Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Smoke Trail, hosted by Smoke Wallin, is a journey into awakening consciousness, weaving authentic stories and deep discussions with inspiring guests to unlock high performance and perfect health. Each episode delves into spirituality, leadership, and transformation, offering tools to transcend trauma and find your bliss along the way. It’s a reflective space for achieving peak potential and inner peace in a distraction-filled world.
Smoke: side, so If we have any,
Smoke: you know, background noises, I'll cut it out, but it's too nice.
Alissa Allen That's a video.
Smoke: to not be outside.
Alissa Allen Oh, that is a quite a background. That looks so good. It looks like one of those, backgrounds in Zoom prompts.
Smoke: I wake up every morning here in Sedona, and I walk out and I look, is that CGI, or is that, you know, no, it's God rendering?
Alissa Allen That is, pretty special. Yeah, reminds, reminds me of, I feel like I'm on vacation looking at it.
Smoke: Well, Alissa Cohan, welcome to the Smoke Trail.
Alissa Allen Thank you.
Smoke: I'm super excited to have, my next guest, Alyssa Allen Cohen.
Alissa Allen Yeah, it's Allen, I got married, yeah.
Smoke: Allen, she is a neurotheology thought leader, spirit health director, and founder of a pioneering model of health that unites neuroscience, AI, and modern science with ancient wisdom and spiritual practice.
Smoke: And I won't read the rest of this wonderful bio, but I will publish it with the episode, but I'm super excited because what I love about what
Smoke: I've learned about your work and your passion is you really are combining technology and the latest thinking in science, psychotherapy, a whole bunch of social sciences side of things.
Smoke: And you have this deep grounding in spirituality, and this is why I wanted you to join me on the smoke trail, because it's a great confluence of those two things.
Alissa Allen Wow, thank you, Smoke. It's such a joy to be here, and it's really special. It's very gratifying to know that leaders want to elevate this message of how to reach your highest potential.
Smoke: Yeah, I really do think, there's a sea change coming. I know�
Smoke: You know, when we talked last week, in prep, this came up, but, you know, there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of things surfacing
Smoke: In society, politically, and in lots of other arenas.
Smoke: And, a lot of people, that's got a lot of people stressed out, and for good reason.
Smoke: But that being said, I view it as� it's the same way when we go through our own personal journey, and if you want
Smoke: peace and happiness, peace and love, which is what I� I was seeking. All the things that are in the way come up. And all the shadows, all the� all the stories you told yourself, and all the traumas and, you know, points of separation from Source that happen.
Smoke: from childhood on, and you have to work through those and clear them in order to get to that beautiful blue sky, Sedona Mountain peace and love inside. And I think that's happening in society at large, and I do think that leaders
Smoke: whether it's in business, in any other field, and, you know, I just have a reference of entrepreneurs, because that's my world, but, you know, anyone, humans, who have elevated themselves, have
Smoke: you know, figured out ways to make it in this environment, and yet they're, like, now starting to question, is there more? What else is there? I feel like there's something bigger, and I see lots more of that. So, what do you think about that, that optimistic viewpoint?
Alissa Allen No, I think the optimism is apt, and I think it's timely, Smoke, and I think we are seeing this, the convergence of integrative healing, you know, I kind of term it unitive intelligence, because I think we are seeing a natural gravitation
Alissa Allen even if you're just somebody that is tired of waking up feeling chronic fatigue, brain fog, all the way to wanting a more vital life or fulfillment, I think a lot of the stress factors we're experiencing today, it just comes from trying to align our life with purpose.
Alissa Allen And stress is actually definitively the outcome of not living in alignment with your purpose in certainly many ancient medical texts. And so, I would define what we're experiencing as an awakening. I think in each
Alissa Allen person's own life, they are identifying areas that they want to do better, they want to see their lives optimized, and they want to show up more fully. And I think that as it pertains to business, when leaders are really
Alissa Allen aligning themselves not just with their values, vision, and mission, but they're taking care of themselves holistically. It's a whole person, profoundly human-centered wellness regimen.
Alissa Allen We're really starting to see, just that leveling up, where people are transcending addiction.
Alissa Allen trauma, and they're also discovering new ways. It's no longer a binary system that we've held in modern medicine for 300 years now.
Smoke: Yeah, I want to dig into that a bit, but, you know, one of the things that I, really appreciated about
Smoke: your journey is you have, you know, you've come through some dark times, you were, you were out of shape, you were, addicted, you were having you were having a lot of issues, you weren't the person you wanted to be. You said I think you said, I wasn't the kindest kindest person, or something like that.
Alissa Allen I know.
Smoke: Do you mind sharing a little about your journey, your personal journey, and then we'll get into some of your current work?
Alissa Allen Yeah, so I would say it's probably my biggest credential, Smoke, is being on the side of suffering and going through those dark valleys. While it led to fortifying myself academically, it really was stepping on the scale at 250 pounds. I was a pretty polarizing person. This lovely energy that hopefully emanates and resonates today was a lot of personal work.
Alissa Allen It really required diet, nutrition, meditation, sourcing mentors, and just really a whole life change. I think it was more than a 180, it was a 360. And I wore a mask.
