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Lewis HowesNeuroscientist REVEALS How To COMPLETELY HEAL Your Body & Mind! | Caroline Leaf & Lewis Howes
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115 min read · 22,989 words- 0:00 – 5:13
Mind vs. Brain: The Magnet and Iron Filings Model
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
People are dying from lack of hope, deaths of despair. When you take away people's sense of agency, you're taking away the most core dynamic of who you are as a human.
- SPSpeaker
I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness. Really? [laughs] Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest. Dr. Caroline Leaf is in the house, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in the mind-brain connection, who's been in this field for many decades. I'm very excited you're here. Thanks for being here.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Thank you. I'm so excited to be talking to you, Lewis. It's great. Thank you.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, y- And, and I am, uh, I love that you're in this field of understanding the mind-brain connection-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... and how it plays into our thoughts and our emotions, our feelings, our mental health, and everything else that's happening in our lives.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, my first question is what is the difference between the mind and the brain?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
And does the, and does the brain control the mind or does the mind control the brain?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You've asked one of my favorite questions there. That's a really great place to start. I've got some props. Is that okay? Can I use some-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... props to show you?
- SPSpeaker
Sure. Show me. Show me.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay. So I've got some-
- SPSpeaker
Explain. I need to, I need to understand-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... in a simplified way.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay. So here's a brain, not a real one-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... um, in a skull. And the terminology for about the last 40 years is that the mind and the brain have been used interchangeably. So most people think when you talk mind, you're talking brain, or when you're talking brain, you're talking mind. And the most of the popular literature, even the scientific literature that the media tends to put out, talks about how the brain produces thoughts or the brain produces the mind. But your brain actually can't do anything on its own. So if you're dead, and if I was holding up this, if this was a real brain and I just took it out of someone's head, which I wouldn't do, but if it was bleeding and whatever, and you looked at this brain, we could stare at this all day long, but it would never do anything. So what is the difference between a dead brain and your, yours and mine and the listeners and the viewers is that you are actually thinking, feeling and choosing. You're alive, and your aliveness is your mind. And your mind is this ability that, of what you're doing right at this moment as you're listening to me. You are processing the auditory sound waves, the electromagnetic light waves through your ability to think and feel and choose, which is mind. So your mind is this like processing, unique, brilliant processing field, gravitational field around and through your brain and body, and you convert what you're hearing and seeing into actual meaning, and that meaning is formed from trees that you actually grow into your brain. So at 400 billion actions per second, you're using your mind to translate auditory and visual signals into protein tree-like structures in your brain to make sense of what I'm saying. And then each thing, new thing that I say, you're growing more and more. And everything I'm saying is in the root section because it's the source of the information, and the tree trunk and the branches are your interpretation of what I'm saying, and you're linking it to other existing, whatever I've, whatever I'm triggering at the moment that, that you know about, whatever in your life, related to a, a, a subject. And that keeps going, and that's what we do all the time. That's... Your mind is always with you, and your mind works through the brain, and the brain then responds. So here's a little model. So your mind is the gravitational field, and this is not woo woo science, this is hardcore Nobel Prize winning science that there's discovery of the gravitational field. In fact, Einstein spoke about it back in the early 20th century, how we, each human has this gravitational field, this electromagnetic field around us, and that is basically through us, and when you die, that's not there anymore. And that's the thing that's kind of keeping you alive. And that's the thinking, feeling, choosing, the psychological version, and the, the science-y version is this gravitational field. So it's a little bit like a magnet.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
This is, this is a super easy way to understand it. If you imagine a piece of white paper and you put a whole lot of iron filings on the paper, you may have done this at school, and then you bring a magnet and you put that in the middle of this mountain of iron filings, and suddenly you've got this beautiful electromagnetic field. The iron filing arranges itself into this field around the magnet. So you can't see the electromagnetic field. But, but you can only see it because of the iron filings. It's invisible, but the iron filings follow the tracing of the field-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and therefore, uh, you can see it. So the relationship between the magnet and the field allows the iron filings to express themselves in that pattern. The re- the, the brain is the, like the magnet, and the field is your mind, and the relationship allows you to express your behavior. So-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... the, the little pattern is your behaviors. And, and the biggest core thing is that that's the primary source. You never stop thinking. Your mind is always going. You wake up with your mind, you eat with your mind, you choose your clothes with your mind, you're doing the podcast with your mind, you'll go to sleep with your mind. So mind is the source, and if you don't understand and manage it, it's changing anyway, then it's a mess. And if it's a mess, your brain and body are a mess and you can't achieve greatness. So to achieve greatness, you need to understand mind. There you go. There was a mouthful. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Wow. Let's, let's just end the podcast now.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Unpack it. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
That was perfect. Uh-
- 5:13 – 10:14
The Mind's Field, Quantum Physics and Think-Feel-Choose
- SPSpeaker
How, how far does the field extend?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You know-
- SPSpeaker
Is it two feet in front of us? Is it six feet? Is it, uh, a football field? How far can it go?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Uh, we- they, they don't really, we don't really know because when you're talking about quantum physics and gravitational fields, there's a lot of interaction that occurs, but what the science seems to show is that it's kind of a almost- How, you know, like around us sort of this-
- SPSpeaker
Mm. Like a halo-y field
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... kind of like a ha- yeah
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And it, it's, it's probably more because, but it interacts because everyone's got this field and we, and we, then we live in gravitational fields. So you, everything around you is a gravitational field, so everything's interacting. And so that's why, you know, when you come up to someone you... E- an example would be like that electrostatic shock when you, you know when you brush past someone-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and you get that? And on, on a more psychological level you can experience that, that field as like maybe you're in a really great mood and then you get into a conversation with some friends and they're so totally depressed, and you come away from there thinking, "Christ, I feel awful. I need to go and have a shower." You feel so-
- SPSpeaker
Right. [laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So they, th- their field has interacted with yours and impacted you 'cause those fields, that, that field is coming from your mind-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... which then uses the brain and converts what you're experiencing into these thoughts, and then these thoughts are generating, you know, th- th- there's this whole relationship, the iron filings concept, and there's this back and forth. And this literally is photons. I- Anton showed us that we're literally generating from our thoughts as we talk from our thoughts, which we, that, you can't talk without thoughts. You build thoughts and then you, your actions and behaviors and communication come from those thoughts. So this would generate healthy, it's a nice healthy green tree, and here's a toxic one. So this would be a toxic-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... you know, the depression or whatever, you know, being negative or whatever. That would generate toxic photons, and these are the ones that would make you, you know, you feel it. You feel that negativity. This is a sense of you're around a happy person and you just feel like amazing, you know? And so this is, it's very real. This is not some ethereal thing. It's, we, we're talking about the non-physical sciences of quantum physics and physics and things like that, but it's real, and it's, there's an impact and an effect, and we can control it. That's, that's the interesting thing, is we can-
- SPSpeaker
What is the, what is the definition of quantum physics? What is that in relation to the mind?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So quantum physics is considered to be one of the most fundamental and accurate sciences and at its most simple level, 'cause it's really had bad press, but it's been around for very long, and it basically just deals with the unseen, the, the, when you talk about particles and waves and the subatomic level. So what we can see now looking at each other is, would be what the, we would consider the classical physics realm, that you can see and touch and feel and hear.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So it's very, it's-
- SPSpeaker
And op- and you can operate on it, you can-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah. So it's the physical. But if you, if you actually s- um, and, and we see from studying of the atom that things get smaller and smaller, and then you've got the subatomic level, then you're entering the quantum world. So once we go into the subatomic level, we actually see that the atom is not really an atom. You know, particles change according to their, they, they're waves and then they're particles only when you actually look at them. So it's, it's considered the observer effect, and it's really interesting because it means that we have these waves of energy, and as we make a choice we create reality, which we do. So as you think, feel, and choose you change your brain. Because everything, every time you choose, think, feel, and choose, those three things always go together. Always thinking, always thinking means you're always feeling. Thinking and feeling means you're always choosing, and it's happening at like 400 billion actions per second constantly. So we're processing this world around us through this think, feel, choose, and then we build thoughts. So there's this structural-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... there's this structural consequence. So a thought is actually a physical response of the think, feel, choose. And quantum physics kind of is helping us understand that. But quantum physics is real, um, and is, is easier to understand with classical physics.
