Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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
We are not afraid to ask the most important question in weight loss. One of the things we've been thinking a lot about lately is how our mental processes will will subtly hijack ourselves by answering easier questions than the most important questions. Some really difficult question will come and will subtly water it down or answer something related. It is easier to work with lots of examples of that.
If we're trying to move powerfully toward health and we want to make the most progress, the most powerful moves, the best space, got to ask the difficult questions, the most important questions, the most profound questions that move us along our way. So I'm not going to string you along. I'm going to tell you my perspective on the most important question, but I want to give you a little space right at the outset to just think and process for yourself.
When you hear someone say, what is the most important question in weight loss? I just want you to think about it. Do some processing. What do you think is the most important? And then I tell you my perspective. And then I love to have a dialog about it. And if someone can convince me that there is an even more profound question, I will concede.
And I will love it. Because everything that we are doing, everything that I'm doing here, our dialog together is about finding truth. What is true about the body and true about the world, and true about the easiest ways to flow through a process toward health. I am not a person, at least in my intention, to be married to any ideology or anything of any kind.
I'm a pragmatist. Right. I'm a primary care doctor at heart. It's all about we just got to have things that work for people. Like what helps a person to move forward in health. That's what we want. Maybe this is the most important question for you today. How do I make it an enjoyable lifestyle so I don't gain it back?
Perhaps that is the most important question today for you. Thank you for sharing that question. As I was reflecting on this question, in my mind, the average person who has asked this question, you know, in America, what's the most important question in weight loss? The most important consideration. I think on a survey, the average person would say that the answer is how many calories?
Some variation of of that. How many calories am I getting in my day? How many calories are in this specific thing? You know what is my net calorie balance? You know how many calories in people would say that is the most important? And then there'll be variation. Some people say, well, their food choices may be, am I eating healthy things?
People will say, say that. But I think calories is the focus. Calories has been absolutely the focus of most dietary practices. And it's not that it isn't true. Calories are real. Okay. And numbers are real. But I think the calorie paradigm boils things down to a numbers game, which my reflection this week is might be good for robots.
If a person was a robot, maybe we could boil everything down to a numbers game. My experience working with thousands of people for over a decade, trying to help people move toward weight is boiling everything. Weight loss, boiling things down to a numbers game in general is a dehumanizing process. It is kind of the zeitgeist of the era is to treat everything in that way.
And it is in general has not been helpful, has not been helpful. I have had more success seeing more people have more, health and flourishing and progress and sustainability when we take things out of the realm of, a numbers game and ask some deeper questions about the human experience, what it's like. This is what I'm showing people from this more right brained perspective.
What is it like to be in the world? A little bit of poetry to start our session today. Poetry from the rock band Weezer. I don't know if this is something that you've ever listened to. Something I will listen to on occasion. I'm going to give you kind of a paraphrase, of these lyrics, this song called numbers.
There's always a number that'll make you feel bad about yourself. You try to measure up, try to measure up to somebody else. Numbers are out to get you. They say you're too short to join the team. Your IQ is too low for poetry. Numbers are out to get you. I hear the sadness in your laughter. So call on me and tell me what you need.
Look at him. Look at her. They've got a million likes. You better figure out how to multiply. Divide. Numbers are out to get you. They'll kill you if they get you. I hear the sadness in your laughter. Just call on me and tell me what you need. I'm a one, I'm a zero. In the end, does it matter?
All that we even really know is every nail needs a hammer. But the numbers won't compute. When we love, the two becomes 10112358, 13. I hear the sadness in your laughter. We are nothing if not a little melancholy at times. But I think that, those lyrics of numbers to me captures the feeling of reducing a human being and a human experience into a numbers game.
You hear the sadness in the laughter, right? That to me, is like the experience of being turned into a mechanical process. The question that I am going to pose to you, and the question that I think is much more important than a number of any kind, is the question, what do I really want in my life? Really?
And the deepest level, what do I want? This is actually a surprisingly hard question to answer, at least for me and for many people. What do I really want? If we are not clear about what we really want, it makes every other decision difficult and a struggle. And when I mean, what do I really want? I mean, on this deepest, most human level of I like our whole life the guiding place, the root level, the foundation.
Over the past weeks, we've been seeing examples from our book. How will answer easier questions will be confronted with a question like that. And then we will take it to a more superficial level, because to go to that space, you say, oh, I don't know. I don't know if I'm so comfortable answering such a personal question. If we are trying to get to the deepest level of our experience, we have to unpack some stuff to go there.
Easier to stay in a superficial level, you know, and I think I'll just count some calories, you know, as they can be easier. We'll read the label on the package. Isn't that what everybody's doing? I mean, a lot of people reading, a lot of labels and still struggling. Okay. I think the struggle is to really go to the deepest emotional center of our life and to say, hey, here is the place where we really need to do the work.
The first layer of answering a question, what is the most important question is, is getting to things we desire. That is the first type of thing, like things that I want. Okay, answer. That's the question. What do I really want? You say, well, a want is kind of like a desire for something. Desire at me might be like the pre experience to what I really want to move us toward today, which is an intention to answer the question, what do I really want is to begin to form intentionality and intention.
Very simple question, very profound space to develop a life intention. An intention is the type of thing I'm trying to show. You can cut through a lot of stuff. So I think in the modern world we have a lot of confusion. We have a lot of conflicting messages. We have money and marketing and culture, all these things coming at us and we say, well, what is the anchor?
Right. We've talked to kind of about anchors. Good and bad. What is the thing that a let's let's me cut through the difficulty so that we can start flowing through space without struggle so that we can develop an enjoyable lifestyle that keeps us in a sustainable path. So we don't want to turn back. That's that's where we want to go.
That's the intention. That's the guiding direction. What we really want an enjoyable lifestyle that is leading us to health, that is like sitting in the sailboat and blowing across the lake. And you say, I'm having such a good time in this boat. I don't want to get out. You know, I'm done with walking. I'm sticking in the sailboat down with struggling.
I'm letting the wind do the work. That might be the intention. And when you answer the question, what's the most important question? What do I really want? I want to develop in my life a sustainable, enjoyable lifestyle that is moving me toward my goal. And so I don't have to fall back into patterns and habits that are not serving me.
Absolutely have to be very intentional to do that. How many people find that out of people who try any dietary or lifestyle process, any exercise program, any specific diet? In my experience, the most people who have found something sustainable that I have seen serve them and continue to get better, that they enjoy for years and years. Is a centering, focusing, fasting based practice, like the little lens that focuses every other health practice that is the base layer.
It's the structure that organizes everything else. Get a meal frequency that is serving someone, and then layer in the food choices through it, the movement through it, recognizing it as a mental health practice that interfaces with every other good mental health practice so that we can build a comprehensive and holistic lifestyle of health that is serving both our physical and mental needs.
So it's easy to say intention, but we really want to get clear on it, to build it out. Okay. An intention in our life, intentionality in our thinking and action. I want to share this quote with you from Gary Zucker, who I don't know from his writing, in turn eternally Golden, which I didn't read. I just found this.
I was searching for quotes about intention and I really liked this one. Intentions are causes that create effects. So even just this first sentence, it just made me think so much. We're trying to get down to a root level to change the rudder in our life, right? To get us on a different course so that the sail is blowing us in the direction we want.
You see, before we're messing around calories and things like, okay, what is the intention? What is the purpose? Like what is the very most important thing? We see an intention, you see. Well what is that? If you see an intention as a cause intention, cause effect, like a lot of times we're just focused on effects, but we want to bring it way back.
What are the causes that are creating effects? We want to have different causes. If we want different effects, we need different causes. How do we have different causes? We need different intentions. This is how we get way upstream. Way upstream intentions are the causes that create effects. Choosing an intention is the fundamental creative act. See, I loved this especially because this is what I've been diving in with.
Our book The Creative Act. We're trying to create a different way of being in the world. An enjoyable lifestyle is a way of being in the world. You see, I want to exist in an enjoyable lifestyle. That is the expression of how I am being in the world, and that is a creative activity. So now we're getting the process.
Gary is helping us clarify intentions are causes that create effects. Choosing an intention is the fundamental creative act, and intention is the reason or motivation for doing what you do. Every action has an intention in. It comes from fear or from love. I think that is so beautiful. This kind of leads us in to an alternative formulation that I was thinking through of the question.
