, Thinking Fast and Slow. One of the insights that we got the other week
was about avoiding the negative.
The worst experience is much more important than just having some level of extreme brilliance. Remember said perfection not required.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, by any means. And it can be enough. In December just to make it through without having the worst outcomes. You say, what we really don't want to do is we don't want to gain a lot of weight, right?
That would be the thing.
I was describing when I launched our little challenge the other day. So we got a lot of forces pulling us in this direction. We want to create some forces going the other way. That's the idea of the challenge, not to put any pressure on anything. Yes, to inspire.
Definitely want to inspire, but never to put any pressure.
But if you float through December, I say just neutral. Okay, we got 11 other months that are not December or we can make a tremendous amount of progress. So if we can navigate through a space, we avoid the worst outcomes. We're not gaining weight here. We're just threading the needle. We're finding the balance.
Maybe that can be a way to navigate both physically.
Avoiding weight gain, finding a neutral space, maybe pushing things forward. That's when the excitement could really build. Make it through December
and connecting with friends, family, food, all these things and lose weight. That would be like the triple triple Crown.
Make it through the season. Also
in a solid and stable emotional space. I think those things related definitely related.
Bringing everything into balance. Fasting can help us bring all these things into balance, specifically from the food space.
Absolutely. Fasting can help you navigate a holiday day. We're able to do some of that around Thanksgiving.
Can be any day, you know, a basic fasting process. Say, maybe I'm going to open up space in the morning, have a coffee,
and then keep that eating window
in a space.
Then you have more freedom within that space. I'm going to have a big, healthy, Happy Meal. Maybe some treats or something in there. Okay. And we're balancing that out within that day with a bunch of fasting space on the other side of it, and let everything come into balance and be a way to do it within the day.
Or do you say, hey, I've got a holiday season happening here,
a lot of eating is happening
and.
We don't want to bring a fasting space into that. So that's not the culture. That's not the process. No problem.
But what about the days before it? If we go a couple days ahead of time, maybe we lean a little harder into a fasting space there so we can balance these things on a broader time frame every day.
It doesn't have to be so-called perfect.
We can balance things over a week or over multiple weeks, and that's what we're trying to do between now and January 1st. What are the processes that we can lean into here? And then we got a holiday, maybe holidays like this, and then we lean into it on one side and then on the other side
and flow through this month.
See, when we zoom out on the whole month, then we take a lot of the pressure off, then anger that we could experience. Say, I've definitely talked with a lot of people say who had anger. They were in a dieting space, say, like, I can never have a treat. I can never have something like this. They feel angry that they missed out on some special experience with friends or family.
I would never want that for someone.
You're fasting, giving a way to balance this out. Lean into fasting space on a day where it's not a holiday, it's not a special experience. You can create a special experience for the body. Give it a gift, open up the space, allow the body to come into balance there and you have a bigger food day that you plan for it.
You enjoy it. Nothing to feel guilty about, nothing to be angry about,
enjoy it. Then you create good memories with it. This is how you build a healthy, assertive relationship with food and then you flow back out of that space. You have the memory of it, have a good experience, and then you have a good experience using a fasting practice.
Bring things back into balance on the other side. That's how we navigate through December, hitting everything that we want. Good experiences with friends, family and food. Good experiences leaning into health practices that are taking us in a healthy, a positive direction, and going to set ourselves up for a really joyful, exciting process in 2026.
This is what I'm going to try to help you, dive through. And this is what we'll be walking through together on the channel, moving toward, health powerfully in 2026.
Right off the bat. Well, a lot of other people are going to be like waking up on January 1st and starting over and saying, hey, what am I going to do?
We're diving in thoughtfully, doing the deep work that is going to take us, forward in health, preparing the mental and emotional space to take the steps, a journey. You say a weight loss path is a healthy journey to me. It's a lifelong process. It's not just something that is done for a couple months and then it's done.
It's about developing a lifestyle.
It's about developing a way of being in the world.
