Why grief mimics psychosis and unlocks deeper senses

Steven Bartlett 0:00 If what you're saying is true, then, I mean, this is a revelation.

Dr. Tara Swart 0:02 Yeah. And I, I couldn't speak about it until now, that it's possible to communicate with someone that's passed away. And I'm saying it from the point of view of being a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, and it's taboo because we are afraid that people will think we're going insane. I mean, I've been part of teams that have locked people up and had them injected with stuff against their will because of things they were saying that's not that dissimilar to things I've experienced. So I wanted to find out as much science as I could to try to back it up.

Steven Bartlett 0:30 And do you think you've found the answer?

Dr. Tara Swart 0:32 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 0:32 How sure are you?

Dr. Tara Swart 0:33 100%. And the things I found out are going to shock you.

Steven Bartlett 0:37 The floor is yours. (instrumental music plays)

Dr. Tara Swart 0:38 Okay. So I'm Dr. Tara Swart. I'm a neuroscientist and a medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry, and I lost my beloved husband to leukemia almost four years ago, two days before our fourth wedding anniversary. And everything I believed in had gone wrong. I was just totally lost and broken, but then I started getting signs from my husband. And in my desperation, I did consult a couple of mediums, but not being impressed by them, I ended up thinking, "If it's possible to communicate with someone that's passed away, and I am all about optimizing my brain, then I should be able to do it myself." So I went down a rabbit hole, and what I've uncovered in this research is gonna have a really beneficial effect on a lot of people.

Steven Bartlett 1:22 Why?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:23 Because it means that we are capable of so much more than what we think the human mind is capable of.

Steven Bartlett 1:27 So listen, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try and ask the questions and challenge you in ways that I think the viewer might challenge you.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:33 I want you to ask me those questions.

Steven Bartlett 1:38 I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe, so if you could do me a favor and double check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show and the trajectory it's on. So please do double check if you've subscribed and, uh, thank you so much, because in a strange way, you are- you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I appreciate you for that. So yeah, thank you. (instrumental music plays)

Steven Bartlett 2:09 Dr. Tara Swart, good to see you again.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13 You too.

Steven Bartlett 2:14 Thank you for coming back. You were our most viewed guest on the show of all time. Our last conversation did just over 20 million views and downloads, which is pretty staggering, but you're back to talk about something entirely different this time-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:26 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:27 ... which is this idea of science, which kind of intertwines with all of your work on neuroscience that you've done throughout your career. My first question to you is what is it that you think you know that the vast majority of people don't quite understand, comprehend, or have accepted yet? And take me right back to the sort of first principles of that thinking.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:48 I believe that we are capable of so much more than what we think the human mind is capable of now, and I- I believe that the brain actually filters down the capability of the mind so that we can exist on this material plane. And things that I found out doing research for the signs is going to shock you. The abilities that we have that we're not aware of are way beyond what you might even imagine right now.

Steven Bartlett 3:13 In what departments and facets of my life?

Dr. Tara Swart 3:16 Let's just start with something really simple. How many senses do you think we have?

Steven Bartlett 3:19 Five? Of course, we can smell, I can touch, um, I can hear, I can see. Um, is it five that I... Yeah, five. Is it five?

Dr. Tara Swart 3:28 Have you heard of a sixth sense?

Steven Bartlett 3:30 Being able to see ghosts and stuff?

Dr. Tara Swart 3:31 (laughs) Okay, so I think most people would agree that we have five senses, and some people would say, "Isn't there something like a sixth sense?" And I don't think it's agreed what that might be. So I actually did a literature review of several pieces of research about how many senses humans have, and we actually have 34 as we currently understand it.

Steven Bartlett 3:51 34? And so what does this mean? Like, what is the... 'Cause you're making an assertion here. What is the assertion that you're making and what does that mean for material sort of, uh, consequences of my life?

Dr. Tara Swart 4:05 I'm making a hypothesis based on both the analogy of the observable universe and the fact that we have this expanded suite of senses to challenge you to understand that you are capable of much more than you think you are. And, you know, you're a really good case in point for me because you love rationality and data and science and you don't really love intuition and the, you know, the unknown, the unseen. So you know, I think if I can convince you of anything by the end of this podcast, then the impact that that could have on society I think is huge. I mean, the things I found out are going to shock you.

Steven Bartlett 4:40 What do you mean by that?

Dr. Tara Swart 4:42 I, as you know, was a, was a psychiatrist in the past, so I'm able to diagnose people and say whether they have a mental illness or not. In the past four years, I've been keeping a secret, and there were times in that four years that I had to ask myself if I was in clinical depression, if I was psychotic, if I was manic, if the way that my consciousness was expanding... I mean, Steve, I've- I've been part of teams that have locked people up and put, you know, had them injected with stuff against their will because of things they were saying that's not that dissimilar to things I've experienced in the last four years.

Steven Bartlett 5:27 So

Steven Bartlett 5:29 I guess we better get into the secret, because I sat here with you almost two years ago now and we had a fantastic conversation, but there was something you didn't tell my audience when we had that conversation that r- reached more than 20 million people. There was something at that moment in time that you didn't tell me, which was this secret you've been keeping. What is the secret, Tara?

Dr. Tara Swart 5:50 Um, I lost my beloved husband to leukemia almost four years ago, and I've written this book which mentions my personal story. So...... and I trust you. So I really wanted to come back on the podcast and just explain a little bit to people about what's been going on for me for the last four years.

Steven Bartlett 6:13 So your husband, Robin, you met him 2016? And he passed, he passed away from leukemia in...

Dr. Tara Swart 6:24 2021.

Steven Bartlett 6:25 2021. Now from 2021, when he passed away, what, what happened in your life? What was going on in your world? If I was a fly on the wall, in your context, what would I have seen?

Dr. Tara Swart 6:37 He'd been given two weeks to live but he actually lived for three-and-a-half weeks, and he died two days before our fourth wedding anniversary. So I was literally reading condolence cards on my fourth wedding anniversary. If it wasn't for the people that I have around me who became like a fortress, I don't think I would be here today. You know, never having had that experience before, it was just so, so devastating. Um, and even though I'm a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, I just, I just was like, like totally lost and broken. And then I started seeing robins in the garden every single time I went to the window, both in Hampshire and London. I've never ever seen so many robins in my life, like not before or since. I still see them sometimes. But I noticed it. I thought, "Of course that's what I want to see." I have no idea what it means, if anything. Um, and then about six weeks after he passed away, I was asleep and I heard a noise in the distance, and we had been burgled once so I went to check it wasn't the alarm in the garages. Couldn't work out what it was, thought maybe it was birds in the distance, went back to sleep. It was about 4:00 A.M. And then I got woken up by a massive thump to my shoulder. I wouldn't demonstrate it on you because it would be too much for me to hit you that hard. It wasn't like a tap. So I opened my eyes and I could see next to my bed a very vague, hazy version of Robin as if he was pushing himself through treacle to be seen, and I was just transfixed. And I saw him become more and more clear. I could see the outline of his hair and his face, and then suddenly he just dissolved from the top down, and my eyes went like this, and I remember seeing his shins and his feet. And I was like up on my elbow watching and I- I just gasped out loud. In my desperation, I did consult a couple of mediums, and again I had that dual conversation. I said to myself, "This is the kind of thing that crazy, desperate people do," and within the same breath, "It's okay for me to be crazy and desperate right now. I've lost my best friend, my life partner." Like, my everything I thought about how the world worked has crashed around me. And I ended up thin- you know, being, not being impressed by the mediums and just at some point, I can't even remember when now, thinking, "If it's possible to communicate with someone that's passed away, and he was my husband and my best friend, and I am all about optimizing my brain and expanding my consciousness, then I should be able to do it myself." That's, that's the start of my journey that I've written about in Signs.

Steven Bartlett 9:35 And do you think you've found the answer?

Dr. Tara Swart 9:36 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:38 How sure are you?

Dr. Tara Swart 9:39 100%.

Steven Bartlett 9:42 I mean, if, if, if what you're saying is true then that's a pretty... I mean, that's a revelation, right? So many people have lost, lost people or, um, have gone through different types of loss in their life, and you're telling me that through the work you've done over the last couple of years and the research you've done, you understand how to communicate with them in some capacity?

Dr. Tara Swart 10:03 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:05 And you are 100% sure?

Dr. Tara Swart 10:06 100%.

Steven Bartlett 10:07 So listen, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge you in ways that I think, um, the viewer might challenge you, sat at home.

Dr. Tara Swart 10:17 Sure.