- SPSpeaker
Right. Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So classical physical, quantum, the sort of non-physical world, two work together. Does that make sense? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
It does.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Tell us. [laughs]
- 10:14 – 16:03
Leaf's Research Path: Neuroplasticity and Brain Injury
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Absolutely. I can certainly try. So I've spent 38 years studying this, and I started out in the world of working in more clinical. I practiced for clin- cl- clinically for 25 years, and I initially started my research in the '80s. And funny enough, in the '80s the brain, we, we were taught that the brain couldn't change. So all my lectures were around the brain is fixed. It's that set.
- SPSpeaker
It's fixed. Fixed mind, fixed brain, fixed mindset.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah. So they, so it kind of that's it. You've just got to learn how to kind of, you know, work around it.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And so that's just, and compensate. More of a compensation kind of-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... philosophy. So I remember thinking in one of my neuroscience lectures that, ah, this does not work for me because we're changing and growing as humans. So I said, "No, I'm gonna start researching this." And I was told by my professors, "That's a ridiculous question." And I actually did a TED Talk on this, the ridiculous question of neuroplasticity. So in the '80s I said, "Okay, well, give me the worst situation. What's the worst situation?" They said, "Okay, it's traumatic brain injury." Once someone's had a traumatic brain injury, and I mean, your dad went through one-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... that's, that's it pretty much. That's, you know, you're written off. And, um, we were trained, as I said, to compensate. So I said, okay, well, there's hardly any research in the '80s o- on brain injury and on how to comp- how to treat it. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna start there. And so I worked with people that had been in comas for like-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... longer than two weeks.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And at that stage, if you were in a coma for longer than eight hours, the brain damage was considered irreversible. Now, in this day and age, we know that's not the case. But in the '80s, that was the going philosophy. So I was completely swimming upstream when it came to this concept. Anyway, I showed with, with my subjects that with using your mind in, and not in any weird way, just a very systematic, deliberate, intentional mind management in different ways and different brain building and dealing with emotions and just different ways, same sort of process, um, that you can actually change this. And so some of my, uh, my, the first, my very first case study was a girl who was 16 at the time of her accident, and she had lost a whole year of school, written off as a vegetable. I mean, that's what the doctors used to say-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... in those days, which is a terrible thing to say to someone. Anyway, long story short, after eight months, not only did she manage to c- she came around. I started working with her when she was, when she was conscious and functioning sort of at a second-grade level. And she wanted to, her goal was to get, her goal of greatness was to get back to, to finish 12th grade and with her peer group. Now, that was an impossible task.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
All the doctors said, "Don't even go down that road. Not a, not even worth it." So I said, well, I was a new scientist then, very young, totally into this-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... said, "Well, you, you know, go with me. Let's do this." And she, within eight months, she caught up to a 12th grade level, finished school with her peers, and went on to get a university degree. And one of the coolest things was that she was actually a really average student and not even good at math. After, after the accident, using her mind to change her brain, she became like a math genius. You know what I mean? This was like... And I can tell you story after story, and that really s- motivated me to work across the board with now I really have to understand what's going on. And I happened to be living in South Africa, where I grew up, at the time. I was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa, and in the apartheid era. I mean, this is like, it really ages me, doesn't it? To go back into those. I worked through the apartheid era, the transition, and the post-apartheid era. So I was seeing all the socioeconomic trauma, the racism trauma, w- and I worked in that three days a week in those environments-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... with terrible poverty and whatever. And I worked in war-torn Rwanda, and I worked with the wealthiest of the wealthy, heads of, CEOs of corporations, schools everywhere that I... My laboratory was the world to try and understand humans and mind and get away from this scientific concept that consciousness is the hard question, and no one-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... is really doing anything. We're just talking about it as being this elusive philosophical thing that we will push aside, and one day, promissory science will do it one day. And I thought, "No, I can't do this" because it's, I, I am mind. You are mind. So if I don't manage it, I mean, you can go three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So my underlying premise was, okay, well, if that's the case, what is it? And how do we manage it? And if it's, if I don't manage it, what I did re- uh, from my research, you can learn to manage it. Mind is malleable. You can direct the neuroplasticity of your brain. I did some of the first neuroplasticity research in my field in the late '80s, early '90s. Before it was accepted, by the mid-'90s, neuroplasticity was, well, that's it. And, um, and I showed that my, my underlying argument or thesis was, well, if our mind is always changing, which it is, so you wake up, you're experiencing everything, conversations, the emails, the pod- life, politics. You're immediately immersed in life, and you're processing that through your mind. You're growing it into your brain, and you're doing this every moment of the day. So if I don't control it, it's a mess. But if I do control it, then it isn't a mess. Now, I know we can't control events and circumstances. We all agree with that, so I'm not into this whole law of... I'm not talking about law of attraction and, you know, saying 15 positive affirmations, and that's gonna fix your story. No, I'm not talking about that at all. It's not realistic. I'm talking about the fact that you cannot control events and circumstances, but you can learn to manage your mind, which means your responses. So you can, yes, the things are gonna happen, COVID, trauma, death, life happens. But how you manage it, and you... I mean, your case is a classic example. Your life was turned upside down, and your family's life was turned upside down, and you managed your mind and got yourself back going. So you were doing this concept anyway. You know, greatness, that's why I said, greatness comes from us managing our mind. And greatness doesn't necessarily mean that you've got millions in the bank and you're this famous superstar. It means that do you have mental peace? Are you actually growing? Are you satisfied as a person? Are you... You know, that's the sort of where we want to go-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... as opposed to this very externalized version of it. So.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Wow. Um, this is [laughs] really powerful.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs]
- 16:03 – 26:35
Depression and Anxiety as Signals, Not Illnesses
- SPSpeaker
So how do we learn to manage our mind in response, in a more positive way, to the chaos, stress, traumas, dramas of life around us? You, you know, obviously we, we can maybe influence certain events to manifest in our lives-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... but we can't control the things that are happening around us necessarily, just how we respond, like you said. So how do we learn to reframe our mind or rewire our mind and so that we can have inner peace when there is trauma or pain around us?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Brilliant question. It's a skill that we learn, so that's really nice to know. The sooner the... It is never too late to start, but the sooner we start, the better. So I have four-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... adult children. They learnt this, they grew up with this stuff. And as I've learned new things, they've been my lab rats, so they've been trained and-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... literally, and my husband, and they all work for me, by the way. So [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
They're either, they're either all amazing kids or messed up kids. [laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Totally, yeah. Yeah, we'll have to ask them the question. Well, Dominique's my producer, so I think she's sort of doing okay there. But yeah, no, the thing, the biggest thing with the mind and managing mind, Lewis, is to accept that depression, anxiety, even the scary words like bipolar and schizophrenia, and then going to the more sort of things like that we can accept, grief, anger, et cetera, these are not illnesses. This is the biggest message that I probably have, the second-biggest. The first is that mind is the source, and if you don't get mind right, everything else, you can read all the great books you want and go to all the great seminars and self-help, but unless your mind is right, you won't even use that stuff. It's just data. And so you, do you ha- there's a, there's that s- there's another step missing, and it's understanding that autonomy, that sense of agency that we have to manage what's going on around us, and to accept part of mind management is not to make the bad stuff go away, but to know how to live in the bad stuff, 'cause it's not going away. So despair, anger, depression, anxiety, these are all completely normal responses. In fact, they're very helpful. They're helpful messengers and warning signals as opposed to being scary illnesses. They are not neuropsychiatric brain diseases like we've been told. They are actually responses, and because they are responses of our mind in, in, in the world, we, and we use our brain and body to express them, 'cause we, we've got the mind has to have the brain and body to s- you know, build the thoughts and then from, we use that to speak. We're using our physical to, to store what we've, what we've processed and to convert and then to speak. So obviously, if our mind's a mess, our brain and our body will be a mess. But because our brain's neuroplastic and we, if we manage our mind, we can change our brain. We can change our DNA. Literally, that's what I've shown in my research. You can literally change your DNA, your blood markers, literally. And that's-
- SPSpeaker
If you change your mind?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
If you change your mind, you can immediately influence your biomarkers.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So for example, if you, uh, in acute trauma, for example, and you go through... Just, uh, okay, let me explain it in a very simple way.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
I'm test- been testing out a glucose, continuous glucose monitoring device. And, um, for some research purposes. And I happened to while I was wearing it, 'cause you wear it and then you, you know, you track your levels. Uh, and I wanted to see if in terms of mental health and the neurocycle that I've developed, I wanted to see the impact. And I happened to be going through a, experience a very acute trauma in our family over December. And in the moment of the trauma, I happened to see on my glucose monitor that my glucose had shot up to 240. Now that's heart attack level. And I immediately managed my mind through the neurocycle, which is the concept that I've developed. Which is just a system. Anyone can learn it. And I dropped my glucose levels within seconds back down to a normal level. And as it cycled up, it cycled... I could manage it. And in... If glucose is at that level, your cortisol's shot up at that level. Your DHEA has dropped. Your homocysteine's up. All that means is that your immune system is going crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Is under attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly. You've got a cytokine storm like we talk with COVID. And in fact, your, your brain's immune system and your body's immune system will recognize that traumatic event or that established trauma or that mismanagement of whatever. That, it'll recognize that as an invader like a virus, like COVID. So you get the same response to, um, a mind thing, a thought. Which is the consequence of mind. Think, feel, choose, you build thoughts. Thoughts are made of roots and trees. Branches, which are the memories. So thoughts are made of memories, like trees are made of branches. This is toxic. It will stimulate the same response in the immune system as if I had COVID or if I had a flu virus or if I had measles or something. Or any kind of damage in my body, the immune system sees that as threatening survival. 'Cause we, we are wired for survival.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So this is not survival. So your immune system says, "Hey, that's a threat. Let's send out the army. T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, macrophages. Let's go fix this thing." And it creates inflammation, which is a temporary state of healing.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So initially inflammation is to isolate and fix.