There is a flow that is not about struggle. It's about finding kindness and grace for ourselves in each day,
a series of habits and patterns that help us
navigate the obstacles that we face in a way that is not brute forcing our way through it, fighting and struggling with it so that the experience of being
healthy, being healthy.
Like we see, right. Health is something that we are. We are healthy, which means we practice it. It's a way of being.
And in this way, it's not something that you have to wait for.
The practices that are healthy are the experience of being healthy.
And so we do these things the way we eat, the way we move, the way we think, the way we react and breathe.
All of these things are our way of being in the world. And as we learn from our experiences.
Is a study.
Absolutely. I agree with this. Practicing is like studying. We are here in this space and we are learning and growing,
developing our way of being in the world, a way that releases anger
in a way that accepts in the lessons of the world.
We learn from it and grow from it.
Let go of anger.
As we release that, to me, this is the way that we start to. To bring both health to our selves as our top priority. Right? We want to bring health to ourself first. We want to
take that warning of anger. Anger is showing us the message is showing places where we need to heal,
and we need to do that so that we can fill ourselves up, put ourselves on a health path, and then ultimately not just for ourselves, but so that we can push, that out, you know, next to our family.
Right? We want to bring health to ourself so we can bring health. How flows out hard to give something that you don't have, but when you have something then you can share it. And so we want to build ourselves up like we did that talk on fasting wealth. There's a type of wealth that we want to build, storing up health for ourselves so that we can share it out with the world, bring health to ourselves, our family, and then our friends and then outward.
This, to me, is the process that can start on a deep and fundamental level to to bring health more broadly back to society, when when we can feel overwhelmed. I've felt this so many times, all the social media, all the news, all the negativity coming into us makes us feel small and helpless to say, I feel powerless to do anything about these monumental, forces in the world.
So hey, all of that is external. Like we said here, happiness is inside.
We don't need to consume happiness. And but we do and can and should protect ourselves from the negative influences that are coming in and recognize the real path personally to happiness and health is not about consuming things. It's about letting go of things. Get the anger and resentment out.
Allow
health, life, and positivity to flourish and that will move us forward.
On a health path and a health path for ourselves. And those around us.
I will center ourselves right here in this day. Take a nap for this day. What, what does this day of health look like for you?
What are the best, the best choices that you can make today?
To open up some space, open up some beautiful thinking, and take one step forward today, and then I'll be back with you tomorrow,
and we keep stepping forward. One day at a time. Maybe take a little, space here. At the end of the session, write out some reflection on anger today. Are there places like.
Okay, you hear anger? Are there places where you've experienced it?
Are there things in your life where anger has been giving you a message? Hey, this is a place where I need some healing here. Is there a step you can take today to move toward it, to not bury it down somewhere, but to recognize, hey, here I am right in this moment.
This is centering, right? So we want to be living in the present.
Anger is showing us something about the past. Can we let go of it?
Yeah. This is a great centering question to ask.
How am I feeling here?
And then giving it some open space.
And allow it to surface.
So what we're seeing giving things some space. That's the big pattern from fasting. You give things some space in the body. Lots of good things can happen. Body will be getting rid of toxins, getting rid of dysfunctional stuff. The same sort of space emotionally that we can create to open up some emotional space here.
You know, we're all so busy. I've, I've got a list of so many things I want to do and we're done here. But we say, okay, to the extent we can, let's open up some space here.
Breathe into it. Maybe it's just five minutes. Maybe you can take five minutes and ask yourself this question. How am I really feeling?
Are there places where anger comes up? Maybe you do a little looking for it
like we did in that space yesterday. Maybe music can help get you there, get some peaceful music in there, and maybe those notes can help work their way in
that. Here is a thing I really am angry about
that I've been angry.
This is really good too. That'd be the follow up. What am I thinking? And is it true?
Really great thought.
The thoughts are going to come. You know, sometimes this is a barrier to people for a meditation space. People think like, oh, to meditate. What does it even mean? Mean. Like sit and think about nothing and clear the thoughts.