Every intention comes from fear or love. And so I want us to really think about that perspective on our intention formation as we're forming our intention. Like, what is this route level? Are we coming from a place of fear? Are we coming from a place of love? And so as I was thinking that you can reformulate our question, what do I really want?
Think of it is the question, what do I really want? The same question as what is the loving thing to do or said differently? What would love, do? Or what is the loving intention in my life at this moment? I did the session a couple sessions I've done on this. Like is is love the answer right in a very tangible fashion.
And I did the the session the other day. Where were you hearing from Jaya John about moving from a place of love and wholeness and connection at the core of our being? So what I'm suggesting to you as we are getting into our intention, our deepest intention, that it be a loving, kind, compassionate, thoughtful intention we can have this tendency when we're moving toward a health goal is like beating ourselves up.
And we saw some truly, I thought, fascinating psychology of how we can get ourselves in negative cycles where we're basically trying to punish our way to health. And we can be tricked into that because of mean, mean reversion that our worst day is not, you know, who we are. We can we can bring all this guilt on ourselves, and we start to recognize, oh, I'm having like a really bad day.
We can show grace to ourselves. And then we see things getting better and we try to lift ourselves up. That was yesterday. I love that thinking. Right? So in our intention, that's a loving way to treat ourselves. That's a much more effective, healthy, sustainable way. You know, if you're trying to build an enjoyable lifestyle that you don't want to get away from, you can't be treating yourself like, a sweatshop employee.
You know who you are abusing your way there. And every time that you are, you're not having your perfect day. You're hammering yourself. We're going to be lifting ourselves up. So we want an intention coming from a place of love and kindness. Do you have an intention on that level where you say like, hey, this is the priority in my life.
This is down at the deep level. This is how I want to be. Have you written something like that out? I really challenge people to find the intention and write it out and write about it and your experience and reflection. Write out the words. If we don't have an intention, that is so concrete that we can write it out, do we really have it?
You know what I mean? Do we really have it? If we can't get it out on paper? And if we don't have something central like a core value of something that means something to us enough that we can get it out on paper? Think of all the things in society that want to fill that space. There are a lot of people who will give us a lot of intentions, who will tell us, no, this is the way.
If you don't know exactly what you want, how about this and they'll sell it to you. Fasting. My favorite process. You know, for many reasons. But, is free and nobody can sell it to you. Nobody can even give it to you. You have to give it to yourself. I just give you the opportunity, the offer that fasting could be part of an enjoyable lifestyle, that you don't want to get away from the barrier to entry, that you have to pass through, that you experience some hunger in a fasting space that you can come to see that not as a negative, not in any way as suffering like we were talking about yesterday, about the
the terrible experience of poverty and lacking basic human necessity and completely inversion from a a luxury fasting of recognizing the gratitude for the incredible abundance that we have, and to be able to say, I'm in such an incredible space. I have so much energy and power within my body and resources that I can choose to say, hey, I don't even need this now.
So much abundance, so much gratitude. So I don't even need this. I'm overflowing with energy and power through a space of gratitude like that. That an intention on a deep level can say my firm intention, not just something I want. Intention is desire paired with commitment. A lot of people who want things, who aren't having a commitment or a priority to actuate the desire, intentionality brings in the commitment, the focus, the action into the desire to move it forward.
You might think of intention as desire in action. What is at that foundational layer? Think of it love in action, kindness and compassion in action. When I talk about love in action is like the kind of love that is like service. Love is service. Love that is willing to sacrifice for something to help a process or someone flourish.
That kind of space is not always an easy space, right? We can get into that space, say, and it's not always easy to love someone. It's not always easy to care for someone, not always easy to have those emotions for ourselves as well. We're getting down to that deep level if we really want to change the direction, you know, of the the ship, what is the loving thing to do?
That's a way to look at our intention. And so this is getting us way upstream. This can flow into lots of different directions, the layer beneath all kinds of other questions that we'd rather ask. Am I going to go exercise today? You know, am I going to go eat like these times? Am I going to have this snack or that?
How am I going to interact, you know, with people, which of course determines in large measure, like how do we interpret these situations in the stress that is feeding into our whole emotional state? See these types of questions much more important than just the numbers on a page tracking a spreadsheet of calories. Does calories matter? Yes, calories are real.
Numbers are real. These things have an effect. But how? How do we interact with that space in a way that's much more human? That is like dealing with the reality of our emotional space and our decisions. These are the things that help us build that enjoyable lifestyle. Having an intentional experience, to me, is the type of thing that can try to pull us out of a reactive, impulsive space.
I don't know if this is something that you struggle with. Do you? Do you struggle with impulsivity? Do you struggle with reactivity? Is part of that experience weaved in our experience with food and eating? You say, I find myself eating when I don't really want to. You know, that's using food as an emotional crutch for stress, anxiety, depression, boredom, these sort of things.
The interface is so huge in that area with how we use food and what our intentions truly are. We've talked using our beautiful psychology book about how emotions can be deceiving. Emotions can be an illusion that is fed to us by this fast thinking system, right? We have fast and slow thinking. The slow thinking, what we really think of as our true self are very rational, contemplative self.
That's who we really think of ourselves are. But we're seeing in this psychology world that we have two systems. We have the reactive, impulsive, fast system that we have primed through habits and perspectives that that just acts and it bypasses these rational decision making. So when we're very, very intentional, we have we can reprogram this is what we're trying to do reprograming our experience so that our whole being both our impulsive, fast thinking side that has been programed into the type of decision maker that we really want, we're trying to strip out emotion, especially emotions.
We don't like impulsivity from our decision making as much as possible. Be very intentional to do that. So we have to be intentional about our intentions. And enjoyable lifestyle is not one of constant struggle and enjoyable lifestyle is a process of getting to that flow state. Like we were reading about where the decisions that we want are, the decisions that come naturally to us.
So much of that state is that parasympathetic state, right where we're in this flow state, parasympathetic outflow, things are calm, things are under control. We are experiencing space of strength and calm and perspective that helps us to navigate things that maybe in the past we would have impulsively reacted to. Have you had that experience? Have you been in a state where you were dialed in enough, or focused enough, or centered enough, grounded enough where you saw like an emotional situation developing and you saw and recognize the pattern and you were flowed away from it.
You didn't make the same decision in a space, and it took you to a space where you say, hey, this is good. Like I'm okay in this space. That's the sort of thing you want to reward that. Like we were talking yesterday, lifting ourselves up like that would be one of the most wonderful things to celebrate. Say, an enjoyable lifestyle is a space where you're navigating through a space and you're learning from your experience, and you're overcoming struggles that you've had and finding a place of peace and contentment.
Satisfaction and encouragement in space is where you say, hey, I've improved in this space. I am walking in alignment with my true intention. The intention is showing like the optimal, like the blueprint, the template, and we can kind of hold up our intention against like our current experience, and it's showing us the discrepancy. Guess here is like the ideal vision here is how you want to be walking through the world.
And it can give us a little lens to look. It's like, well, what does my intention mean in this space? What does my intention mean in this decision, in this difficulty, in this obstacle? This is an incredible victory, right? You survived not eating the bedtime snack. I like that that's probably the right word. Right? I have, I have personally experienced that.
I mean, my lifestyle before I learned about fasting, I ate all the time because that is the that is the culture. That's how I grew up. And, you know, especially coming out of my experience as an adolescent guy and athlete, which is like, I'm I was lifting weights. I say, I want to, you know, build muscle, get ripped like you got it.
You got to eat all the time. That's what people tell you. It's not actually true. But I developed a lifestyle. I get up, I eat breakfast, I have snacks all day, I have lunch and dinner and then more snacks and a bedtime snack. And oh, man, when I start trying to learn to do that, I can really resonate with that.
The first time I try to not have a bedtime snack, which I've done like basically my entire life. I'm just like, what? Oh man, I don't know if that that might have been the hardest one. Bedtime snack. Try to go to bed. When I'm used to eating for decades, I've always eaten a bedtime snack. Survive it. That is another thing we talked yesterday.
Lifting ourselves up. You give yourself five, five. Cheers for that. My experience was very hard to do. I would go to bed trying to cut out the late eating. That's what I started first, when I went on a fasting path. I started with the late eating because, you know, medical literature, very clear. Eating late not good is like the worst time to eat if you're trying to lose weight late eating, because hormonally the whole system is shutting down.