- SPSpeaker
To protect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly. Isolate and prot- And then you're supposed to, you know, fix this up and sort this out and find the root cause and then this goes away and then the anti-inflammatory factors come in and the inflammation goes away. But if we don't deal with the stuff, and we don't deal with our past traumas, and we don't deal with those patterns in our life that we are in- enacting. Um, that the constant arguments or these cert- you know, we all have these toxic patterns. Well, no one's immune. We all... And, and the signals of those are things like depression and anxiety. And those are simply telling you, "Hey, there's a pattern." It's either a trauma-based pattern or it's a toxic habit you've developed. But that pattern is actually putting your body under tremendous stress. Even to the point where your DNA is affected. And I showed in my research that, you know, if you think of the DNA ladder. If you pull out a chromosome, it looks like an X. And where you see my fingernails, pink fingernails for those of you that are listening. Um, the pink fingernails would then represent what we call telomeres. And telomeres are a proxy for how you are managing your mind. Very interesting. New cl-
- SPSpeaker
Aren't they also, aren't they also based on how long you'll live as well?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly.
- SPSpeaker
If the telomeres are longer.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Totally correct. So the len-
- 26:35 – 33:36
Challenging the Disease Model and the Chemical Imbalance Story
- SPSpeaker
So are you saying... Am I hearing? Did I hear you say that there, there isn't a mental health disease? It's more of just a, a, a pattern that, or something that we should be mindful of, but it's not-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... an actual disease?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
No, it's not a disease, and I know this counters, this counters the current philosophy, but if you look at the science, there's a large body of science. In fact, if you interpret all the science around this field and you really look at what's being tested, you actually will see it's not a... They've been looking for the neurobiological correlate. So they've been looking for where in the brain is depression, and for years we've been told about-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... the serotonin imbalance causing depression. I mean, that's not even... It was a theory, never proven. Great for marketing, for pr- you know, for selling drugs, and also a simplistic way of telling someone, "Hey, you're depressed. Don't worry, it's chemical imbalance. Let me give you a drug-"
- SPSpeaker
Oh, right, right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... "to fix it." You know, it's, it's, it's-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, man
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... we, we want this quick fix mentality. So with... As medicine has advanced and technology has advanced, so we've become very caught up in the quick fix and... But life's not like that. Mind is not like that. Mind is separate from brain and body. You can apply that kind of thinking, not quick fix, but you can apply a symptomatic diagnosis treatment approach to body, to physical brain and body. But when it comes to mind, that, that... There's this, this gravitational field, this force, this think field, choose thing. It's not gonna go in... A medication's not gonna change how you're thinking, feeling, and choosing. It's not gonna get rid of this. It's just gonna numb your brain, so maybe you don't feel this for a-
- SPSpeaker
But-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... while it's working.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
But then, but at the same time as then when that drug wears off, this is still there. This is still being recognized by the immune system of your brain as a problem. So this is increasing your vulner- the longer it's there, the more you increase your vulnerability to disease.
- SPSpeaker
Oh my gosh.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You know? And this is what gets you stuck, and these are the patterns. So no, it's not an illness. It is a normal human response. Here we... COVID pandemic. We all know that everyone's going on about the next pandemic is mental health. We ev- mental health has always been an issue. You know, so from the beginning of time, mankind has battled with life, with issues-
- SPSpeaker
Right, right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... with death, with fighting, with war, with whatever. So mental health's not on the rise, but the mismanagement of mental health, making it a disease-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... has created a whole new problem.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So here, so here we sit with before the pandemic, they started doing a population study in the mid-'90s, and this is when I was still pract- early days of my practicing, sort of 10 years into my work, and I started seeing this trend of... And, and I was watching the study, where people were, where they, the decades-long trend of people living longer. So we know, we all hear this message. What, this is what we've heard. People are living longer because of the advances in medicine and technology. None of us question that. But something happened in '96 that did start questioning that. By the mid-2000s, it was an established res- researched fact that we don't live longer anymore, that the trend of people living longer has actually reversed, and that we have a, a, a pandemic of deaths of despair, where people are dying-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, okay
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... from preventable lifestyle diseases, and the age group most being affected are between 24 and 65. So people at the beginning of their career, in the prime of their career, and through that, that age group are being, are dropping down dead like flies, and it's death considered deaths of despair by preventable lifestyle diseases. So we have to look at the vuln- lifestyle disease means that there's something in our body that's, that's weaker. Why? Lifestyle, which is mind driven. How am I eating, drinking, sleeping?
