The Optimal Morning Routine To Manifest Your Dream Life & Destroy Negative Thoughts | Joe Dispenza

1. 0:00 – 5:07

   Why the First Moments of the Day Matter

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      What we practice, we get good at. So for many people, the first thing they do in the morning is that they practice stress. They get up, whether it's the news or emails or social media, they, in what I consider to be a very important time of the day, they allow the environment to start conditioning their mind, and then that conditions their body. Certainly, that's the way I see it. And in a view of what we've been talking about so far, of course, we've mentioned addictions, which are rife these days. How important to you is the first part of the day when someone has woken up? Is that a critical part of the day where people have to be very intentional, or can they do some of the work that you promote later on, or do you think first thing in the morning is a very important part of the day?

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza0:58

      Um, I'm gonna be really careful about this. I think there's two times the door to the subconscious mind opens up. When we wake up in the morning, and we go to bed at night, and it's simple brain chemistry and simple physiology. We have a circadian rhythm. Soon as there's light, our body has been pretty much programmed-

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:18

      Yeah

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:18

      ... uh, that we begin to release serotonin and different chemicals that kinda wake us up. So our brainwaves go from delta to theta to alpha to beta, and you kinda slide up this way, and then you're back to conscious awareness, local in space and time. When you go to bed at night, you go from beta to alpha to theta to delta, and you slide down. Now, if you're stressed, uh, you can't stop thinking, you stay in beta, and you- your thinking actually is arousing the body because you're thinking about your problems. You can't slide down, right? So those two points, uh, in the day, when we wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, um, when we're... And when alpha or our analytical facilities are suppressed, we're in theta, we're in a hypnotic state.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:05

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:05

      And the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is wide open. What separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind. So as you suppress analytical facilities, you can program anybody to do anything. So then what really happens for most people before they even reach for their cell phone, and by the way, the statistics are 86% of the people in the Western world, first thing, first thing they do is they reach for the cell phone, and they connect to everything that's known.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:35

      And why is that a problem?

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:37

      Well, I would never tell people how to think, but I would give them information to cause them to think. So the device is reminding them of things that are known, and every person, every object, everything, every place is mapped neurologically in our brain 'cause we've experienced it, and then we have an emotion associated with our coworker, with our boss, with our ex, with our whoever. And so the moment we start responding, now we start feeling the same way. So now the environment is actually controlling the person's feelings and thoughts.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:16

      Yeah.

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza3:16

       And anything that controls the way we feel and the way we think, we're victims to. So something's programming us to think and feel a certain way. There's nothing wrong with that. You, you should check your texts, but, and do whatever you need to do, but, uh, first thing in the morning, if the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is open, why don't we program a new behavior? Why don't we rehearse a different way of being with our children, with our spouse, uh, in our Zoom meetings, when we're alone, when we're in traffic? Is there a better way to evolve our experience? So if you're truly in the game of evolution, you're truly in the game, like one lifetime, one day. What am I working on today? Can I respond a different way to this person? Um, can I think this way instead of that way? Let me be conscious of my unconscious thoughts. Let me not be in a habit. Let me stay away from certain emotions. Let me practice feeling these emotions, see if I can maintain it. Now you're in the game. You're out of the-

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:10

       Yeah

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza4:10

       ... bleachers, and you're on the playing field. So it actually happens even before the cell phone because what most people do is they wake up, and the first thing they do is the brain is a record of the past. They think of their problems, and those problems are just memories that are etched in the brain that are connected to certain people and objects at certain times and places.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:29

       Yeah.

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza4:29

       The moment they think of their problems, they're thinking in the past. Then when they think about their problems and they feel unhappy, now their body's in the past. And if you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny-

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:38

       Yeah

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza4:38

       ... wow. And then the emotion that's associated to it is now the body's in the past because thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body, and how we think and how we feel creates our state of being. Now, here's the problem. If you can't think greater than how you feel, and you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, and you understand that feelings and emotions are a record of the past, then you're thinking in the past, and your life will stay the same.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:05

       Yeah.

2. 5:07 – 8:34

   Morning Routines, Mental Rehearsal and the 95% Program

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:07

      So I've always been a fan of morning routines, personally. For me, I've, I've discovered when I have some intentional time to myself in the morning and when I don't, I'm a different person.

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza5:17

      Yeah.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:17

      I show up differently. My productivity, the way I am with my wife or my kids is completely different. So I've learned, and I'm now 44. At this age, I know mornings are very important for me. And sure, could I do the same thing at lunchtime or later on? Technically, I could, but I never find time, number one. Number two, I don't think it's as powerful later because I feel first thing in the morning, I'm priming myself to be a certain way-

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza5:46

      Right

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:47

      ... for that day. And actually, since our first conversation, Dr. Joe, I went on your website and I downloaded, uh, some of your meditations, and I've been doing one most mornings. It's a 23-minute meditation. And I've gotta say my favorite bit in the meditation is about 17 or 18 minutes in, where you say something to the effect of, and I don't wanna misspeak for your words, but it's something about now's the time to remind yourself of the feelings you don't wanna feel. Remind yourself of how you do wanna show up. I, I, I love that bit.

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza6:26

      Mm.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:26

      Because each time, for me, it's like, "Yeah, okay, I don't wanna be like this today, and if and when this happens, this is how I wanna show up. This is how I wanna be."

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza6:37

      Yeah.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:37

      So first of all, I wanna say thank you, because it's been... It's this idea that you spoke about last time, mental rehearsal. You know, we, we have no problem thinking about athletes rehearsing how they're gonna perform. We have no problem thinking that, of course, an actor, if they wanna play a part a certain way, they're gonna rehearse. They're gonna keep rehearsing until they're able to do it. Yet most of us don't really apply that in our own life. We don't think, "Yeah, I need to be rehearsing for the person I want to be in my own life."

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza7:07

       Yeah. The game of life. [laughs]

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:08

       The game of life. The most important game.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza7:10

       Yeah, the most important game. Well, um, 95% of who we are is a set of memorized behaviors-

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:16

       Yeah

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza7:16

       ... uh, automatic emotional responses, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that are running pretty much like a computer program. They're automatic, right? So, so, so you can think positively all you want. You can say, "I'm healthy, I'm healthy. I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy. I'm free, I'm free. I'm worthy, I'm worthy." And your body's saying, "No, you're not. You're miserable." Right? So it makes sense that there's gotta be an unlearning process, and we gotta stay conscious-

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:44

       Yeah

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza7:45

       ... of our unconscious thoughts that slip by our awareness unnoticed. We gotta watch how we speak. We gotta observe how we act. We gotta, we gotta pay attention to the way we're feeling, and we have to become so conscious of those unconscious states of mind and body that we don't go unconscious in our waking day. Because how you think, how you act, and how you feel is your personality, and your personality creates your personal reality. So if you're thinking the same way, you're acting the same way, and you're feeling the same way, nothing's going to change in your life.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:12

       Mm.

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza8:12

       Right. So then the unlearning process is as valuable as the relearning process. The breaking the habit of the old self has to happen before you reinvent a new self. You gotta prune synaptic connections before you sprout new connections. You gotta un-fire and un-wire before you re-fire and re-wire. You gotta deprogram and then reprogram. You gotta-

3. 8:34 – 13:45

   How to Unlearn: Trial and Error and Becoming Conscious

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:34

      So how, how, how do you unlearn? 'Cause I guess if we think about addiction, for many of us, this is just living in the past. We're just repeating behaviors that we've done in the past that m- made us change our state, that gave us that dopamine boost. I get you can meditate. You can feel that elevated emotion with a very, very high degree of emotional intensity, but how do you go about becoming conscious and unlearning-

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza8:59

      Yeah

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:59

      ... those previous patterns?

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza9:00

      It's trial and error.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:02

      Yeah.

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza9:02

      You gotta go out, you gotta go out into life and try it out. Okay, I've changed my internal state. You could have a great meditation and connect. Your heart could open. This has happened to me. You could open your heart. It'll be amazing. You'll feel like the day is invincible, and you get up, and then the rest of your day, you're unconscious the, the, the 15 hours of your day. So you're gonna weigh one hour of being in a different state of being against 15 hours of you being unhappy and rushing and in a program.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:28

      Mm.

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza9:28

      So then how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's called change. How many times do we have to go unconscious to the point where we no longer go unconscious and we stay conscious? That's the moment of change. Now, if you're truly out of the bleachers and you're on the playing field, and this happens to a lot of people in our work, they say, "You know, I really believe that this is the truth. I really believe that you could-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:58

      Mm

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza9:58

       ... heal yourself. I really believe you could change your life. I've seen the testimonials. I just never believed that it could happen to me." Now, this is a big moment. Now you're really stepping on the playing field.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:10

       Mm.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza10:10

       So a person who starts doing their work, they're not, they're not interested in healing. The true, the ch- person who's truly interested in this work, they understand that the only way they can heal is [laughs] that they have to change. They're not saying, "I'm gonna wait for my wealth or my healing to happen in order for me to feel grateful and be joyful in life." They're saying, "If I feel grateful, my healing's gonna begin," right? "If I, if I'm feel more whole, then there should be some change in my gene expression." So they've studied the content, they've studied the information, and now it becomes extremely practical. So they may have a great meditation, and we've seen this happen to many people. They sleep better. They have less pain. They have more energy, but their blood values never change. Now, they don't say, "Oh, I feel better, but I'm failing. This doesn't work." They say, "What is it about me that's stopping this from completely healing? Okay. How am I [laughs] -

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:09

       Mm

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza11:09

       ... in my waking day?"

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:10

       Oh.

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza11:10

       The moment you begin to ask that question, you turn on the frontal lobe, and the frontal lobe is the seat of your conscience. Now, the moment you start looking at, at the end of your day, how did I do, this is such an important question. How'd I do today?

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:22

       Mm.

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza11:22

       Did I fall from grace? When did I lose it, and who did I lose it with? If I had another opportunity, how would I do it differently? They'll tell you, I've, I've seen them s- stand on the stage and tell their story and say, "I had to start really watching myself in my life-

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:38

       Yeah

   20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza11:38

       ... how I was emotionally responding to my ex, how I was emotionally responding to my financial problems. I had to really, really pay attention." That, and that takes an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of awareness-

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:52

       Yeah

   22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza11:53

       Stop the program, right? So you forget and you go, "Damn, I went unconscious there." Now, you didn't lose, you didn't fail, you just became conscious. Now, if you keep becoming so conscious of your unconscious states, you're, you're outside the program. You're only in the program when you're unconscious.