And that was a big barrier to me for a while because like, well, what do you do in a space like you're in a space? I'm trying to practice meditation. Be thoughtful, do these things, are these thoughts just coming in? Do you experience that like, oh, all of a sudden my mind is wandering. I can't keep my mind.
You know, we have thoughts. But to me, this is one of the first places is actually the benefit is just to actually see what are the thoughts that come up. You ask this question, what am I thinking? This is the first part of awareness. So maybe we don't even know say I don't I don't have awareness even. Are there things I'm angry about?
Like we can be so busy. I know I've been in this for so long where it's like, you know, we're just going, we're doing the things we're taking care of. All of the stuff.
We're not even connected in emotionally to our own experience. So I really like Queen of Heaven bringing us this thought.
This is a great place to start.
What am I actually thinking? Those thoughts that are coming, you know, whatever they are, maybe it's just all the things that I have to do are the things that keep coming in.
Perfectly fine thing. Just space to process, giving ourself space to process. That's a really healthy thing. If you sit in an open space and the thoughts that are coming in, they aren't deep and profound life changing thoughts about like, oh, I just I sat here for five minutes and I realized, you know, the anger and it's not like you're going to sort everything out and only a few minutes
got
to kind of sink into that space.
I
try to journal from what is on your mind. That's a great space to me. A journal and a meditation are just like a flow back and forth.
You open up a little meditation space, say it's only five minutes. It doesn't have to be like, oh, I've, I've taken a half day off work and I'm, I'm going to sit in some special position for four hours and just think, now this can be just a little open space in a day.
Clear out some space and see what comes up.
And maybe it's the to do list, but maybe a while. The process
if you want to work on it, maybe it could be journaling with it. Sometimes it can help people have a little journal right there with you where you can say, hey, I really do want to try to clear out the thoughts a bit.
In a meditation space, you can get to a space. It is like a more detached from all the to do list, and all the things get into a broader experience.
So okay, if you don't, one way to get there is to have the journal there and just write the thoughts out. That can be a way to take them from this space of cycling.
Thoughts here, I've written this out. It's here. It's not going anywhere. It's top of mind.
That can be a way to get it out and process.
This is the flow back and forth. So you see we're trying to dig down into the emotional and the health space,
say a chronic disease. Say this can be depressing but it can be inspiring,
especially as you see that it can be a communication that it's not necessarily something
completely negative that can't be learned from, or it's not necessarily something that is permanent, that can never be changed.
And a truly inspiring path is to receive healing, to receive a process that can help you to walk away from something like that,
this process putting it on paper. There is a process that can help.
Let's say from our beautiful quote that we were working on about the sediment in the glass.
They ended specifically saying, okay, we realize we have accumulated sediment, you know, in our glass,
actively do the work to remove it, putting it out on paper
is a huge part of the actual work of getting it out to be able to move on from it.
This is such a simple thing.
Can such a simple thing as writing it out on paper
be helpful?
I will tell you that it can, but it's a surprisingly hard thing to do. This. That's been my experience.
Something, you know, in the way. That's what we're digging in with our psychology book, right? That the way the mind works,
we've seen it is primed against us in many ways
to put us into zones of complacency, the default systems, the way the brain works, trying to lock us in place from a certain perspective, it's trying to protect us.
It's trying to say.
If we don't change, we won't be hurt. We just preserve the status quo. And because it's always a gamble, things could always be worse. This is the calculation that some center in there is making. If we make a decision, it could always be worse. And so to protect ourselves from some worse outcome, we just won't change. And so our emotions are set up to, to keep us locked in this space of keeping everything the same.
So it can be very hard. You can be thinking of thought, I know I've done this a lot of times. I'm angry about something. I'm doing something. I won't write it out
because it's like, and I've fought battles with that where it's like, because I know if I write it out, that would be the process to start to change it.
That would be the process to start to release it. And so some, some center in there is keeping us from doing that. And so
one of the processes I've realized is when I've opened up a space to try to write something into the journal.