Steven Bartlett 10:17 So I'm gonna try and ask the questions that the viewer might ask-

Dr. Tara Swart 10:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:20 ... because there's, you know, people... The i- this idea is quite a significant perspective-shifting one, so m- my job in this conversation, although these are sensitive matte- matters of course, is just to try and play devil's advocate where I can. And-

Dr. Tara Swart 10:34 And I just, I want to say that, you know, you know me.

Steven Bartlett 10:36 Yeah, I know you, yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 10:36 And you know that you've asked me to come back on the podcast several times, and I've come when I'm ready.

Steven Bartlett 10:41 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 10:41 So I want you to ask me those questions.

Steven Bartlett 10:43 Yeah. So where does this journey begin then? So this, y- you suffer this tragic loss in your life. You go to the mediums, y- you're let down by them. Where does this begin? Where does your research, your, your journey of discovery begin?

Dr. Tara Swart 10:57 It starts with this decision to, um, you know, try to communicate with him myself. There's a realization at some point that it's not a one-way thing, that when people pass away, they also have to learn. So it's- it's, it's like two people having to learn a language to speak to each other, like two people who speak a different language having to learn a language that they can both speak. That's, that's how it felt. Obviously as a scientist I then wanted to find out as much science as I could to, to try to back it up, which really comes down to the science of whether the mind or the psyche or the soul can exist separately from the body.

Steven Bartlett 11:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 11:40 And I will say that way before I even started thinking about this stuff, just the m- the moment that he died, which he died in front of me, once he'd actually passed away, I remember a really strong feeling of looking at his body and just knowing that wasn't him, and that the essence of who he was, I didn't know where it was, but it was not there lying in that bed.

Steven Bartlett 12:00 And when did you realize that you were going to...... start to collect research and do research on this idea of being able to communicate in ways that most people don't realize we can communicate through signs.

Dr. Tara Swart 12:11 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 12:11 And also, when you talk about being able to communicate through these 30-plus senses, is that just with the dead or is that with each other? Like, can I communicate through, uh, you know... is there other ways that I can tap into these senses that you've discovered through your research that will help me be more effective with the living too?

Dr. Tara Swart 12:31 Hmm. I mean, I think it starts with yourself. So I think that the fact that if you're not even aware that you've got 34 senses, then you're obviously not consciously tapping into something that you're not aware of. And, and some of them are non-conscious senses anyway, um, things like the pH of your blood or, like, the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood. You're, you know, you're not gonna be conscious of those. You can't necessarily exert much control over them, although obviously if you slow down your breathing or you do a certain type of breath work, it, it could have an impact on those things. The conclusion that I came to... So like I said, I went to the brink a few times. I went to the brink... Let me give you the first example. I realized that the first anniversary was coming up on October 26th, and around, you know, a couple of months before that, I was doing the best that I had been doing so far, but I was very aware this anniversary was coming, and I wanted to prepare myself mentally. But from the 4th of October, I suddenly, like, was in aches and pains all over my body, which actually lasted for six or seven weeks, and, uh, was accompanied by me feeling so depressed that I actually had to look in the mirror and like, go through the criteria for clinical depression and work out if I was actually depressed or not. Um, and I didn't meet all the criteria, but I was in this physical pain. I could not understand why. I, I went for a massage. It was so painful, I didn't go again for a year. So eventually, I looked through my, um, diary o- calendar on my phone, and I looked back to October 4th, which was the day that it started, and that was the day that I'd taken him home to die. That was the day I took him home from hospital. I didn't remember that date, but clearly my body had, and the trauma was just re-emerging as like, physical pain. Um, and I only realized quite a lot later that I had to, to do some somatic work to actually get rid of the last bits of trauma that, um, talking therapy can't actually get to.

Steven Bartlett 14:28 Somatic work?

Dr. Tara Swart 14:29 So body, body work, whether that's massage or, uh, dance or art or craniosacral therapy or tai chi, you know, like anything physical. Because basically, there's an area in the brain... It's actually inside, so I can't really show it to you on this, but it's kind of inside there. And that part of the brain is to do with articulating speech, and it basically gets shut down by trauma. So those sort of phrases like, "I'm speechless," or, "I'm dumbfounded," or, "I have no words," indicates the fact that there may be residual trauma that's held in your body that you can't actually articulate and get out and solve through talking therapy, so it requires some kind of physical therapy. So that was obviously to do with my, um, sense of pain, and it took me a little while to kind of put together what that might mean by really, like, tapping into why was my body, um, manifesting pain to, to sort of remind me of something or show me something. But also, in the first couple of weeks after, um, Robin's body, Robin's body was taken away the morning after he died, and it was, uh, just under two weeks till the cremation. In that time, I would wake up in the morning, and I would be absolutely freezing cold, like shaking and shivering. And it was October, it wasn't like mid-winter, and I would blast up the heating. When someone else was in the house, I would realize it, it was like a sauna. It was actually a bit embarrassing, and I had to like, you know, turn it down and like open some windows. And Robin actually hated being cold, and he would have been in the morgue in a refrigerator drawer that whole time. And again, I think it was my sense of temperature that was kind of on the same wavelength as where... I didn't consciously think of where he was, but I was feeling freezing cold. So it was... Looking back, it was things like that that were coincidences, absolutely. But then, over time, and I'm talking a couple of years, I could ask for specific signs and get them. Sometimes, at first it would take a while, and then it became like it would happen that day. I could ask a question in my head and get an answer. I mentioned having, you know, sort of, again, being at the brink of my sanity, having to question things. I was experiencing something called thought insertion, which, um, in psychiatry, is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It's when you have a thought in your head that you know isn't yours. So I was experiencing that really vividly. But can you imagine experiencing that, and at the same time being a psychiatrist that is, is saying, "Right, Tara, you do realize you are having, like, a psychotic symptom?" And so, in my research, one of the things I realized, that maybe, you know, if you're going through grief and you don't know the things that I know, you can't articulate to yourself that grief in many ways is like psychosis. It's changing the levels of neurotransmitters in your head. It's changing the electric, electric and chemical, like, signaling in your head. I just have so much empathy for people that, that have to go through that and don't have the wherewithal or the resources that, that I did.

Steven Bartlett 17:35 Do you think one needs to cultivate their ability to see signs? Do you think it's like going to the gym?

Dr. Tara Swart 17:39 Totally. Totally. I've... It took me years. Um, and like I said, I believe it took him years as well. Um, so yeah, I, I say it's like learning a language, but you're right, it's like going to the gym.

Steven Bartlett 17:51 And what does one need to do in that gym to grow their sign muscle?

Dr. Tara Swart 17:57 Well, it always starts with believing, right?

Steven Bartlett 17:59 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 17:59 Um-

Steven Bartlett 18:00 Do you think that's one, one of the big issues w- uh, in terms of being able to access these other dimensions or dynamics, is most people just don't believe in it?... so I wouldn't, I'm not even sure if I'd say most people, I'd say a lot of people don't believe in it.

Dr. Tara Swart 18:13 Or they secretly do, but they're scared to talk about it 'cause they think people will ridicule them.

Steven Bartlett 18:17 Yeah. 'Cause, 'cause I don't know, my, my brain, my brain feels like I need to have the scientific evidence of things for me to accept them, because I think sometimes I worry that if I don't have scientific rigor around my beliefs, then I would, I'm susceptible to believe anything, and I'll believe in a spaghetti monster in the bottom of the garden, and I'll believe-

Dr. Tara Swart 18:36 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:36 ... you know, every religion in the world and every, and everything, and then I'm unanchored, and then I blow around like a plastic bag in the wind, and then I have no orientation.

Dr. Tara Swart 18:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:44 So I think, okay, rigor is the basis of my beliefs. I have to have some sort of scientific evidence.

Dr. Tara Swart 18:50 I know you do.

Steven Bartlett 18:51 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 18:53 Um...

Steven Bartlett 18:53 It's not to say I'm not open-minded, because-

Dr. Tara Swart 18:55 No.

Steven Bartlett 18:55 ... I've had my mind changed so many times in my life that-

Dr. Tara Swart 18:57 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:57 ... one would be dumb now to not be open-minded and to not listen.

Dr. Tara Swart 19:02 I agree with you about rigor, completely agree with you. My entire career has been based on that. But I just, I, I, you know, I was pushed up against a wall, so I had to think differently, and I think the question that I posed to myself is, is, "What if?"

Steven Bartlett 19:15 You had to think differently?