Alissa Allen perfectly well. I was very charming and hid a pretty severe addiction to alcohol and to marijuana and to a lot of drugs that
Alissa Allen seemingly could be therapeutically driven. We know cannabis can be a wonderful antidote for pain and cancer. You know, unfortunately for me, it was just to escape my life. I wasn't using it responsibly, and I ended up really broke, really sick, and really obese.
Alissa Allen And so it became clear that my life's mission really needed to be about going through that journey so that I could empower others and hopefully, derail them from doing what I did.
Smoke: Did you have, I mean, it sounds like you kind of hit rock bottom, in a sense, as they call it, and a lot of times.
Smoke: A spiritual awakening will only happen when someone hits rock bottom, has a health scare, has a near-death experience, has something really tragic happen.
Smoke: Not always, but that does seem to be a catalyst for an awakening.
Smoke: Was there a moment when it was like, oh, like, something hit you? Was there some kind of incident? Or, like, is there something, like they said, woke you up out of your� your then-current trajectory?
Alissa Allen Yeah, for me, it was� I mean, you would think it would be, strapping on and� sorry, Jen's listening, you know, 3 sports bras just to try to get on an exercise machine and make it bearable, but no, for me, Smoke, it was really at an auction sign in my front yard. I had hid so much from my life, and it was during that downturn and foreclosure of 2008, and unfortunately, I had just been so fiscal
Alissa Allen you know, irresponsible and reckless due to my victim story, that I really ended up and it was very sobering to have people walking up once your house is on auction, to have people walking up.
Alissa Allen complete strangers trying to assess what they're gonna buy, and to try to keep it intact. And so, for me, just seeing that.
Alissa Allen invasion of privacy, too. I'll never forget. I had this kind of falling-down craftsman. It was all I could afford in California at the time, and
Alissa Allen Just to feel so violated and exposed, I really realized I have to do something. That mask has been punctured, the veil is not winning, and it's time to really do something about it.
Smoke: Now, were you able to Just make that decision and make the change, or did you get outside help?
Alissa Allen Yeah, I'm a pretty black and white person. It was, for me, just, I've got to do it. I will say, though, Smoke, and I� I love Tony Robbins. He had a story about if you're in Unleashed
Alissa Allen your inner power. He had a story where if you want to quit smoking, you don't need to, you know, methodologically lay this out and go one by one. You know, if you're done smoking, you're done smoking, and that really landed with me. I love that self-empowerment
Alissa Allen movement, and I think it's very helpful. I think everybody should listen to these messages. It really personally helped me, and that just clicked for me, smoke. Like, yeah, I'm done. This is my rock bottom.
Alissa Allen I just am not going to accept this anymore. And it sort of was this segue then into, I think, a primary catalyst for your healing. I think your healing hinges on taking responsibility. And the minute I took responsibility for
Alissa Allen everything, even the ugly, even things that I wanted to deflect, I really saw my life change for the better.
Smoke: Yeah, that's� that's amazing. You know, I� I was talking to my last guest, Tony Dennison, the actor, and he's been 32 years sober, and, you know, for him, when he finally quit for good.
Smoke: He� he joined the 12-step program, and he's been in it since then. And that really helps a lot of people, because
Smoke: not everyone has the, so, personal willpower and then spiritual willpower are two different things, and personal willpower has a limit, and that limit is tied to your level of consciousness. So, what I� you know, just hearing your story, the fact that you were able to just make that decision and stick to it.
Smoke: You had a high level of consciousness that was covered up.
Smoke: And just by accepting responsibility, you were able to access that and do it. A lot of people aren't there yet, and they need a program that� because that program�
Smoke: calibrates at 540 if we talk about Hawkins power versus force scale, which I know you're a fan of as well, but that unconditional love field of energy that 12-step programs
Smoke: operate at is a powerful field that helps kind of lift people up. And if they haven't done their own work, and they don't clear all the things that, you know, kind of led to whatever their dependency was.
Smoke: They� and they stop going to meetings, they� they lose contact with that high energy field, and they revert back.
Smoke: So, I think you, you obviously,
Smoke: Had a high level of consciousness, probably at birth.
Smoke: You, through, various traumas and things that happened, you know, throughout your young life, Covered that up.
Smoke: And then, when you had your, oh shit moment, like, I'm done, you were able to tap into that really high energy field, which is remarkable. It's not� it's not something that, a lot of people can do.
Alissa Allen I received that, thank you. I actually really� I googled my names, just for fun, because I think it's so fun to see, and my name, actually, in Aramaic, which is� and I'm deeply� I love, the Bible and Christian, but it means Joy Priestess.
Alissa Allen And I felt that, wow, that was in divine order. Like, the universe is so magical in its ability to string things that don't� don't really seem� they look random, but they end up really coming together, this beautiful Venn diagram. I think that's such a metaphor for life, so�
Alissa Allen I really received being born that way, but I think everybody is born this way. And I think that's why�
Alissa Allen My work is so compelling to me, is just these different ways we can empower people to awaken that power within themselves, and it's unique for each person.