- SPSpeaker
Uh-huh.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
But more than that is what's my mind behind all of that? How am I actually managing the day-to-day moments? How am I managing the patterns, the traumas, the established toxic habits? What am I doing about that stuff? And that's... We need, we need all of that because this current trend of science is saying, "Oh, those don't matter. What matters is the symptoms. Let's just look for the symptoms."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Checklist, diagnose, label. When you label someone, you chop, you, you, you chop up to 10 years more off their life. You know, it's like it's adding on... They've shown studies of people with a mental health diagnosis have a chopped their 20 years off, up to 20 years off their lifespan. People on psychotropic drugs, because of all the complications and the changes in the brain and the body- Chopping up to 25 years of their life. I mean, this is serious. So here we have this already existing, then the pandemic hits. Now another year is, they say that there's an additional year being chopped off people's lives. But there's such a contradiction because they're saying, "Hey, there's this adverse circumstance, grief of loss of people, uncertainty, medical and, you know, not knowing if you're gonna live or die, and how long is this isolation gonna go on, and economic impact and whatever, the whole lot." That's trauma, and they ex- they're saying that, but they're saying, "But this is the way to treat it. Let's label it, let's diagnose this, let's medicate it." So here we've come into COVID with a problem, with that stupid philosophy that's created such a lot of problems, and scientifically this has all been researched and shown. And now we've got the pandemic, and now they want to carry on that system that didn't work to this, which is gonna make it even worse. So we've got to shift our narrative completely, and we've got to stop, stop saying that mental illness is on the rise, and that there's one in four people on antidepressants or depressed. We- 100% of people are depressed and anxious and concerned about this COVID pandemic. 100% of people in the world at some point in their life have and will be anxious and depressed and in grief and sadness and terror and despair and one of the others. A large percentage of the population, and I'm not sure of the exact percentage 'cause no one's really done this kind of research, but estimates it's probably 30, 40% of people will have extreme trauma of a, from abuse, war trauma, that kind of stuff, where they'll go down the continuum to sort of the minus 9, 10, 8, 9, 10, if you look at a continuum of 0 to 10, 0 to minus 10, um, and have things like psychotic breaks and hearing voices and extreme states-
- SPSpeaker
Mm. Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... of distress, mental distress, which are still not diseases. They are simply in that traumatic situation, you're having a traumatic response.
- 33:36 – 39:16
Validating Pain Without a Disease Label: X Plus Y Equals XY
- SPSpeaker
Do you, do you feel like there... I mean, is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance in some people? Uh, you know, when they say, "Oh, I'm, I have a depression, it's a disease," or bipolar, or, "I have this mental health disease," or, "I have a chemical imbalance, I was treated with this. Don't try to say I don't, because this is who I am." Is that, do some people have that, or is that based on-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
That's a result of-
- SPSpeaker
Go ahead.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
The narrative of, "I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance" is a narrative that is the only explanation that people have been given. They're not given an alternative-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... uh, reaction, I mean, an alternative narrative. So w- the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I wanna validate your depression, your anxiety, your grief, your despair, your PTSD, whatever label you've been given. I want you to, I want to validate that that doesn't need to be validated with a disease label. You're not diseased. You're not a broken brain. You aren't... Your brain isn't defective. You are going through something. So you aren't something. You aren't that. You are going through something.
- SPSpeaker
You're experiencing something. Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You're experiencing something, and you're experiencing, and you've coped in the only way that you could cope in that moment-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... so it created this adverse response because it was an adverse situation, and you were just trying to cope. So what we have to do is go through a process of embracing and processing and reconceptualizing. So the important thing here is to recognize that chemical imbalance isn't the cause of your despair. The cause of your despair is what you've gone through and what you're going through. And learning how to, and not knowing how to manage it and how to deal with those thoughts that are driving you crazy, and those flashbacks, and the, and the trauma of the flashbacks-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and going back into those situations of the rape or the abuse or the war trauma-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... or the... That, it, it can, it'll drive a person crazy, and that's not crazy in the sense of illness. It's crazy in the sense of your mind is like this erratic tidal wave around you, and it's going through your brain, and you've got these in your immune system, and everything's screaming out to you and saying, "Hey, let's fix this." So a disease label invalidates it.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And for a moment it might be nice to know, okay, well, there's a label to how I feel, 'cause it kind of gives us a bit of, feels like we've got a bit of control. So initially that gives you comfort, but don't see yourself as that. It's better to say, "I'm experiencing post-traumatic stress issues because of what I've been through" versus, "I am PTSD," or, "I have the sickness of PTSD."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
It's better to say, "I'm experiencing symptoms of bipolar, these intense swings, because of my whole story," than saying, "I, I have bipolar. I have a chemical imbalance." I mean, just researchers coming out the other day show that we've got to stop saying this. The top psychiatrists-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... that lead this field will tell you we've got to stop saying this, that there's, there's no ways that serotonin imbalance, if... You can't even measure that. There's no gene for... There's no genes or serotonin imbalance causing it. It's what you've experienced that's the cause. And then that moves through your brain and your body, so obviously your brain and your body respond, so we will see changes in the brain and the body. We will see neurochemical chaos, not necessarily serotonin imbalance. That's just one. Sometimes it's dopamine, and if dopamine's down, serotonin's off, and then in- and then anandamide's off, and then... I mean, I can give you a list of big chemical terms, and that's gonna change every function in the structure of your brain, and your, your DNA and your telomeres and, um, 1,400 neurophysiological responses are off. So-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... you know, that's, and that's the response, though. And that doesn't mean that, that you have this thing hidden inside of you, this scary thing that's controlling you. And I, that invalidates. If I s- if, if someone comes back from war, or someone's had a sexual trauma, to tell them that the depression or anxiety they're feeling is an illness is an insult to what they've gone through.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
But if I say, if I say to you, "Gosh, that, that's terrible. Tell me about it. I wanna hear your story. I want to support you. Your depression and, and anxiety that you're feeling is a signal that there's stuff going on. There's an origin story, there's a source. So c- can I listen? Can I help? Can I support you in trying to recognize the signals and go through the process to find the origin story, and then to reconceptualize it?" And that's takes time.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
It's not a 15-minute appointment where I can give you a label. That takes time. That's not also, and it's also not the conditioning kind of treatments that are in place that some of them work if they're used in the right place. But to try and s- r- to try and put a, a veteran who's gone through something back into the situation to try and condition them, you can't condition. You have to reconstruct.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So it's kind of like an algebraic equation. X is, is the situation. Y is how you should want, you want to function for mental peace. So you've got X plus Y, and so here we are in our X situation where we, as a sort of human experiencing life, we're supposed to be at Y. And you put the two together, and what the current treatment says is that, "Okay, now we're gonna create Z. We're just gonna ignore X and Y. We're gonna create a new thing, and that new thing is you're diseased." But that doesn't work. It's actually X plus Y equals XY. X is what you're going through. Y is where you wanna find mental peace. And you wanna put the two together to live together so that you can change-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... how the past plays out into a future.
- 39:16 – 56:48
The Neurocycle: Preparation and the Five Steps
- SPSpeaker
What was the process that you broke down to bring it back to, to more normal levels for yourself?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Of feeling more peace, groundedness, calm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay. So it's the process of the neurocycle. Excellent question. Um, it's the process of the neurocycle, which in the s- it's in the second half of the book. So-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... the neurocycle is five sign, five s-
- SPSpeaker
This is, this is the five steps, right?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah. This is the five steps. This is what I initially developed for people with traumatic brain injury. It was my first time that I developed it and developed my theory. And then from there, refined it to all the different types of, you know, situations I worked with, and then it's been refined over the years. This is the most updated s- um-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... research. So a sci- a good scientist should keep learning and changing and improving, which is what I've tried to do. So in this book is the updated version of the neurocycle. The neurocycle is how you get your mind, which is always working, under control. If, in a state of acute trauma, like we w- like I was in in that moment, acute trauma creates a red brain. I showed you that picture of a red brain. That red brain means that I have a tidal wave in my brain going on, or that there is, a, um, the left and the right brain will be out of harmony. I'll have a drop of blood and oxygen to the front of my brain.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
I'm gonna have things like the delta. We've heard of things like delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
All those waves are supposed to flow like waves in the sea. And if you think of the sea, you've got the big swells, which is delta; slightly smaller swells, which is theta; the p- then their build, which is beta; the crest, which is high beta; and the gamma, which is the ripple on the beach. And so we want that through the brain in this nice, kind of even way. That's kind of the, the Y state. X plus Y. X is what happens to us. Y is that state. So X happens, and then that Y state gets thrown off. So in that moment, that's what happened to me. So what we wanna do is, because mind works through brain and body, and m- mind is experiencing this, this trauma, which is a mess, um, our brain and body just do what the mind's doing. So then there's a mess in our brain and our body. But if I have that kind of chaos, I can't think straight.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
I'm not gonna have any wisdom. I'm gonna fall apart. And in this situation, I would have.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And, um, s- and I have in the past, but now I've learnt how to deal with this.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And I talk about there that this neurocycle can improve how you manage anxiety and depression by 81%. That's a massive-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... claim.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And I've shown it scientifically. Okay. So what I did was to try and get myself back under control. Now, in that state, you, you don't know what to do in a, in a tremendously acute traumatic state. But I knew from my science and from my knowledge, and so I'm proactive, so I could go into two zones. So I went into two modes. The one mode was the mental mess that I was in, which is the pilot, 'cause I'm driving. I'm in this time. Imagine yourself being in a, a helicopter that's like a time capsule, and you're flying over this forest, and the forest is your mind with all these trees.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And this acute trauma has just grown because it's instant. So here's this terrible And your helicopter's drawn to this because you are in shock, and terror, and fear, and deep panic and anxiety. That is all the smoke signals. So I h- my, my pilot's going like this. The co-pilot is also me, but it's my wisdom. Because inside of each of us is our survival.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And that's our instinct. That you know when you give someone great advice and you just think, "Oh, wow, where did that come from?"