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:09

       Yeah.

   24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza12:09

       The moment you're conscious, you can objectify your subjective self, so you can see yourself through the eyes of someone else. So the learning process comes from the mistake.

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:21

       Yeah.

   26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza12:21

       The brain learns by mistakes and surprises. I- I've made enough of them in my life. It's just whether you're gonna do it again.

   27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:26

       Yeah.

   28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza12:26

       You wanna do it again, you're back in the habit, back in the routine. If you say, "This is it. The next time that happens, I am not gonna do that." Not for anybody else, but because those emotions actually, my response to that person or that circumstance is actually weakening the organism.

   29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:45

       Yeah.

   30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza12:45

       Is that person, that circumstance worth it? So then it's evolution. It's evolution. The challenge then has to be met with a greater level of mind. Now, if you're just doing your meditation just because you wanna please God or do the right thing or feel good about yourself, that's gonna get stale after a while, because it's just gonna become another routine between your coffee, and your shower, and your emails, and your drive to work, and people aren't present.
4. 13:45 – 22:22

   Joe's Think Box, Play Box and Group Rehearsal

   1. JDDr. Joe Dispenza13:45

      So I'm a early morning guy, just like you. I get up really early. Why? 'Cause nobody bothers me.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:51

      What time?

   3. JDDr. Joe Dispenza13:53

      4:30-ish, somewhere around there.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:54

      And what, and then what do you do?

   5. JDDr. Joe Dispenza13:56

      Um, I get in my think box.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:58

      What's a think box?

   7. JDDr. Joe Dispenza13:59

      Well, okay, what am I doing today? But I'm not gonna sit down and just jump into a meditation. What thoughts, before I go into this meditation, am I gonna stay away from? Well, what circumstances, what things I can think about later that aren't that important to me? What emotions, what memories am I gonna stay away from? If I go there, I know what that's gonna do to me. Why am I doing this meditation? What am I gonna be doing? What do I... Well, how am I gonna do it? So I, just like, just like any- anybody who does anything really well, you get in your think box and you organize what you're gonna do.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:27

      Are you doing this in bed, or are you having coffee first, or?

   9. JDDr. Joe Dispenza14:29

      I just get up, move around a little bit, you know, do a few things, maybe write some notes down. 'Cause then I can assign meaning to the act. I can stay conscious for a minute.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:37

       So you do all this before your meditation. Okay.

   11. JDDr. Joe Dispenza14:39

       Always. But then when I get in my play box, there's no thinking. I did all my thinking in my think box.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:44

       You did all your thinking in your think box. Is that also when sometimes we wake up and there's these kind of thoughts that are just popping up, is, is you writing down a few things? Is you processing them a way of sort of quietening down the noise-

   13. JDDr. Joe Dispenza14:56

       All right, so, so-

   14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:57

       ... so that you can drop into meditation?

   15. JDDr. Joe Dispenza14:58

       Yeah. Yeah, so let's say I have 10 Zoom meetings [laughs] in one day.

   16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:01

       Okay.

   17. JDDr. Joe Dispenza15:01

       I look at my calendar and I go, "Okay, none of that really... I'm gonna get to all of that. This is not my time to think about the known. I know all this stuff is gonna work out. I know how the Zoom meetings are gonna go."

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:12

       [laughs]

   19. JDDr. Joe Dispenza15:12

       "Okay, but let me just make sure when I'm in these certain Zoom meetings, that I'm leading with my heart and I'm being the person that I wanna be as an example for my team. I wanna make sure I'm communicating really clearly. I'll make time for this, that." Okay, I get all that out of the way. Well, that's all the known stuff. But when I come to execute now, well, what am I gonna do to open my heart today? Like, what am I really gonna do? How, when I do the breath to bring energy into my brain, what am I bringing? Like, where am I gonna go to that? What do I want w- to experience? When, when, how do I do that? Let me just review that. Okay, then I'm gonna open my focus. I'm gonna go deep into nothing. I'm gonna go as far as I can. And then when I get to that point, then I'm gonna create. And when I create, this is what I'm gonna create. So I'm not thinking when I'm there, what should I create? I've already got that all worked out. I'm rehearsing. I'm getting clear on what I'm gonna do. I'm getting clear on what I'm not gonna do. I'm getting clear on how my last meditation was and how I want to evolve my next meditation.

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:03

       How about that?

   21. JDDr. Joe Dispenza16:03

       So then when I get to my play box, I'm not analyzing and thinking, 'cause if I'm analyzing and thinking, I can't do it, right? So I get that worked out. If it takes me half an hour, I allow for two hours for myself. If it takes me half an hour to get very clear, and then sometimes there's disturbing things that I have to get through because there's, like, meetings and stuff like that and... But I just go, that is all always gonna work out. This is you, this is your time.

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:26

       It's, it's interesting, Dr. Joe, that for many of us, for many people, meditation is almost like your pre-day ritual, right? So you, you meditate to prime yourself for your day, how you're gonna be. But when you talk about your morning routine, you have a pre-meditation ritual.

   23. JDDr. Joe Dispenza16:46

       Yeah.

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:47

       Which I f- which I find really, really interesting.

   25. JDDr. Joe Dispenza16:49

       'Cause I, I wanna get, I wanna get into it. I wanna s- like, I wanna assign meaning-

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:53

       Yeah

   27. JDDr. Joe Dispenza16:53

       ... to what I'm doing. When you assign meaning to the act, you turn on your prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex says, "Quiet. Everybody that's not involved in this intention, settle down." So the frontal lobe will actually lower the volumes of the circuits in the brain that, that, that are a disturbance. So, so when you assign meaning to something, you get more value from it. So I just learned that if I just get in and just do my meditation, sometimes they're wonderful because I've done it enough times, but if I just drop in, it just, it l- it doesn't have any meaning. If it doesn't have any meaning, then it just becomes another routine. You're, you're doing your meditation, but you're thinking about your coffee. You're do- drinking your coffee, you're already thinking about-

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:32

       Yeah

   29. JDDr. Joe Dispenza17:32

       ... your emails. Your, the brain's an anticipation machine, and we lose our free will to that kind of programming. So, so after I, when I get my think box really clear, it's just like when I used to golf. I would just kinda look at where I was gonna hit the ball. I would think about the, the club I was gonna use, how I was gonna swing, and how I was gonna feel. I work it all out in my think box. When I get in my play box, I've done all my thinking, now I'm just gonna execute.

   30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:57

       Yeah.
5. 22:22 – 27:48

   How Quickly Will Change Come? Knowledge, Presence and Small Victories

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:22

      before we move to that, for someone who is watching this or listening and is intrigued, and they go, "Okay, I, I, I understand. I've got a choice. I can practice feeling an elevated emotion." They also hear you saying that this can take time. If you've spent 10 years in stress, it ain't gonna happen overnight.

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza22:44

      And sometimes it does, though.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:45

      But sometimes it can do. How quickly might someone, if they wake up and they don't reach for the phone and don't put the news on, and they decide to engage in a meditation, maybe with a pre-meditation ritual like you do, how quickly might someone start to feel a difference? One day, two days? Or is it realistic that within seven days someone's gonna start to feel quite differently?

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza23:10

      Okay. Let's talk about this because, uh, I don't wanna mislead anybody. Knowledge is the forerunner to experience. The more people understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, the how gets easier, and this is a time in history where it's not enough to know. This is a time in history to know how.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:29

      Mm.

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza23:30

      The practical application in understanding that philosophy, that theory, that intellectual knowledge, that information, once you start to apply it and personalize it and demonstrate it, the more you can understand that why you're doing and what you're doing it, you get greater value out of it. So we have people that are diagnosed with serious health conditions that are nurses, that are cancer researchers, that are physicians, that are engineers or, or just a, a person who just really wants to understand the content. Now, this is... it's so much easier To forget this information than to remember it.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:04

      Yeah.

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza24:05

      It's just, I, I, I always laugh at myself 'cause I have to go back and relearn it again, and I think I know it pretty well, and yet I forget.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:12

      Mm.

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza24:12

       I don't know why, but it's just the way it is. So, so when our meditations get stale, it's 'cause we forget what we're doing, right? So the person who really, really takes the time to study instead of watching Netflix, instead of scrolling through TikTok, instead of getting on their phone and doing mindless texts or whatever, they're going to set aside an hour a day and I'm gonna learn this information. When they sit down to do the work, they're present.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:35

       Yeah.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza24:36

       They're, they're... They understand if they feel this emotion, that they're gonna signal a new gene in a new way. If they feel the other emotion, they're gonna down-regulate that gene and up-regulate the gene for their disease. So now it's a, it's, it's an understanding.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:49

       Yeah.

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza24:49

       If I rehearse how I'm gonna be mentally, I'm gonna install the hardware in my brain. If I keep doing this, it's gonna become a software program. I'm gonna start acting that way. Okay. If I say, "I can't, it's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't feel good," those are the things that stop me.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:02

       Mm.

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza25:03

       Okay. But what if I just start saying, "Anything is possible. I believe in synchronicities"? What if I, with my intention and attention, just really get clear on that? Would that be the new, new voice in my head? So now the person who's truly present and not thinking about their shower or the emails they have to do or their cell phone or their texts or when they have to take their kids to ballet or whatever, you're gonna get to all of that. The person who's truly present, if they follow the instructions, we've seen them have very significant changes, first in their subjective experience of themselves.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:36

       Mm.

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza25:36

       Like, "Huh, wow, my back pain isn't there. That's kinda weird." Or, "God, I slept better last night." These small indicators are feedback to tell you that whatever you're doing inside of you is producing a result outside of you.

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:53

       Mm.

   20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza25:53

       Keep that up over a period of time and you see instrumental changes taking place in the person. Now, another person who has had a series of traumas, been, uh, abused in some way from, from childhood, uh, is facing a lot of health conditions, a lot of emotional and psychological conditions, we don't want them to heal in one week. We [laughs] want them to work on overcoming those emotional states-

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:22

       Mm

   22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza26:22

       ... and those are the victories. So sitting down in the meditation, and when their body starts getting agitated or starts getting anxious, instead of quitting and saying, "I can't meditate," 'cause that would be the extent-

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:34

       Mm

   24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza26:35

       ... of that person, just be curious. What's on the other side of this? Can I, can I lower the volume to this emotion? My body's craving this emotion. Let me settle it down into the present moment. That would be a victory.