It takes that food. Our cortisol level is going up. Cortisol have normal functions in the body. It's not just, you know, a negative as far as, you know, stress hormone cortisol normally going in a cycle in the body. And it comes out at night to help us repair our muscles and tissues in the body. Physiologically, in the body, cortisol will help shunt energy into body fat.
And so to me, what this is showing the body is expecting there to not be food there at night. That's why the cortisol comes out then. Because it's like, okay, we don't have food in this space now. Cortisol can do its operations of helping the body tissues to recover, without having to deal with all this energy there, the same amount of calories in a day.
You know, we started this saying most people dialed in on calories. What people don't appreciate is the same amount of calories in a day can have different effects, depending on when we eat them for the same amount of calories is totally wild, you know? So this is like a huge challenge to the calorie perspective. Different calories have different effects based on different hormonal states in the body, and that changes based on our circadian rhythm and other natural cycles in the body.
So, you know, sometimes I've I've given talks at many conferences and, and presentations. I gave a talk once to a room full of like 50 nutritionists. And I had been invited by some, very thoughtful nutritionists who really like the type of thing that I talk about. But they're in the minority of nutritionists, so they're kind of like 30% of nutritionists in the room.
Really like what I'm saying brought me in because they were having so many struggles with other people in their, department who thought, you know, oh, fasting spaces is terrible. It's going to slow everybody's metabolism, because that's what what people have been conditioned to think in our society. And so I given this talk, having this really interesting emotional space with all these nutritionists trying to help people see.
And I was like, you know, let's just look for some common ground, common ground with a standard nutrition model. You go to a nutritionist, pretty much every nutritionist, regardless of whether they like a fasting space or not, will tell you not to eat a bedtime snack. They say, oh, you don't want to eat late. And so to me, this was like the big breakthrough that I've had is in working with nutritionists to help people see, okay, not eating late is the beginning of fasting.
As I show people, you are opening up a few extra hours of fasting space and like all of a sudden, like so many other nutritionists listen to like, oh, like the light bulb starts to go off. Like why I never thought of it that way. And this is what I want to show people. Fasting isn't just 16 eight.
It isn't just omad. It isn't just these two discrete things. It's an entire spectrum, you know, down to the minute, you know, extra fasting space have profound effects on the body. And, to me, this is the base layer. And so I love, that you dialed in on that. Survive. Eating the bedtime snack is like the beginning of fasting.
That's where it all starts. It's where it all starts for a standard nutritionist to come in and see, like, oh, I see, like, different calories, even if you had the same calories, but you took those calories from the snack and just put them at the meal and you still had the same calories in the day, you're putting those calories into a different hormonal and temporal space.
You're opening up more. Fasting space at the most important time is going to help the body. And so that is like the root level where, to start. And my experience and most people that I have worked with is that as you get a win like that, you make it through it. Usually the first time is the hardest.
This is why I describe fasting as a practice. Fasting is a practice. It's something that you practice to get better at and you get better at it for many different reasons, because you gain experience and knowledge with it, yes, but also because the body physiologically adapts and gets stronger. Fasting is a type of strength, and I think we need to look at it as its own unique type of strength.
People understand aerobic strength. You know, how far can I walk or run? People get anaerobic strength. How much can I lift? Fasting is its own intrinsic strength. How strong and trained is the body at accessing the energy that is within it? Okay. If you don't train it, it's not so good at doing it because the body tries to be as efficient as possible at everything it does.
It does not want to waste anything. And so if we are in a situation where we do not challenge the fasting system, the ability of that system to operate atrophies because the body does not maintain the proteins and pathways that help the body to run it efficiently. So as we train it, just like we train the muscle, we lift a weight.
The body says, oh, I need to get stronger at this. And it builds the proteins and systems to help that part of the body function. As we open up a fasting space, the body says, oh, this is important. We are doing this. We need to build out the pathways to be able to do this better. Then the body does that.
And and it can take a couple weeks to do that. And so most people's experiences that as you're doing a practice, it can get easier over a couple weeks especially. And then it's it's both a short term and a long term process. So the longer you practice a thing, the more normal it becomes. And the stronger the body is.
As you're going through it. You start at this place surviving the experience. Okay? And I like that. I've got a video where I describe the hunger waves. Right. And I showed the waves crashing up on the beach. Right. That's the experience we experience hunger as like a wave. It rises and then it crashes up in this crescendo experience.
Right. Very intense. That most intense experience about 10 to 15 minutes. The whole experience, the whole wave, generally 60 to 90 minutes is a hunger experience. The most intense peak 10 to 15 minutes. And so you say survive it. So you ride out the wave. That's why I talk about anchors, right? Anchored in the waves. This maybe is our anchor, where we're trying to get to the deepest level, like the the bottom of the ocean where the anchor sits.
Our intention, the core direction that we're trying to set, that is upstream of every other decision we make. So we're trying to survive that experience. That's the first step. And then we gain experience. We improve our strength. And the goal, of course, is not just surviving. If the entire experience of life of a person who is using a fasting process was just one never ending survival thing, you know, that would would not be very nice.
I never would have stuck with it personally, I'm over ten years in on un fasting. I never eat a bedtime snack. Now the one of the hardest things I've gotten over is and you can describe it as an addiction. It's certainly a habit is so hard. I mean to lie there in bed. That was my experience. Without eating, I couldn't sleep just to start.
I just couldn't sleep. I sit there thinking about my fridge is just ten steps away. I get out of this room and over there, and then I'm there and I can be eating a thing. All I could think about and you know, it feels like hanging on. So I like it survived. Like, okay, but now I, I never do it.
I haven't done it in years. I don't even think about it. It never would cross my mind. The only time I crossed my mind is, my kids like to eat a bedtime snack, and, you know, then there's a lot of interesting things I think about there. My kids are lean and strong and active, and, they certainly are not fasting most of the time.
And I think, well, no, I want them to eat and have energy and they need to grow. So fasting is a tool. Fasting is a process to help you in a certain space, help you maintain weight, help you lose weight. It can absolutely do that. So not everybody shouldn't be doing it at all places in times. But then I think I have thoughtful things.
I was like, well, here the years are ticking by. My kids are always having a bedtime snack. Look at what is happening in this culture. Is is this really the healthiest thing to do? Am I actually setting up a situation where they might struggle to stop it, since it's been part of the entire formation of their human experience?
Like I? As a difficult question to answer, I'm I'm not a pediatrician. I don't have, that exact answer. You know, they're lean and strong and healthy and they're hungry and and it seems like a thoughtful thing to do. This is what I want to show you, though, is it can change my experience. Change. I worked with hundreds and hundreds of people who have had that experience and and gotten over it and through it, and then it fades away, not just surviving, thriving, floating through the space so it can become an enjoyable lifestyle.
That's exactly, what we want, exactly what we want. Maybe that's an intentional space to flow in today, right? If you're saying I'm struggling, I'm just hanging on. Right. Just surviving. Okay? Giving yourself super encouragement that you did it very, very hard thing to do. In our society, it's rare that you run into people that do it. Most people have a bedtime snack.
And our society, most people that I talk to, at least in my consulting, do that. It's very common, very common habit, very hard to step back from. That's the barrier to entry. Most things of value in life have resistance to them to move through a space. This is like a way that we can know that we're on the right track.
Hey, if something is easy and it's it, you've really totally thought about it and you said, okay, I'm dialed in. This really is a thing. It's easy. We just flow, okay? We have gratitude for that. We're trying to make as many things like that as possible. But in general, tell me if you would agree the things that are best for us, the things that really will take us to a better place, have resistance to them.
We have to push against something or we have to work for something. We have to strive for it to accomplish it. Most things of value are like that, and because we have limited capacity, right? Limited mental and physical capacity, we are always, as a general rule, especially this unconscious self, we are always trying to look and flow toward the path of least resistance.
This is why it's so difficult to change, because change requires work. It requires doing things differently. It requires different thinking and action and everything about the way the brain works. Everything about our experience is to default to habit. So that. So that's it's as easy as possible to navigate the real work. This is why I'm suggesting in our discussion today that the most important thing is to get way down into this intentional level is so far up stream of, you know how many calories am I eating?
How how much of this stuff to really get to this core powerful place is I would describe as the path of least resistance to a different place. We think of this the habits, the patterns. Maybe for decades that we have had. That's the well-worn path I did the session the other day where I put up Robert Frost's poem right, Two Paths Diverging.