I'm really trying my best. It's hard to do to pay special attention to the things that I refuse to write down. If I'm writing staff and I'm thinking I should write about this, I'm like, no, I just won't do that. I'll be like, oh, why is that?
Is it the things that we selectively edit out of our journal might be the most important things.
Actually, that's where the real battle can be in here to UN tangle. The experience we have in these deep emotional space is to really move toward health and healing. That's a process of change. We have to change in order to heal. We have to change something,
either about ourselves or about the way we're interacting with our environment in some way change a decision, making, change a thinking
say, how do we do that?
How do we negotiate that as like the internal negotiation we've seen in our book that we really have two different thinking systems. We have this reactive, immediate emotional, intuitive system that that that is gets the first strike at everything.
And then we have the secondary system that that is delayed, that is rational or at least tries to be rational. That is
our more conscious experience. And that's what we really think of as our true self. The real thinking, being
when we see like 90% of life is this immediate, intuitive system. And that's what gets primed. That's where our habits live, and that's where the flow state really is.
Because as much as possible, the secondary system that we're describing, what we see as our true self, has a limited amount of, bandwidth every day. And so most of the day we try,
to flow through in our habits. And that's what preserves our mental and emotional capital. And so
the process of awareness, the process of journaling, like we are saying, the communication between a meditation space and a journaling is how we navigate and get into the interface.
Between these systems. We see what we're really trying to do
when we say we're trying to change our way of being in the world, you say, well, how do I reprogram?
This intuitive system that is basically on autopilot, it's basically making all these decisions.
And that is what comes to feel normal in our day to day experience is just to keep doing what we've always done. And so we were looking in that reading yesterday about regret.
We always like to make the normal decision because we punish ourselves more.
When we change something, we do something different. And then if we experience something negative, we experience that as a much greater source of regret,
much more open to being angry with ourselves in that space. And then we know that. So our body protects us from having a negative emotional experience by keeping us in these default, patterns.
This is one of the reasons why habits are so hard to change,
because the system is set up against it. So you say we want to change a habit and a pattern
here. We're going through the process actually to get to that interface to use within a day, recognizing,
we don't have to change our entire life all at once.
We can make a small step. This is what I always want to say. We always bring things into the present is how we reduce anxiety and pressure. We aren't worried about everything in every other day that could ever be done. We're saying, what is the step that I can take in this day? What is the the challenge and the obstacle?
That we can do here in this space?
That's enough for this day.
The thoughts will come up. Maybe this side is something like this. Here's a big thought. I need to move to Maryland. You know, I need to. I need to get out of this space. I need to do something. Okay? This is a you got to open up a space for something like that, and then you got a process that it'd be a big change, right?
Opening up that space, directing that conscious system to say, this is the way when we encounter this situation, this is the way we're going to start,
flowing through this space. We reprogram that system
takes a couple of weeks. Usually people say, you know, 14 days to solidify a new habit because we have to be intentional about something.
We have to be thoughtful about it, using our limited resources to program that space so that we start getting used to it.
That's the difficult work. Identifying what are the things need to change?
What how is the way that I'm flowing through it right now? What what is the environment? This is what we've been talking through, the emotional triggers, the situations that create, the states where we just impulsively and intuitively move through a situation without thinking it.
Do you experience that
you you flowed through a space and it was something that you needed to change. You say, I've been working on this. I didn't want to have an emotional eating or I didn't want to, you know, say this to this person or whatever the experience was. And it was once you got done with it, then you went back and you thought, oh, I didn't want to do that.
But because we have that quick thinking system, it flowed through it before we were able to stop it.
This is how we get into that space of building awareness of it,
journaling out so that we can start having solutions to it. Oh, every time this is happening, I'm experiencing this.
Then we can write it out. We can plan next time.
I'm going to do it this way. Next time I'm going to have increased awareness so that we can get to that space, make a different choice, have a different way of being in that type of experience. And then that's the practice. As we practice through that, it becomes easier. And then it's like, then we have gotten over that obstacle and we need to take one step at a time toward that.
sometimes I think in this sort of space
about, you know, what even is medicine.
