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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

Unlock The Power of Your Mind To MANIFEST & ATTRACT Anything You Want! | Dr Joe Dispenza

YouTube @drjoedispenza Feel Great Lose Weight is available to order in the UK and in the US & Canada Dr Chatterjee’s book Feel Better in 5 is out now in the UK and in the US and Canada

Dr. Joe DispenzaguestDr. Rangan Chatterjeehost
Apr 29, 20221h 14mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 5:52

    How Repeated Thoughts Make Us Sick

    1. JD

      Our thoughts can make us sick. We can think about our problems, imagine the worst case scenario in our life. We can turn on that stress response just by thought alone. The science says that stress can push the genetic buttons that create disease. If our thoughts can make us sick, is it possible then our thoughts can make us well?

    2. RC

      As I study your work and your research, one of the key messages I get is that the way we think has a huge impact on our health and our happiness, and if we take control of our internal state, in many ways we can take control of our wider lives.

    3. JD

      Yeah. You know, um, one of the exciting things that's happening right now is I'm coming to the realization that this is a time in history where it's not enough to know. This is a time in history to know how. And my interest is to take information that's based on science, and I think science is the contemporary language of mysticism. I think it's science that demystifies the mystical. And if you can apply, uh, and combine a little quantum physics with a little neuroscience, with a little neuroendocrinology, with a little psychoneuroimmunology, a little epigenetics and electromagnetism and, and in a simple way give people sound scientific information. The more they understand this model, uh, and understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, that, the how becomes easier. So, so let's demystify just one simple process. If you believe at all that your thoughts have something to do with your life or something to do with your health, and the research points the finger that 90% of the thoughts that you think are the same thoughts, uh, as the day before. As long as you're thinking the same, more than likely your life or your health is gonna sa- stay the same because the same thoughts lead to the same choices. The same choices lead to the same behaviors. The same behaviors create the same experiences, and the same experiences produce the exact same emotions, and those same emotions influence our very same thoughts and our biology, our neurocircuitry, our neurochemistry, our hormones. Our gene expression stays the same because we're the same. And the principle is nothing changes in our life until we change. So then the principle in neuroscience says that nerve cells that fire together wire together. If you keep thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices, doing the same things, reproducing the same experiences that stamp the same networks of neurons into the same patterns, all for the familiar feeling called you, in time we begin to hardwire our brain and condition our body emotionally to become more of a subconscious program. So 95% of who we are by the time we're in our mid-30s or middle life is a, a set of memorized behaviors, uh, unconscious habits, automatic emotional responses, hardwired thoughts, beliefs, perceptions that function automatically. So if you believe in that idea, then if you wake up in the morning and you think about your problems and your, you know, your brain is the record of the past, the, those problems are connected to certain people and certain, uh, objects and things at certain times and places. The moment you start thinking about your problems, really much you're remembering your past, and every one of those problems has an emotion associated it-

    4. RC

      Yeah

    5. JD

      ... with it. So the moment we feel unhappy, the moment we feel anxiety, the moment we feel unworthy, now our body's in the past. So thoughts become the language of the brain and feelings become the language of our body, and how we think and how we feel is our state of being. But it only takes a thought and a feeling, an image and an emotion, a stimulus and a response, and you're starting the conditioning process and you're conditioning your body emotionally into the known, into the past. You do that enough times, the body's so objective that, that it doesn't know the difference between the real life experience that's creating that emotion and the emotion that person's fabricating by thought alone. The body's believing it's living in the same past experience 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Now, the research on epigenetics says that the environment signals the gene. Okay. Well, the end product of an experience in the environment is an emotion, so then the person is signaling the same genes in the same way because the body's believing it's living in the same environment. So the trauma, the betrayal, the loss, the drama, whatever it is, the diagnosis that causes a person to feel certain emotions, the majority of emotions that we feel, and you know this because you're an expert on it and you write about it, are, are derived from the hormones of stress.

    6. RC

      Mm.