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:47

       So that person with a lot of trauma, there's a m- moment in the meditation where they feel uncomfortable. The easy thing would be, "Hey, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna put on Instagram. I'm gonna get a coffee. I'm gonna do anything else to distract me."

   26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza27:01

       Right, right, right.

   27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:01

       You're saying that's the key moment. You wanna sit with that and hopefully break through that.

   28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza27:07

       What I'm saying is there's no such thing as a bad meditation. There's only you overcoming you. People think, "I'm doing my meditation wrong." No, [laughs] you're doing it right.

   29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:17

       Even if it's difficult?

   30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza27:18

       That is the moment that is going to define the person. So, so then the person goes, "Oh God, I feel really uncomfortable. I, I'm not a good meditator. There's something wrong with me. It's my trauma, it's my past, it's my parents, it's whatever." The person who says, "N- no, no, I'm gonna sit in the presence of this anxiety, and I'm gonna keep working with my body, and I'm gonna keep lowering the volume to that emotion." Now, listen, if you keep lowering the volume to that emotion-
6. 27:48 – 43:11

   Chronic Stress, Emotional Addiction and the Present Moment

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:48

      A lot of this is a complete paradigm shift for the current way most of society is, and the way modern society is kinda taught, whether it be at school or university. Um, you know, we talk- if I talk through the lens of a medical doctor and looking at the health of my patients, for many years, I have said that, listen, you know, we're missing lots of key skills as medical doctors because, you know, what we, what we've learnt can be really good for acute problems and, and emergency situations, but it doesn't tend to work so well for these chronic conditions that didn't happen overnight, that they have developed because of our lifestyle. And I've said many times in the media over the last few years that about 80% of what we see is in some way connected to our collective modern lifestyles. You know, I'm not putting blame on people, I'm just saying it's the way we are living these days is leading to not just things like obesity, type 2 diabetes, but also anxiety, depression, migraines, uh, gut problems, low libido. Whatever this barrage of problems we're now seeing as doctors is. But I've gotta say, um, over the last few years I've been wondering, well, yes, I still maintain that's, that's the case, and I still wanna make and help people make those lifestyle changes, but actually I've realized it's not the root cause. It's not... I can go further upstream. Yes, lifestyle's important. If I can help people change, yes, it changes their downstream, um, consequences on their health. But the way we think, our mental wellbeing, our happiness, I have actually come to the conclusion over the last year or so that's even more important than lifestyle because if we change the way we think and approach the world, and respond to people and external events rather than, you know, unconsciously reacting, well, that creates a new environment in our body where we naturally make better lifestyle choices. In fact, those lifestyle choices no longer feel like an effort because a lot of the time, those lifestyle behaviors are simply a way for us to manage the stress in our lives. Would you sort of... I mean, how would you see that? Do, do you agree with that? Do you have a different perspective? I'm just very, very interested to hear, hear your thoughts.

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza30:07

      No, no, I, I, I absolutely agree with it. I, I absolutely do. And, and I just think, I think that, um-

   3. JDDr. Joe Dispenza30:16

      The one thing, if it took you five years of living in chronic stress and living, and what are the emotions of stress and survival? Aggression, anger, hatred, um, competition, judgment, insecurity, envy, jealousy, pain, suffering, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, powerlessness. Those are all derived from the hormones of stress, and psychology calls it normal human states of consciousness. Those are altered states of consciousness. And so then if you're living in emergency and your response to your coworker, to your boss, to the traffic, to the news, to whatever it is, weakens the organism, and you're switching on that emergency system over time.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:08

      Mm.

   5. JDDr. Joe Dispenza31:08

      No organism can live in emergency mode for an extended period of time. You're, you're drawing from the body's vital resources, and you're converting all of its energy into chemistry for some threat, real or imagined. Okay? So then if you keep doing that in chronic conditions, there's no energy for growth and repair.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:30

      To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

   7. JDDr. Joe Dispenza31:57

      There's no energy for long-term building projects. The, the immune system dials down. The digestive system becomes out of phase. Hormones change. Uh, um, our cardiovascular system changes.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:10

      Yeah.

   9. JDDr. Joe Dispenza32:10

      Our respiratory system changes. This is because the, the body is believing it's living in a dangerous environment, okay? So the problem then becomes that the arousal of these stress hormones that create fear, that create anger, aggression, or create pain give the body a rush of energy. Now, people become almost like an addict. They, they need the problems in their life to reaffirm their addiction to that arousal, to that emotion.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:42

       Yeah.

   11. JDDr. Joe Dispenza32:43

       [laughs] And now if you can turn that response on by thought alone, number one, you become addicted to your own thoughts, and number two, you become addicted to the, the very life, the, the life that you don't even like. [laughs]

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:57

       Yeah.

   13. JDDr. Joe Dispenza32:57

       So then you ask the person, "Why are you this way?" And they'll say, "I am this way because of this event that happened to me five years ago."

   14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:05

       Yeah.

   15. JDDr. Joe Dispenza33:05

       Well, what that really means is they had some really profoundly, uh, emotional experience. And the stronger the emotion we feel, the more altered we feel inside of us, the more we pay attention to what causes it. And the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot, and that's called the long-term memory. And so then that person then is altered biologically from that trauma, from that event. And what they don't know is every time they remember the event, they're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body-

   16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:35

       Yeah

   17. JDDr. Joe Dispenza33:35

       ... as if the event was occurring. Okay. Well, then you tell the person, "Why are you this way?" Well, then they'll tell the story [laughs] about how it happened. And the research on memory says that 50% of that story, the way you recount it, is actually not accurate. It's actually not the truth.

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:55

       Mm.

   19. JDDr. Joe Dispenza33:56

       That people don't have the same brain, so they embellish the story to excuse themselves from changing. And if they make it more difficult or they, they add more components to it, then now they'll reaffirm their identity in being a certain way.

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:10

       Yeah.

   21. JDDr. Joe Dispenza34:10

       That story becomes very important to them, and they believe it, they behave it as it, and they ultimately become it. And so then can you use those same principles-

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:21

       Yeah

   23. JDDr. Joe Dispenza34:21

       ... and begin to start to manage your inner world? And by regulating, taking time before you start your day and say, "Okay, before I grab my cell phone, before I get up and run through my routine," you know, my automatic routine where peoples are on automatic pilot in a, in a habituation of what they did yesterday, and their body's dragging them into the same predictable future based on what they did in the past, and they've lost their free will-

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:50

       Mm

   25. JDDr. Joe Dispenza34:50

       ... to choose to become conscious to a set of automatic programs. Well, if the familiar past is the known and the predictable future is the known, there's only one place where the unknown exists-

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:01

       Yeah

   27. JDDr. Joe Dispenza35:01

       ... and that's the sweet spot of the present moment. So if you said, "Okay, let me get present here. Let me remind myself of those thoughts I don't wanna think. Let me remind myself of the behaviors I wanna change. Let me review in my mind the emotions that cause me to move to a lower denominator. Let me become so conscious of that that I won't go unconscious again. Let me remind myself who I do wanna be, how I do wanna think, how I do wanna act, how I do wanna feel. And let me see if I can get so good at doing this with my eyes closed when I start my day that I can do it with my eyes open." Now-

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:35

       Mm

   29. JDDr. Joe Dispenza35:35

       ... this, this, this river of change, you know, when people say, "I can't predict my future," well, the best way to predict it is to create it, not in the known but in the unknown. So our research shows that if you teach a person to go a little further than where they normally stop, you know, when they get uncomfortable, they, they quit and reach for their cell phone, or they say, "I'm busy. Got too much to do." If you get people present really and you teach them how to stretch a little further, uh, and they get beyond that known and there's no danger, there's no threat, there's no survival, the body actually begins to relax into the present moment.

   30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:12

       Yeah.
7. 43:11 – 53:26

   Practical Steps: Awareness, Rewriting the Story and Making Life Your Experiment

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee43:11

      A lot of people, uh, Dr. Joe, may be struggling and going, "Okay, look, I get that. Yes, I don't like the way that I think, but I don't know how to change that." Right? So in terms of moving this into maybe some practical things people can do, firstly you need awareness. Hopefully this conversation [laughs] is giving people that awareness. But if people are not aware, how can they become aware? And once they become aware, what sort of things should they start to do to start making those changes?

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza43:41

      Yeah. Thank you for, for teasing that out. That's such a great question. You know, um, uh, my interest is to give people the tools so that they have within their reach all the things they need to begin to apply and become scientists in their life. People don't know, if you don't know that, uh, those stress hormones are addictive, then you'll think they have power over you.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:08

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza44:08

      If you don't think that you can change your thought, just because you have a thought, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. And the moment I realized that, I was free, right? And if you isolate yourself a lot and you don't, you're not out in the world because of whatever, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll start to believe every thought that you think is the truth. And so that challenge then of saying, "Okay, I do truly wanna be happy. I do truly wanna be healthy. I do truly wanna have a life that, that is really empowering, that I feel good about." Okay. Well, let's take a look, like if no different than... Well, you used the example of Tiger Woods. No different than Tiger Woods watching himself swing on a video, observing himself play. No different than a person who stands in front of an audience and does a lecture and watches them do the lecture. Nobody else will see what they see. They'll see themselves very differently than anybody else.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:12

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza45:12

      And they'll, they'll see themselves do it, and they'll wanna self-correct. They'll wanna evolve their experience. Now, because we got this big frontal lobe, 40% of our entire brain, that's our conscience. That's the seat of our awareness. That's our creative center. When we ask the question, what would it be like to be in a different life or to be happy? If instead of getting on your cell phone or instead of getting on your social media or instead of turning on the TV or instead of calling a friend and instead of doing something to distract you from that possible answer, if you sat with it long enough and that creative center turned on, it would naturally scan the whole entire landscape of the brain because it's the CEO, it's the symphony leader. It has connections to all parts of the brain. And it's gonna look out over the landscape of the brain and look at the knowledge you've learned and the experiences that are stitched in your brain that are associated with what you know to answer that question. And as it calls up these different networks of neurons, once the brain fires in tandem, you get an image or a picture in your mind, and that's called intention. You see a new possibility, right? So then this is why I am passionate about what we're doing. I never thought, Rangan, that I would see the kind of changes in people's physical health that I've seen in the last two years. Now, people do the best with what they think is available. If you don't know that this is possible, you are going to make the same choice.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:46

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza46:46

      And that may be relying on some pharmaceutical, something outside of you, some therapy, whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But if your response hasn't changed in your life, the efficacy of whatever you're doing is going to be diminished. Okay, so once I now know that people could heal from different health conditions, and there's evidence in the science and there's evidence in testimony like the person that you just recited. That's one of many, many people that have had that experience.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:16

      Mm.