In other words, I took the one less traveled. We are trying in the midst of a culture that is heading in a very unhealthy direction, to take a road less traveled, to pull things back way upstream. And. And this is also the session I did the other day. The illusion of easy people say, well, change is difficult. Change is hard.
You it well, isn't it easier to do something else? But here's the thing if doing something else that is easier is not taking you in the direction you want to go, is it really easy? That's the illusion of easy. Say, I'm trying to go to Minneapolis, but I'm driving towards Chicago. I and it'd be very easy. Have you ever tried to, you know, you turn around on a road, you get in this section, you can't turn around for ten miles and you're like, oh my gosh, just going to add 20 minutes and you're you're trying to figure out, can I get by with pulling over a UI?
And one of these things where it says, you can't do that, but you're tempted to do it anyway? Okay. But it's like we're going not in the direction we want. The easiest way to get to Minneapolis is not to keep driving to Chicago. You said it'd be very easy. Look, I don't have to turn, I can I just keep going easy, okay?
But is it really easy? You want to get way upstream, you say, okay, this is why change is hard. This is why we have to do it. Because to change the course, we got to turn around. We got to go in a different direction. See, the intention is showing us the blueprint. The intention is telling me I really need to be in Minneapolis right now.
But we're on the road to Chicago. Got a turn. Takes effort to do that. But once we turn, once we get way upstream, we change the course. Now we're on the track back to Minneapolis. Now we're getting where we want it to go. Then it can become easier. Okay, we've made the turns. We've gotten the car in a different direction.
Right? We're driving on the right road, moving toward the direction we got our compass. I think an intention is like the compass. Which direction do we want to really go take some effort to do that. So everything we do requires effort of some kind. We have to work. We have to, make decisions and do things every day.
What I'm suggesting is that the place to apply the most important leverage point, to put the limited amount of effort we have to get way upstream and apply that effort at the deepest level of our intentionality is the place where that effort is going to pay off the most. To really answer the most part and question, what do I really want?
Means where do I really want to be going? Like, if I'm steering the ship here of my life, where do I really want it to be going? What are the things that I am really passionate about and able to take action, take desire into action at that deepest level that's going to flow out through 100 other decisions. Everything about where we go, that's how we really change, the course change, our way of being in the world.
It's a transformation. Transformation is a huge word, I think. But this level, you say, how do you. We have a I want a personal transformation. Like it's such a it can be a grandiose word. Say I want everything to be different. Maybe it's too big a word you say. I just want one thing to be different. So I want a small little change that can be a way to think about it.
But a transformation to me as I think about it, what does it really mean to be differently in the world? So this is the important question to me. I want to be differently in the world, develop an enjoyable lifestyle so I don't have to gain it back, get out of the cycle. Have you experienced this? So many people experiencing this up and down and up and down.
And then the emotional roller coaster that is accompanying, you know, is it a chicken or the egg? You know, you really have to get into that sort of space. Are the emotions driving it, or are the frustrations of a yo yo experience driving like an emotional state? I never want people to experience this. This is the most is the most common weight loss pattern in America today.
Up and down, up and down. And I've seen it so many times for pretty much every single weight loss process, including bariatric surgery, for example, you know, people have a bariatric surgery. I've I've met with hundreds of people who've gone through bariatric surgery. The most immediate, powerful weight loss experience you could have surgical weight loss. People lose hundreds of pounds.
I've seen people every amount of time out from bariatric surgery. Some people maintain that, but I've seen so many people in where the graph is like this. I've seen people go all the way back, and then I've seen people come halfway back, and many times someone had this experience, and then now they're having this experience, and I see them at this point where they're back, you know, in my weight consulting practice.
And then we're talking about this experience and what has happened and the the deep level where that experience, you say, can't get much deeper into the body than a surgical weight loss. But there was not, from my point of view, a corresponding intervention on the emotional level that got that deep. And what I'm suggesting is that actually the intentionality of our experience, it's like it's like an emotional surgical procedure to get into that level of that space, to really address our relationship with food.
The intentionality of our relationship with food is the core thing that that shapes this experience. Have have you experience that as a multifaceted experience? We need three things. When I think about intention, okay, it starts with desire. We talked about it flows through intention, which is desire and action. And this gets us to one of the very most important things.
Intentionality has to be paired with a functional plan if we can be very, very intentional about things. But if our actions are not manifested through a process that is efficacious, it can't work. And I think my experience has been that a lot of people get themselves actually into an intentional space, and they put a huge amount of their effort, and being into a process that doesn't work.
And and this is so emotionally defeating that people give up. And and that is one part of it. One part of it is that and the other part of it is people don't give up. It's just the process fails them. They and they keep at it. And despite a process, it doesn't work, which and then people experience this anyway, even when the intention hasn't gone.
And the main way that people experience that is through standard dieting processes. Standard dieting processes work for a very small minority of people who try them in the long term. They work for almost everyone who tries them in the short term. And this is another one of these illusions and traps that we can get into. You start almost any standard diet, and there's a big New England Journal Medicine article showed that almost every diet works for everybody who starts it, whether it's low carb, low fat, Mediterranean dash, this or that, you go on any diet, you start having success and then people plateau is why people plateau.
People fear that because, hey, I've been through this cycle. This is what happens. I get on something that works and then it stops working. And then I mutter along for a time and then it slowly we do this again, and that starts this cycle of, mental, torture that most of people's weight loss experience is had, says some type of trauma has always triggered the need for comfort supplied by food, and poor habits return.
Now we're getting way down there that some type of trauma can be new trauma, and it can be old trauma. Trauma, in my, experience, is a type of thing that does not just go away with time. We tend to bury trauma inside us. And then it just it's like you bury a seed and it tends to sprout.
Have to be very, very intentional about dealing with the trauma that we have experienced and trauma, difficult, experience and things coming to us is something that is fairly likely in our experience to keep happening to us, unfortunately. And so maybe, maybe this is another core intention of the day. What is the process for breaking out of that cycle?
How do we process the trauma that we've experienced? How do we prepare ourselves for trauma that is coming? What is the emotional center in the space? Do you see how this is so far upstream of a standard dietary perspective that is like, oh, how many calories am I getting in a day? Well, that's true, it's nowhere near the type of question that helps us answer this question.
This is the type of question that really matters. How do I have an enjoyable lifestyle when I'm surrounded by trauma? How do I have an enjoyable lifestyle when inevitably things are going to come that I feel unprepared for and unable to handle? Where I have an entire lifetime of habits that I act a certain way, where everything about my experience tells me my impulsive decision making I find myself doing, and certain things without even being consciously aware of it.
Very, very difficult space to navigate. But it is the most important question. These are the types of spaces and decisions that change everything that our transformational, experience. I have many, many thoughts about it. Let's really dive into some other types of thinking here. Here's an area that I have not talked very much about in the past, but my conference in Aspen this last weekend is just just making it, front of mind.
I spent three days, talking with, among, among others, hundreds of people. But I had the opportunity to talk with many, many U.S. military veterans who have experienced the very, very worst trauma that I think any human beings could ever experience. The most horrific stories that you could possibly imagine. And on a very, very deep level, I talked with these people about their experience of the incredible trauma and dysfunction that these experiences brought into their physical being.
And so this just showed to me in, in such a again powerful way of the deep connection of our physical and emotional space. And you can just feel it. This is like planted this trauma is planted in a deep soil inside of of the being of this people. And that manifested in so many different ways in just in my observation from it, many people struggle.
I see a lot of people gained a lot of weight. There's just one observation after this experience. Certain people that I talked to went from being Navy Seal, probably the most intensely physically conditioned person that you ever meet. Massive strength, huge muscles, lean and powerful, the most fearsome physical being on the planet. Basically just like a powerful force of nature.
Holy cow. Trauma implanted deep into the system ten years later. Metabolically unhealthy. Since this is showing what I'm saying, you can't go to a situation like that. Deep trauma in an experience. Don't don't you understand? 1500 calories in 2000 calories out. Easy. You see, we have to get way upstream. We're all like that on maybe a different level.
We don't have an extreme combat tour in Afghanistan. Hopefully, maybe, maybe some people do. Okay. But we have whatever our thing is and trauma and experience is showing us these experiences, showing us that we have to get to this level. We want to deal with this situation in a more powerful, direction. Okay. We have to address this.