Alissa Allen But I think everybody really is born with a spiritual intelligence. We've got emotional intelligence, business intelligence, but we don't talk a lot about spiritual intelligence.
Smoke: Yeah, I think� I think that's right, but I also believe that,
Smoke: Everybody comes in with a karmic signature.
Alissa Allen I would�
Smoke: They're energetic, with their soul, their spirit. And, depending on where you are in your, evolution, in your learning.
Smoke: You start out at that level, so there are�
Smoke: large swaths of the population that start out at a very low consciousness level. The cool thing about Earth School is that anyone can reach� you can be in hell or heaven, you can reach enlightenment, you can� and everything in between.
Smoke: So I agree, everyone innately has this inside, but they� I think, I think there are definitely wide differences in�
Smoke: The ability to access it from the start.
Smoke: Yeah. But there's lots of examples of people who just, you know, have an accident and have a near-death experience, and the next thing you know it, they're operating at a super high level because they saw beyond, and they were
Smoke: And they� maybe they started out at a much lower level, so, you know�
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: There is hope for everyone.
Smoke: The spiritual will has much more power than the personal will, and what does that mean? It means a commitment to source, to oneness, to�
Smoke: the all to God.
Smoke: And once you make that commitment, things just start to unfold in that direction. And really what we see is, you know, how far away from divinity are people, right? That's kind of the.
Alissa Allen Oh, yeah.
Smoke: On the stage of the world, we see�
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: How much separation there is, and how much pain that causes.
Alissa Allen Yeah, yeah, it's� it's a huge issue, I think, too, where you�
Alissa Allen We're not teaching that. That's� that's not�
Alissa Allen a curriculum that we help cultivate. We're not teaching people the divinity within themselves, and I think that's why theology was compelling to me. To your point, the ancient Vedas, and we were discussing this earlier, Smoke, I mean, it's called samskaras. You're born with a�
Alissa Allen DNA dust in a, you know, astrological Vedic profile, and so�
Alissa Allen but it was cultivated in ancient cultures. It was� it was�
Alissa Allen supposedly nurtured and developed to attain the highest self. And I think just weave in modern
Alissa Allen Medicine, certainly I've seen it, and in modern life, we've moved away from that, and I think that's this yearning for balance, yearning for awakening, and yearning for optimization. However you're defining that, you're just trying to achieve your divinity.
Smoke: Yeah, no, I agree with that. The� I mean�
Smoke: I think particularly in the West, but it's� I think it's also widespread. I've been to India a number of times for business, and�
Smoke: you know, it's not like it's an enlightened place. You know, out of a billion three people, they have some enlightened people, but they've lost their connection in some ways to that tradition. But I think in the West.
Smoke: you know, we weren't taught it because our parents weren't taught it. And, you know, so, you know, there's definitely been a�
Smoke: a pretty big separation, which� which, again, is part of this awakening. I think there's� a large movement.
Smoke: throughout the world, but in the West, and among leaders that, you know, people are waking up, and they want to figure out what does that mean?
Smoke: Yeah. You know, why� you know, in disassembling my own ego, recognizing the things that I'm really� like I have, like, excess, ability to do, but I realized that those are the things where the wounds were the deepest.
Smoke: that I compensated for.
Smoke: And my reaction was, you know, whatever that was. It was, you know, to be high profile, to be visible, to be� to be seen, to be heard, because at one point in my childhood, that wasn't the case, and so that was my separation. Like, it was a deep�
Alissa Allen Hmm.
Smoke: wounding that I guess you could have gone in different directions. My reaction was.
Smoke: I'm gonna go so far to the other extreme and be out there.
Alissa Allen That� and I got really good at it. But now, like, disassembling that, I'm like, oh, okay.
Smoke: That was what that was. That was the separation.
Smoke: I don't need any of that stuff.
Smoke: Once I recognize that.
Alissa Allen Now, that's actually thematically, smoke. I love where you're going with this, because I think that if you think about it from childhood wounds.
Alissa Allen Trauma on top of your karmic, what you are born with.
Alissa Allen You know, we're really wrestling with this ego, because the ego in certain�
Alissa Allen concepts, and as you� you try to read literature on self-awareness, is there to also protect you. It's� it's�
Alissa Allen not necessarily a negative thing. So, I love where you're going with this, because I think that
Alissa Allen that's something that's missed, even in religious texts. It's certainly not in medical texts, ancient or modern medicine, Western medicine. And so, we're walking around quite wounded, just trying to accelerate our lives.
Alissa Allen in this karmic, pattern on top of wounds that we've just not dealt with, and I certainly can identify with that. I think so many of us wear a mask because of these wounds, and they're deeply hurtful.
Smoke: Yeah, and, and, once you understand it.
Smoke: All of the wounds, all of the struggle, all the things were perfectly set up for each of us.
Smoke: So that we would have to create� it would create the separation, so it would create the response, that's how consciousness learns, it learns on its own, so that we could then reconcile that. And so, the deeper the�
Smoke: the deeper the wound, the deeper the trauma, the deeper the� harder the struggle, I've come to recognize was because that's what I set up for myself.