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza47:16

       When they stand on the stage at our week-long retreats and we call them up, why do I call them up on the stage? Because they are speaking the truth. They are the example of truth, and I want people to become aware of that possibility. Why? Because if you're unaware of it, it doesn't exist for you. And consciousness is awareness, right? And so then with consciousness, you can't have consciousness without energy. So there, that, that thought of another possibility is a different energy. It's a different possibility. And, and so now once you know it's possible, then okay, now let's get down to stepping in the footprints that other people have left behind. Why? If you're telling the story of your past every single day, and 50% of that isn't even the truth, then you're reliving a miserable life that you never even had, all for the reason to excuse yourself from change. Stop telling the story of your past and start telling the story of your future. Stop romancing your past and start romancing your future.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:19

       Mm.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza48:19

       Why not fall in love with your future as much as you've fallen in love with your past? If I do this as an experiment and- You're scientifically minded. Make your life the experiment. Make your life the experiment.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:32

       Mm.

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza48:32

       Okay, I'm gonna be uncomfortable if I start making different choices. Okay, but I'm not gonna white-knuckle it and stay in this unknown.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:40

       Yeah.

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza48:40

       What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna work on making my brain work better. Let's work on making my heart work better. Let's put the whole thing together and let's practice.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:49

       Yeah.

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza48:49

       And so then in the beginning, if it doesn't happen in two days, most people quit. Why? Because Amazon Prime can deliver to your door in a day, and you're used to that kind of entitlement of convenience. Creating really and making ch- change, if it took you five years to develop this health condition, it may take you a little time to uncreate it, but what you're looking for is those small, subtle shifts in your life and in your body. Once you start seeing those changes take place, now you're more invested and, and you can't believe in a new future without believing in yourself, and you can't believe in yourself without believing in a new future. You, they just, they just, you have to choose yourself every single day. So the person who's, when the drugs and everything else wasn't working, they, they, they, they were-

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:37

       Yeah

   20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza49:37

       ... their own resource, and they understood that this was their medicine. And so-

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:42

       Yeah

   22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza49:42

       ... every day, every day they said, "How did I do at the end of my day? When did I fall from grace? When did I go unconscious? When did I return back to the old me? Let me rehearse it. Tomorrow I wanna evolve my experience." And it was no longer about healing.

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:57

       Yeah.

   24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza49:57

       It was about changing. And they stand on the stage and they say, "Oh, God, I just realized that I, I, I have to work on this-

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:06

       Yeah

   26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza50:06

       ... more with my eyes open. I have to stay in this emotional state. I have to keep the vision alive in my mind," and it's so much easier to forget that-

   27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:13

       Yeah

   28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza50:13

       ... vision of your future than to remember it, and it takes repetition and practice. And there is a very strong change that goes on when people start making the effort. So simple thing to do. Wake up in the morning. Before you reach for your cell phone, ask yourself, "Who do I no longer wanna be? Let me write down the thoughts today. Let me become so conscious of I can't, now this is horrible, I hate my life." Let's just stop that thought because that thought is gonna produce a chemical that's gonna signal-

   29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:40

       Mm

   30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza50:40

       ... your body to feel a certain way. Let's become aware of how I behave. Write down two behaviors. Do I complain? Do I blame? Do I rush? Write them down and just commit them. Review them in your mind. What emotions do I wanna-
8. 53:26 – 1:02:48

   Meditation, Brainwaves and Brain-Heart Coherence

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:26

      I wanna be respectful to your time, but I'd love to just briefly cover meditation and brain waves-

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza53:30

      Sure

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:30

      ... if you had time-

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza53:31

      Sure

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:31

      ... because-

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza53:32

      Sure

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:32

      ... I think again, that's really, it's really helpful for people to understand that.

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza53:36

      Okay, well, let's demystify it. I looked it up. You know, I looked up the symbol. What does that symbol, uh, uh, uh, that represents meditation mean? And the actual translation of the word means to become familiar with. That's what it means. So then when you become conscious of your unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and emotions and become familiar with them, if you can become so conscious that you don't go unconscious and you're facing off with your old self and you have those thoughts, you're in a meditation. That's a good thing, right? And if you can fire and wire the new thoughts and rehearse the new behaviors and s- practice trading the chemicals of survival for elevated emotions and you keep practicing those heart-centered emotions, they'll begin to become familiar to you. So Breaking the habit of the old self and reinventing the new self, unlearning and relearning is the model of change. Okay. But when you're living in stress and you're living in survival and the brain is aroused, what we're doing when we lost control or we can't predict what's going to happen is we try to control and predict everything in our life. And the arousal of the stress hormones causes our brain to move in these brainwave states called high beta. Now, we're talking right now and we're in low-level beta. We're in beta, and beta is conscious awareness. So we're, we're, we're aware that we're local in a body. We're occupying a body in space and time, in a, in an environment and time. And the b- the sensory system is picking up all this vital information through our senses from the environment, and beta brainwaves ha- happen to create coherence between our inner world and our outer world. No problem there. If I said, "Oh, there'll be a, a dinner tonight and I'm gonna invite you. There'll be 10 people there, and please just remember all their names," uh, your brain would kind of pick up into like a mid-range beta state. It's not a bad stress. It's just that you gotta get a little bit... The light bulb gets a little brighter. You gotta get a little bit more aware, a little bit more awake. But when you're frustrated and when you're angry, when you're impatient, when you're resentful, uh, when you're fearful, you're in these high beta brainwave patterns, and then that high beta's the alarm. It's the alert. It's emergency. There's a threat. There's a danger.

   9. SPSpeaker55:44

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza55:44

       So we shift our attention from one person to another person to another problem to another meeting to another thing to another place to the past, and every one of those circuits in our brain that are associated with everything we know in our life starts to light up out of order, like, like a lightning storm in the cloud 'cause our attention is shifting. Turns out the brain starts firing very incoherently, and we over-focus on things. Why? 'Cause we don't want them to happen again. And so the arousal causes this incoherence in the brain, and when the brain is incoherent, we're incoherent. And the person in survival, the primitive system is saying, "Focus on matter. Narrow your focus on the danger. Focus on something material." And why does that happen? Because the sense is heightened, and we become materialist. So you're not gonna be thinking about anything else if something's rushlin- ru- uh, ruffling, r- rustling in the bushes and, and it's dark. You're gonna pay attention to that, right? So, so this kind of habituation of narrowing our focus or over-focusing becomes the common way people think when they're in survival. They think that's, that's focus. So we said, "Okay, how are we gonna teach people how to change brainwaves?" So what if they go from a narrow focus and, uh, focusing on objects in the material world to broadening their focus or creating a divergent focus instead of a convergent focus and opening their focus and focusing on nothing but space, nothing known, nothing material? And the act of sensing space tends to slow the brainwaves down and start to suppress the analytical mind. When you're in survival, you're in stress, you're overly analytical, and our research shows that if you're analyzing yourself and you're analyzing the problems in your life within that aroused emotional state, 100% of the time you'll make your brain worse. You'll drive it further into those high beta states, and that's like driving your sports car in first gear on the freeway. It just won't work in time. So as you broaden your focus and you sense nothing, the acts of sensing and feeling causes you to stop analyzing and thinking, and your brainwaves start to go down into a slower brainwave state. And you s- get past the analytical mind, and you move into what's called alpha brainwaves. Now, alpha brainwaves, in beta your outer world is more real than your inner world. In alpha, your inner world starts becoming more real than the outer world, and the voice in your head, that default that's talking to you all the time, tends to sh- shut off and the brain starts to imagine. It starts to see in images and pictures.

   11. SPSpeaker58:14

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza58:14

       That's alpha. It's an imaginary state. It's a creative state. But when you're sensing space, what happens that's so unique is those different pa- compartments of the brain that were subdivided when the person is sensing space not only moves into alpha, the brain starts to synchronize. The different, um, communities of neurons that were firing out of order start to resonate-

   13. SPSpeaker58:36

       Mm-hmm

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza58:36

       ... in coherence and order, and the front of the brain is starting to resonate with both sides of the brain. And all of a sudden, you're seeing more community of neurons coming together, and what sinks in the brain links in the brain. Now, when the person has coherent alpha brainwave patterns, now all of a sudden the brain becomes more integrated, and they can start to hold an image and focus or dream or imagine. We all do this when we're driving on the, in the car on the freeway, okay? There's nothing wrong with that. But then if you can s- get your body to relax even further so that it's in a light sleep, that it feels so safe that it could actually rest in a light sleep while you're conscious and awake, relaxed and awake, you're... now you're in a brainwave pattern called theta. Now, in theta, lights go out in the thinking neocortex. The memory bank, the autobiographical self is literally shut off.

   15. SPSpeaker59:29

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza59:29

       Your connection to the environment, to your body, and to time literally changes. If lights go out on the neocortex, then you're get beyond your identity, and we see then when a person's in theta the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is wide open to information. And when you get beyond the analytical mind, then you open the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. That's what separates it, the analytical mind. Now you're suggestible to the information and you're in a hypnotic state, and you can rewrite a program. [laughs] You can rewrite a new script. You can change the way you behave. You can change the way you, you pro- you can reprogram yourself to do something differently, and you can't do it in high beta 'cause you're not in the operating system. You gotta get beyond the conscious mind-

   17. SPSpeaker1:00:18

       Mm

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:00:18

       ... into the subconscious mind to rewrite those programs. So teaching people how to regulate and change their brainwaves is an important element, but what about the heart? Because to create a new future, it requires a clear intention and an elevated emotion. It is the fundamental quality of brain and heart coherence. So then can you practice breathing through your heart and practice regulating your heart and practice bringing up these elevated emotions and feel it with your heart? And our data suggests that if you place your attention on your heart, and you just do that for a few minutes, you'll actually give the heart a very low frequency, and that very low frequency is indigenous to the energy of the heart. So the heart starts building a little energetic field. Once that happens, the heart will inform the brain through the afferent fibers. They'll say, "It's time to create," or, "It's safe to create." And when the heart gets coherent, it sends a very profound signal, like grabbing a big sheet and giving it a little whip. There's a wave of energy that goes to the brain, and all of a sudden you see the heart and the brain start synchronizing, and now we're in a creative state. And the heart produces an external magnetic field that's up to three meters wide, and now we start feeling more whole. Now we feel like our future has already happened, and we're no longer looking for it. Why would we look for it if it felt like it already happened?