The trauma, the experience, whatever the emotional thing is in our life or experience, that is the place that we, that we have to go. What do I really want? I say the most important question in a space of trauma. Maybe the question that you really want is, how do I heal from this traumatic experience that came to me?
How do I stop experiencing it? Absolutely. This is true. Everyone's trauma is unique. No one size fits all fix. This is why, of course, the very start of these sort of things someone is dealing with trauma is like, do you have a therapist? Right? Are you moving toward it? Are you getting help with it? Are you recognizing, like the significance of it, the power of it?
We have in general? I think a culture is a trauma like you have to you just have to be strong, right? You power through. Something is like like, I think a cultural perspective we have on trauma. Not helpful, not thoughtful. Maybe trauma is at a root level. Maybe trauma is the intention, both past and preparing for a future.
This this is one of the big reasons here why I have done some sessions here trying to say like, what is the loving thing to do? What is the antidote to trauma? In some fashion? I would say love is the antidote to trauma. Very, very difficult, difficult space. The most, powerful testimony that I heard from people, this weekend, which is totally changing so much to think about.
I'll just tell you, if you want to think along with me and some really out of the box, stuff. If you have a Netflix, you can watch this documentary In Waves and at War. Many of the people that I met this weekend are the people who filmed this Netflix documentary. I met the people who pretty much all the people, who actually made this documentary on Netflix in Waves and War.
It tells the story of four US Navy Seals who experienced horrific trauma and found healing from it. It is a tough film, no sugarcoating of trauma in that film. It is graphic and raw and, difficult. Not child friendly. I won't tell you, but it is real. And it and it is a type of thing that is getting to a very deep level.
When we're sitting in a space about finding healing from trauma, this this will really give you some interesting perspective on that for sure. May be one of the very root levels of all disease. If we really are trying to dial down and drill down trauma across the spectrum, of human experience embedded so deep, you know, and then there is this concept, here's a concept that people have talked to me about that I initially blew off completely as some sort of pseudoscience, which is multi-generational trauma, the idea that trauma, you know, can flow down through generations.
That seemed ludicrous to me, to be honest. A couple of years ago I said, oh, come on, come on, that can't be real. But the more I have looked into it and the more I have started to understand, even epigenetic phenomenon, that that there is so much information transmitted through not just the DNA, but the entire genome that the entire outside.
We got to understand you got DNA, beautiful double helix and coding regions inside the DNA are actual genes is just the start of what is happening here, just the complexity that the entire outside of the genome and also transmitting information in a much different way called methylation patterns. These entire things, the actual outside of the genome, controlling the expression of the actual code.
And this unlike the actual act code through the genome, the methylation patterns, the epigenetic phenomenon outside of the genome is adaptable. It can change in real time. Incredible studies about trauma that mothers experience before childbirth change methylation patterns of gene expression in the child. When I learned that all of a sudden I thought about how judgmental I was about the prospect of multi-generational trauma, and that experiences can be passed down through generations.
And I thought, oh, like, here's an actual physical mechanism that could explain something like that, that and then you seek trauma in a totally different perspective. Whoa. Then I start to see, oh, maybe this is such a more root level space. Maybe we really do need to be flowing into this idea on a deeper level. There's no doubt that we do.
I write a book about this. After I learned about epigenetics. I was, in a deeper level. I was kind of known about it for a while, but I didn't really appreciate the significance of it. Then I read a fascinating book called The Myth of Normal. If you are resonating with this topic, if you are hearing like, okay, I hear you, I want, I want to do the work, you know, I want to do the work of addressing trauma drill down to the very deepest layers, answer the most important questions what do I really want out of life?
How do I deal with trauma? How do I move on from the past? How do I have a different way of being in the world that is not controlled by trauma and external events, but is true and in alignment with my core being the intention of health and life and vitality and flourishing. Read this book, The Myth of Normal.
Read it. The gentleman who wrote this book, Doctor Gabor Monti as a diction, trained a physician and a trauma counselor, basically, I think, and this book goes into his personal story of, deep trauma being Jewish and his parents fleeing and escaping the Holocaust. The biggest theme that I took out of this book is disease as teacher disease, as teacher that I've talked about, in on this channel quite a bit.
I took from this book. This book was very challenging to me because the idea of disease as teacher is not present in modern medicine. You know, I went to University of Wisconsin Medical School. Wonderful, wonderful place, wonderful people, very standard in its thinking. And I got stamped out of, that system with, exactly the way the modern medicine thinks.
And this idea is nowhere in that. And so it was, is very hard to see it when you're kind of stamped in a mold of thinking, and then you see it. And just like with epigenetics, just like you say, multigenerational trauma, you like the standard way of thinking. I think that can't possibly be true. Disease can't be a teacher.
Disease is bad, right? And of course disease is bad. But but when we see, okay, disease is happening for a reason that more almost than anything, it's a communication from the body. And in almost all cases, shockingly, trauma might be at the root of the reasons for it, and that the body is like body doesn't speak a language that is just audible.
Body can only respond in certain ways. And so when we are trying to learn and understand, why are things the way they are okay, the body does communicate with us though. When the body is communicating many times that is a deviation from the normal pattern that we see. We see patterns of health. Then we see patterns of dis health.
We start seeing that as a communication from the body. Body saying something is not right here. Maybe one of those things that is not right is the trauma. This is so out of the box of modern medicine, but it's the way I've come to see it. I think it is really what is true about the world trauma is maybe if we go back, look at our centering quote for the day.
Intentions are causes that create effects. Maybe an intention is not the only cause, right? Maybe trauma is a cause. Trauma is a cause that has effects in the body. Just think of that. You think trauma is something that happened like is it really there? Is it still there? Maybe. See, that's getting very complex, that's getting into a really psychological, even spiritual sort of place.
Trauma is still there. If we haven't processed and got rid of it. How do you get rid of something that is intangible, at least from our perspective? But if it's there, if it's having causes that have effects in the body, maybe those effects are manifestations, actually a disease. Maybe this is two sides of the spectrum that we are looking at.
We're trying to go into some sort of deep centering space and say, I want to put into this deepest space love, joy, peace, contentment, happiness, satisfaction, contentment. All this stuff is the opposite of what certainly trauma is trying to do. Think of the effects that trauma is saying. Your terrible, horrible things loaded in these experiences. People who are struggling with trauma say things like that that it is defining.
Then if you feel like your life is defined by something like that, so you're not good enough. Part of what I'm trying to show in this experience, right, to get down into these root levels, is that maybe this can be a part of a process of how we deal with trauma by, but not by burying it, which is just planting the planting it like a seed deep within ourselves, opening up the light.
As what we did in this session, was it Monday? Looking toward the light. Bring the light down in there. You know, if you, if you got a seed down in the ground, if you dig it up, if you let the light shine in down on the roots, that's going to it's going to wither the thing up. She doesn't seed grows in the darkness underground.
And it comes out when I shine the light down in there on it. Don't bury it. Bring intentionality into the trauma space. Take the darkness. Take the difficulty. Bring the intention to it. These are the different force trauma pulling this way and tension balancing it out. I think you really like that book. That book I read it, I, you know, I struggled through it.
I was like, is that real? Is a disease. A teacher is a disease. Showing something, can it be used? Can you use a disease to correct something, to heal something in some way? This is the message that healing can come to people by listening to a disease. This is a beautiful illustration of the obstacle is the way that by moving toward it and through it, that you can step up on it to actually a better place that the body is trying to show us the way toward better health through a disease.
This it sounds warped when you first hear it say, that can't be possibly right. What would my body do that to me? Say, would my body make me feel pain? I think a lot in this space. You'll get this in the book. The loving thing to do is not always to run away from pain. The loving thing to do is not always to run away from difficulty or struggle.
Sometimes the way you love someone is by struggling with them and and the body loves us. I tell you, our body loves us is a message I have on this channel that I've tried to communicate. You people struggle with a weight loss issue. People feel like my body is broken. This is this is like a big underlying philosophy of of the talk I did is obesity a disease?
The the modern medical appreciation of obesity, which I think is trying to be thoughtful, tells people that obesity is a disease and that the body is basically broken and dysfunctional. And the more I have really died, dive deep and think about it. I find that to be an unacceptable process. It's not true. There is dysfunction that comes from having the energy imbalance in our body.