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Or, you know, you get that ah. It's, uh, that depth. It's like we know what we know. We know how much we can handle. We will say, "I know this," that kind of thing. That's the p- co-pilot, this wisdom. So what we wanna do in those states is to get ourself into the co-pilot. Remember the co-pilot and the pilot, and you use the you language. So here you flying this plane all over and the co-pilot's saying, "Okay, let's calm down. Let's land it at that tree." So you land the plane. You land this time capsule, whatever. And you get out, but you're with the co-pilot so you're safe. So you've created a distance and all this, this is... I'm explaining in detail-
- 56:48 – 1:01:31
How Many Thoughts We Have and Why Negativity Dominates
- SPSpeaker
What does the neuroscience say behind positive thinking versus negative or toxic thinking? And I s- I think the... I don't know what the stat is. It's 60,000 thoughts a day or something like that we have, and 80 or 90% of them are the same recurring thoughts. It... I, I'm probably off there, but something like that.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
No, no. There's a, there's a lot of stuff like that out there. And you're not-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... far off in terms of what the l- what the, what the media is saying. In terms of, um, the people, I follow people that are heavy into understanding the numbers of, you know, the, from a very s- neuroscientific perspective, and I've done my own calculations. The av- we build around about 8 to 10,000 thoughts a day.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So we building. So, uh, that's c- sort of how many events we experience. It could be more. These are very, very, very, very, very average numbers.
- SPSpeaker
Hard, hard to track. Yeah, yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
It really is. So it's somewhere s- it's somewhere between 8 and 18,000 that we build. So and we build in response to what we experience. So whatever's new is built. But then to build, you also have the thoughts popping up. So at any one moment, so you, you know, we can work in 10-second blocks. That's what neuroscience shows us, just to give you some kind of tangible thing to handle, hang onto. In any one 10-second moment, you can literally have anything from 1 to 13 thoughts that will move from the non-conscious, and maybe more. And in, as well, and, and also build a couple of thoughts in that. A, a, a thought with, one thought, but with multiple, maybe 100 memories in that. So there's-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
That's, that's 120-odd things happening in any 10-second block.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And multiply that by 60 seconds, you know, or times six, so in-
- SPSpeaker
Sure
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... in one minute. So you can really see the numbers as they multiply. So i- that's where we get anywhere between 8,000 we build, and then, uh, probably about another 10,000 are coming up. So 18-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... thousand seems to be a more... But whatever the number is, it doesn't really matter. It's a lot. And, uh-
- SPSpeaker
We have a lot of thoughts.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
We have a lot of-
- SPSpeaker
And a lot of, and a lot of them are more negative it seems like, right?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Not necessarily.
- SPSpeaker
Oh.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
If you look over, the only reason it feels like that is because the negative get more attention, not because they are, um, not because you're wired that way, but because they have created complete disruption-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... in your brain. So we see, remember-
- SPSpeaker
It's a str- a stronger physical reaction, right?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And you gotta get rid of it. It's f- it's fi- it's against your survival. So you're going to pay attention to whatever's threatening your survival. Think of it. If someone's at your front door and they're trying to bash your front door down and you've got your family to protect, you're gonna pay attention. You're not gonna sit and watch TV. You're gonna pay attention to what's cat- what's, what's a threat to your survival. That's why we... So it's not that we have more negative thoughts. It's because we try to-
- SPSpeaker
When we're relaxed and calm, we're not thinking, "Ah, I need to fix this." We're, that's, we're just relaxing and hanging out, but it's when there's an, a thought that's negative, we put a lot of attention on it.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly. It's the-
- SPSpeaker
So we're not, yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... it's the big tree in the forest. It's we- whatever you think about the most will grow. So you may have a, this huge infinite forest of green. The strip through the middle is the wise mind that can't ever change. The majority is green. Small trees, big trees. And you're gonna have clusters of the black in between. Some people will have more 'cause they've had more abuse. You know, as I said, 30, 40%, well, sort of 20 to 30% of the population, depending on where you are and which country, um, would have more ex- experience more trauma, socioeconomic, you know, a- abuse, war, et cetera. So war, war-torn countries, you'll find more PTSD, higher percentages-
- 1:01:31 – 1:07:15
Addiction as a Response and the Role of Agency
- SPSpeaker
So if we suppress in terms of what? Not pay attention, not be aware, uh-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah. Take a chemical
- SPSpeaker
... medicate, take drugs, uh-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... drink, do por-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... whatever the addiction is to cope-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly. Yes
- SPSpeaker
... as opposed to address it. What happens?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Well, the, so essentially, I'm glad you brought that up. So addiction's not a disease. We're not caught by the chemical. And the chemicals do change your brain. I've just explained that. But your mind can override any biological change because your mind's more powerful than your brain. And that's how we... You know, you can always draw on that internal survival instinct, which is that internal strip of green trees, just for the analogy sake. So addiction isn't a disease. Addiction is a response. Like depression. It's a warning signal. It's trying to take something that's painful and taking something to numb the pain.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So as you said, the sex, the pornography, the, um, the, the-
- SPSpeaker
Alcohol, smoking
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... alcohol, the drugs, the smoking. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Food, yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So you often find... Exactly. So if you find someone, I was talking to someone yesterday who had a, um, tremendous, um, addict- battle with cocaine and alcohol. Addict- but it, it wasn't that those that grabbed them. We get the impression that, oh, your brain's diseased, therefore you're vulnerable to those and you can't control it. Nonsense. That's taken all the hope. People are dying for lack, from lack of hope, Lewis. That's, that's what that statistic I spoke about earlier-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... the reversal of trends. People are dying from lack of hope, deaths of despair. When you take away people's sense of agency, you're taking away the most core dynamic of who you are as a human. Your mind is all about agency. Think, feel, choose. You control that. And you remove that agency from someone by saying, "Hey, you can't control the fact that you're addicted to alcohol or that you're addicted to..." That's terrible. But if you say, "Okay, I see that that is where you're finding your coping strategy at the moment, that d- having the alcohol is numbing the pain." Having, take- having the, you know, the pornography, the, the, the repeated whatever, the abuse of whatever. Abuse of anything to d- to, to hide it, the opioid addiction. It's the, it's just to numb the pain. So once a person is in a loving, supportive environment where they can start seeing that change, then they can start, and seeing why. Then you can take them through the process of, okay, well, let's see. Maybe that signal has got a cause and let's start finding. And when you start working through the neurocycle, they... I can tell you now, most of the time they're still addicted to something because the pain's so bad and they're denying this is a disease because it's easier to accept that initially. But they deny, "No, I don't. I, I'm not addicted to alcohol. I'm, no, I'm not addicted to, to whatever, the, um, cocaine. I'm not addicted." But once you start lovingly showing them, "Okay, well, let's talk about... Forget about the, the what you, the substance. Let's talk about you. What's going on? What's happened?"