Dr. Tara Swart 19:17 So, um, the psychologist Carl Jung talks about, um, when he talks about the collective unconscious, he talks about those basically three main things that all humans experience, which is birth, life, and death. And so we have this common experience, which is actually part of our inherited gene and brain structure, um, so everyone who's ever lived will experience those things. But if we look at ancient wisdom, for a start, we are made of the carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen that came from the Big Bang, so we're all made of the same thing. Our ancestors lived in the cycle with nature. I think us actually having broken our connection to nature is a huge part of why we're so disconnected and unhappy. So if you think of the lifecycle of a salmon, for example, it, you know, it goes through its lifecycle and eventually its bones contribute to the phosphorus on the, um, floor of the forest, so it never really goes away. Um, in many other ways, our ancestors repeatedly saw the cycles of nature, and therefore always kind of knew that everything gets renewed and nothing ever completely goes away. And I think that's a really important thing to return to. I think, you know, when we question things, which you're absolutely right to do, I think we have to look at things that we didn't think were true that we now know are true as just ways of being open to the fact that things in the future might become obvious or known that aren't known now. I think that is an important place of being open-minded to, to sit at. And so for example, um, want to hear about slime mold?

Steven Bartlett 21:00 You tell me if that's something I wanna hear about.

Dr. Tara Swart 21:03 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 21:03 (laughs)

Dr. Tara Swart 21:04 So slime mold are single-celled organisms like amoeba, who go about their daily life on their own very happily as long as their basic needs are met. But if, for example, they're facing potential starvation, they will come together and form a slug, because the slug can move towards your vegetable patch, you know, a new food source, and they can survive. Equally, if they are, (laughs) if they are facing potential, um, extinction, they will come together and form a, a sporing body, like a mushroom. So that's got a stalk and a fruiting body that can release spores that will go into the atmosphere to all different places where these new baby organisms can, can grow and thrive. But if you think about it, the single cells in the stalk are sacrificing themselves for the greater good, 'cause there's no chance that they're, they're going to get released into the atmosphere as a spore, 'cause they're in the stalk. So some of them actually cheat and climb up the stalk to get into the fruiting body and displace other cells from the fruiting body. So things like that, and for example, the mycorrhizal network, which is how mushrooms and mycelium feed the roots of trees. Even trees that have been felled can be kept alive for centuries because the my- mycorrhizal network, which is the connection between mycelium and tree roots, can bring water and sugar to that tree stump to keep it alive. And trees and mycelium don't even only do it for the same species. They do it because they're part of the entire forest and its symbiotic relationship, and they care about each other. Things like this would've been, like, thought to be fantastical 10 years ago. Um, you know, we are in L- in LA at the moment, and I saw the driverless car for the first time. Now, when I was growing up watching sci-fi, I never thought I'd see that in my life. So that's all I'm saying, that... And, and I'm saying it from the point of view of being a cognitive scientist, and I'm talking about the nature of consciousness. I'm not talking about other, I'm not asking you to believe, you know, other parts of science. But based on the fact that we don't know everything, we've learned loads of things that we thought weren't true before, I strongly believe there's a benefit to humanity of raising this kind of question and having this conversation, which I ask you why it's a taboo conversation. What, you know, why shouldn't we be enlightened? Why shouldn't we feel better? Why shouldn't we be more connected? Whatever we've been doing up until now certainly hasn't been working.

Steven Bartlett 23:50 When, when was it that you made the decision that you were going to write a book about this called The Signs? Was there a particular moment in this process where you realized that you were going to dig deeper and that then you were ultimately gonna share this with the world?

Dr. Tara Swart 24:04 I wasn't intending to write a book at all, but I'd got to the point where I had something that I could share with people that I actually thought would be useful.

Steven Bartlett 24:10 And at this point, you're communicating with Robin...

Dr. Tara Swart 24:13 On a daily basis.

Steven Bartlett 24:14 On a daily basis?

Dr. Tara Swart 24:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:16 Give me some color to that. What does that mean? Give me some examples if you can.

Dr. Tara Swart 24:20 Well, it either will be that, like, I'll ask a question in my mind, and the answer will come in my mind but I know it's not my own thought. Or I'll just get a direct, like, message from him in my mind that I know isn't me. But mostly it's the signs. So I've t- talked to you about the first anniversary and how hard that was. By the time of the second anniversary, um, I was actually in America, and I'd been filming in studio for a week, and then I was on the road on the Navajo Nation, and that was due to, I was due to fly out of the Navajo Nation on the second anniversary of Robin's passing. And on, by that point I was feeling a bit like I'd completely burnt out, and I had a choice about how to reemerge. Um, you know, whether that was going to be in a good way or I wasn't gonna be able to make it. Um, and I had this analogy of a phoenix rising from the flames in my mind. So on that trip, I said, "Darling, send me the sign of a phoenix." And-

Steven Bartlett 25:25 You said that to who?

Dr. Tara Swart 25:26 To Robin, in my head. And I s- I chose the phoenix 'cause it's really unusual. So it's not like if I said, you know, a dog, I'm probably gonna see a dog on the pavement every day. But I chose something that is not an easy thing to see. And I was actually in Oklahoma City where, you know, you wouldn't expect necessarily to see, like, something unusual. Every single day between my hotel and studio, I went through Chinatown and I passed a restaurant called The Phoenix Garden with a big emblazoned, like, you know, sign. And on the way there, I had had an indirect flight from Boston, and the flight leaving Boston was late so I missed my connection in Chicago, and I had to spend a night in Chicago, and then I was, you know, late for filming and stuff. And so when I was leaving to go to LA, I was leaving on a s- on a Sunday, and from the Monday onwards I had a podcast every single weekday in LA. And so the team said to me, "We know that you cannot miss that flight. We are not going to put you on an, on an indirect flight. We absolutely promise you direct flight to LA, so you're fine from Monday onwards." We were in the middle of nowhere for, like, a week and basically my flight wasn't booked, so we didn't know which airport we were going to be at. We arrived on the eve of the anniversary of Robin passing, and my flight was booked that day, and it was from Flagstaff in the Navajo Nation to LA, flying on the day of his anniversary, no direct flights. I had to fly through Phoenix, Arizona on the day of his anniversary.

Steven Bartlett 27:01 You've probably heard of that old analogy of y- when you buy a car, you end up seeing the car everywhere on the road.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:06 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 27:06 Like, I buy a, buy a new car and then I go everywhere and it seems like everybody's got my car because of, I think, do they call it confirmation bias in science?

Dr. Tara Swart 27:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:12 In psychology? Where once you've got something in your head, you're more likely to see that thing.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:16 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:16 I think they've done studies on this where if you are exposed to something or you're told to think about something, then you'll see it more in the world.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:22 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:22 How do you separate what you're saying from that proven psychological phenomenon?

Dr. Tara Swart 27:28 I don't. I say use it to your advantage.

Steven Bartlett 27:31 But how do you know that wasn't what was happening in your life? Because if you thought about the word "phoenix" and then over the course of a couple of days, you're looking at everything-

Dr. Tara Swart 27:39 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:39 ... but you're only gonna register the things that are emotionally regi- resonant. You know, I might have seen-

Dr. Tara Swart 27:45 Of course.

Steven Bartlett 27:45 ... "phoenix" a lot of times over the last seven days, but because I wasn't-

Dr. Tara Swart 27:46 And it means nothing to you.

Steven Bartlett 27:47 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 27:48 So I didn't, I didn't register it.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:49 Again, I would say the number of times this has happened, the s- the sort of, like, how narrow I make the criteria. So, you know, sometimes I say, "I need to see a button or a symbol of a button, or the word 'button', but it's got to h- happen three times by 11:00 PM tomorrow." Um, and one of my friends says that, you know, we share something which is if you see a pair of lions, um, and we send each other pictures of it. But she says it has to be if you went out of your way and you walked a different way and then you saw them. If it's like, you know, the normal way that you go or somewhere that you know that they exist, that doesn't count. It has to be if you went out of your way. So I had a previous, um, thing with Robin which was about the figure of eight or the infinity symbol. Um, and there's a story in the book of how that was cropping up for me when I actually met him. But there was a day recently where I had some spaced o- I had three spaced out meetings in the day, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to walk for an hour between them all.