    7. JD

      And stress is when your brain and body are knocked out of homeostasis, right? So [laughs] it makes sense then that when you perceive a threat or a danger in your life, you turn on that primitive nervous system and you're mobilizing all your body's resourc- sources for some threat, real or imagined. No problem if it's short term. But the chronic long-term effects of the hormones of stress downregulate genes and create disease. Now, the problem is we can turn on that stress response just by thought alone. We can think about our problems. We can imagine the worst case scenario in our life. We can capture bitter memories and do that over and over and over again. And in effect, if we can turn on the stress response just by thought alone, and the science says that stress can push the genetic buttons that create disease, then our thoughts can make us sick. Well, the question is if our thoughts can make us sick, is it possible then our thoughts can make us well? And that's kind of my interest.

  2. 5:52 – 11:27

    Why Lifestyle Changes Don't Last

    1. RC

      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. JD

      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, "Well, I can 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. RC

      Mm.

    4. JD

      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, 401ks, whatever it is. It tends to be then that [laughs] the difficult one to manage really is our emotional stress.

    5. RC

      Mm.

    6. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    8. JD

      ... 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 return 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. RC

      Mm. Yeah

    10. JD

      ... 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. RC

      Yeah

    12. JD

      ... 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.

  3. 11:27 – 17:52

    Personality Is Not Fixed: Rangan's Competitiveness

    1. RC

      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.

    2. JD

      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-

    3. RC

      Hmm

    4. JD

      ... 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 the... 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 it. 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 e- 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."

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. JD

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

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. JD

      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 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-

    9. RC

      Mm-hmm

    10. JD

      ... 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.

    11. RC

      Hmm.

  4. 17:52 – 20:40

    Mental Rehearsal and Teaching the Body a New Emotion

    1. JD

      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-

    2. RC

      Mm

    3. JD

      ... 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.

    4. RC

      Mm.

    5. JD

      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-

    6. RC

      Mm

    7. JD

      ... that it's possible to change, and we have great evidence and 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, [laughs] and it's a new level of consciousness that says, "I don't need anything outside of me to change my internal state."

    8. RC

      Yeah.

    9. JD

      "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."

    10. RC

      Mm.

    11. JD

      If you don't know what you're doing and why you're doing it, it's left to conjecture, to superstition, to dogma. And so then lighting a match in a dark place and taking a look at what aspect of yourself, if you wanna be happy, then the first thing you have to do is stop being unhappy. You [laughs] gotta become conscious of those thoughts that make you feel bad-

    12. RC

      Yeah

    13. JD

      ... and the memories that go along with it, and the emotions of that. And, and, and, and disentangling from that program, uh, takes a lot of energy and a lot of awareness.

  5. 20:40 – 28:44

    Athletes, Visualization and Brain-Change Studies

    1. RC

      You mentioned visualization there, really, the, this theme of creating the emotion and the feeling now. You're not waiting for something to happen in the future so you can experience that feeling. You're, you're actually taking control of that and creating that feeling immediately, which is very powerful. And what I think of when you say that is I think about sports people. Tiger Woods, for example, the night before playing 18 holes, he'd be in bed, and he would literally be playing every single hole, every shot, picturing where it's gonna land, walks up, plays that shot. Is it gonna be a little draw? It's gonna be a little cut? H- is it gonna be low? It's gonna be high? To the point where he and other golfers will say when they show up to actually play, they've already played the course. So I know a mutual friend of ours, David Hamilton, when I spoke to him on the show a couple of years ago, David spoke about tennis for him and how, you know, never really played before, and I think within a few months or within [laughs] a year, he was actually doing really well in the men's leagues through this kind of process of visualization. So I think when we hear about it from sports folk, we, we get it. We go, "Yeah, yeah, it's important for them." But, you know, many of us don't think about it with our own health. We think that the way we feel is the way we feel. Oh, you know, I, I happen to feel low and sad. The other thing that I discovered whilst I was researching, uh, for this, for this, um, conversation, uh, Dr. Joe, was there's this wonderful TED Talk by a chap called Anil Seth. He's, uh, a global researcher in consciousness at, in the University of Sussex, and in his TED Talk, he shows this wonderful image of a human being. Literally, there's a false hand in front of them, and he's looking at that false hand. And then after a few seconds, someone drops a knife in on the false hand, and he pulls his real hand away. It's so profound, and this really speaks to what you've just been saying, which is your brain doesn't know the difference.