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And when you start doing that, then I'm depressed and this and this, and then the things start coming up. And as soon as you start getting that cycle happening, then the person is more able to say, "Oh, I see. I've been trying to numb my pain." And then you can start getting the release. 86 to 93% of people that are addicted get out of addiction through choice, and that choice is stimulated by a supportive, a s- a super supportive, loving environment that is help- helps people to see what's going on. 'Cause it's very hard to face that stuff, so we can live in a state of denial. And so that's what takes a lot of good supportive and good therapy and good environments, you know, supportive environments. But to tell someone, "I'm always an addict," is one of the worst things you can say. You're saying, "Okay, you have no power."
- SPSpeaker
Right. Right. I'm a victim to this chemical imbalance or-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... whatever it might be. Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
But that's not the case. And, and it's, and, and it may take you years. I mean, I, I, I was speaking to someone the other day who was, as I said, a cocaine, battling with, I mean, all kinds of stuff, and now is one of the most amazing people helping other people doing the most incredible work. That person had been raped multiple times as a child by... He came from a very wealthy family, and the babysitter who looked after him-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... when he was, parents were so busy working, was repeatedly raping this child through his childhood. And-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... then got... I mean, it happened again at university and this and this and, and different work environments and, and in different parts of the world when he traveled to the different parts of the world. And that's where... So he had to get to the point where he realized he was numbing the pain. You know? So that's... So if- can you see we have to shift the narrative?
- SPSpeaker
Absolutely.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You know, that this is... And I mean, these are extreme cases, but there's also the day-to-day. I mean, we've got to live with ourself. Someone the other day said to me, "Well, that's all and well, relationship, big extreme. What about just sitting here with myself?"
- 1:07:15 – 1:14:35
Responding to Toxic Self-Talk and Shame
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So.
- SPSpeaker
It's, uh... So what should we be thinking when toxic thoughts about ourselves, I'm not good enough, I'll never amount to anything, I shouldn't try this, this person doesn't like me, drama, stress, anxiety. Whatever it is, when we have a toxic thought that doesn't support our dreams, that doesn't support the betterment of our future and our vision, what should we be thinking in terms of replacing that, in terms of the process? Or is that something we shouldn't be rejecting negative thoughts, we should be a- analyzing and being aware, but how do we do it without consuming our life?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay. So you, you kind of answered the question, the second part. That's what you do. The only way to get control is to embrace and to process and reconceptualize, and you do it in a very accepting manner. So it's like get into the helicopter and y- be the messy pilot and-
- SPSpeaker
Follow the steps. Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... be the co-pilot. Yeah. And get, get into that state of mind because then, and then it's very nonjudgmental. That you start by telling yourself like the very first thing as you're getting in the helicopter, whichever point when you're in, is to say, "It's okay. It's okay." There's been a million, billion people who have been in the same position as you.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
That are battling. In fact, most people battle with self-esteem. It's very few people that don't, for some reason, battle with self-esteem. For example, just take that example, thinking I can't do this or I am shame. Because every toxic experience we have completely rips at the core of who we are, and the core of who we are is- I'm needed. I'm valuable. And I have something to contribute to the world that no one else can contribute. So when someone tries to take that away from you through an abuse or-
- SPSpeaker
Ooh
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... that is, has attacked the core of you, so you kind of hide amongst shame. And, and self-esteem comes out of this, "I shouldn't be feeling this." But if, especially a young child, like five, to be abused, you don't know how to process that. So the most immediate thing is because it's so against survival and because the adult in your life who's supposed to be the protector, everything's distorted. You don't have the language. You don't have the m- the, the-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... brain power yet, the mind power yet to process. So your coping strategy will be, "Well, this made me feel bad, so I am bad." So you tend to have this-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... a pervasiveness. Sexual trauma tends to create a pervasiveness of shame, and that comes out in all kinds of behavioral manifestations, whether it's withdrawal, whether it's being difficult, aggressive. And it's pervasive and, and that, that attacks self-esteem because something at the core of who you are has been attacked. And that's why when, it takes time, as you s- as you spoke about, to go back and, and, and find that. So in terms of what do you say to someone, the first thing is to get to the point where we have to change our narrative. We have to forget what the world said about all these scary words and see those as very helpful. It's a complete 90-degree or 360-degree change. Despair, anxiety, shame, thinking I am shame, thinking I have no self-esteem, thinking I can't do this, that's okay. Because as soon as you say, "That's okay," as soon as you can admit you're feeling that, you've controlled it. You've now-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... from a neuroscience-
- SPSpeaker
You've got power back. Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You've got the power back. You've shifted the power balance. So instead of, um, if this is now in the non-conscious. It's this trauma. It's the five-year-old. It's gone through the years, whatever. And there's been this... And I'm not saying you did this, but there may have been a period that you suppressed because you didn't know how to process it till maybe 15, 16, 17 when you-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... were getting more cogn- metacognitively able and started seeing things. Maybe it was older. Very often it hits around between 18, 22 where early childhood trauma where we start seeing those patterns manifesting and a bit of awareness coming. So now that when this comes into consciousness, in the brain, this thing is now weakened. So these protein branches, which are the memories and the emotions, the data, of the event, which was that-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... is now weakened. So the minute I, through my tears, say, "Okay, I'm, I feel, I, I feel shame. I feel like I've got no self-esteem. I feel like I'm useless and I'm ugly and I'm this and I'm that and I can't ever achieve anything." The minute I can accept that, I can look at that objectively, pilot, co-pilot, and the co-pilot can say, "What do you feel?" I feel, "Okay, let's now see if that's real." And that whole calm, just the way I'm speaking, calm, it's okay. Own it. It's fine. It's okay. Now we can fix it. That's weakened these chemical bonds, protein bonds. I've started changing the structure in my brain. I've now shifted 1,400 neurophysiological responses to work for me instead of against me. I've now started recreating balance in the brain. I've increased blood flow. So I'm setting myself up to be more resilient to do the very hard work of unpacking, and it gets worse before it gets better. And the, the, the, one of the really good things that I have presented in, in my work and in, in this book is to h- to know that scientifically I've shown that even if you feel worse, which you will when you unpack this and you start seeing-
- SPSpeaker
Right. [laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... stuff that you've suppressed, it's terrible. It's heartbreaking. It can make you feel like you just wanna die. Um, and when-
- SPSpeaker
That's how I felt.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
When I started talking about it, I was like, "This is the scariest, hardest thing that I've ever done." I'd ra- I'd almost rather die. Like, it's the feeling that you have. You're like, "If anyone ever knew these things about me, if I had to truly face these things-"
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... it's the most scary, challenging thing I've ever emotionally had to deal with.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
And it feels like you're dying.
- 1:14:35 – 1:22:58
Healing Past Trauma, Release and the Kintsugi Principle
- SPSpeaker
How do we, I mean, how do we truly heal the trauma of the past, uh, that causes a lot of our thoughts? 'Cause I hear, like, the... I'm hearing you say that I'm feeling the traumas, the memories of the past that we had from the event And we're holding onto the memory, the idea, the thought of the event.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And sometimes we, we... And a lot of the times, I would go to say, uh, you know, I'll speak for myself, and I'm, I'm thinking most of us probably.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
An event happens, and our memories after decades and years build it up into something bigger and more extreme potentially-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... than the, the event actually was. And we're holding on to... Now our mind is coming up with memories that weren't even real that cause this reaction in us. So how do we really... Is it healing the trauma of the past? Is it healing the memory of the past? Is it healing all of it?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
What is, what is going on?
- SPSpeaker
What, what, what is the process?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
What should we do? Is, is it only through therapy? Can we do it alone through-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
No, you can-
- SPSpeaker
... just journaling?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You can do it alone. You can do it with therapy. You can do it... I would never do anything completely alone. I would make sure-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... you have some sort of support system. Um, if you can get to therapy, it will definitely help. But therapy's a catalyst. It's not actually... And it's your place where you can unpack the pain and get the guidance for how to manage the next step, but you're still living with yourself 24/7.