Steven Bartlett 28:48 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 28:49 And for the last meeting of the day, I ended up walking past, um, UCH, which is University College Hospital, where he was having treatment. And that had been a really traumatic time for me when he was in hospital there. And I have, I will have to say I kind of avoided that area since then. I'll tell you about a particular story that was, like, really traumatizing for me. Um, so on this walk to, um, where I was going for the evening for a book launch event, I ended up walking past the hospital. And I, and I actually said in my head, like, "Why would you make that happen to me? Like why, why do I have to walk past that building? I never want to see that building again in my life." And again I said, "You have to send me a sign." And, um, by the time I got to Euston Station, so you know, you can, people who don't know can Google this, it's not very far, there was an elastic band in the figure of H lying on the pavement, and that means something to me. Um, so the thing about this, this confirmation bias thing is it, it's dependent on the reticular activating system, which is the system of your brain that filters out what's not crucial to your survival and fi- filters in what it wants you to notice. And so actually one of the things I've written about in the book is the art of noticing. Because really we live in this world where the li- you know, life is passing you by at 100 miles per hour. You're not noticing things that could actually be crucial to you thriving rather than you just surviving.And in this model called shared trait vulnerability, which falls under the field of, um, research called neuroaesthetics, so basically, creativity is a positive personality trait, right?

Steven Bartlett 30:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 30:39 But there is a, a high correlation between creativity and psychopathology, which is mental illness, particularly depression, schizophrenia, and alcoholism. And there are quite a few high profile examples of, um, creative people who had mental illnesses like Alexander McQueen, Kurt Cobain, van Gogh. So what that shows is that there's an area of overlap of three particular ways of thinking that are underpinned by neurology that are the reasons that people with mental illness are so creative, and they are basically, um, hyper-connectivity. So that's, that's two things. That's joining the dots in the material world of things that aren't obvious to other people. But it's also hyper-connectivity inside the brain. So if you think about all these lobes... (laughs) So heavy. If you think about all these lobes, the more lobes that are firing at the same time, and there's also a cortex that's known as the association cortex. So that one, you know, these f- lobes can be firing, but they're not necessarily connecting up with each other. The more interconnected all this firing is in the brain, the more the brain opens up to new ideas.

Steven Bartlett 31:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 31:57 So that underpins creativity. And also, this usually really involves the visual cortex, which is in the occipital lobes, and that's why sometimes people, whether it's through psychedelics or, you know, sort of, m- sort of altered states of consciousness through creativity can, can see things that they didn't see before.

Steven Bartlett 32:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 32:14 There's also something called novelty salience, which is noticing new things, um, or just noticing things of importance that you would otherwise have filtered out. And there's something called, um, attenuated latent inhibition or low latent inhibition, which has to do with that filter, and it means that the filter allows more things in than it normally does.

Steven Bartlett 32:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 32:37 So you can see, we've got hyper-connection, we've got noticing more things, and we've got the filter, like, loosening and allowing more things in. Now, if you've got a high IQ, high working memory, and you've got cognitive flexibility, which is you can think, you know, out of the box, that's a really good thing. If you've got a low IQ, you've got deficits in your working memory, and you've got what's called perseveration, which is you just go over the same thought proc- process over and over again, that can lead to you having a psychological crisis. So I took that model and thought, if grief is like psychosis, and I'm currently in a very vulnerable state, is creativity a conduit for me to get not only back to the state that I was in before, but into a state of expanded awareness, where I can loosen the filter as I choose, as I choose fit? I can notice things that I would've passed by before, and I can think differently about my mind works, how the world works, possibly what happens after someone passes away. And then I went and, you know, looked into near-death experiences and terminal lucidity and dark retreats. Like I said, I went down a rabbit hole.

Steven Bartlett 33:48 And

Steven Bartlett 33:49 what did you find in that rabbit hole?

Dr. Tara Swart 33:51 At the border of life and death, usually within one to 24 hours of death, someone who has, whose brain hasn't been functioning, who can't remember the names of their own children, suddenly becomes completely lucid and says, "Steven, darling, come over here. Let me, you know, let's have a nice, like, mother-son chat." And then that gives a lot of people hope, but usually that means it's an hour or 23 hours till the person's going to die. We can't explain that. How can a brain that's irreversibly damaged suddenly function completely normally? There is no explanation for that. With the near-death experiences, I was particularly compelled by three stories. Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon, she's in that Netflix documentary, Surviving Death. She was submerged underwater for 15 or 20 minutes. She should never have been able to be resuscitated. She describes her whole journey of going to another realm, seeing, you know, a being of light, being told that her life isn't over, she has to turn back and return to the physical world, even though she could see her bloated body and her friends trying to reach her to resuscitate her and they couldn't. Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote Proof of Heaven, he is a doctor. He was an atheist. He was in a coma with bacterial meningitis and was pronounced clinically dead, and then basically came back and said that he saw heaven and he now believes in a god that is benign that cares about the future of humanity. So for me as a doctor, hearing these stories from other doctors was really, really convincing. And then there's one story that, um, Dr. Bruce Greyson told me. He's a professor of psychiatry at University of Virginia who has done 50 years of research into near-death experiences, and he told me the story of a patient in ICU who kept going into cardiac arrest and he had a primary nurse who was a young, um, 20-year-old nurse and they had a really close bond. And one weekend, she was, she had the time off for the weekend and he had a different nurse looking after him, and he went into cardiac arrest and he had a near-death experience. And in that near-death experience, he saw his primary nurse. She said to him, "Your life isn't over. You have to go back and get better. And please tell my parents I'm sorry about the red MG." So he wakes up in ICU, he's got this replacement nurse looking after him, and he says, "The strangest thing just happened. I, um..."... had this experience of being in this other world, I saw, um, my primary nurse and she said I had to come back. And she also said to tell my parents, "Sorry about the red MG." So the temporary nurse starts, bursts into tears, runs out of the room. He has no idea why. Someone comes in and says, "What's just happened?" He explains. And they tell him that his primary nurse was given a red MG for her 21st birthday, took it out for a test run, crashed it into a tree, and died. Now, he didn't know she was dead, but he saw her on the other side and she told him to come back.

Steven Bartlett 37:08 And the guy that told you this story was who relevant to the patient? Who said that?

Dr. Tara Swart 37:13 Dr. Bruce Greyson. He, um, has done 50 years of research on near-death experiences. He's got over 5,000 recorded cases of patients of his own that he's looked after that have had near-death experiences, and he also shared with me, with me the numbers of, of, uh, cases that other people have on databases. So, you know, we're looking at over 10,000 cases globally recorded at the moment.

Steven Bartlett 37:38 What is it that you believe based on those near-death experiences, like the red MG story-

Dr. Tara Swart 37:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 37:43 ... and based on this phenomenon of terminal lucidity?

Dr. Tara Swart 37:50 So Professor Alexander Bathiany, who wrote Threshold, about terminal lucidity, put it really nicely when he said, "Maybe at the border of life and death, we see something that is true all along, but we don't, for whatever reason, see it or acknowledge it whilst we're alive and well, which is that the mind and body can operate independently of each other."

Steven Bartlett 38:14 It is quite, it is quite shocking. There's this case from 2009, an 82, 2-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease who was non-verbal and non-responsive, and had no apparent recognition of her surroundings or family for years. And then one day before her death, she suddenly sat up in hospital, looked around, and recognized her daughter by name, spoke clearly, reminisced about the p- past, thanked her family for caring for her. Her speech was coherent, her memory was intact, and her personality recognizable, as though she had never been ill. She fell asleep that evening and died peacefully during the night.

Dr. Tara Swart 38:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 38:49 And what do you think's happening there? What do you think's happening there?

Dr. Tara Swart 38:53 It's possibly, you know, partially explained by a, a surge in neurochemicals, but it's not explained by how can those neurochemicals act if the physical neurons and synapses are damaged? There, there is no explanation. The only explanation is that the mind is not emergent from material, matter. It's not... The, the mind, the thoughts, the emotions, the psyche, cannot be solely emerging from physical matter. That's the only explanation, from what we understand so far.

Steven Bartlett 39:26 And so what is it that you now believe? You believe that our souls and our bodies are two separate things.

Dr. Tara Swart 39:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 39:30 And where does our soul live if it's not living inside of me?

Dr. Tara Swart 39:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 39:35 So, like, where is Robin?

Dr. Tara Swart 39:36 Mm-hmm. So I believe that, you know, whether, whether you want to call it the universe, consciousness, um, collective consciousness, Godhead, cosmic soup, I don't... The word for it isn't important. There's, there's somewhere that that energy goes, and it still exists in some form. And if you believe in reincarnation, then you may believe that it then enters another body as a vessel and, you know, has a different life. Um, but it doesn't go away.

Steven Bartlett 40:09 How do you know?