    2. JD

      Yeah. We don't see things how they are. We see things how we are. And so the... I, I don't like to use the word visualization because I think it's been-

    3. RC

      Okay

    4. JD

      ... I think it's been overused. I like to use the word mental rehearsal. I don't care if you're a virtuoso, uh, musician. I don't care if you are a performer or an actor. [laughs] I don't care if you're a dancer or an athlete. Everybody does this who's engaged in getting better at whatever they do. They will rehearse a course, now, or they'll re- rehearse the act enough times that the, once they can concept the whole thing to its completion and they get out of that think box, then the think box is so important because we have to review our act. We have to repeat it enough times. And the act of mental rehearsal really installs the neurological hardware in your brain. It primes the brain for it so you have circuits to use. Now, mental rehearsal also changes the body. You can take a group of men, uh, and have them imagine or rehearse doing bicep curls for an hour a day for two weeks and add an emotional component called stronger, harder, more intense. And for one hour, they practice in their mind doing those, those curls. At the end of two weeks, there's a 13.5 increase in muscle strength. They never lifted a weight. Their body's changing by thought alone. So the person who's priming their brain and body through rehearsal, when they get in their play box, there's no thinking [laughs] .

    5. RC

      Mm.

    6. JD

      There's just doing. There's just the act. In fact, the thought of what they're doing becomes the experience. They get lost in the act, and their analytical facilities, their, their analytical mind is out of the way and they can, they can sustain a state where nothing in their environment is gonna move them from the state. They're in the feeling of what it would feel like to play well, and they hold onto that feeling. And when the conditions get tense, they actually do something different. They self-regulate, and they actually crave this moment of performance to be able to produce an outcome. And so there's no mysticism to this. It's just what people do when they get really into something, is that we rehearse all the time. So what people understand, if you take a group of people who have never played the piano before, and you teach them one-handed scales and chords, and they come and practice for two hours a day for five days, at the end of five days, if you do a brain scan before and after, they'll grow circuits on the opposite side of the brain. No magic there. You learn something new. Learning's making new connections. You get your body involved. You get some instruction.

    7. RC

      Mm.

    8. JD

      You have an experience. Experience enriches the circuits. Repeat it over and over again, fire and wire, and pay attention and stay present, you'll assemble new neurological, uh, circuitry. Take another group of people, have them close their eyes, and act- actually have them mentally rehearse playing the scales and chords for two hours a day for five days. Scan their brain before and after, and at the end of five days, their brain will look like they've been playing the piano for five days, but they never lifted a finger.

    9. RC

      Mm.

    10. JD

      The brain literally changed through the rehearsal. Okay, so now take the person and put them in front of a piano. They've never played the piano before, and they could actually play those scales and chords like the people who are actually physically demonstrating it. So what does that have to do for the single mother of three children? What does that have to do with the person who's trying to heal a health condition? It's not enough to just have a good meditation and get up and spend the rest of your day reacting and responding to the conditions in your life. That's one hour of living or conditioning your body and brain into the future against 15 hours of you, um, responding emotionally from your past.

    11. RC

      Mm.

    12. JD

      So we gotta rehearse. Okay, how am I gonna be in this situation? How am I gonna change? What would love do today? Or how- what would greatness look like? It's th- it's those frontal lobe questions that actually begins to install the circuitry, and we all do it naturally. The only time we don't do it is when we're living in stress and we're living in survival. Why? 'Cause it's not a time to create. It's not a time to learn. It's not a time to go inward. Uh, it's not a, not a time to dream.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. JD

      It's a time to run, fight, and hide, and if you're spending the majority of your time in the arousal of those stress hormones, then most people then, their senses become heightened. They narrow their focus, and now they're engaged in tr- in doing anything they can, relying on something outside of them to take away that feeling. So if a pe- if people begin to understand that they actually can change and there's a f- they understand a formula to do it, and they practice that formula, and they rehearse it, both b- by mentally rehearsing it and actually participating in it, the effects should be, in the experiment, that something should change either in your body or in your life, and that's why we do it. So when you see the changes or the synchronicities or the coincidences or the opportunities starting to show up in your life, you're gonna pay attention to what you did, and you're gonna do it again. And many people who have chronic health conditions that just get beyond those thoughts and those habits and those emotions that keep them as that same personality and begin to think, act, and feel differently notice dramatic changes in their, in their health and in their biology. And we have the data to suggest that people who do this for seven days, their body looks like genetically and biologically they're in a different life [laughs] .