Smoke: Like, I set up this program so that I would have to overcome those things, and understand them, and appreciate them, and have compassion for people that go through those things, so that I could unwind my own shit.
Alissa Allen Yep.
Alissa Allen Nope, nope.
Alissa Allen Oh, blessed is� blessed is the path to your� to awakening your highest level self. That's so blessed.
Smoke: Alright, well, let's� let's talk a little bit about AI and technology and, like, because there's a lot of people in the spiritual lane.
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: Who are very anti-technology, anti-AI, anti� Sure. You know, they think it's like, you know, they've read some texts, you know, I don't know, Gnostic or some other, where they, you know, there's a prediction that the machines take over, kind of thing.
Alissa Allen Yep.
Smoke: And I think there is a real danger for that, but I share your view.
Smoke: I think I'll say it the way I say it, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but that technology as an accelerator, and used properly, is an incredible tool
Smoke: that we shouldn't shy away from, but what does yours properly mean? And, like, what� and what are the dangers, and what are you doing with it? Like, tell� tell me about your�
Smoke: Tell me what you guys are doing.
Alissa Allen Yeah, Sue, I mean, I think similar to you, we view AI as an accessibility jumping point. I mean, we really�
Alissa Allen I think responsible bioethical AI, if we were to put a public health terminology on it, since that's my background, is really just about�
Alissa Allen putting those guardrails where the AI is used for empowering human health. We should be using AI to alleviate human suffering. Whether it's
Alissa Allen not to be nerdy or over-technical, but language learning models that can predict distress. Oncology patients, so I come from Emory University Smoke, where we ran a phenomenal clinical trial, and our hypothesis was that
Alissa Allen oncology patients that interacted with a chaplain or spiritual health advisor along their journey had higher resiliency rates, and in fact, we proved that in a 150 patient case study. So.
Alissa Allen I think, though, the language learning model we embedded to extract that data was just reading patient charts that were exhibiting patterns of emotional distress, depression, anxiety, family circumstances, the things that happen when you're sick or not feeling well. Well, imagine if you can turn and unleash a language learning model in just everyday life, where
Alissa Allen you're starting to notice patterns, and it empowers you to actually take actionable items on it. I look at data�
Alissa Allen biomarkers, AI, as actually a tool for knowing thyself, which is a very spiritual concept. These should be the window into oneself.
Alissa Allen It should not be a diagnosis metric. That should always be in conjunction with a healer or medical provider.
Alissa Allen But what we're working on currently is how to leverage AI for mental resilience. What can it do to signal distress and then provide the antidote? And how can we answer urgently
Alissa Allen emotional distress. I think just in 2020 for Smoke, they released 885 billion units of antidepressants in the UK.
Alissa Allen Loneliness is now an epidemic. The Surgeon General has declared this a public health crisis. People are not well.
Alissa Allen And they're on their phones, they're on technology all day. If we can submit and use the AI to submit an intervention that's cultivating mindfulness, sending positive messaging, empowering people to feel seen and heard and enough.
Alissa Allen We really do have this hypothesis that then we can start to move patients that might take longer to seek help, may not go see a behavioral therapist, may not feel comfortable talking to somebody to actually really go out and have a human intervention. And that's where we're working with the AI.
Smoke: Yeah, I think that's a really good, example, and I� you know, so, really, it's like, to� before you would know, because there's no, like.
Smoke: obvious indicators, we're not with these people. This might be a tool that, like, creates a flag that says, hey, this person needs some help, and how do you zero in on it? I think the AI has been� I think they're reading, like, some of those MRI charts and x-rays better than doctors at this point, so there's�
Alissa Allen scary.
Smoke: There are� there are bits of it that,
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: you know, at least on a speed basis, it can accelerate� you know, it's like anything else, though. It's� there's garbage in, garbage out. The way you guys built your LLM model at Emory when you were doing that, you� it was a captive�
Smoke: set of data.
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: specifically designed for that purpose. I think that's where the real gain is. Although, you know, the general ones are� can be useful.
Smoke: if you have discernment, if you actually use your brain and look at what they're doing, I run my stuff through, like.
Smoke: chat, and then I run it through Grok, and then I run the results into either one, and I look at them, and I'm like, okay, and then I might cross. So I'm� I'm thinking about it, and prompting, obviously, is a big part of it, but the way you guys did it was in a bald garden, its own environment.
Alissa Allen Yeah, we really� I mean, we wanted to start with patient data before anything else, because we wanted the AI to be trained on quality data.
Alissa Allen And AI has a propensity to hallucinate, so we know after putting in few prompts to Claude or chat GPT, it starts to go haywire. Its algorithm ceases to really keep its pattern logic.
Alissa Allen And so, we really, just to put that guardrail, we didn't let the system cycle beyond 2 or 3 times, and not to be overly technical, Smoke, but we really wanted quality data. It's very difficult to train an LLM on random data sets because of user bias, and that's where�
Alissa Allen the bioethics of AI are very critical, and many colleges and universities are starting to speak out on this, but where we're using AI is not just as a predictive language, but to create, then, exercises. So it's also pulling from CBT, Enneagram, holistic modalities to suggest and prompt anything from breathless
Alissa Allen to, exercises like NLP and neuro-linguistic programming, tapping therapies, to start to bring
Alissa Allen consciousness and awareness back into the body, and then we certainly have a guardrail where if we really denote the AI detects that you're in a high level of distress, we will� it does an automatic call to 988, which is a self-harm intervention. But I think AI�
Alissa Allen And�
Alissa Allen do something revolutionary where it creates accessibility like I've never seen before. And it creates an awareness smoke. I mean.