Dr. Tara Swart 40:11 (laughs) I'm gonna say something that you're, I know you're not gonna like, but I... I know because I feel it personally, I feel it from, I feel it, like, with the person that I've been closest to in my entire life, who I know would never leave me if they didn't absolutely have to. But I can back that up to the extent of I can, I can say, "You can't prove that this isn't true." I can back that up with everything that I put in the book. And I'm not the only one. Dr. David Eagleman at Stanford says, you know, this idea of the brain being like a radio and receiving signals from outside, we can't prove it, but we categorically cannot say it's not true. Professor Donald Hoffman suggests that space-time is not the basis of how the universe works, suggests that consciousness is the basis of how the universe works. We can't prove that's not true. And I find that really exciting. I mean, as a scientist, you're supposed to challenge the status quo. You're supposed to be curious. You can't, as a scientist, believe that everything we know now is all there is. There's no point to being a scientist if that's what you believe.

Steven Bartlett 41:16 I asked you this question about the gym earlier on, about is it kind of like training in the gym? Is, are there things you think people could do to heighten their ability to speak to loved ones that might have passed or to heighten their ability to tap into signs?

Dr. Tara Swart 41:29 So I go through this in the book, and, and I chose the order quite carefully. So I talk about neuroesthetics, which is, you know, noticing beauty basically, if not, like, actually engaging in the arts. There's a lot of evidence for engaging in the arts in terms of, like, um, increasing your novelty salience, which is noticing new things, which is part of the journey of opening up that filter.

Steven Bartlett 41:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 41:51 Um, and then there's a whole chapter on nature, because I think a lot of signs come from nature, like butterflies, robins, um, sort of, you know, spiral formations, cloud formations. So noticing nature more can help you, you know, also to receive these signs. And then community is a huge part of it, because, you know, if I had this conversation with you and you totally shot me down and said, "It's not provable, this is ridiculous, I'm not airing this episode," that would have a very different ef- like, effect on me-

Steven Bartlett 42:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 42:23 ... to you even being open to, like, asking me challenging questions that I welcome, but also engaging in this conversation and, and sort of, you know, may-... feels a little bit like maybe questioning, you know, some things that you might do differently. Um, so those are three very important parts of, like, sort of part two of the book. Part one is more about what are signs? What are you missing? You know, have you been receiving signs already?

Steven Bartlett 42:48 One of the things that I... when I was going through my sort of, um, transition from, like, being religious to being agnostic, I'd say, 'cause I wouldn't call myself an atheist, is I was watching all these, um, Atheist Minds debate and talk and stuff. And one of the things one of them said is that if coincidence didn't happen in our lives, then that would be a miracle, like, statistically, mathematically.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:07 If at some times you don't think of Dave and then the phone rings and it's Dave-

Dr. Tara Swart 43:11 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:11 ... that would actually be more mathematically improbable than it happening some times.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:16 If you think about, you know, the nat- if, if you had this on a, like a distribution cover or something, it is likely, mathematically, that really unlikely things will happen sometimes.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:27 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 43:27 Right? So I, I've always had that in my head as a way to sort of rationalize coincidence.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:32 So when coincidence happens, I think, "Well, probabilistically, really unlikely things have to happen, and if they never happen, then that's a miracle."

Dr. Tara Swart 43:40 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 43:41 Does that make sense?

Dr. Tara Swart 43:41 Yeah, it makes sense.

Steven Bartlett 43:42 Like, mathematically, you'd say, like, likely things happen often, unlikely things happen less often.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:49 Extremely unlikely things happen way less often.

Dr. Tara Swart 43:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:52 That's, like, the nature of, like, maths, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 43:54 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:55 So when extremely unlikely things happen, I say, "Actually, that makes sense because probabilistically, those things happen infrequently." They're not happening every single day. Like, right now, I'm thinking of... I can name 10 people. I guarantee when I go to my phone, none of those 10 people have texted me.

Dr. Tara Swart 44:08 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 44:09 But if I do that every day, one day, I'm gonna say, "Hey, Steve, checking in." Which makes sense because of the, the laws of probability.

Dr. Tara Swart 44:15 Yeah, but I don't want you to do that. I want you to just, like, be open to naturally thinking of someone and seeing if that does happen or, you know, kind of... Or asking for a sign and seeing if it comes into your life. That, that's, that's all I'm asking. Like, what... You know, just try it. It's not gonna hurt you. And I'm not just saying that to you. I'm saying it to everyone.

Steven Bartlett 44:38 And how do you think that would benefit me?

Dr. Tara Swart 44:41 I think it makes you believe in something bigger than yourself.

Steven Bartlett 44:44 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 44:45 Um...

Steven Bartlett 44:45 And why is that so important?

Dr. Tara Swart 44:47 Because I think a life where all you're trying to do is get through and meet your needs is... Life can be better than that. Um, I think a life where you feel more connected to yourself, to others, to something greater gives you purpose. Um, there's a lot of research that shows that having a purpose that transcends just yourself is actually really healthy and important.

Steven Bartlett 45:12 And what is that for you, now, that transcendent layer in your life? How do you define it? Is it a religion? Is it something else?

Dr. Tara Swart 45:18 It's definitely not religion. Um, I guess it's spirituality and, you know, a form which will mean different things to different people. It's definitely about caring for humanity.

Steven Bartlett 45:30 Is it a god? A creator?

Dr. Tara Swart 45:33 For me, no. Um, but 85% of people globally believe in religion and a god, so it's important. Um, I think for me, it's about giving, like, a voice of relevance and helping people to feel seen and heard 'cause I think that's very lacking. And, you know, I'm in the enormously privileged position that you have given me of being able to do that, and I want to use that in a really, like, positive way.

Steven Bartlett 46:02 How does this overlap with or sit alongside what people call intuition? 'Cause you talk about that as well in the book.

Dr. Tara Swart 46:09 Yeah. Um, I know there's so much. Like, there's still, like, so much else that I want to say.

Steven Bartlett 46:14 Just keep going.

Dr. Tara Swart 46:15 So intuition is... I mean, intuition is what it is. It's accessing inner wisdom, right? But I've, I've included it as a really important part of the book because I believe that it's a way to receive and interpret your signs. But, um, I just wanna go back to something I said earlier, which is about how trauma can be stored in your body, and, you know, to some extent, it can't be retrieved through talking therapy 'cause there aren't words for it because it's actually embedded into the tissues of your body. There's a really exciting new hypothesis for how that might work called the serotonin hypothesis. So previously, I think it would make sense that if, you know, for example, when, when Robin was in hospital, I would, like, sit in a very hunched over position and my fists would be clenched 'cause I felt like I was fighting for his life all the time, and if I relaxed for a millisecond, he could die. Um, so it makes sense to me that that... those postural issues would show up for me later and, you know, in terms of, like, pay- aches and pains and, you know, perhaps sort of... Well, not perhaps. My... As my Pilates and yoga teachers keep telling me (laughs) , like, issues with, you know, certain parts of my spine and stuff. But, um, the serotonin hypothesis is very exciting as a neuroscientist because a lot of people have heard of Bessel van der Kolk's work and the book, The Body Keeps the Score. And it makes sense, kind of intuitively, that the body does keep the score. And, and like I've said, there's an amount of trauma that you can't expr- you can't articulate verbally, so we believe we understand there are imprints of that in the body.

Steven Bartlett 47:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 47:53 But we have... We've never really understood how that works. Um, and we... You know, I've talked before, I think with you, about intuition through a process called Hebbian learning, which is neurons that fire together, wire together, gets pushed deeper and deeper into neurons from the outer cortex, the limbic system, the brain stem, into gut neurons. And that's why intuition is called gut instinct. And we understand that through stress postures, you could have bracing patterns in your muscles for, like, the trauma that you've experienced. Fascia is the connective tissue that holds your entire body together, all your organs, all your muscles. And until fairly recently-... fascia was thought of as a vestigial organ. It was cut away in surgery without thinking of any, that it would have any effect on the rest of your body. Now, it's understood more to actually be an imp- an organ of its own and an important one. And the serotonin hypothesis goes some way to explain how the level of constriction of capillaries and the amount of nutrients that's released to skin, fascia, and muscle is a mechanism for how trauma is held in the body.

Steven Bartlett 49:05 And with that in mind, what do we do to get rid of that trauma held in the body?

Dr. Tara Swart 49:09 Physical activities. Um, so dancing, singing, drumming, humming, chanting, massage, yoga, craniosacral therapy. And you'll notice, like the ones I started with are, you know, very related to ancient wisdom. So our ancestors knew this. Um, for example, in ancient Greek, um, uh, ancient Greek burials, they would wail and beat their chests, so they were getting rid of grief by ch- like screaming, but also by beating their muscles and letting, like, trauma exit their body.