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:40

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:01:40

       And we're really relaxing into the present moment. So, so teaching people how to regulate their brainwaves and move into these slower frequencies, people get really good at it, and we have the data that suggests you could be 91, you could be 7 years old, you could have a disease, you could not have a disease, you could eat gluten, not eat gluten, you could eat meat, you could drink wine, you could smoke cigarettes. It doesn't matter. It's just people, once they learn the skill on how to change their brainwaves, they can open the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. But intention is not enough. Intention is the directive. It's like the electrical charge in the field. The elevated emotion is, is the magnetic charge. It's what, what feels like the future has already happened for us.

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:25

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:02:26

       So, so brain and heart coherence, when you do that together, in a sense you have a Wi-Fi signal. The body's emitting information and energy. And, and so we teach that as a way for people-

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:36

       Mm

   24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:02:36

       ... to really practice getting beyond their analytical facilities. And when they're able to do that, as we said over and over in this, in this talk, it just becomes natural. It just becomes-

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:46

       Yeah

   26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:02:46

       ... automatic. It just becomes a skill.

9. 1:02:48 – 1:13:14

   Choosing a Meditation Path, The Formula and Final Words

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:48

      I know you, um, a- and your team teach a lot of these methods and meditations, um, at retreats and all kinds of, i- in all kinds of different ways. Uh, for someone who feels inspired by what you've said and thinks, "You know what? I wanna, I wanna dip my toe in here," you know, meditation is all the rage these days. Many people from lots of different fields are talking about it. I- is what you teach a specific type of meditation? Do you feel that all kinds of meditation have value for people to at least get going on this journey-

   2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:03:19

      Mm

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:03:20

      ... of opening up to space and just stopping the analytical mind?

   4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:03:24

      You know, I mean, um, if the environment is so seductive, you know, and [laughs] and if our body has been conditioned and habituated to be the mind, and we're either living in the predictable future or the familiar past, it makes so much sense to start our day to disconnect from the environment, to settle our body down into the present moment and get beyond its drives, its emotions, and habits. That's, that's the act, right? So, so, um, we teach no specific form of traditional cultural religious meditation. In fact, that usually divides an audience. Um, we look at the data. We look at the data, and we look at what exactly it is that either I say or the combination of everything put together with the sound and everything that produces these elegant states. Now, there's just not enough time, but, but I can tell you when a person gets really, really in the zone, they, they hit a, they hit an, a, a really transcendental moment-

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:23

      Yeah

   6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:04:23

      ... when they get to that point of theta and they go into an arousal.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:27

      Yeah.

   8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:04:27

      But the arousal's not fear. The arousal's not pain. The arousal's not aggression. The arousal is ecstasy. They're connecting. And-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:34

      Yeah

   10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:04:34

       ... that's the moment where we see an instantaneous biological upgrade that goes on in the person's body. Energy starts to inform matter, and, and we're lucky enough to be able to catch that on different brain scans. So, so, so then it makes sense then that knowledge is the precursor to experience. You gotta learn. You gotta understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. You gotta demystify the process. It's gotta make sense to you.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:58

       Yeah.

   12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:04:59

       That's why we have so many men in our, in our events, because the men love the science. They're like, "I'm not gonna listen to my wife. It doesn't make sense to me. But, uh, but she's all intuitive and feeling. But this, I can do this. It makes sense to me."

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:11

       Mm.

   14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:11

       So then when you m- when it makes sense to you... So, so then as an example, we have this little course called The Formula, and The Formula really is m- the understanding of brain and heart coherence. It's 30-minute lectures with five meditations. I think there's 12 or 13 sessions. Easy, digestible way to understand.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:28

       Mm.

   16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:28

       Then once you understand the knowledge, you'll say, "Okay, let me try working on the present moment. Okay, now that I got that down, let me try this." And so we build-

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:36

       Mm

   18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:37

       ... you know, step by step, 'cause I don't... I wanna set people up for success.

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:41

       Yeah.

   20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:41

       And I wanna set it up so that it's within the realm of their acceptance, where they don't go, "Oh my God, this guy's killing me. I got, I mean-

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:47

       Yeah

   22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:47

       ... I got a busy day here, and I can't sit here." But if it's, if it's in increments, and-

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:51

       Yeah

   24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:51

       ... and it's digestible, and you can understand why you're doing it and what you're doing it, uh, then, then the how gets very easy. And that's what we want people-

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:59

       Yeah

   26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:05:59

       ... to do, to experiment. Let me try this out for two weeks, and let's see if anything changes in my life. If it does, I'm gonna keep doing it. Now, so communities of people, we have, you know, huge community around the world, and what I love the most about our community is we're doers. They don't go s- they don't go, "Oh God, I gotta meditate today." No, they meditate because they don't want the magic to end in their lives.

   27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:20

       Mm.

   28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:06:20

       They, they're doing it because events, they're no longer going anywhere to get what they want. Somehow it seems like it's coming to them.

   29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:28

       Yeah.

   30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:06:29

       They're a magnet. They're some... Their synchronicities, the serendipities, the coincidences, the opportunities are coming to them as a result of doing the work. And now- They're believing less that they're the victims of their life, and now every coincidence, every opportunity informs them that they are the creator of their life. And now [laughs]
10. 1:13:14 – 1:35:38

    Trauma, Letting Go of the Past and Forgiveness

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:14

       Trauma, right? There's a lot of awareness growing now about trauma, the impact of our childhoods, how we're spoken to, the beliefs we take on as kids, how that impacts us as adults. Now, one approach to deal with trauma is to go there, to go and unpick it and uncover it and see a therapist and detail what happened, why it happened. You know, get an understanding of why you're behaving a certain way as an adult. Now, I think for many people, I include myself in this, that can be incredibly powerful and incredibly important. But I also see when I think of your work, I, I wouldn't say it's mutually exclusive necessarily from the outside at least, but is there a danger that we can spend too long in our trauma, processing our trauma, trying to think about it? Because effectively, a key message from your work is don't get stuck in those emotions of the past. Don't let your past define you. Think about that vision of the future. Start to feel what you wanna feel in the future so you can experience it right now. But can someone go back, revisit their trauma, try and process it?

    2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:14:37

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:14:37

       And is that approach consistent with yours, or would you say it's a better approach or a different approach is to not spend time there, just create the new reality?

    4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:14:49

       Yeah. I think I'm, I, I'm down the middle on this, okay? I, I, I think there are many modalities that work for trauma. What I've discovered is that insight never really changes behavior. You can see that your father was overbearing or was an alcoholic, or you could see all these different things, you know, uh, like you could come up with the insight of all these different things. The problem that I see with people is then they tend to excuse their change by saying, "Oh, I had a rough childhood. That's why I am the way I am." They're excusing their pre- present position. So, and again, trauma's a difficult thing, but for me [laughs] the person who's living by the identity in their life that they were traumatized as a child or whatever it is, or they've had a trauma in their life, I'm not saying forget the trauma and create another emotion. I'm saying that the person who's willing to go through the emotion and keep working on lowering the volume to it. The, the... We have had so many people in this work with brutal pasts, really, really difficult pasts, do the work, and finally they reach that point where they just break free from the emotion. They look back, and I have interviewed enough of them, it's the same thing. They look back at their entire past and they don't wanna change one thing in their past 'cause it brought 'em to this elegant moment where they're liberated. They see their betrayers. They see their abusers. They have nothing but love for them. Now, the side effect of that, and many times they'll say, "It was like my heart blew wide open." They had to pass through the valley of the shadow of darkness to get there, and they just thought, "I, I don't know if I can go any further," and they went one more time. And the body literally was liberated from the past, right? 'Cause the trauma's not just in the brain. The trauma's stored emotionally in the body. So you wanna take the body out of the past, out of the known. What do you think the body's gonna say if it's been conditioned to be the mind? The unknown is a scary place. You step out into the unknown, you're gonna be unprepared for that trauma. You don't know how it's gonna happen. And so the person keeps clinging to the known and, but when the person finally overcomes the emotion, the body literally is freed from the chains of the past. The side effect of that is seeing the past from a greater level of consciousness. Lo and behold, there goes the suicidal tendencies. There goes the dysfunction. There goes the irritable bowel syndrome. That was because the body was still living in that past event by living by the same emotion. So the research on memory is kind of fascinating, and I just, I've studied it enough and I, and, and it, the way we recount the past is not the way it happened, even if you absolutely think you remember it being that way. So we don't have the same brain as we did when we were eight years old or 12 years old or 20 years old. We have a different brain. We have a completely different brain. So the fabrication of the story for many people, they embellish the story and make it seem even worse than what it was. But you're really, what you're saying is, 'I changed in those moments, and from a biological standpoint, I haven't been able to change since. So let me tell you why it's been so hard for me to change.' And the story becomes dramatized or embellished. A, a person works them up, fire themselves into this emotional froth, and then fires and wires the same circuits in the brain, and they're actually reaffirming their limitation. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I think, I think we're just, we're just taking too long, right? So- 50% of that story isn't even the truth. It means, in a sense, we're reliving a miserable life that we never even had, and we don't want. But, but the, but the, the unknown, people would rather cling to their suffering. And, and this is not a judgment. We all do this. We'd rather stay in the known than take a chance in the unknown because those emotions of survival are saying what? Run from the unknown. The unknown is a scary place. So now, the unknown, you gotta come up against that moment where you're gonna actually leave that behind and step into the unknown. This is not a intellectual process. This is, this is David and Goliath. There's a battle going on where the body keeps wanting to go back to its familiar state 'cause it's subconsciously been conditioned to be the mind and stay in the known. So then if the person keeps revisiting the trauma from the past, I'm not certain enough that when they revisit the trauma from the past, unless they learn how to desensitize their emotional response to it, that it's gonna work for them. What I learned is that if the person overcomes the emotion, the memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom, and now you no longer belong to the past. So the body gets frustrated in the meditation. Instead of taking your, uh, blindfolds off or turning the lights on to say, "I listen to the voice. I can't meditate. There's just too much." The sincere person says, "What's on the other side of 'I can't'? What's on the other side of this emotion? Let me see if I can s- settle my body back down out of that emotion and recondition it to a new mind." And the act of doing that in the beginning is very tedious. Then all of a sudden, the person starts getting better at it, and they're telling their body it's no longer the mind, that they're the mind. They're executing a will that's greater than that program. And just like training an animal, you stay. You're not gonna die. I'm gonna feed you. You can check your emails. You can check your texts, but this is my time right now. And you keep doing that with the body, keep settling it down to the present moment. It acquiesces. It surrenders to a new mind, and when that happens, we've seen this, we've measured it, there's a liberation of energy. We go from particle to wave. We go from matter to energy. That emotion is liberated from the body, and now, now there's energy to heal. [laughs] There's energy to create a new life. It's, it's, it's available energy. It's free energy.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:21:01

       Yeah.