- SPSpeaker
You gotta do the work. Yeah. [laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So this is... You've gotta do the work. And this is where having a system of mind management is so vital. So what you've described is the whole thought tree. And that thought tree, let's take the incident of, of what you went through as a child, and that would've been, you know, what, the actual incident would've been is the roots.
- SPSpeaker
The event. Yep.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And then your... The event. And, and the details and the timing and the, all the emo- everything. And that then builds your perspective of how you viewed yourself and, and how you viewed this whole... Which this is your be- um, your emotions and the data, and that manifested in how you actually lived your life.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So that's a trauma from the past. There's no guilt in this, even though it's toxic, because that's all you could do to survive. It's a coping mechanism. So this toxic tree is a coping mechanism. So we've got this inbuilt, um, thing in our mind and our brain that en- or system that enables us, 'cause this should wipe you out. You shouldn't even be alive kind of thing if you look at the natural biology. But there's this protective system in place that kind of cocoons it for a season-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... until you're ready to deal with it. So that's, you know, the... And then something will come in, event will come in your life where now you have to deal with it.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And sometimes we ignore that. We ignored it a few times-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... before we deal, and then eventually. So there's kind of a cocoon, so it's protective, so it is damaging. But because you're not ready to deal with it, it's not wiping you out. It's still causing problems. It's still creating a few shock waves there in the ground and that kind of thing. But when you're ready to, you know, then suddenly something will happen in your life, and it's being put... It's, it's slowly infiltrating. It's this slow infiltration. So it's sending out little tendrils, you know, it's growing. That you're still surviving, but things are getting worse and worse. And eventually that, eventually this cocoon starts breaking down, and it explodes in your mentally, physically, in something, in a relationship, in a work environment, in a... It builds, it cascades, and little things happen, and then eventually there's a big explosion. That's this thing, the cocoon starting to come off. As you are maturing and getting older and doing more with your life and experiencing more, this has to then get sorted out. So your body gets to a point where it has to reject it. It has to-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... the puss has to go, for want of an awful analogy, but it's a good example. At some point, you c- it can't stay there anymore.
- 1:22:58 – 1:30:19
Daily Protection: Self-Regulation and Brain Building
- SPSpeaker
I'm curious, how do we... What's the process of protecting our mental health on a daily basis? Whether we've... It sounds like first we need to be aware of and do the process of healing the past or the, the traumatic memories of the past, however you wanna call it. But what's the process of protecting the present and the future so that we don't fall back into a dark space that, that kind of keeps us there for so long?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Absolutely.
- SPSpeaker
Is there-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
There is
- SPSpeaker
... is there a process you recommend?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
There is, and it's self-regulation.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
It's being very, very self-regulated. Um, we see from neuroscience, and I actually have a little quote in the book where, um, I think I've got it. I think I actually had it open 'cause I was re- I did a, um, I actually did a little, a live on it today. But you can every... Uh, I can tell you what it is. Every 10 seconds, here it is. I don't know where it is. Um, every-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
I thought I had the page open. Every 10 seconds, you can be consciously aware of what you're thinking, feeling, and choosing. Mental peace and keeping yourself in a state of mental peace comes from being aware every 10 seconds. Now, I'm not asking you to set your watch and your time on your phone. I'm just saying that translate that out. It means all the time. That as, when you're awake, you need to be standing back and observing your own thinking. You need to be thinking, "Okay, what am I thinking in this moment? How am I reacting this moment? I wake up, I feel great, and then I read an email, I feel lousy" Or, "I wake up feeling on edge. Why? I'm talking to this person. How am I reacting? How am I responding? I'm doing this email. I'm doing this work. What's my..." That, it's constantly monitoring, and that may sound exhausting, but it's not. It's the most natural thing in the world. It's one of the most brain healthy things you can do. So that's the one key, is self-regulation. It, as you neurocycle, as you get into the habit of neurocycling, your self-regulation skills are trained to a level where it changes your life. I honestly, if I had to sel what pr- say, say what protects my mental health, it's my increased self-regulation from constantly living a life of neurocycling. Then the other thing in the neurocycling that is phenomenal for protecting mental health, which no one speaks about, I don't happen to know anyone except me speak about this, and it's called brain building. And it's, there's a whole section in the book on brain building. And that's taking the five steps of the neurocycle to learn new information.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
As humans feel-
- SPSpeaker
Like what does that mean? A new skill or a new...
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
A new... Every day, new data. So for me, I will take, um, s- my scientific research. Every day I spend at least an hour looking at neuroscientific or scientific studies related to my field of work, um, studying new information, the latest. So I study it to the point where I could actually give a lecture on it or I could write an exam on it.
- SPSpeaker
Wow. Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
So I take the five steps and I study information. Every day when you wake up, you have millions of new baby nerve cells, and they, nerve cells look like trees, and they are waiting for you to be, to, um, to like lattices, to strengthen the new cells, the new thoughts that you build into the, the neurons of your brain, these little branches, these thoughts. And if you don't use them, they become toxic waste, so that affects your sleep at the end of the day-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and affects your dreams.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And cumulatively over time, they affect your health of your brain. So when you, when you brain build, it's like cleaning your teeth. If you don't clean your teeth every day, eventually you're gonna have a real problem with your teeth and your brain because it's gonna cause all kinds of issues in your body, and so on. Same thing with brain building. Brain building builds mental and physical resilience. So by learning something, we actually think deeply. The, when you neurocycle to brain build, what I'm doing is getting you to think super deeply. And when you think deeply, you make all these great things happen in the brain, the left, right side, oxygen and all that stuff. And you, and that's the only way you can actually grab those new, those new baby dendrites. They respond to deep thinking. They don't respond to shallow thinking. They don't respond to scanning through headlines-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and hurry sickness and rush, rush, rush and data capturing and never doing anything about it. They respond to, "Oh, that's, I scan the headlines. That interests me. Let me read that article and study it-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... as though I'm gonna write an exam." Or I'm reading this great book, or take my book and study it, you know? Study that every day for an hour. You'll get, you'll not only get the tools, but you'll be building your brain. Whatever. Take anything you're interested in. If you love cooking, if you love... Whatever you are interested in, self-help books, anything, don't just read. Study them. Use the five steps. Take an hour a day. If you can do more, do more, and you will transform your mental health. All my patients, when they came into my practice, I would obviously evaluate and do all that kind of thing and work out sort of where the issues were, but we would always do brain building first. Sometimes for a few sessions, I would only do brain building and get them to a state where I could recognize they're starting to get more resilient and self-regulated. Then we would start doing the trauma work and the learning disability work and the-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Trauma. You know, working with traumatic brain injury.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
We would... And in fact, all the traumatic brain injury and stroke work that I would do with my patients, like if I was working with someone like what your dad went through, I would teach the, the patient and the family brain building. We would take what are you interested in, and like if your dad was interested, let's say in whatever. Let's say he was interested in, I don't know. What was your dad interested in?
- SPSpeaker
He's into, uh, playing piano, singing-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Okay. Okay
- 1:30:19 – 1:36:12
Talking to Kids About Mental Health
- SPSpeaker
I feel like a lot of parents in general don't have the tools to have conversations with their kids around mental health. Um, you know, I don't remember much of my parents. Although they're amazing, I don't remember us talking about mental health and, um, these, these challenges that might arise, these emotions and these feelings that might arise for us at different times, and the ways of how to manage it properly as, as like the tools that are m- now being discovered and, and researched like you have today. What conversations should parents be having with their kids around mental health in order to make them feel safe, seen, and loved with the confusion that they have maybe as teenagers or young, young adults, uh, in today's world?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
I love your question, and it's so important. We should be doing this from babies. So when a child comes home from school and they may be three or four years old and they're sad, they don't have the language. But to be able to actually notice and validate, "I see you feeling sad. Why are you sad?"
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And what... And, you know, giving toys to be able to act out. The older they get, never overlook a child's emotion. Always validate. "I see you sad."