Steven Bartlett 49:44 I'm very well aware that there's probably a lot of people who have sent this conversation to a friend who is struggling right now.

Dr. Tara Swart 49:52 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:53 And that that friend who has lost a loved one, potentially a husband, potentially a wife, potentially a, you know, God forbid, a child-

Dr. Tara Swart 49:59 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 50:00 ... or a grandparent or something, is listening to this because they are in search of answers for their own healing.

Dr. Tara Swart 50:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 50:07 You've been there.

Dr. Tara Swart 50:08 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 50:09 You may still be there in some degree. If you were to advise them on their own healing journey, what advice would you give them?

Dr. Tara Swart 50:23 The first thing would be, uh, to not repress or deny how they're feeling and, you know, really feel the emotions that, that have to come along with grief. Um, I've, you know, I had amazing talking therapy, which definitely helped me a lot. So if people have access to that, um, professionally, then great. If not, then, you know, if you've got close friends that you can talk to, then talking it out does help. But I've really learned that there's a limit to how much that helps and that some sort of physical therapy, um, is really helpful as part of it. Those would be the basics, I would say. Time in nature has been so healing for me. Um, some form of creative outlet, whether it's making or beholding. So you don't have to be good at art if, if you draw, you know, a picture of how you're feeling emotionally or a sketch of your loved one. It doesn't have to be good. You get benefits from doing that. It's an out- creative outlet for your grief. That's probably the second level, and you know, the third level to me is if you've got a- any inclination to receive signs, um, or just be open to, you know, a white feather landing at your doorstep, um, or a bird coming to visit you or something that means something to you, then that can bring a lot of comfort and guidance and joy.

Steven Bartlett 51:45 And you also assert that things like being in nature, creativity, honing into our r- intuition increase the probability of us receiving these signs.

Dr. Tara Swart 51:53 Mm-hmm. Well, receiving and being able to interpret in a way that's meaningful for you.

Steven Bartlett 51:59 Gut instinct. Um, in the book, you talk about how strengthening one's gut health can have a, an impact on gut in- instinct.

Dr. Tara Swart 52:08 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 52:09 Explain that to me.

Dr. Tara Swart 52:11 So the, the body is basically the physical foundation for, um, you know, all of your senses to be able to, to flourish, to your higher mental faculties to be able to flourish, and ultimately, for, you know, whatever spiritual experience you have of life, to, to be able to be at its fullest and best as well. So taking care of the physical foundations is really important. And, um, you know, we could talk about all the usual things like sleep and diet and exercise, mindfulness, stress management. But I want to really focus strongly on the, the gut-brain axis, because a lot of new research has come up since I wrote The Source. So it's actually w- you know, we know a lot about this bidirectional communication between the brain and the gut. It's actually a three-way system, which is the brain, the gut itself, the gut neurons, and the gut microbiome, which is trillions of bacteria and fungi and, you know, organisms that, um, are basically determining the health of our entire system, 'cause they're connected to our immune system, to our skin, to our oral microbiome, and, and the brain. So the way that you... The, the most direct access you have to your brain is through your gut. The gut is the most direct way that you can influence your brain, and you can do that through exercise, obviously diet, um, supplementation, even like, um, meditation and art and music therapy have a beneficial effect on your gut microbiome as well, which has a knock-on effect on the neurons in the, the brain. And they communicate with each other many ways, m- mostly through the vagus nerve. S-

Steven Bartlett 53:57 What's the vagus nerve?

Dr. Tara Swart 53:58 The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve. So it comes from your skull. It's Latin for wandering, because it's the longest nerve that goes through your body. So it goes... There's two, the right and the left, and they go all the way from your cranium, which is-

Steven Bartlett 54:11 What's my cranium?

Dr. Tara Swart 54:11 Your cranium is the bone around your brain.

Steven Bartlett 54:13 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 54:14 Um, so inside that, um, down your neck. They go through your diaphragm and to your intestine.

Steven Bartlett 54:20 I'll put a photo up on screen-

Dr. Tara Swart 54:21 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 54:22 ... for everybody who wants to see where their vagus nerve is.

Dr. Tara Swart 54:24 Also, other nerves. So the nerves that innervate the gut organs, um, they're called afferent intestinal nerves. They're also involved in this communication. Then there's hormones, and there's cytokine, um, messages, which are chemical messages that aren't hormonal. Your immune system actually also produces neurotransmitters, and there are immune cells in your brain as well. So those are all the ways that we know currently that the brain and the gut communicate with each other.

Steven Bartlett 54:51 And

Steven Bartlett 54:52 so what does this mean in terms of my gut health and ways to influence my, my brain? Does it mean that I, I need to be really big on my prebiotics, my probiotics, to make sure my, my gut's intact, and if I do that, then my intuition will be sharper?

Dr. Tara Swart 55:06 Mm-hmm. So that's true, but I always like people to understand what's behind that, not just mindlessly take prebiotics and probiotics. So what we're trying to do is reduce inflammation throughout the system, and so basically, because the brain is a small organ in, in our entire system, but it uses up at least 20% of our energy, so it's very vulnerable to, um, what, what we call oxidative stress or free radicals. So every time, like, there's any turnover of cells in our brain or our body, basically as we live, the wear and tear of daily life, we release free radicals which are molecules that can damage cells, particularly nerve cells. And because the brain is- has such high turnover of energy, it's particularly vulnerable to free radical attack, so reducing inflammation and putting things that are neuroprotective around it, like certain vitamins and minerals, is really important. And the hippocampus part of the brain, which, um, it has high cell turnover 'cause it's to do with memory, laying down memories, and obviously well into adulthood we're still doing that, that's also very vulnerable to free radical damage, and that's why we can get memory and cognitive impairments and dementias as we get older. So the, the modern Western diet causes something called dysbiosis, which is that your gut isn't in a good state-

Steven Bartlett 56:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 56:35 ... and that creates a cascade of inflammation and releases molecules, some of which can cross the blood-brain barrier and therefore cause inflammation in the brain. So we want to minimize that as much as possible and put in as many protective and beneficial factors as possible. If we're doing that, the system's in what we call homeostasis, which is good balance. It's kind of starting to take care of itself. It's got all the nutrients that it needs. It's hydrated, it's oxygenated. That's when you've got extra resources to do the higher mental functions, and up until today pretty much, I've described those as being able to solve complex problems, being able to think flexibly, creatively, override your biases. But now I'm proposing that there's more than that that we can do. There's accessing levels of intuition that we didn't know we had. Very much thr- through the same mechanism of how I described trauma being stored in the body, hidden wisdom is also stored in the body. It's not just in your brain. And therefore, the same therapies, like beholding and making art, humming, drumming, storytelling, dancing, yoga, just movement, can help us to access that intuition that isn't just in our brain and our mind and take us to a next level of intuition that's not just cerebral, it's- it's physical.

Steven Bartlett 58:09 I've just invested millions into this and become a co-owner of the company. It's a company called Ketone IQ, and the story is quite interesting. I started talking about ketosis on this podcast and the fact that I'm very low carb, very, very low sugar, and my body produces ketones, which have made me incredibly focused, have improved my endurance, have improved my mood, and have made me more capable at doing what I do here. And because I was talking about it on the podcast, a couple of weeks later, these showed up on my desk in my HQ in London, these little shots. And oh my God, the impact it's had on my ability to articulate myself, on my focus, on my workouts, on my mood, on stopping me crashing throughout the day was so profound that I reached out to the founders of the company, and now I'm a co-owner of this business. I highly, highly recommend you look into this. I highly recommend you look at the science behind the product. If you wanna try it for yourself, visit ketone.com/stephen for 30% off your subscription order, and you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com/stephen. And I'm so honored that once again, a company I own can sponsor my podcast.

Steven Bartlett 59:16 You used the word dark retreats. I've never heard that phrase before.

Dr. Tara Swart 59:20 So dark retreats come from, um, a Tibetan religion or philosophy, but it's, um, it's seen throughout the ancient civilizations, so the ancient Greeks and Romans used to bury people actually for days, and then they would come out and be, like, the seers and the mystics of that, um, community. S- but there's most research, um, available in dark retreats 'cause it's still happening today.

Steven Bartlett 59:45 What is a dark retreat?

Dr. Tara Swart 59:46 A dark retreat is, um, have you heard of silent retreat, silent meditation?

Steven Bartlett 59:49 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 59:49 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:50 Yeah, my girlfriend went on one.