    6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:21:01

       So the person goes, "Wow, I, I see it from a different level of conscious. I have nothing but love," or, "My goodness, I, I'm, I'm no longer that person." Uh, and, and they're now free from the past. Now, the side effect of that is that there's a biological upgrade. There's a neurological upgrade. There's a chemical upgrade. There's a genetic modification that's taking place. Why? You think the same way. You make the same choices. You do the same things. You create the same experiences. You feel the same emotions. Your biology will stay the same 'cause you're the same. [laughs] Now the person's thinking differently. They're making different choices. They're doing different things. They're behaving in different ways. They're having new experiences, and they're certainly feeling different emotions. The body reorganizes to-

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:21:49

       Yeah

    8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:21:49

       ... a new chemistry. And, and, and they'll tell you, "I'm not that person any longer. I'm literally not that person." And, and their betrayers, even if they're family members, they have forgiveness for them, and what is forgiveness? You take your attention off the emotion. You overcome the emotion. You don't pay attention to the person or the problem. Now you're free. You free yourself, and you free them and-

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:22:12

       W- w- what if someone says to you, Dr. Joe, "Look, uh, I, I get what you're saying, uh, but my ex-husband cheated on me, right? They shouldn't have done it. I cannot forgive them for what they did." And the reason I'm asking is because this is exactly what happened with one of my patients. 'Cause this often happens. So I talk a lot about forgiveness, and a lot of people push back. They go, "Yeah, I want to, but you don't know what happened to me. This was really, really bad. Like, this cannot be forgiven." What would you say to that person?

    10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:22:43

        I'd say to them, "I want you to think about something in your life that you've done that you would like forgiveness for, that you don't feel good about, and forgive that person the way that you would wanna be forgiven and you would be forgiven yourself." I mean, we all have done, we've all had indiscretions. Nobody's, nobody's [laughs] nobody's-

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:23:02

        Yeah

    12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:23:02

        ... perfect. So, so that person that is in that state is still in the emotional state. The problem with that is that no new information can enter the nervous system that is not equal to the emotion [laughs] the person experiencing because it's not relevant. So the question really is, is how long do you wanna do that? How long do you wanna do that? And, and again, knowledge and information about what that is doing to that person's health and their biology. If you reason with... And we, we've had this happen enough times in our work. That's not an uncommon situation. When the person finally, finally takes their attention off that and puts it on something else, they notice that they feel differently.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:23:49

        Yeah.

    14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:23:49

        If they can... Uh, you can't just tell a person to forgive, uh, because it's an eth- it's, it's kind of an etherical thing. It's a, it's a subjective process, right?

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:23:57

        Yeah.

    16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:23:58

        So if you're... We've seen this. Our oxytocin levels in a lot of our participants go up 200 times, right? That's a l- that's a lot of, that's a lot of love. Oxytocin signals nitric oxide.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:24:09

        Yeah.

    18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:24:09

        Nitric oxide signals another chemical that literally causes the arteries in your heart and lungs to actually expand. There's more energy. There's more blood going into your heart. Okay. So when that person takes their attention off their ex, takes their attention off their past, and starts looking at themselves, denaturing that identity that's built on the past, see, that person had a reaction to that circumstance, and that reaction produces a refractory period of chemicals and emotions, right? And if you don't know how to control that refractory period, and it lasts for hours or days, it's called a mood. You keep that same refractory period going on for weeks or months, now it's a temperament. One long emotional reaction. You keep that refractory period going on for years on end, that's a personality trait.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:24:56

        Yeah.

    20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:24:56

        And most people's personalities are defined by, "I am this way because my husband cheated on me." What you're really saying is you haven't changed in 10 years, and you're giving your vital life force to that person. Who is worth 10 years of your life?

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:25:14

        Yeah.

    22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:25:14

        Who's worth it? So then the stronger the emotion we feel, the more we pay attention to the cause. Where you place your attention is where you place your energy. That person's giving their vital life force to heal, their life force to change to that person or that circumstance. [laughs] Lower the volume to that emotion-

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:25:36

        Yeah

    24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:25:37

        ... you take your attention off that person or problem. It's not the person or the problem. They're using unconsciously that person or that circumstance to reaffirm their addiction to that emotion. That's why they keep thinking about it. If they weren't addicted to that emotion, they would stop, they would stop thinking about it. So then, is it the person? No, it's the, your left... We'll ta- we'll take your ex-husband and put him in a, a rocket and a straitjacket and let's shoot him to the moon. Now what? Now what? Now what, now what are you gonna do? You still have that-

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:07

        You still got it

    26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:26:07

        ... embossed in your brain and conditioned in your body. At what point? So then the research on oxytocin, you can't, you can't, you can only talk around this. [laughs] You, you can't say to someone, "Forgive," if they still feel the emotion. That's, uh, they're separate from the act of forgiving.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:24

        Yeah.

    28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:26:24

        Imagine feeling so much love by, by... No one's doing it to you. It's actually coming from within.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:32

        Yeah.

    30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:26:33

        What, you have that em- you have that moment, that catharsis, where you feel that emotion. Oxytocin levels go up just slightly in the research, just a little bit more elevated. An elevation in oxytocin makes it impossible to hold a grudge. They've done the da- the research on the data. You cannot hold a grudge. It's impossible.
11. 1:35:38 – 1:49:03

    Two Hours of Meditation and Making Time

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35:38

       One thing I've heard you say recently, which has been really helpful for me, is that you don't get up from your meditation until you've overcome that emotion, until you've reached that place of calm and gratitude and joy.

    2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:35:54

       Mm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35:54

       And if I think back to when I started meditating on and off maybe 10 years ago, you know, some days I'd drop in, it would be great. Other days, it would be really hard. I'd think, "Oh, not today." So I'd walk out of it and go, "Oh, you know, not today." With a, with a complete misunderstanding that, oh, it always has to be perfect and joyful, whereas now, I know it's a practice. I sit there for the entire time. Some days it's wonderful. Other days, it's hard.

    4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:18

       Yeah.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:36:19

       And I think that's very powerful what you, what you share there. How long do you really-

    6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:23

       [laughs]

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:36:23

       ... take for your meditation?

    8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:24

       So I allow for two hours.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:36:25

       Two hours?

    10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:26

        And I do the f- first 20 minutes or so to 30 minutes, depends on me, I'm in my think box. And then, then the next hour and a half, if it takes me an hour, Rangan, to get to the present moment, I will not get up from my meditation until I get there. So I'm just uncompromising to that because I know that if I overcome myself-

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:36:46

        Yeah

    12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:46

        ... it's the overcoming process that's the becoming process. So if I get, if I stretch myself as it doesn't feel good, and I, and I, and I break through, then I'm a different person the rest of the day. If I get up and quit, then I'm s- the same guy.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:36:58

        Yeah.

    14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:36:58

        I can't expect anything really magical to happen in my life. So I'm just willing- To just go that distance because, because I think that if you get up as the same person that sat down, nothing really happens. Nothing, nothing really happens. And, and we've talked to so many people that have had so many transcendental, profound experiences, and they look back at all the meditations that they've done, and it's not the good ones they remembered. It's the ones where they sat through the fire and they love themselves for doing it. They love themselves because they sat through it. That's, that's really the value, uh, behind all of this.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:37:39

        Yeah.

    16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:37:39

        So for, so, so for the person who's on the journey, like for me, I'm just the type of guy that like if I do a meditation and I, and I get, when I make it through it and it wasn't a pretty meditation, I'm, uh, that, that discomfort bothers me the whole day. It bothers me because I don't wanna do that again.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:00

        Mm.

    18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:00

        And I wanna make sure that... I, I'm not thinking about the news, or I'm not thinking about what people think about me. I'm not thinking about all that, any of that stuff. I'm really thinking about, "What happened there, Joe? Like, what, where, where did you go? Like, why are you feeling this way?" Because I'm disturbed by something because I think I could do better.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:16

        Yeah.

    20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:16

        It's like these, like a martial artist, you know, you're sparring somebody and you get kicked in the face three or four times. Sooner or later you say, "What am I doing?" Like-

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:23

        Yeah

    22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:24

        ... what, and, and, and you sit there and you think about it over and over again, over and over, and it bothers you until you figure it out, right? So the, so the-

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:30

        And you feel good 'cause you overcame it. You're like-

    24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:32

        Then-

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:32

        ... "Hey man, I can overcome it."

    26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:34

        Yeah. And so then what... [laughs] People say to me, "Wow, two hours in the morning," you know? Uh, I, I say, "Listen, it's really simple. If I can overcome myself at the beginning of the day, the rest of my day I can overcome anybody."

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:44

        Yeah.

    28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:44

        Like, I'm just okay with any- When you're okay with yourself, you're okay with anybody.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:38:48

        Yeah.

    30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:38:48

        When you're angry with yourself, you're angry with others. If you're unhappy with yourself, you punish other people to feel unhappy 'cause you want them to feel the way you do. It's just the way it is. You're grateful for... You get up grateful.
12. 1:49:03 – 2:11:52

    Changing Personality: Mental Rehearsal and Emotional Training

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:49:03

       So much to unpack there. There's a couple of statistics you mentioned there that 90% of the thoughts we think are the same as the day before. I think you also said that 95% of who we are by the age of 35 are a set of memorized behaviors. And those two things really stood out to me because as a medical doctor, a lot of the things that I try and do with my patients is to help them make change in their life, let's say change their lifestyle. And a lot of the time, those behaviors that they engage in are very short-lived. They, they get super motivated, they do it for a few weeks, but then they often revert back to where they were before. And I'm wondering if those two statistics help me understand why that is, because actually if we're not changing at source the programming in our brain in terms of how we think and how we approach the world, then it's gonna be very hard, isn't it, to actually change those downstream behaviors in the long term?