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
"Do you want to talk about it? I see you." So it's, it's I see you. Do you notice I'm saying, "I see you"? And you can find your own wording of that. But it's to acknowledge-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... which validates. And never to judge or say, "Oh, you don't need to feel like that." What parents do a lot unintentionally. I'm a parent of four. I did it even with all my knowledge. I have, uh... So we make mental messes. I say we make mental messes all the time. But it's very important not to... If someone, your child comes to you and says, "I, I'm really worried." And, and then you say, "What are you worried about?" "I'm worried about this one" doing something that you think is totally irrelevant. "Oh, that's not so bad. You don't have to worry about that." That is the worst thing you can do to a child, because what you've done is invalidate something that for them is now they feel shame. So now they've got, um, this confusion of worry. They don't know how to process it. And you know what? Parents do that in-
- SPSpeaker
And you, and you haven't accepted their feelings or their thoughts.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
That's it. So it's very important. Even if you don't think they're, that it's valid, you're not helping them saying... And I know it's done often with the intention of, "Oh, it's not so bad. It'll be okay. Calm down." Don't do that. It's, it's rather sit down and embrace it. Say, "Okay, how... Let's talk about how you're feeling. Why do you think you feel..." Go through the five steps. I've actually got in my Neurocycle app, I've got a, a whole thing on how to, um, use neurocycling for children. And I'm writing... I've written books in the past, but now we're doing the updated versions of neurocycling for baby tots, neurocycling for young kids, teenagers-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... whatever. So exactly how to have the conversations, but it's openness. One of the things that I have as a parent, um, and I've, I mean, I've worked with a l- I do- did used to do a lot of family therapy when I practice, and as a, uh, the advice I always gave parents and that I've tried to apply as much as possible is keep o- your environment open. Keep it no matter what your kids... If your kids wanna talk to you about sex and, and things that you don't wanna talk about, if you don't wanna talk about them, they're going to talk about them somewhere else. And that goes for-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... emotions too. We've got to allow our kids to say, "I am feeling depressed." The other day someone said, "How do I help my child not be a professor of depression?" And it was quite an, an interesting way of phrasing it. And my response to that was, "Well, help them process it." If they're a professor of depression, what can you learn from them? If they, if you feel that they are so good at depression-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... there's, that's a symptom or a signal of something going on. You need to acknowledge that and say, "I see you feeling depressed. Can you explain more?" And then work through the whole, get those, you know, the five steps.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Work through it systematically. You can use a lot of visuals with kids. I mean, I've been doing this with kids when I was practicing and training in schools and things as young as three. And I would take the brain. Listen, three-year-olds respond to this. They will ... And I'll say, "This is in your brain." And I will take a tree. "Okay, so now this is the happy tree, the sad tree."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And you work through. "Okay, what are you feeling? What's the, what's the sad give me?" And you give them the words. And then, "Let's see. What are you doing? What are y- ..." And you work through systematically through the process. And you say, "Okay, so this is where it's co- ... " And it might take a few days. Same, so it's the same process, but you're orientating them to their level. And then what you're doing is-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... you're modeling what to do. At the same time, don't hide your feelings as a parent.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
You know, there's so much tr-
- SPSpeaker
Don't act perfect.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
No. Because it's in the mess that they see you appear and grow. Mess is how they learn. So you make a mess, you get mad at your k- child for no reason, and then you feel guilt and condemnation. That's ... Don't do that. If you get mad, explain why you're mad. Say, "I'm really mad. I'm sorry. I said the wrong thing. I was wr- I didn't mean to do that. This is why I did it."
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
But the thing that we mustn't let a child grow up, "Oh, you're the mother. You chose to have me, therefore you've got to be perfect. And if you fail-"
- 1:36:12 – 1:43:05
Leaf's Challenges, Three Truths and Definition of Greatness
- SPSpeaker
So almost four decades you've been doing this work and research, and as a practitioner as well applying this in the real world. What is the biggest challenge you still face today even knowing all of these practices and awareness around the brain, the ma- the mind, thoughts, thinking, memory, all this stuff? What's the challenge you still face as a human being with four decades of experience?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
The, the, the, the challenge that, uh ... Personally, it's I wish I could manage it 24/7, and that's my goal, 'cause I know it works. And when it does-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... and I get totally frustrated when I think, "Why didn't I just use the neurocycle?" It's got to the point in our family where if I would ... Like, I actually went to my husband yesterday and I s- I was really, like, worked up about something. He said, "Well, why aren't you neurocycling?" I went, "I want to s- like, don't say that to me. I don't feel like neurocycling. I want to, I just want to have a moan." You know, that kind of thing. But yeah, essentially it's true. 'Cause I had to. I actually got myself back under control. So my greatest, the greatest hard- the probably the hardest thing to do is to, to watch, um, people in pain when I know that they can-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... that there's a way out. And I wish I could fix things, and that's probably what you can't do. I mean, not probably. You can't do that. It's made me ... My weakness is I now want to fix everything and everyone.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
And if I can't, I think, "What have I done wrong?" So I have to keep reminding myself all the time that I can't. I can only ... You cannot fix anyone else, but you can only support them. So that's a very big challenge for me. 'Cause I can see, "Hey, just do this." Even to myself. "Do that. You, you'll be fine afterwards. You'll, you'll, you'll get through this." You know? As, as that saying goes. This too shall pass, when you know how to manage it. So that's, yeah, that's for me a big challenge. And in terms of globally, uh, the narrative of mental health, we just have to stop telling people that they are brain damaged when they are just being normal humans. That's a huge challenge.
- SPSpeaker
This is awesome. I'm really glad we had this conversation.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs] Thank you so much.
- SPSpeaker
Th- this question I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths question. So I'd like you to imagine it's your last day on earth many years away from now, and you get to accomplish all your goals and dreams. They all, they all come true. But eventually you gotta, you gotta go to the next place. You gotta leave this earth. Uh, and you gotta take all of your work with you. All of your research, all of your books, your, you know, this interview. It's gotta go with you to the next place.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
But you get to leave-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
This interview especially. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, exactly. But you got, but you get to leave behind three lessons that you would share with the world. This is all we would have to remember you by are these three lessons, or what I like to call three truths. What would you say you would share?
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
That the mind is something you can control. The mind is real. The mind is the source of everything, and that it's something that you can learn and develop, and that I would leave the system behind. I'd say, "Listen. Learn, learn to manage your mind. Use the neurocycle. Develop it further," whatever. But that's what I would, um ... And, and the, the fact that your mind is real, that your mind is always with you. If you, if you don't get your mind under control, everything else is just wound dressing.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Um, behaved that that would really-
- SPSpeaker
Okay
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
... so that would be sort of the main thing. And then the how to, I would definitely leave behind. Do this and develop it. Grow it further. Make it even better than what I've done. But this is what I can offer humanity is this has how it manage mind. And then the, then the philosophy, the third thing I'd leave behind is three words. Three, three lessons that, um, a psychologist William James has, is quoted often as saying. And that's three things in life are so important. "Be kind. Be kind. Be kind."
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
To yourself, to others. And with those three things I think we'd be pretty well equipped to have a decent, peaceful, realistic existence.
- SPSpeaker
Absolutely. Those are beautiful truths, Caroline. Appreciate that. I wanna acknowledge you, Caroline-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Thank you
- SPSpeaker
... for a moment because this has been, uh, very awe- awe-inspiring and eye-opening.
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Thank you.
- SPSpeaker
And I acknowledge you for the [laughs] nearly four decades of constant curiosity, constant-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
Thank you
- SPSpeaker
... research and dedication to understanding the mind and the complicated nuances of the mind, of the mind-body connection, of the mind-brain connection, of quantum physics, and all the things surrounding the energetic field of the mind. Uh, it's something I've been fascinated with my entire life, uh, as a young child, uh, growing up learning about it. But it's something that I've been more curious about. But for you to make this your life's mission and study it, and then make it sim- s- try to simplify the complex-
- CLDr. Caroline Leaf
[laughs]
Episode duration: 1:43:05
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Transcript of episode zX4DeCV31YY