Dr. Tara Swart 59:51 Yeah, so that's the kind of thing she would do. So basically, you can go away for a few days to a few weeks, and you're just in silence, and you're meditating and doing breath work most of the time. In a dark retreat, you are in, like, pitch black for... I mean, you can go and do it for a few hours or a weekend, but it's meant to be in sevens, so 7 to 49 days. The monks do 49 days. If, as a, you know, a person who's interested spiritually, you wanted to do it quite seriously, you would go for seven days, and you would be in a room or a cave that's got double walls, so it's completely dark. And, um, the reason for doing this is that not all of us can have a near-death experience, right? So this is a way of emulating, it's the closest way of emulating that for anyone like you or I to get access to the benefits of a near-death experience, um, which I've ou- outlined them all in the book. So in a dark retreat, at first, you sleep a lot. Because it's dark, you're releasing a lot, lot of melatonin from your pineal gland, so you fall asleep in darkness.... you awake in darkness and basically that kind of makes you feel more sleepy, so you sleep a lot. After a couple of days, you start to see, like, pulsations of light. It might be like little shooting stars or kind of just like little sparks here and there. And then eventually, it feels like the walls are dimly alight. So in complete darkness, you start to see light. Obviously, there's an element of, like, hallucinating at this point. And so after three, four, five days, you will actually start to see animals, real or sort of fantastical. And eventually people see, like, deities or beings, like people do in near-death experiences. Um, and when people come out of these retreats, they experience many of the same benefits like, you know, a real sort of, like, joy for life, less fear of death, more compassion for other people, less fear of failing so, you know, taking more healthy risks. So, it- it's a way basically of emi- emulating a near-death experience.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:15 And it therefore convinces you that there's more than you can see in your day-to-day life, and therefore that expands your mind in a way that's beneficial?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:02:23 Yeah, it's another, uh, example of an altered state of consciousness. You can also get altered states of consciousness through conscious connected or holotropic breath work, and through the use of psychedelic, um, plants as well.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:38 How do we know that it's- it's not just a changing of our neurological state or the- the chemicals in our brain that are causing us to interpret things differently with our senses? Because, you know, we've all ex- uh, I said we all. Many of us have experienced having some kind of stimulant or psychedelic or some s- compound-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:02:56 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:56 ... in a rave or at a festival-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:02:58 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:58 ... that's made us see the world differently for a moment.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:00 And science would say that's just the neurochemicals in our brain-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:04 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:05 ... doing different things which are changing our perception. They wouldn't say necessarily that it's a different realm or a different dimension.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:13 Yeah, and I- I think you're right. I think it is that. So as a neuropharmacologist, I, you know, understand as much as the research says about the... It's mo- mostly, like I said, in- in the body, in the brain with psychedelics, it's mostly 5-HT or serotonin 2A receptors. And there's a level of hyperconnectivity within the brain, particularly, as I said, in the visual cortex here, which allows people to see things that they don't normally see.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:39 Um, and I think the way to apply that in your life is that it's a glimpse into what's possible.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:50 Um, once you've experienced that, it could either be that you find other natural ways of experiencing that. So there's- there's a paper I can forward to you that shows that certain forms of conscious connected breath work produce the same effect as a moderate dose of psilocybin.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:05 Which is magic mushrooms.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:04:06 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:07 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:04:07 And this, um, research came out after psilocybin was banned, and practitioners thought, "Well, what are other ways that we can help people to achieve these altered states of consciousness?" Um, and personally, I believe that, you know, having, like, c- a pl- completely, like, awe-inspiring experience in nature, or for me, like, the ballet particularly when I've been so lucky sometimes to sit in the wings and you just completely feel like you're part of it. I mean, I've literally had a spiritual experience sitting in the wings watching, actually it was one of my friends, a principal dancer dancing. Just so overwhelming. It's completely an altered state of consciousness. Um, so there other, there are other ways of accessing that, um, but I think it depends like why you want to and what it means to you. But at minimum, these sorts of things that I'm talking about are ways of understanding that there's more to life than what we know.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:04 And how does that meaningfully change, like, the concept of what happiness is and contentment is and, like, living a good life is?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:05:15 So what I think is really interesting is that we don't actually have to experience certain things ourselves. So there's a lot of research that shows that students from various different, um, areas of expertise who simply learn about near-death experiences actually get some of the same benefits, and that these can last for over a year later. So understanding that when someone sees that there's something greater than us, when someone sees the interconnectedness of- of everything, when someone understands how small some of their problems are in the greater, you know, picture of things helps people to be more compassionate, more grateful, kinder to others, um, less materialistic, is- is really interesting. And I think anything that we can do to help us, you know, free us from some of those chains that I think hold us down in the material world, particularly in the Western world, is... it's healthy for us physically, mentally, emotionally, but it also brings in this element of spirituality that I think is just so lacking in the world at the moment, and- and could be so helpful. Because if we look back at the way that our ancestors used their senses and their intuition to interpret the land, like a cloud formation could mean that rain's coming, but it could also mean that your ancestors were talking to you. Just seems like such a beautiful way to live. And when we lived in, you know, in Paleolithic times, we didn't have spare resources for having fun, but we adorned ourselves, we danced, we told stories, we made, you know, cave art. So I think that just really reminds us that...... those things that are often seen as luxuries or frivolous, they're not at all. They're fundamentally important.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:06 Believing in- in these things itself is good for us, is that what you believe? You believe that believing in something transcendent, whether it's spiritual or religious, is actually just good for us, so that's reason enough to believe it?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:07:19 It's reason enough to believe it, but I think it will naturally change what you do once you believe it. You're not going to live in the same way if you- if you beli- you know, believe some fundamentally different things.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:29 And the ways in which it changes what you believe are beneficial to you, so y- are you saying that that is reason enough to believe it, like to want to believe it?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:07:37 I think it's reason enough to try it.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:39 Yeah. I mean, sometimes it causes y- people through human history to do awful things, right? To kill themselves, to- to strap bombs to themselves and do horrific things because they believe in something transcendent. It- it can also lead to, like, destructive behavior.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:07:59 I mean, I don't think there's any evidence from near-death experiences that that's the case. I think... I know what that- what you're referring to is something that's, you know, more fundamentally like religious and...

Steven Bartlett 1:08:14 'Cause I was watching that- I've been watching... Jack told me to watch this, uh, Capture Bin Laden documentary, so I was watching it last night, and these people flew themselves into buildings because they believe in, you know, they were obviously radicalized in, uh, various ways but they- they believed in going to a afterlife that would be better than this one.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:08:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:34 And that they were sacrificing themselves for the greater good. So it's just- it's- it's, I guess it's a side point that just b- the belief in transcendence itself in some regard isn't necessarily always gonna guarantee our behaviors on- on this planet are productive.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:08:48 Yeah, and I was gonna say like perhaps it's something more dogmatic, but I think you're absolutely right to raise that point, and I'm not trying to sit here and say, "I found, like, the perfect solution and everyone should do this and it's all good," like, that's just... I know that's not true. I'm not trying to say that at all. I think we should absolutely be questioning everything that- that I'm saying, and I will keep questioning the way that I'm living my life and keep trying to learn and grow.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:11 I guess