There are pros and cons to it, but especially when you look at this model disease as teacher and you realize this is a communication, the body is communicating things to us. It's not broken. It's communicating about things that are out of balance and dysfunctional, is trying to have a conversation with us. And this is the process. Obesity may be more clearly than anything shows us the model.
We don't run away from it. We listen to the body, we learn from the experience, and as we move through it, you can see it as you move toward it and through it. Realizing the body. We're having a conversation here. Maybe trauma is at the root of that. And as we're moving toward it and trying to get through that space, overcoming it, having the conversation with the body looks like losing weight, coming through the process.
You be in a healthier state, right? Especially if we can learn to listen to the body more closely. Think of that process moving through the conversation. If you take the medical model, you say obesity is a disease. You say disease is teacher means disease is trying to communicate with us and show us a different way. Body's trying to teach us, saying, what does it look like to have that communication say, okay, the way you have been living your way of being in the world has just been such that more energy has flowed into this system than has flown out of it.
We haven't been able to align like a dance. Think of like dancing with a partner, right? You don't know the steps of the Kumba cumbia, whatever it is. And so you're stepping on your partner's toes. This is like our dance with the body mental, physical. We're trying to align our eating with the natural flow of energy in the body, in a culture that tells us got to eat all the time, but now the body's like, I'm stepping over here and this dance is like a disaster.
We're stepping on our partners toes, bodies trying to show us. This is like what fasting is, right? The flow getting in alignment body is like, hey, I need some space here to run some other metabolic processes. Can't be eating now. We need the healthy food for the nutrition. We need the space. Fasting like a dance with the body.
And so that's the flow state that I want to help people get into. Fasting. Flow state is like a dance with the body. And as we're in that dance, that's the enjoyable lifestyle. I like that people like dancing. Do you want to be young and free like a child? It's just dance it. It's like everything okay? I just flowing that sort of mindset, moving through a space like that.
Now the body's like, oh, I get now we're getting in alignment. You see how bring everything into balance, bring into alignment with these core natural cycles. Now we're flowing through a space. More energy is flowing out of the system that is flowing into it in a hormonally balanced way that the body understands. Then you can see it. You're losing weight.
This is communication from the body. The body is like, yes, this is this is the way the system works. You know, I always say, if you're going to be great, you're born like maybe along with the placenta. Like that's where the instruction manual is. Okay. Baby comes out now the instruction manual, you can just read it will love it.
But then the no instruction manual comes. So here we have to observe, be thoughtful. Learn. That's like the dance. What are the practices actually that the body is showing us with the way the metabolism works that are as actually the path to deal with this situation means heal from the trauma. Listen to the communication. I really believe if we are listening most clearly enough thinking of this comment.
Everyone's trauma, unique, no one size fits all fix right? Our body though is communicating to us about our situation, our experience. Dive into that space, learn and listen to the body. Think what it looks like, then to flow out. Then this disease, if we call it that, will disappear, right? It will the the we can see it in this word that I don't like obesity.
The extra weight that is, we say is not serving us right now. We don't want we want that to just flow out of this system. Then what we perceive as a disease, which may in fact just be a communication from the body about the state of things, will disappear. Now that's a model for potentially many different types of diseases.
I'll just tell you that I experienced that through. It's always multifactorial. I've tried to do every single health thing that I can in my life to improve health. So. So if you only do one thing and something happens, easy to say. Oh cause effect. Okay, you do 25 things at once. You say, what was it, 2019? I, I developed a really, really difficult autoimmune disease, autoimmune esophagitis.
Esophagus starts swelling up, I couldn't swallow. Holy cow. Really, really unpleasant. I thought I was going to die for a while. And in the process of learning about that, as I'm working on healing from a disease that happened, I realize, oh my gosh, I start to realize how out of balance my life was. Traumatic things that I had experienced.
Look into this book and see that that this gentleman has been working with people with trauma. He was describing me. There's a section on autoimmune disease in there. Says them very, very common for a certain type of person. You can read it a certain type of person to develop an autoimmune disease. I just read myself in that book, and then he presented the pathway to say, hey, you have to unwind that takes a lot of work to do that, but I believe it now.
Having experienced it, I went to the top doctors for treating autoimmune esophagitis. The only answer was drugs, and it is a lifelong condition. You're going to be dealing with this forever. And I said, there's got to be a better way than that. There has to be. Oh, man, I did a lot of reflection too, about, you know, when it's my own self, how many times in modern medicine you know, I see somebody that comes in with some sort of problem.
It's like, oh, yeah, you just read the standard stuff or the answer to this, this drug or the answer to this, this drug, but then it when it comes to my own personal self, all of a sudden I have a disease, then it's unacceptable. Right. To me it was unacceptable. I went as hard as I could at it, you know, to to really understand.
How do I really get rid of this? How do I heal? How do I be free of it? I've done a lot of personal reflection to say like, what is really my my perspective as a doctor? You know, it's acceptable to me to just throw some drugs at people to, you know, but for my own self, I wouldn't treat myself that way.
I don't want to treat people that way. I'll tell you, this is why it became intolerable for myself to stay in my primary care practice. I just can't I can't do this if it's not acceptable for me. I can't accept disease and dysfunction and the fact that you actually can in when you open your mind to it and to experiences that are outside of this modern medical system that in so many ways is so incredible, the technology so incredible it is.
It's a miracle, but in so many ways is so blind to the incredible healing potential that exists inside of the human body and the human mind, the fact that medicine and health and healing can actually be unlocked through our own selves by something as simple yet profound as recognizing that diseases can actually be communications from the body to help heal us.
Not everything. You get an equal eye infection, you know, disease. Probably not teaching you anything. Although maybe if we dig deeper, why did this happen? Maybe there is maybe there even is there. You know, I don't know. You know, sometimes these messages are hard to interpret. We have not had this perspective on our radar. We are not skilled.
And I know I certainly I'm not highly skilled at understanding all the different ways that this might be true. Maybe it is true on deeper and broader levels that we don't yet understand. But I'll tell you, I have a few conditions where I never would have believed it, but now I do obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disease in these circumstances.
Very clear to me now that in, most of these cases, the body is trying to have a communication and teach us. So this is this is the process as we're talking about it. This is a sort of space that I really want to sink in on this, channel in these discussions. I feel like we're doing it.
I love the interaction, that we're having the dialog, the discussion. To me, it is beautiful and real. Nothing sugarcoated. I've said that a few times. Right. And and to me, it's kind of a little mini joke. It's about as funny as I get. Okay, I don't sugarcoat anything. No, because sugar. Right? Not good for weight loss. Sugar.
Not good for weight loss. We try to cut out the processed carbs, the processed foods, all this stuff. But don't sugarcoat anything on the deeper level. Meaning let's, like, really be real and, get down into these deepest levels and move, move toward that.
Let's give it space. That's what I'm thinking here in this, you know, this space just to have a real conversation with you here. You know, I'm thinking through my mind. I've got a whole lot of reflection that I've written down on some notes. And then I'm thinking, man, this has been a lot to process. And I'm thinking, you know, should I dive into more thoughts on this?
And then I was just thinking how how deep so much of this has been right to, like, really dive in on the trauma and I think give that some space, a little thing in my mind and just stop talking and let some of this linger a little bit very hard in our modern society to take some space, to take some time and to just sit with something difficult.
See, here I do that. I say, hey, let's just sit with some of this. We've created a space here. We started with the idea. What is the most important question and think of the flow through it most in question. Important question what do I really want. And it just this start to flow into a deeper, deeper space. And this was not on my radar to start with in this day just flow into the idea of trauma.
But I just feel like it has been such a natural process and discussion.
Can we give ourselves the openness, the space to actually sink in, to something deep and profound?
But this is the type of thing that I really want to help people sink into a really deep and profound space that can be transformational space. That's not something that you can just easily do. And it's it's not something that you can do quickly to, to move into a space of dealing with deep trauma, super ingrained patterns. You can't edit that.
You know, to edit it, to chop out the space is to chop out the process of moving toward it. That's why I use that word kind of sinking in. You don't think you don't sink into something instantly. It has to mean enough for you. This is what intention really is, right? That an intention, as we're heading toward it, pretty much has to take time and space in order to mean something like like the standard model, like of, social media, you know, videos, these sort of things like chop these things up very like attention, like get everybody to like, just doesn't it doesn't resonate.