    2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:50:04

       A- absolutely. And listen, you know, you know this as well as anybody. I mean, chronic diseases require a lifestyle change. And, and change is an interesting concept. So the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, get ready, because you're going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel unfamiliar. There's gonna be some uncertainty. You're not gonna be in the known. You're stepping out into the unknown. You're doing something differently, and the body which has been conditioned to be the mind, the servant is now the master. So the body loves the familiar known. It loves the same suffering, it loves the same pain, it loves the same unworthiness. It's been conditioned that way for years on end. It really is running the show. So the moment you step out into the unknown, the body goes, "Wait a second. I'd rather feel guilty than this feeling of the unknown 'cause I can't predict my future." So the body starts influencing the mind, and then we start to hear this chatter in our head that says, "Rangan, start tomorrow," you know? "Tomorrow's a better day. You really don't feel like it today. Why don't you just have one piece of cake? You're a loser. It's your parents' fault, it's your ex's fault, it's your culture's fault," whatever it is. And if we accept, believe, and surrender to that thought as if it's the truth, that's an old circuit in the brain. That thought will lead to the same choice, which will lead to the same behavior, which will create the same experience, which will produce the same feeling or emotion. The person says, "Well, this feels right to me." No, no, no, no. That feels familiar. Crossing the river of change, going from the old self to the new self, there is a neurological, a biological, a hormonal, a genetic death of the old self. There's pruning going on.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:51:53

       Mm.

    4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:51:53

       There's, there's inhibition going on, where we're no longer releasing the same stress hormones that give us the arousal. And so if there's three types of stress, physical, chemical, and emotional, physical stress being trauma, injuries, accidents, falls. Chemical stress, you know, viruses, bacteria, pesticides, pollutants, toxins, hangovers, whatever. Emotional stress, that's the big one. That's, uh, family tragedies, second mortgages, single parenting, 401 [k] s, whatever it is. It tends to be then that [laughs] the difficult one to manage really is our emotional stress.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:52:29

       Mm.

    6. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:52:29

       So if you can help people to get more physically balanced, more chemically balanced, and to become more emotionally balanced, then the effects of their personal change will be expedited-

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:52:43

       Yeah

    8. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:52:44

       ... and they'll be a longer duration. So the person sees you for six months. They start a great program. They start making the right choices, and they start feeling better. And then once they make the wrong choice, then it's a downward spiral back to the old unconscious habits and emotional condition. They feel unworthy again, and they return back to your clinic, or they return back to your consultation, and they come back with the same exact conditions. And the simple solution is yeah, because you returned back to the same personality, and you're feeling the same emotions, and your body's back to believing it's in the same environmental condition. So if your personality creates your personal reality, and I believe that, and your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel, then the present personality who's listening to this podcast has created the present personal reality called their life. Not your ex, not your parents, not your boss. You create your life. So it makes sense then if you wanted to create a new personal reality, you'd have to change your personality. In other words, if you wanna change your life, you have to change, and nothing changes in your life until you change. So then this first step in change then, 95% of who we are is a set of unconscious thoughts-

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:54:00

       Mm. Yeah

    10. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:54:00

        ... behaviors, and emotions. Then the first step [laughs] is to become conscious of your unconscious thoughts, to become so aware of how you behave. Do you complain? Do you blame? Do you make excuses? Do you judge? Do you... Are you aggressive? And then look at the emotions. What is this emotion I'm feeling? Wow, this is guilt. This is sadness. This is victimization. This is unhappiness. Name it so now you're so conscious of it-

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:54:25

        Yeah

    12. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:54:25

        ... that you don't go unconscious and return back to the same self. And how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's the moment of change.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:54:37

        Yeah. I mean, it's so powerful. There's two key elements there that I'd love to dive into a little bit. There's awareness and personality. On personality, one of the deep realizations in my own life over the past few years has been that our personalities, much of our personality at least, is not fixed. Like, many people think that, oh, the way I am is the way I am, and what I've learnt through the research but also through my own personal experience of life is that often our personality is not who we are, it's who we had to become. So for example, I, for most of my life, most of my friends and family would say that I'm intensely competitive. I can't stand to lose. I will win. I will do what I need to do to win at all costs. But I know, I know full well that that now comes from a feeling of lack. That came from a feeling of lack inside that I, I developed this idea as a child that actually I'm only loved, I'm only worthy when I get full marks or when I'm a success, right? So therefore, of course, being competitive absolutely serves that purpose, 'cause if you're competitive, you're gonna keep reinforcing that, yeah, you're gonna then succeed, and you're gonna get that external validation which you feel you need. But as I've become aware of that, and that's where the awareness piece I think comes in, for me, I've become acutely aware that actually, no, I can change that. Actually, that's not fixed for life. And these days I'm not competitive. I'm, I'm competitive in a different way. Like, it's not because I need to succeed and because that says who I am, and that's a reflection of who I am. It's because, no, I'm no longer coming from a place of lack. I'm coming from a place of love now, where, yeah, I still wanna do well, but it's not a reflection of my self-worth. So I've really experienced that you can change.

    14. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:56:33

        Right. Right. Well, then the fundamental thing then is to realize then that there's great science to show that we are not hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of our lives, and we're not doomed by our genes, that we're marvels of adaptability and change. Now, here's the challenge, though. The challenge is, is that most people wait for crisis or diagnosis before they make up their mind to change, and my message is why wait? So then if your personality creates your personal reality, and you become conscious that in lack or in separation, the game to play when you're living in three-dimensional reality is that you have to do something to get what you want. So, so then you have the thought of wanting something, right? You want a new career, you wanna succeed in something, you want a new relationship, you wanna heal. That thought of whatever that experience is, your mind actually predicts it somewhere in the future, and you say, "If I work really hard, if I sacrifice a certain s- number of things, if I save a lot of money, I can go on this vacation or have this experience." And so some people wait for the experience to occur, and when the experience occurs, the payoff is the emotion in three-dimensional reality. But the distance between the thought of what you want and the experience of having it, between cause and effect, between one point of consciousness, I'm conscious that I'm competitive, and another point of consciousness, can I change that, is called time. So everything in three-dimensional reality takes time, and we experience separation until the event happens, and then we feel the emotion. Well, that's great. But the fundamental quality of, of a person's personality who's competitive, once they have that experience, then they're gonna compete for the next thing they want. And there's nothing wrong with that because when we're matter trying to change matter, of course we're gonna use the principles. We're gonna control, we're gonna predict, we're gonna compete, we're gonna fight for, we're gonna work harder, we're gonna manipulate. We're gonna do anything we can to produce an outcome. And, and when we have the experience, the experience then produces the emotion. Well, the question is then, then people become so reliant on the, the experience to change their emotional state, they need something outside of them to change their internal state. And so if I said to somebody, "Hey, why are you so unhappy today?" They would say, "I'm h- unhappy because of that person or that circumstance."

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:58:59

        Yeah.

    16. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:58:59

        And what that really means is that that person or that circumstance is actually controlling the way you feel and the way you think.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:59:06

        Yeah.

    18. JDDr. Joe Dispenza1:59:06

        And anything that controls the way we feel and the way we think, we're victims to that circumstance. In other words, we're victims to our environment, and our response to the environment actually weakens the organism. It actually takes the body's vital life force and turns it into emergency, and that's... And you tap those resources. Okay. So then that's cause and effect. You're waiting for something. You create something, and so we're in the plane of doing, and you master some skills, you get educated, you make the right choices, you get the right counseling or the right advice, and you could actually succeed in this world. Well, that's great, but the time between [laughs] you getting it [laughs] and the thought of it is a lot of separation, right? And so what if, like you said, you said, "Okay, what would a new personality who's not competitive live like? What, what, well, how would I have to think? How would a, how would a person who, who's no longer competitive have to think?" And you start thinking about how to think. And the act of actually with intention or attention actually begins to install new circuitry in your brain, new hardware. Keep doing it, and it becomes like a software program. That becomes the new voice in your head-

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:00:18

        Mm

    20. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:00:18

        ... that says, "Ease up. There's another way to do it." Then if you said, "How am I gonna be in my life when I open my eyes? How am I gonna live today, one day, one lifetime, as if I wasn't competitive? Okay, well, I may have to read a little bit and learn a little about how to do that, but I can find somebody that did that." Obviously, someone has. If you closed your eyes and you rehearsed mentally how you're gonna be on a Zoom call, how are we gonna be with your colleagues, how are we gonna be in your relationships, mental rehearsal, when you're truly present, the brain does not know the difference between the real-life experience and what you're imagining. And the research on mental rehearsal says you can install neurological hardware in your brain to look like you've already done it. That's already been experienced.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:02

        Mm.

    22. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:01:02

        Now your brain is no longer a record of the past. Now it's a map to the future. Keep priming the brain with those instructions, and the hardware will become a software program. Now you'll start behaving that way. Now, here's the hard part. Which you accomplished. Can I teach my body emotionally what it would feel like to no longer be competitive, to be in love with life, and know that everything's gonna work out, or that I'm resourceful or intelligent or whatever it is? Can I bring up the feeling of what that competitive, non-competitive person or a person who's mastered s- that feels like? If you can teach your body emotionally what that feels like before the experience, then it would make sense then if you could do that enough times, you can condition your body emotionally to begin to change with that thought and that feeling-

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:01:52

        Mm

    24. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:01:52

        ... with that image and that emotion. And so then the person becomes a new personality [laughs] and changes from the old personality. And our research shows when you do that, not only do you change your circuitry, the way your brain works, the way your heart works, your gene expression, your immune system, but the side effect of that a lot of times is there's very profound biological changes that take place in the person's health.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:16

        Mm.

    26. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:02:17

        And you say, "How did you do that?" And they'll tell you, [laughs] "M- that disease exists in the old personality. I'm literally somebody else." So if you have evidence and testimony, which we do have-

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:30

        Mm

    28. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:02:30

        ... that it's possible to change, and we have great evidence in scientific research that we're doing, evidence becomes the loudest voice. And that person who stands on the stage and tells the story of their personal transformation, and they're speaking the truth. They're the four-minute mile, and it's a new level of consciousness that says, "I don't need anything outside of me to change my internal state."

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:02:54

        Yeah.