Is letting go of anger medicine. Think of that is like at the root level of so much.
I spent such a huge amount of time, you know, as a primary care doctor, I'm in the office. We think of medicine as like the pills coming in. Right.
So someone needs medicine. Someone's blood pressure is too high. We need to send the medicine.
Can forgiveness be medicine?
Can releasing stored emotions be medicine?
I think when we look at this inflammation space, when we realize that we are harboring
anger inside of us, he isn't saying it's not a physical thing. You know, we, you know, in medicine, especially in the West, medicine is
you find a lot of what I call strict materialists, people who believe the only things that exist are atoms and molecules.
And and that's it. You know,
and if, if you believe that, it's okay. You see, we still have an emotional experience. Maybe you, you don't, believe in, you know, a soul or a spirit or anything else like that. You say the conscious experience that we're having here is just an emergent property of the molecules that are, you know, existing up here in the brain.
I think that's okay. You can believe that. That's okay. But we still have an emotional experience.
The thoughts are still there.
The anger that we harbor is still within the body. If you say, well, it's only in the brain, you know, you don't have to take it into a spiritual dimension or anything else. You say anger is real.
You know, I say to somebody who is in that space, do you believe anger is real? Do you have anger in your life? Do you have emotional experiences of regret and darkness and discouragement that are hard to let go of?
So if that is true, you say, well, what is the type of medicine that is, dealing with that? If if the blood pressure is high because you're harboring anger and resentment from a lifetime of traumatic experience,
they say, wouldn't it be great to have a pill, for example, from our modern framework, to say, I have an anti anger pill, the happy pill?
A lot of people think we have things like that until until they really take them
say, well, you know, I was on,
I was on the SSRI, I was on things is it's not a magic pill. I'll tell you
can be helpful for the right situation. Not that it has no value.
A pill that can blunt your experience of an emotional state is not a type of pill that can help you resolve it, though.
Type of pill that can keep it from distracting your experience. That in many ways, this is a reflection that I've had with many people. I've managed, I'm sure thousands of people, taking SSRI, for example,
I've had a lot of discussions about people's experience with it.
And SSRI can help someone who's struggling with anger, for example. And SSRI can be very emotionally blunting in many ways. Kind of chop off the highs, chop off the lows can be very helpful, you know, in certain certain situations. Absolutely better to chop off some highs and boost up some lows. If you can't, you know, if things are unmanageable can be very helpful.
Not unhappy that we have these things, but.
But.
Does it help you to do the deeper emotional work to get rid of it?
This is a big thing that I want to share. Actually, in this, this whole, discussion on anger
is that anger
is like a warning. Anger is a message. Angry can think of it like a compass.
You know, here's my beautiful rock that I call a compass that we, here's say something natural that we're hanging on to, say
we think anger, we think negative emotional experience. Stay away from it. I think this is how we end up burying anger. So deep down.
What is like is anger. Like you're saying, is anger really trying to help us? Actually is anger showing us say, here is where the problem is, don't bury this. Don't run away from it. Like, hey, look at this. Like, be thoughtful about this. Like, this is, this is where the work needs to be done. And maybe it's something, you know, and maybe in the best case, maybe if we're really sensitive, if we're really aware and something just happened, we just became aware of it.
Anger just came here.
We don't have a practiced process anymore, a practice of just burying it. We say, let's like, really be thoughtful about this and and not run away from it and deal with it right now. So we aren't planting these seeds down in there. I think the seeds, when we when we bury the seeds of anger deep down,
that is how it can come back out is disease.
Because when we are harboring this resentment, which is just smoldering anger that is never going away, and that is what is ramping up, that's communicating to the body, okay, things aren't safe. Things aren't right here.
And then then we can see that's what triggers the sympathetic nervous system. The adrenaline is flowing, the chronic cortisol, everything on edge. And when things are in that state in that in inflammation talk, if you didn't see it, go back and watch the inflammation talk. I showed the flow chart, okay. That that's what's feeding into insulin resistance. And 100 other things.
what is medicine actually like? I think we need a reevaluation in a large measure.