And maybe there's a place for it. But to do the really deep work, gotta sit with it. Gotta have enough space in your life to do it. You gotta find the space to lean into it. Move toward it. I just think just here, after I kind of see, I amped. I was amping myself up on all this stuff.
And then here is I'm. I'm trying to physically, personally do it with you here. Then I'm reflecting on, okay, what am I doing? I start taking a deep breath. This is the thing. How do you open a space? How do you move toward it? Well, like we're back at the basics, right? Start with a breathing practice, doing a deep practice.
I'm doing a little mental check in with myself. I'm realizing like, oh, my little box breathing. Not doing very good right now. Like when I breathe in, okay, I want, I want to I'm not holding that a for count. You know I start you should be able to breathe in for a four. Breathe. Hold it for four. Breathe out for a four.
Hold out for a four. Kind of a cycle. And then you can expand that. Right now I'm kind of like 3 in 3 out rallies, man I've got a I've got a ways to go here in this sort of space to really settle down. Do you have time wherever you're at. Right now, do you have, you know, pressures, things you got to get to like that's all good.
We've all got stuff we got to do. So. So what I really like about, you know, the archive is going to be here, come back to a space, settle in, find a space. If you got time pressure right now, find a space in your life later today, tomorrow, whenever it works in your days and weeks, finding a space, especially in the morning, a beautiful way to start the day.
Taking some space at the end of the day to really open up a space like this is the thing doing versus being our society. So focused. Do do do do. I feel that here like, oh, I need to, I need to keep talking as I'm I'm sharing my real thoughts with you. I need to keep talking. I need to keep saying things to people.
My beautiful audience. There's a pressure to do that. But then the other side of it that I'm seeing here, oh, actually, the space when we stop, that's just as important to be in a space here. We're in a space we've touched on really deep space. We need to be with that. And if you have time and ability to not rush over it, each layer of trauma requires its own allotment of time and space to resolve, that is for sure.
And like you said before, is unique. You can't just say, oh, look, you had this trauma. It's like a dose response. You can't say, oh, just this one's going to require 96 minutes. You know, it is. You can't do something like that. You have to work at it real hard for me to sit here and actually not say something.
I feel self-conscious about it, I think is, is it okay? I think this is what we can experience just more broadly. I'm sitting here thinking, is it okay to sit in a space and not say something feels wrong? That's the exact type of space that we can be in as we're trying to deal with and process so many of these things, we always think the answer is to do and do more.
Sometimes the answer this is the pattern that fasting shows us. Sometimes the pathway is to do less, to do nothing. Right. That's like a lesson of fasting that is a mirror for so many of these other things. Less is more. Nothing is something. Pat had the incredible question the other week like how do I if fasting is like an anchor?
Like how do I anchor myself to nothing? Okay, but here we're seeing space. The absence of a thing is a thing. Nothing is. Something might be the very thing that we actually need here. I'm gonna try to do it. Grab my coffee.
Language and communication is a much broader concept than English, if you see what I'm saying. There is healing available in different ways than the modern Western thinking has typically appreciated. And music is one of those things. Art in general or more broadly, is one of those things. Art as medicine. What is art? Art is a human expression. Art is a communication and an inspiration.
And it's a non language, primarily non language. And it can be a perhaps also of course poetry. We had earlier in the session helping us appreciate how we're not just a number that helps us understand and process emotional states and trauma. Of course one of these causes like our quote, is showing causes of emotional states, trauma. How do we get there though?
The layers of trauma. To me, music is a type of language that can help us get to some of those layers. The rhythm is there, like how do you sink into a deeper layer? Maybe it's like this, a rhythm, a melody, very common. You hear a beautiful melody. It evokes emotion, feeling a deeper level of thinking and communication.
Different ways to do that. Yeah, I'm a big advocate, of course, of meditation. Meditation, probably in its deepest, purest practice, is not accompanied with music more difficult, some to practice, though sometimes I have felt that, okay, I will use a phrase musical meditation. Much easier to start with if you are someone who is not a practiced or doesn't have a meditation practice, finds it intimidating to start listening to the music, help you sink into a space that is thoughtful and contemplative, gentle sounds and like, how would you handle a trauma, right?
How do you open up that space gently, thoughtfully, lovingly? Maybe these sounds graceful, peaceful, beautiful sounds helping you to hold and frame something dark and difficult in as gentle and thoughtful a way as possible. That's the type of space that, that music can help bring. Say, if I'm trying to sit alone in a room in the darkness and meditate with no, no structure, no support, this powerful experience, you can definitely have a deep and profound experience there.
But just like fasting we were describing earlier in the session barrier to entry to that space like we're talking about, the barrier to entry in a fasting space is like experiencing hunger. Have to survive it, right? We were saying, make it through the wave of the experience to get to a space of peace and contentment. Exactly the same map on meditation.
What is the barrier to entry to a beautiful, peaceful, meditative state where you. This is what's possible. Drift outside of conscious awareness of time, meanings flowing through the meditation space without struggle and experiencing flow state in a meditation space. It took me. I've experienced that as some of the most beautiful time that I have spent in a meditation space.
How long was I trying to experience something like that? Being open to it before I experienced it quite a long time? That is not the type of space you just find it. When I started trying to learn how to meditate, extremely uncomfortable experience for me. Just like trying to go to bed without eating my bedtime snack that I had done for 30 years and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, I want to eat something, you know?
And I'm doing this kind of motion. That's the anxiety, right? The experience that's like, maybe it is even more intense. I don't know, it's like the same sit in a room, quiet, dark, just me. I mean, within 20s I'm like, I can't take it anymore. Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I was like, I have all these things to do.
I have to be doing this and that. And then just the thoughts and the things. Very intense actually. Can you sit alone with yourself in an open space? Okay. So one way to look at it is like music is like a, a crutch, an aid. Just like we see we have fasting aids and I put the video fasting aids things that are helpers to help us and say, I just can't get through that space.
Well, like maybe t like especially at night and herbal tea. Very helpful to get through that space. Giving us hydration, giving us calming little botanical helpers in the camomile or whatever it is, you know. Or maybe it's a fiber supplements and they fiber have no calories, but giving us bulk, soaking up acid, giving us just some substance or structure, not metabolically taking us out truly out of a fasting space.
No calories coming in, no artificial sweeteners that are hormonally interfering with our bodily process. Just some fiber to take up that space, just like a bridge to help us get there. Like music is like that, a crutch. So I can't sit in this space, this pure open space, the the wave, the intensity. Even now, I sat down and do a meditation right now, I'm not any kind of master at it.
I would experience the same things. Here's the thoughts that would go through my mind. Am I really doing this now? Like, do I have to do it? But like now I don't have to do it. There's the first barrier to entry. I've got a list of 80 different things that I want to do that are, I would say, important things to do.
You know, I'd say I'm, I'm trying to like run a successful channel, connect with people on a business, go consults and things and have schedules and stuff, like, is it really the highest use of my time to sit in a room and do nothing? I would start this argue argument with myself that I've actually done many times. This is probably the biggest barrier to my ever doing it, because when I start to do it, I just start to come up with a list of things that are more important that quote is coming to me.
Don't let the essential, you know, to paraphrase, be overpowered by the urgent, always going to be things that are urgent that we so-called need to do. And then all of these urgencies can overwhelm the essential. If we're if I'm I'm just doing some personal reflection with you now, I think what's actually the essential things like it might be that actually a meditation space might be the very most valuable, essential type of mindset to get in, to really be rooted and grounded and and thoughtful in everything else that we are doing, that sort of space to get to it, to find actually really profound space of mental place, peace, clarity, contentment is awesome.
Very my experience difficult to do. I still, even having had times which are precious and rare, where I've actually cleared out the space to do it, and then experiences like barrier number one, always something else we could be doing, always something that feels like a better use of time and always, in, in my experience, so easy to just say, no, I can.
And I've had many times I've started in and say, hey, I'm going to open up a space here for half an hour, only where I'm going to say, I'm going to try to get into this meditation space, open up the space so we can process these things, the traumas, the things, all this stuff so valuable. And then I I'll tell myself, I know ahead of time it's going to feel tough.