    30. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:02:54

        "I could actually self-regulate and change my internal state. And the more I understand what I'm doing based on the, based on the model of science and why I'm doing it, made simply, then the how gets easier because you assign meaning to it. And when you assign meaning to it, you switch on that prefrontal cortex, and it will find value in the act."
13. 2:11:52 – 2:28:10

    Addiction, Dopamine and Self-Regulating Emotion

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11:52

       What's your view on addiction? What's driving so much addiction?

    2. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:11:56

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11:56

       And what can people do to try and break free?

    4. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:12:00

       Sure. I think it's a, a, a question worthy of a conversation. I think that, um, uh, we've been programmed, and it's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just how we've been programmed. So, um, I think behind every substance addiction or some addiction on some gaming or media or whatever, there's an emotion that the person is doing their best to regulate. So let's just say a person has, uh, been exposed to a trauma, right? And, and when we have an event in our life that changes our emotional state, the stronger the emotion we feel from the shock, the betrayal, the trauma, the news, whatever it is, the more altered we are inside of us, the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot, and that's called the long-term memory. And long-term memories, so we remember them because we can remember the feeling associated with them. So what most people don't know is that trauma or those series of events [swallows] alters our internal state, and every time we think about or remember the trauma, we produce the same chemistry in the brain and body as if the event was occurring. Now, the body is so objective that it doesn't know the difference between the real-life experience that's creating that emotion or the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone. And it only takes a, a thought and a feeling, an image, an emotion, a stimulus and response, and you're actually conditioning the body subconsciously into that emotional state, and that sets the baseline of that person's emotional state. So then the person goes, "God, I feel empty. I feel f- anxious."

    5. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:13:37

       I feel unworthy, I feel resentment, I feel frustrated, and I don't know how to change it. So then they look for things in their outer world to make that feeling go away.

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:13:48

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:13:48

       So whether it's a drug, whether it's gaming, whether it's pornography, uh, whether it's complaining, doesn't matter what it is. But let's just use a pill as an example, or a drug, a recreational drug. A person takes a recreational drug. The moment they take the rec- recreational drug, they notice a change in their-

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:14:07

       Yeah

    9. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:14:07

       ... emotional state, and the moment they notice that change in their emotional state, they associate that change with what caused it, and they, they remember what, what caused it.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:14:16

        Yeah.

    11. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:14:16

        So that starts to create a dependency. Now, I think there are degrees of addiction. Some are very physiological. You know, receptors are modified. But when you get right down to it, an, an addiction is when the body has been conditioned to be the mind. So then the person, every time they start feeling the emptiness, they feel the unworthiness, they feel the frustration, they feel the anxiety, their brain creates the image of what they need to do to make that feeling go away. And the last time, or the last series of times, it was that ex- exogenous substance or that ac- that activity that made it go away.

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:14:52

        Yeah.

    13. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:14:52

        Now, here's the problem. Let's use gaming as an example, okay? So when you blow someone up, or you break through a certain level, or you shoot someone, or you get points for whatever you're doing in a game, there's a release of dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is the reward chemical. It's the pleasure chemical. The problem is, is that the amount of dopamine that's released in, in a very short interval of time is outside of normal.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15:19

        Hmm.

    15. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:15:20

        So now rush dopamine into the brain, and the receptor sites on the outside of the cell say, "This is way too much dopamine than I'm used to processing." So the receptor sites actually close down. They, they shut down. So now in order for the person to get that same feeling, they gotta play more.

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15:39

        Yeah.

    17. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:15:39

        They gotta do more. They gotta... That's, uh... The stimulus has gotta be greater. So, so over time, we start recalibrating those pleasure centers, those receptors, to a higher level. Now, what, what's the significance of that? In the absence of that stimulation, our pleasure centers have been hijacked to such a high level that we can't find pleasure in anything.

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:16:02

        Mm-hmm.

    19. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:16:02

        You can't find pleasure from a sunset. You can't find pleasure from sitting down to the table and having a meal with your family, playing with the dog, going to see your grandparents. A lot... Especially for a lot of children, you, you can look at them and you can see that something happened to them where they're just glazed over.

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:16:17

        Yeah.

    21. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:16:17

        That's because they're kidnapped by the technology, and so in order for them to get that same rush, they have to play more, they have to do more. Now, here's really the big problem. Learning should be a reward in and of itself, right?

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:16:31

        Yeah.

    23. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:16:31

        I mean, learning should be a reward. But now for most people, they need a stimulus. They need something to drive their attention to whatever they're learning. And, and now attention is dependent on something outside of us, and when you capture people's attention, you capture, uh, their energy. So, and you can program them as a result of it. So the solution then is to teach people how to self-regulate. So we see people that come to our work that have had problems with addictions, all kinds of addictions, but really it's some emotional addiction that really-

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:17:04

        Yeah

    25. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:17:04

        ... they're trying to change, right? And so they just have programmed the thing that it has to happen outside of it, uh, outside of us. So what we discovered in our research is that you could actually turn that hypnosis, that conditioning around, and not wait for the experience to produce the emotion, but teach people how to self-regulate their emotional states and be able to trade resentment, frustration, anxiety for an elevated emotion. And if you keep practicing it, you get really good at what you practice. [laughs]

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:17:35

        Yeah.

    27. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:17:35

        So good at it that you actually become it. So, so then when people start to self-regulate, we actually measure what happens to their physiology when they do it properly, and it becomes a habit. And so then when the person notices then that their body's out of balance-

    28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:17:50

        Hmm

    29. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:17:51

        ... they have one of two choices. They can rely on some exogenous substance or something outside of them, or they can take a moment and recalibrate their emotional state. And, and the only, the only challenge I think with addictions is that the moment you say, "I'm not gonna drink coffee, I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes, I'm not gonna drink alcohol, I'm not gonna have sugar," the moment you make that conscious declaration with your conscious mind, the body has been conditioned and dependent on that substance. So two hours goes by, and the body has modified its-

    30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:18:24

        Yeah
14. 2:28:10 – 2:35:04

    Retreat Study Results and Why Men and Women Come to the Work

    1. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:28:10

       we were curious to see what kind of biological changes would take place in one week if you went all in. Like all in. Like immersed yourself in the entire week-long event.

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:28:21

       Like people do on their one-week retreats.

    3. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:28:23

       Yeah, on our one-week retreats. Yeah.

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:28:24

       Yeah.

    5. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:28:25

       So we, so we, we s- we draw blood, and we look at about 2,882 metabolites, all, uh, exosomes, gene expression. And at the end of seven days, the novice meditators, almost 100% of them, show substantial biological changes in their blood that suggests that they're living in a different environment. Now here's the weird part about it. They're in a ballroom. [laughs] There's nothing going on in a ballroom. I've been to thousands of ballrooms. There's nothing very exciting going on in a ballroom. They're actually making those changes inwardly. And I say to our research team, "Where are those chemicals coming from? Where are they coming from?" The person's not taking any substance.

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:14

       Yeah.

    7. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:29:14

       It's coming from within us. And so the nervous system starts manufacturing a whole pharmacy of chemicals equal to the person's intention and emotional state, and it's how we think and how we feel that begins to alter things in our lives.

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:31

       Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely incredible to hear this. What kind of metabolites or, or I guess chemicals are you measuring? Are they to do with markers of inflammation?

    9. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:29:43

       Yes.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:43

        Um-

    11. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:29:44

        Cytokines, uh, markers of inflammation, uh-

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:47

        Markers of the immune system

    13. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:29:48

        ... markers of the immune system, exosomes that have very positive effects that show the cell is in a state of growth and repair instead of, uh, in a state of tissue break- breakdown or catabolism.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:29:58

        I mean, this is profound because, because a lot of people may not realize that just the way you sleep, if you have a beautiful seven and a half, eight hours of deep sleep compared to, let's say, five hours of sleep, the next day you can measure maybe 700 genes are expressed differently in the body. You can be more pro-inflammatory the night after poor sleep. And what you're saying, your research is showing that actually when you take novice meditators, people who don't know how to do this, who, you know, don't have years of experience, they're not monks, they've not, you know, been trained-

    15. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:30:30

        In fact, in fact, not to interrupt you, in fact, if they have no experience, they're gonna do really well 'cause they're gonna do exactly what you tell them to do, especially guys that come and their wives dra- drag 'em along, or people come and their partner wants them to do it, and they're like, "I don't know anything about this." And I say, "You're the perfect person. Just follow the instructions."

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:30:49

        'Cause you have no preconceived notions to undo.

    17. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:30:51

        They just, they just do exactly what you ask them. There's the guy, his heart's blown wide open. He's crying. He's hugging his wife, and she's looking at me like, "What happened to him?" He just fell into something really big. So yes, of course.

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:31:03

        Is that common in terms of the people who come to your work? I'm interested as the difference between males and females. And something you said there really resonated with me. So in my clinic, what I've seen time and time again is that men, and they're well known for this, and of course this is a gross generalization, but I've certainly seen it to be true in my own experience-

    19. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:31:25

        [laughs]

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:31:27

        ... is they wait. They've got things going on. They don't wanna see the doctor. They don't wanna go and get help, and often when they turn up, the first thing they will say is, "Hey, doc, look, I, I'm sorry to bother you. My wife made the appointment for me. My, my girlfriend told me I have to come in and see you." It's almost as if they wanna excuse themselves for-

    21. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:31:45

        Yeah

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:31:46

        ... "Hey, I wouldn't be here wasting your time, but actually, you know, my other half made me do this."

    23. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:31:50

        Right.

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:31:51

        Is that something you see as well in, in, in your work?

    25. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:31:55

        Something similar, but in terms of this kind of genre, we have a ve- very high percentage of men-

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:32:01

        Great

    27. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:32:01

        ... that come to our work. Um, and I think the number one reason why, Rangan, is because we use science, uh, as the model. We, we rationalize. We give... We, we combine quantum physics with neuroscience, with neuroendocrinology, with psychoneuroimmunology, the mind-body connection, epigenetics, electromagnetism. We build a model. And so guys like... They like the... They like to understand all of that stuff so they can reason with it, so they can leap. Women somehow tend to be a lot more intuitive.

    28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:32:32

        Yeah.

    29. JDDr. Joe Dispenza2:32:32

        It resonates with them. They trust that, and they just, they seem to flow a little differently. But then again, you know, we have men that, that come, and of course a lot of times their partner wants them to come, but they really come because they notice the change in their partner. They're like, "Wow, they're way different. W- I can see that their response to things is completely different." In other words, my memory of them, th- this person is not fitting into how I remember them.

    30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:32:59

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:35:04