Steven Bartlett 1:09:12 the point is just the belief in something transcendent, does that make our lives necessarily better? I guess the answer is I c- it can.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:19 Uh, I'm really obsessed at the moment, actually, with this idea of purpose and meaning.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:21 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:21 Because obviously we're living in a society that's more and more individualistic and-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:25 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:25 ... independence is kind of vogue, and, um, because of a variety of things that have happened over the last 50, 60, 70 years, we have more independence, women, in particular, have a lot more independence which I think everyone is very, most people, are very, um, supportive of.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:40 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:41 We have more choice than ever before, and with choice comes independence. So I can choose now when I have a family and maybe I couldn't choose before.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:48 Um, and with choice and with freedom, I think some of our more short-term hedonistic designs and temptations take hold, and we end up sacrificing the tribe and shared responsibility and dependence, and a lot of our meaning came from, like, those things.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:06 So I f- I feel, to some degree, that when we think about how we ladder up from, like, me to, like, my family to my city-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:14 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:14 ... to my nation and then maybe to my god-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:16 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:16 ... those layers have fallen away, and now for many of us, it's just me-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:19 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:20 ... and that's causing a crisis of meaning and purpose in- in life-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:24 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:24 ... because we're kind of unanchored.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:25 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:26 What's your perspective on this? And, um, do you think it's true that we're, like, we're more unanchored than we've ever been, and how do you think we get back to that if we can relate to feeling a little bit lost and unanchored and the sort of prevalence, in my view, of people having more and more mid-life crises-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:43 ... and turning to religion or spirituality or something?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:46 Yeah, well, I- I actually called this in March 2020, and it's on record 'cause I was on a podcast and I- I said I foresee a huge mental health crisis, but we could choose for it to be a spiritual revolution. And so then obviously the, you know, the rest of the pandemic happened and then there was sort of a return to society which I think people found really hard mentally as well. And at the same time, there was the cost of living crisis, the wealth gap, a new war, the crime rates par- you know, cer- certainly in London, like, just for my life experience, they had, you know, significantly grown, um, for reasons that we're all contributors to, but, you know, it changes how safe you feel in society. And I'm a big fan of technology, obviously, I'm a scientist, but it is ironic that we seem to be more disconnected than ever when in- in one way, we're- we're more connected than we've ever been before.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:11:45 And I, you know, I w- I- I've said this before but I'll say it again, I think the way out of that is- is a return to ancient wisdom, to true connection, which I believe can co-exist with being technologically connected and advanced. Um, but yeah, I just- I just think we've lost what it means to be human, which means, you know, really being in touch with yourself and r- being part of a community and- and caring about something more than just your own life and- and your immediate, you know, inner circle.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:19 And what is true connection in your definition of the word? 'Cause I guess there's false connection if there's true connection.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:25 So what's true connection?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:26 Um...

Steven Bartlett 1:12:26 And what is false connection?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:27 Well, I'll just go over, you know, what I've said before 'cause it's about connection to yourself, to others, and, you know, sort of the world or something greater. And I th- you know, it's- it's about something that's- that's deep and not transactional. It's about something that's meaningful. It's about something that's altruistic. I- I think it's about contributing.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:48 That day when you walked past the hospital, what did you experience?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:54 Um, it triggers me seeing that building, and I just...I, you know, I had obviously looked on Google Maps, but not really realized that I would walk past it. And if I had realized, I would have walked a different way. And I remember just thinking, "It's unfair that I had to see this building." It was unnecessary, unnecessarily a trigger for me. And, and obvious- obviously saying to Robin, "You need to send me a sign." But there, there's a reason for that, which is, you know, I mean, I went to that hospital every day for a month for his first stay, and I think about three weeks for the second one. Um, but he had two admissions to ICU, and one of them, I'd been, you know, to visit him for the day. He'd been bedridden for quite a few weeks by then. And I came home. I was just sort of de-escalating and, you know, sitting on the sofa and getting ready for the evening. And then suddenly I saw the emergency line was calling, and I could hear them saying, "His heart rate went up to 200." Like, "ICU are here now," you know, "We did a crash call." And they're just like talking, talking, talking, and I suddenly just said, "Should I come back to the hospital?" And she said yes in, in a tone of voice that was like, "You need to get here as quickly as possible." Got in the Uber, it's a 30-minute Uber ride from my house, and messaged my best friend and said that, "I've got to rush back to the hospital." He was on the 15th floor, so I was like waiting for the lift. Got up there, saw the matron coming to unlock the door and I just said, "Is he in his room?" And she said, "Yes, he's in his room," but she, her face looked like not good. Ran round and saw all the machinery from ICU in the corridor with like a hundred wires coming out of the room. Ran into the room and just saw Robin sat up in bed, huge smile when he saw me, and he just said to me, "When I thought this was the end, I just kept thinking, 'Please let me see her face one more time.'" And, you know, after that he did get a bit better, but then, um... Well, in that first admission, eventually I said to him, you know, "You've got to start sitting up." Well, the doctor said, "You've got to sit out of bed." And the therapist had come round, he said, "I don't want therapy, I've got you." So like, I took the therapy. The reflexology lady came round, he pretended he was asleep, and eventually I said, "Darling, you've got to play the game. I cannot do this by myself. And you, and you can't just keep lying in bed, you've got to sit up." So he got helped into the chair, and that day when I went to say goodbye to him, I hugged him like face to face, and I ha- didn't quite realize that the whole time I'd been kissing him from the side of the bed 'cause he'd been in bed. And when we hugged face to face, I just burst into tears, and I'd never shown him anything but a smiling face the whole time. And I left, and I just got this barrage of text messages saying, "I'm not spending one more night away from you. I'm wasting away in this hospital when I could be with you. When you come in tomorrow, we're gonna tell the doctors that I'm leaving." So I thought, "Okay." Came in the next day, it's ward round, and I was pretty much like part of the ward round, like the consultant would say everything and then say, "Is that okay, Tara?" kind of thing. And he said, "I want to leave. I'm leaving today. I want to be at home with my wife tonight." And she was very clever. She looked at me and said, "What do you think, Tara?" 'Cause she knew I'd never put him in danger. But also, I'm standing in front of the man that I love, and I'm either going to tell him that I don't trust him, I don't trust his decision-making, the person who always, always had my back, or I'm gonna have to show him that I have his back just like he always had mine. And I said to her, "I understand why you wouldn't be in favor of this, but I think I can manage it." And within two days he was discharged from hospital. Um... Yeah. Off IVs. Um, on, still on oxygen. We still had to go in to have, like, the bone marrow tests and get blood transfusions and platelets and things. But he slowly started to recover. He, it was a slow recovery, so normally within a week he would get the second round of treatment. He wasn't strong enough for that. But, um, we got to the point where she actually said that we could go to Hampshire and then he stopped using the walking stick, he stopped using the oxygen. We came back to London for the second round of treatment. She said, "I could not have imagined you would bring him back in as good a state as he's in." But the second round of treatment was totally brutal, and it didn't work. Um, so he was in hospital again for a few weeks, and then, like I said, on October 4th I took him home. Even then, the female consultant said to me, "The last time you took him to Hampshire he got so much better. If anything changes, bring him back to London." And the male consultant gave me two syringes of bone marrow stimulating, um, drugs and said, "You cannot use this without our permission, but if anything changes, inject him with this and bring him back to London." So I still had, like, a glimmer of hope, which I shouldn't really have had. Um, and like I said, he, he lived for three and a half weeks instead of two. Um... Yeah, and like right towards the end, 'cause he was in a hospital bed on an air mattress, he said like, "Maybe you could like come and lie on the bed with me." And, I mean, he couldn't move, he couldn't raise a glass of water to his lips or anything, but he somehow like moved his arm 'cause I always used to sleep like on his chest. Um, and then after a few seconds he said, "I'm just really claustrophobic and..." You know, I'd like had to put the rails up to stay in the bed 'cause it was so small and I was gonna fall out, and I said, "It's okay darling." And I think that, I think that was his way of saying goodbye to me 'cause he died two days after that.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:17 What's on your mind?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:19 Um... just, like, very sad. Um... I don't want him to get forgotten. I dedicated, like, my book to him. But I, I also know because we've had this conversation, that there's something, there's something, there's, there's still, like... something that I have to do in this life, which was the reason that I had to stay. So... Yeah, I, I think there's, like, a purpose to fulfill that, that Robin wants me to do, so that, that's what I'm gonna do.

Steven Bartlett 1:20:15 How do you think about falling in love again? 'Cause I, uh, f- played out the horrific thought myself in my own life of losing my partner and, and how difficult it would, it appears to be from this vantage point, uh, fall in love again and meet people and to, to think about those things again. Like, how... How do you think about that?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:20:35 Um... So I actually experienced unconditional love, which I didn't believe in. So the first time Robin said to me, "I love you unconditionally," because I had some baggage from a previous relationship, I said, "Don't say that, because I don't think that exists." And he never said it again, but every day for the rest of his life he showed me that it was true, so at some point I just knew it was true. I would say, you know, obviously people say things like, "He would want you to be happy." And, you know, I was still wearing my wedding rings for over two years and, you know, s- even some of his friends said, "You don't need to wear them anymore." But I said, "I want to." And I wore them for as, you know, as long as I still needed to. I... I'm open to receiving love, but I'm not going to go and look for it, let's put it that way.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:33 Why?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:36 Um... I don't know. I mean, it's not really my style anyway. But I think I've been so lucky with what I've had that I don't... I don't... I'd be okay if I didn't, like, have something like that again. Obviously... I'm too young to, like, not want to have that again. But, um, I also feel quite vulnerable, so... I'll just, like, see how things go.

Steven Bartlett 1:22:09 I've watched so many entrepreneurs treat sales like a performance problem, when it's often down to visibility. Because when you can't see what's happening in your pipeline, what stage each conversation is at,

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