Alissa Allen That even in an aura band, or if we just look at this from a regenerative health spectrum, if we look at the field of longevity medicine, where you're measuring your glucose constantly.
Alissa Allen This empowers you with data to make a decision. It's no longer about calories in and out. It's like, well, this cake really does cause my body inflammation and harm. And so the AI, on a neural level is doing the same thing, and that's what we're building.
Smoke: Yeah, it's kind of, like, really back to basics. What you pay attention to
Smoke: You know, they say in management, like, what you measure, you, you get results for. What you pay attention to, affects it, right? Yeah. So when we're noticing our� just noticing our emotions, just in the human form.
Smoke: Noticing how I react to something, or� oh, I feel energy, it's� I would have called that anxiety, what is that? And just� just by being aware of it, it goes away. It dissipates really fast.
Smoke: I think having� Smart systems that can, help
Smoke: Guide people's awareness to, you know, their own issue.
Smoke: is an intervention. Just� just by, like, hey, you know, you're� you� time for a� a break.
Alissa Allen And and so I think that's really a great use of the technology, and a good example.
Alissa Allen Well, thanks, Smoke. If I may, I'll just say one� one thing you touched on that I love and that we're building is a reward system. So.
Alissa Allen We have a gamification element to this, where each� each week you get a summary report that says, I registered gratitude 10 times, or I registered joy 20 times, and if in areas that you were struggling, we give you exercises based on CBT. We've got a medical advisory board that's constantly
Alissa Allen iterating on this so that if Smoke logs on, and 15 times that week experienced anxiety or depression or fear, we have exercises for that. So�
Alissa Allen I think we're really aiming to launch this. It's an MVP, because again, we want the rigor, quality data, but we're really excited to have the first Unitiv Intelligence product, so it is an integrated model, and it's something that we hope changes people
Alissa Allen switching their mindsets out of, you know, feeling depressed and stagnant into action. And we like the privacy that AI� I think that's also really important that telehealth can do
Alissa Allen it's very hard to admit you're depressed. It's hard to call up your friends and talk about this, and I think one thing AI and technology does really nicely is it can be private to you, and I think that's important. Not everybody is willing to, you know, wave a flag and say, I'm addicted.
Alissa Allen I can't drink, or I can't go to this event. And AI and technology does have an element of privacy to it that I think is important when you're entering any kind of journey.
Smoke: Do you see, like, I imagine, like, big health systems
Smoke: Would love to� this would be a really� the perfect thing for them to adapt as part of their�
Smoke: program, because, you know, as some of these models, I mean, we have a broken healthcare system that have really wrong incentives, but there is more of a shift to
Smoke: results and managing, you know, managing the overall costs and preventative and anticipatory treatment is obviously the best way to do that. And so, do you think, like, that is a way� as a distribution
Smoke: Channel for you guys?
Alissa Allen That's actually our goal, Smoke, and it's why I think it's special. Came out of Emory Healthcare and Emory University, because
Alissa Allen We know for a fact there's so many barriers to entry to care. First of all, insurance in the spectrum of mental health, insurance covers, even a good insurance plan, maybe 8 to 10 sessions. I've rarely met somebody going through something that's satisfied after 8 to 10 sessions, and�
Alissa Allen We love this idea that it lowers barrier to entry and gets people using this platform, but the preventative costs, the preventative care costs, are astonishing. And it's a preventative in the word of empowerment, right? Because
Alissa Allen Some people look at the insurance system and use preventative because the insurance companies want to save money, and there's certainly a place for that smoke, but this way, we're uniting insurance and the patient, because the patient
Alissa Allen is also participating in preventative. Not to, you know, inflect on, and there's a place for conscious capitalism, but not to inflect on
Alissa Allen insurance or create the bad guy in insurance, but to get the help they need faster, I think in this country now, smoke, we have a 90-day waiting. I think the Wall Street Journal published it takes 90 days to see a therapist.
Alissa Allen For the average person.
Smoke: And unfortunately, not to� not to slam that profession, but�
Smoke: just like everything else, there's a bell curve of good therapists. 100%. And so, I would just say, yes, therapy is a very good thing for a lot of people, and�
Smoke: You know, not out there�
Alissa Allen Everybody.
Smoke: created equal, right? So, do your homework before you�
Alissa Allen -Oh.
Smoke: Give your psyche to the hands of someone who.
Alissa Allen Thousand percent.
Smoke: Maybe has their own issues.
Alissa Allen A thousand percent. I think that's an important�
Alissa Allen guardrail, but, it is aimed at healthcare, and it's aimed at creating this empowered model of care. We want you to constantly be self-evolving, and hopefully keep you out of a mental distress situation. So insurance and healthcare can do what it does best, which is, if you break a bone, or you have, you know, a need for a scan, or you need emergency surgery, they can get
Alissa Allen To that perfectly well.