There's the barrier to entry. I'll feel anxious, jittery. I'll want to be doing something. I wonder what is on the phone is is, you know, you have to turn everything off. Turn off the phone. No alerts. Computer is off. You have to do it in a space where you're not missing a thing. Most of the time I have to set an alarm because it's like I don't want to.
I always worry, what if I disappeared for hours? You know, never happened. But you can in a in a big space, you can kind of get outside of time. A lot of space can go. That's like because you went way down in that space. It's like a big space to get to that trauma. I set an alarm. I have a goal.
Maybe it's going to be half an hour, maybe it's going to be an hour. You know, is is your life organized in such a way where you have that much time to devote to something truly valuable? Many people would say they can't carve that much time. But then you got to really reflect, you know, are you on Netflix or are you on YouTube with something?
Are you on social media? Do you have any space where you can carve out even 20 minutes, you know, to to say, I'm going to start practicing that? Just like we can practice flowing through a fasting space barrier to entry ride. The wave gets through it. We see on the other side, you've experienced this right where you made it through it.
Or I'm telling you at least, that you can. You make it through this space and then it's like, oh, the wave diminishes. Peace and contentment is present. This is what the meditation space is like. It's the mirror image, the mental and the physical is the mirror image. You have to ride that wave, the anxiety, the jitteriness, all the barriers that say, I could be doing something else.
Just like you see any point in the fasting space, we can always just go eat something. The experience is over. We're going into a meditation space. We want to open up a beautiful space to deal deeply with trauma and emotional difficulty. At any point you can just stop. You can go off and do some other thing. You got 80 other things to do.
This is the barrier and this is the strength. This is a process. Take real time, integrate and process at every moment. You could always say no, but to make it through it to say yes, to be open to it, to accept it, to accept that it is difficult is why most people don't do it. Most people in our society not opening up a space to deeply have a meditation space where they can dive down and answer the root questions, the most important issues.
But we want to be the most thoughtful version of ourself. You have to be incredibly thoughtful. So if you are in this space with me here, just recognize I'm telling you, you are incredibly thoughtful person. Incredibly, because you're taking the time. You're not looking away from any difficulty, you're not looking at anything other than the reality of what is there and approaching it in the most loving, kind, and thoughtful way.
You take that space and bring that to a meditation practice and recognize we've said in this whole session, love is the type of process that sits with people in struggle, and it doesn't shy away from it. It's there to serve and help in the midst of struggle. This is how love becomes a tangible answer to the difficulty that we face.
Because love isn't just rainbows and and Steph is there to support us in in the valley, right in the darkness and the shadow. Say, I accept it, I'm going to sit in that space. I'm going to open up this space just like we're doing now. This is a mirror of the practice. But then, you know, we feel pressure.
We have self-created rules about what we think things should be. I think a session should only be 40 minutes. I say, what if I'm going longer? Are people are going to hate it? And they're like, when will he stop talking to real people? Just turn off people, just turn it off. You know, I don't I don't need to feel judgment or pressure from anybody about anything.
This is the same sort of thing we can bring to every experience in our life. We are truly is very hard. This is what we're saying in the beginning, very hard to know what we really want. We have so much external pressure that even subconsciously, we feel from other people. I'm realizing this right now, this fear I have.
I'm bringing pressure to behave and do things in a certain way. I'm not even realizing. Because what am I worried that a couple people going to judge me who walked on line, this guy talk too long? What is that? It doesn't have any meaning. You start rationally approaching it, say, I want to be true to myself. I want to be true to the experience that I want to create.
I want to create a space where we're not rushed. We're not afraid to just be an experience. That's okay. That's the antidote in a lot of ways to what we're experiencing very hard to heal from things on a timeline. Maybe another fascinating parallel with this meditation space, which was where it has gone. We float in from important questions diving deeper, sinking deeper through trauma into meditation, which is, like I would say, one of the main spaces.
Every part of this discussion, it feels like sinking down into it to me, say we can't heal on a timeline. The the potential of a meditation practice, which I have outlined for you in my most infantile experience of it. I don't know or can communicate exactly how the brain works. I want to learn right this way. I'm going through.
I am picking books to guide our process. I'm on a path with you of learning and developing and growing the psychology that we've been diving into. Understanding how the brain is functioning to me, is deeply enriching. The experience that I have had honestly a few times in my life. Not like every day or anything like that a few times to really get into a space that is outside of our conscious experience of time.
This is what is totally different when we say healing in an overcoming trauma is not happening on a timeline. To be able to get in a space that is outside of time in our normal conscious experience of it, is the type of space that is open enough that you can gain perspective in a different way, and the trauma and the root level of our experience.
I would just tell you, I want you to experience it. If you are here along with me, I want you to have an experience like that. To have an experience like that is is developing another type of strength, mental strength. I think you really have to be mentally strong in order to experience meditation in that sort of way, as some as something that is a deeply or profoundly positive and transformative experience.
It's not the type of thing that just happens. I don't I've never met anyone. I'm intentional in this space of meeting people and having conversations with people who are moving in this direction. I've never met anyone who said, oh, the first time I tried to meditate, I just sat down and I had this beautiful experience where I was, you know, transported out of space and time and and healed all my, think I never talked to anybody who had an experience like that.
Be incredible. Like I said, I mean, if it happened, I'd be totally open to it. I say, what a miracle that would be like a divine intervention or miracle. I'm open to miracles. I'm not. I'm not a strict materialist. I totally respect anybody who is a strict materialist. There's there's no problem. I don't have any. I intentionally do not have any philosophies or judgments of anyone's perspective.
I want all people to feel loved and accepted, and I don't want any kind of ideology or perspective to to stand in the way of people connecting and and feeling accepted and valued. But I am open to miracles. Don't understand them, but I'm open to it. But I will say, most people's experience, everyone that I've ever met experience is that I.
Meditation is a practice to move toward deep trauma, and healing is something that takes intention. So here we are. This is the connection. You have to have deep personal, committed intention to move into that space, to accept that the mental and emotional experience of learning to meditate at such a level that actually has the potential of getting into a healing space.
Okay, do you believe it that there exists within yourself a mental, an emotional space of healing? Take it as a hypothetical. What if, hypothetically, there were they were just considering it now, just for the sake of argument, what if there was a deeply profound emotional and mental space that actually allowed access to healing and health to spring forth from the body?
What if there was? What would that mean to you? What would be the value of that in your life? It's pretty incredible to think about. Do you believe it on a deep and fundamental level, that health exists inside of the body, and that there are spaces and practices and abilities that the body has to heal, conditions that people do not think can be healed to bring healing to trauma, something so abstract and hard to pin down that it's hard to say that it's even real, yet it's real and it has causes and effects in the body.
So how can we process something as abstract and nebulous, yet damaging as trauma? How do you find it? Where is it? You know, I point here because it's like in the heart, you know, but like, you can't cut somebody open in a lab and find it. It's in a different space. You have to find it in a different space.
I'm proposing to you that the meditation space really is that space. What if that's true? That that space that exists somehow incredibly mentally within the body, that you can actually access it, that you can train yourself to do it just like you can train yourself to fast. Most people in society, the average person said, I could never do that.
But then you see that it's a strength and it's a practice, and you can open up that space and sink into it and learn to do it over time. And it can come to feel better. It can come to be a lifestyle that you can enjoy. I could never imagine. I'll just tell you right now, from my experience personally, I could never imagine going back to not knowing about fasting, to feel dependent on constant eating all the time to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and bedtime snack every day like I used to do, which felt so hard to change.
I could not imagine having to go back to living that way. I was not on a good track. I told that I've got a video on the channel doctors, return to health. Fasting was key. Fasting so helpful to me it could not imagine going back to basically feeling trapped in a world where I have to keep eating all the time in order to be healthy, because I want to be healthy.
But I was becoming unhealthy, I was overweight, I was having I couldn't believe it. I always been a lean person and then life happens. Traumatic experiences happen. I could not imagine to go back. I want, I want that kind of experience for everyone. Okay? And then we see that that's the physical side. The mental side. What would it mean to what is the value, what you know what what value would you place on a space like that?
I'll let that be the challenge, for us dive in. Think about in that in that space this week, the mental space dive in on the most important questions will have an ongoing conversation about it. Appreciate you all being, here with me, sinking in on this space today. I think very profound. So sending you all my best wishes and thoughts.
Dive deep. And thinking today on these, most important questions. I think we'll, we'll serve you very well.