Say there is some process that is happening in the body. And this is especially true with our metabolic health, like the physical state in the body, not necessarily so much. I was walking down an icy street and, a car went off the thing and smashed me. Okay. Like you need it. You need a doctor, you need to fix it.
Okay? It's. But now the body is communicating a message like things were okay and then they weren't. You come in, we say. Now the blood sugar is too high. The cholesterol is too high. Blood pressure is out of whack. The weight is going up. Like like like things are out of balance in some fashion. So what is the message?
What is the deeper message?
And you say, I don't want the next generation to continue in these ways. You say, obviously in the big picture, well, you know, look what is happening. Everybody angry at everybody else, hatred toward, so many different types of people, you know, whether it's racial or socioeconomic or whatever political, especially man here, these days, people, you know, even between family members,
people hating their own family members because of different political opinions.
Oh, I have run into so much of that. And it just.
Here's what it makes me want to do. Take a deep breath.
And what what difference does it even matter? Here's just the thought that's coming to me now. What difference does it even matter if we are getting down our health path, say, well, I'm losing weight and I'm healthier if we're harboring anger against our own family members because of some
some so isn't the deeper level of health?
Is an anger a much deeper level than even metabolic health? Say, if we go in, say doctor, ask who had this or that
doctor looking at, you know, I'm speaking from a lot of personal experience. They're like, we get very superficial. We only have so much time in medicine these days.
Problem is coming in superficial pill for this or that. Like how much of medicine is missing the the much, much deeper level?
What would a true health system look like that is actually focused on bringing total wellness to a person.
Where it's not just running people through some economic model,
trying to extract revenue from people in some gigantic scheme, with multi-billion dollar health corporations siphoning off everybody's health information to advertise like like, holy cow. Like that was actually focused on people.
And what would be the medicine
that would actually bring us down to a base layer of peace and contentment, health, healing, flourishing.
to me, I think this is it. Talking about it at least
the best I can come up with talking about the root level to realize there even is a root level. How many times in medicine, I mean, I think maybe almost zero. Have you ever heard, you know, there's a root level beneath the medical system?
That maybe is just true health, like true health has a culture, a culture of health, which I've said a lot here.
You know, we talk about we say this culture, it isn't really a healthy culture to be thoughtful, to move toward health in many ways is like planning a different course out of culture, a way in a different direction.
So you want to move towards something like that. You know, that's below medicine,
but more powerful than medicine. And at least using the word medicine from the modern Western medical system, where it's like every time you want to interact with a medical system, you pay money.
You want to like experience something. It can only be individual, never has a group. Everything so isolated and disconnected and and
and locked up in in little compartments.
Culture. Something so much, more broad. Like how do you build a healthy culture? How do we have a healthy community? And are these the things that actually bring true, flourishing?
As I always wish that the health system could be an an avenue toward
health for people, health for communities. This is a goal. We do talk about that in medicine.
But I don't think we have gotten to a point where we're really manifesting it,
where we're saying, hey, actually, how do we let go of anger, like in a bigger level? How do we get on to that deep level? The place where I've interacted with it the most in medicine is we will talk about social determinants of health,
social determinants of health, say everything else that's outside of medicine, like education and access to clean water and food and healthy air and
stable, work environments, all these sort of things.
Medical system recognize, okay health, about 20% access to, say, the medical system and 80% everything else.
And so here where, you know, we're having a deep conversation about everything else.
But probably even this space, like the real emotional level, letting go of anger and resentment and building peace and contentment, you know, especially through a fasting process, other health processes
that's even going beyond, I would say, a lot of what is talked about, even in people who are talking about social determinants of health.
So it feels really good to me to, take a little bit of space here, really dive, into that space
I really appreciate you being here with me. I'm going to do some good. Reflecting on, this today. I wish you all the very best.
I'll be back here tomorrow morning and we will continue stepping forward. In health together. Have a great day, everybody. We'll talk to you again soon.