Smoke: Yeah. Well, I mean� You know, and I� nothing I say is, like, against getting�
Smoke: Western Healthcare, I think you get two good examples. You need surgery.
Smoke: You, you broke a bone.
Smoke: You know, there's some major� you have a major problem.
Smoke: But those are always treating the symptoms, right? When the surgeon finishes sewing you up, you know what they say to the rest of the people in the operating room? Say, we've done our part, now the body's gotta do the work. All healing comes from within.
Smoke: So it's holistic. It's� it's both and, right? It's like, like, yeah, use all the tools, use the medicines as needed, but�
Smoke: if we're constantly� I mean, pain is a� is an inf� is information.
Smoke: It's not� it wasn't meant to be�
Smoke: you know, countered with, opioids so that you don't feel it, it was meant.
Alissa Allen Right.
Smoke: Bring your attention to something you have to resolve.
Smoke: And, you know, I'm not against someone relieving their pain, but the reality is.
Smoke: Right. The way to solve it is to accept the pain, stop resisting, and find out what is causing it.
Alissa Allen Oh, I fully agree. I mean, if you think about it, I don't think the doctor's office has been remodeled in 300 years.
Alissa Allen It's very fragmented. It's based on a system of within range. I mean, how many people am I talking to today that get a lab test back, and they don't feel well, they have no energy, they feel like something's off?
Alissa Allen But their blood tests are within range, right? Or, you know, they take a scan, and you look healthy.
Alissa Allen I think this is why you are fetching at� what I'm fetching at. This has to be an integrative. The future of health is integrative, and spiritual health�
Alissa Allen Sits at that table, but it's� it's hard to�
Alissa Allen talk to somebody about, well, your liver, which stores emotion, and traditional Chinese medicine has understood this for 5,000 years, you know, that's why you wake up between 3 and 5 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and you can't go back to sleep.
Alissa Allen it's hard to even get there, smoke, when people haven't been educated, and there just hasn't been this dialogue, you know, frankly, until podcasts and thought leaders like you start
Alissa Allen Poking at this really big bear to say, let's think about this differently.
Smoke: Yeah, I mean, I think�
Smoke: I think the one thing that has changed in healthcare in the last, I don't know, maybe it's the last 25 years, maybe it's a little more, is
Smoke: The incentives that� Doctors have gotten to.
Alissa Allen Give medicine, to prescribe things, and the profit motive that.
Smoke: drives prescriptions above healthcare, I think that's been a pretty bad, development, but�
Smoke: But I agree, like, you know, and in fairness.
Smoke: If you're� if you went, you know, my friend,
Smoke: Casey Means, you know, wrote a book called Good Energy.
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: And, she's up for maybe Attorney General, we'll see, or, Surgeon General, we'll see. You know, they make it pretty hard. But, you know, she was a top, top student at Stanford, was getting her� finishing her residency, and just, like.
Smoke: realize, like, all they're doing is� is perpetuating, treating symptoms, and everything else. So,
Smoke: you know, I think there's a�
Smoke: cultural bias, I think there's institutional bias, I think the medical schools only teach one way, and if you're a doctor, you know, you're kind of discouraged from using intuition. You're discouraged from, like.
Smoke: knowing your patients. That's what I love about Hawkins, when, you know, he ran the largest psychiatric practice in America. He had 50 doctors, he had thousands of patients a year, and he was� the worst of the worst cases would go� they would send to him because he was getting results that no one else was getting. Well, he was taking
Smoke: a holistic approach, which was, yeah, he was a fully trained doctor, he knew all this psychology, and that was part of it. And also.
Alissa Allen Yep.
Smoke: He would prescribe Prozac for somebody, or whatever, if he needed to, to stabilize them, but he was also doing energy work, and spiritual work, and all the other things that actually have a lot higher
Smoke: Efficacy than the medicine.
Alissa Allen No, I mean, Smoke, you're touching on a huge nerve for me, so as I started to collect my life and really�
Alissa Allen It became clear to me I just wanted to devote myself to empowering others, whatever my skill set was, how to put this together in this matrix and help other people. I was studying for the MCAT, and once you get through biostatistics and epidemiology, what you really do discern is that these schools are excellent at
Alissa Allen Helping you prescribe organic chemistry, biochemistry, and surgery. I would absolutely talk to a modern medicine or Western medicine physician about that, but
Alissa Allen to your point, and Dr. Means is extraordinary, and so brave to� to have led, I think, the way for, allowing doctors to come out and sort of question this, because they were also�
Alissa Allen punished if they did question the system. There were repercussions for it. I pivoted to public health school, thinking it might be better.
Alissa Allen And there's a little bit more elasticity, since it allows for research in many categories, infectious disease, zoological disease, spiritual health, that I found my way in, but�
Alissa Allen The fragmentation has impacted
Alissa Allen people so deeply, and I think, Smoke, it's important to talk to this topic, because people don't know why. And I often say to clients and people I work with, it's not your fault. The system didn't want you to know.
Alissa Allen some of this information. And, you know, I was just watching a football game. I think after every�
Alissa Allen ad, it was, you're losing your hair, you can't sexually function, you're overweight. It was just so depressing smokes, and now we're programming people, too, on top of it, on your podcasts and your shows.
Alissa Allen just to hear deficiency. And I think that's why the smoke trail and work of AI, or anybody today that's trying to just pull you out of that doom loop, it is so critical to know that doesn't have to be your destiny.
Smoke: Yeah, I mean, you wrote what I believe in your� in your pre, work questionnaire, but, you know, we are� we are all physical, mental, and spiritual beings.
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: The power of our� well-being is in reverse order. It's in spiritual, mental, and physical.
Alissa Allen Yes.
Smoke: All of this stuff we're talking about is the physical.
Smoke: Yeah, but it's whack-a-mole. Like, nothing in the physical world is caused by the physical world, it's all the next level up. Well, we think we are. So just, you're at the mental level, if you believe you're healthy, you're healthy. If you believe you're sick, you're sick. So all these.
Alissa Allen doctor.
Smoke: Pharma ads, all these junk food ads.
Smoke: you know, all these� I mean, you name it, they're� they're propagating the disease
Smoke: and the solution at the same time. And, you know, I have a personal practice of hygiene, which is when, you know, every day, I declare my, I'm an infinite being, I'm subject to what I hold in mind.
Smoke: You know, and I go through my list, and one of the things that I say out loud to myself is, any negative things, any false beliefs, any messages I
Smoke: got today, I� I disavow, I don't agree with them, they are gone, they're not part of me. Now, why do I do that? I'm in a perfect, you know, health and great situation, I'm in a very, high energy level.
Smoke: I do that because if I happen to be in the airport, and they had CNN, and there was an ad for some disease, some medicine, and my subconscious heard it, and I didn't pay attention, it goes in unfiltered. So you've got to clear it. It's personal hygiene on a daily basis, no matter how
Smoke: Clear you get, no matter how high you get, you gotta clear this stuff, because it can� it's insidious.
Alissa Allen Oh, I love that, smoke. It's like, I once wrote this essay, and you've articulated it so well. Spiritual health regimen is spiritual health hygiene, but
Alissa Allen I love what you're saying, because that subconscious is key. We know mantra works, and that's where, you know, my field, neurotheology, was so exciting, because we've talked a little bit about modern medicine, but where it is great are the scans. And so, when you get to see a SPECT scan of someone's brain on meditation, or mantra, or just a positive statement, and you watch
Alissa Allen The neuroplasticity start to light up and develop.
Alissa Allen It's exhilarating. But I love what you're saying, too, because it reminds me, when I studied Ayurvedic medicine.
Alissa Allen the number one, the first day, they told us the mind projects the body, and you digest everything. You know, what you see, what you hear, this isn't just digestion, how I thought about it my whole life. It was sensory.
Alissa Allen And I think that's� I love what you're saying, because it's almost like you're commanding, my spiritual armor is on, and�
Smoke: No, I mean, it's a real thing, and, you know, I would've�
Alissa Allen Awesome.
Smoke: You know, a few years ago, I would have been like, yeah, right, but it's a real thing, and.
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: you know, when you� when I go out to a� I've got a bunch of meetings coming up, I gotta be in LA for a bunch of YPO stuff.
Smoke: And, you know, when I walk out of my hotel room, I put a protective, you know, layer of golden white light around me, and I say, you know, I don't allow anything negative to come in this, and I go out and I deal with my business.
Alissa Allen Love it. I love it.
Smoke: So, like, declaring it, being clear on it, It's really important. Our subconscious
Smoke: which, you know, we can call that� that's probably a more familiar term in the West, and it's really our karma.
Smoke: It, you know, everything in our subconscious is, like, gonna propagate if it's unclear.
Smoke: And when you're sitting there watching a movie or television, You're in a trance-like state.
Smoke: So, you're in a very receptive state to receive any messages that come, which is why I cut out, essentially, you know, all the violent stuff I used to watch, and�
Smoke: I don't� you know, all the horror stuff, I used to� I mean, I used to watch everything under the sun, and I'm like, then I realized, like, oh, that was going into my brain, into my subconscious, and then who knows how it's gonna come out again, but�
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: You gotta� you don't want that.
Alissa Allen Yeah, no, I love that. I think you have to protect what you digest. I think that's�
Alissa Allen Yeah, in all senses, yeah, I love that.
Smoke: what practices do you have? Like, what do you do to keep yourself on the right track, on the, you know, you know, in your daily life?
Alissa Allen You know, I mean, I really believe in prayer, smoke. I think it comes� I did go to seminary, I talked to�
Alissa Allen every�
Alissa Allen spiritual, my spirit guides. I have something at home called a prayer chair that I really seriously, every morning, sit in and�
Alissa Allen meditate and receive something from the universe. And I ask the universe to please send me something lovely that day. I just have sort of trained my subconscious to expect something. It'd be
Alissa Allen a nice chat with a neighbor, I've had people buy me coffee, so it's become a discipline, but I really believe in prayer. I think it's your language to the universe, it's your language to source.
Alissa Allen And it's your truest form of language. It's your own dialogue, and I really constantly pray, to the point that I had a friend of mine pull up next to me in traffic, and they thought I was singing in the car, but I was actually talking to myself. So I talk all the time to Universe and Source.
Alissa Allen I'm also a really big believer in Maimala beads. I do carry them, and if you've noticed, Meg, a lot of people wear them for many religious and spiritual reasons, but there's something about the, yeah, the grounding, the energy,
Alissa Allen And I spoke to you a little bit in the questionnaire, some of the hypnosis and treatments I've been the recipient of, but I do think having something tactile is very important. Buddha had beads, Muhammad had beads, Christ wore beads, and had rocks, so I think it's important, and�
Alissa Allen I really wish that upon people. Pick up a rock. I used to tell students of mine that felt anxiety, pick up a rock, call it your fear rock, and put it in your pocket. Let it be your worry rock or your fear rock, but I think something tactile is important. I always have that on me.
Smoke: Yeah, I think that can be really useful. The, what I've, experienced More recently, is�
Smoke: Really, doing meditations where I occupy my body, and I occupy, you know,
Smoke: there's a lady, Judith Blackstone, who has a thing called the realization process. I don't know if you've seen that, but�
Alissa Allen No, I knew that.
Smoke: She was a dancer who got injured, broke her back, and then was laying there, kind of her career was over, and�
Smoke: just laying there in her studio, and, like, all she could do was give lessons, but she couldn't� she was really in a bad place. And she spent a lot of time inside, like, and going into the parts of her body, and doing� she'd end up repairing herself, and�
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: And came up with this whole process, but the�
Smoke: you know, I think� and something tactile is really useful, but if people can�
Smoke: Get into their body, not� not, notice my feet, be in my feet.
Smoke: Not notice my legs, be in my legs. Not, you know, be in my hip joints, be in my shoulder joints, be in the subtle parts. If you can get your brain to where you can actually become inside, that's also a really grounded way
Smoke: to operate in a crazy world. You can walk around and be very grounded because you're embodied.
Alissa Allen No, I love that. For me, though, smoke, that's a discipline. I mean, I really struggle. I live a lot in my head, and that's going to be, like, Alyssa 2.0. That's a journey for me. I really struggle to be in my body, so�
Alissa Allen like, that first 10-15 minutes in my prayer chair is just about all you're gonna get out of me. But�
Smoke: And I would share that, like, I� I was mostly doing meditation in my head, and .
Alissa Allen Yeah, I need.
Smoke: And now, it's very much more whole body.
Smoke: Also, but you'll have to try it out. I need to get there. It's, it's really�
Alissa Allen I need that book. It's really an interesting�
Smoke: it's a different feel. It's a� it's a� it's like a�
Alissa Allen kind of transcend a trans� Transcendental, what are the� how they call that? Is it sort of like that smoke.
Smoke: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you, follow her process, I mean, she's come up with a way to, you know, essentially gain enlightenment, through being embodied, like, through going totally in your body. So, you know, I combine that with Hawkins and with a whole bunch of other stuff, but�
Smoke: But I found it to be�
Smoke: a very different experience than just being in meditation in head. So, like, literally go into your toes, go into your ankles, go into your knees, and then find them, and then, and then balance in the middle of your brain, and experience what a balanced mind feels like.
Alissa Allen And then you can breathe through your head, breathe through your body, not just in your lungs, breathe all the way through.
Smoke: And by doing that, you've kind of� you've steadied the brain, and you're able to move around and experience, the physical world. It's a pretty powerful�
Smoke: Program.
Alissa Allen No, that's� that's deep. Yeah, that's� I'm working towards that smoke. I� I'd love to exit my head.
Alissa Allen At some point, yeah.
Smoke: Yeah, it really helps. It's a� it's a good� it's a good part of it. Well, Alyssa, I think we could talk�
Smoke: About a lot of things. One of the things I'd love for you to share with our listeners is, is there ways that they can support your work? Is there a way� what are your� how do they reach you if they want to, if they want to learn more about what you're working on with Emory? And I know you have a program at Yale, and some other things.
Alissa Allen Yeah, so right now, I'm venturing into this world of social media smoke, but you can always find me on LinkedIn. I do have a substack. The chief aim of the substack is to turn over essays, empirical data of our findings at our neurotheology lab, and I'd really love people to reach out just to discuss my work. We're really looking to
Alissa Allen have advisors that are interested in this intersection of AI and integrative medicine and health, particularly mental health, spiritual health. So LinkedIn and Substack, it's substack.com forward slash hey friend, it's Alyssa.
Smoke: Put it in, also, put it in the show notes, so�
Alissa Allen Yeah.
Smoke: But, that's awesome. I really� I'm super excited about your work, and�
Smoke: anything I can do to support you guys, to get the word out there, I'm here for you, and let's go� I mean, we'll definitely have a part two to this down the road. We'll get an update on your progress, and maybe dig into some of the other
Smoke: areas that I know we can talk about.
Alissa Allen Oh, thank you, Smoke, so much. This was incredible. Thank you.