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. JD

      Their body is no longer responding in the same way, and they're no longer victims to their environment 'cause they can self-regulate. There tends to be a greater resistance-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. JD

      ... uh, to anything in their environment, even on a microscopic level.

  6. 28:44 – 35:32

    Root Causes: Chronic Stress, Addiction to Emotions and the Stories We Tell

    1. RC

      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, 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 h- 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, 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. JD

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

    3. RC

      Mm

    4. JD

      ... over time. 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. 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.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. JD

      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.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. JD

      [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]

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. JD

      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."

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. JD

      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-

    13. RC

      Yeah

    14. JD

      ... as if the event was occurring. Okay. Well, then you tell the p- 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.

    15. RC

      Mm.

    16. JD

      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.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. JD

      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-

    19. RC

      Yeah

    20. JD

      ... 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 people's, are on automatic pilot and 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-

    21. RC

      Mm

    22. JD

      ... 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-

    23. RC

      Yeah

    24. JD

      ... and that's the sweet spot of the present moment.

  7. 35:32 – 43:40

    Staying Present and Moving Beyond the Familiar

    1. JD

      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-

    2. RC

      Mm

    3. JD

      ... 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 cellphone 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.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. JD

      And when that happens, we see this over and over again, energy moves right into the heart. And now the heart all of a sudden starts to beat with more order, more coherence. The autonomic nervous system-

    6. RC

      Mm

    7. JD

      ... is no longer dysregulated from stress. It's starting to organize, and this feeling feels right, right? So then if you can sustain that state independent of the conditions in your, your environment, then you're mastering your environment. You're mastering your life.

    8. RC

      Yeah.

    9. JD

      The response most of the times, if you don't change your response to the conditions in your life, then nothing will change-

    10. RC

      Yeah

    11. JD

      ... including you. So, so, uh, in chronic stress then, the person who's living in chronic stress, they're mismanaging their attention because when you're in stress, stress is created by you can't predict something, uh, you've lost control, or you have the perception that something's getting worse. And so look at, look at the world we live in right now.

    12. RC

      Mm.

    13. JD

      People are in chronic stress. They don't know that, but now they need the arousal to wake them up, and then they need something outside of them, their cellphone-

    14. RC

      Yeah

    15. JD

      ... a, a TV, whatever it is, a movie, a drug or g- drink, whatever it is, to make that feeling go away. And once you notice the change in that internal state, you pay attention to what caused it, and now you're more reliant on the outer-

    16. RC

      Yeah

    17. JD

      ... environment. So then is it possible then to teach a person then to create more coherence in their brain and heart? And we have data to suggest-

    18. RC

      Yeah

    19. JD

      ... that you could change your brain in four days and make it work better. You can make your heart, you can trade resentment, impatience, frustration for elevated emotions and train people how to create more coherence in their heart. The side effect of that, doing that every day, we've done the research, will strengthen your immune system f- up to 50%. Why? 'Cause your response isn't weakening you.

    20. RC

      Mm.

    21. JD

      You're not victim to your environment.

    22. RC

      Yeah.

    23. JD

      So if you're not victim to your environment, then you're less susceptible to anything in your environment, large or small or tiny or microbes or whatever.

    24. RC

      Yeah.

    25. JD

      So then when the person understands that, then they say, "Oh my God, this hatred, this fear, this anger that I've become so accustomed to, I literally have to change that." And when we do, you have to understand that the body's going to crave the familiar feelings 'cause that's-

    26. RC

      Mm

    27. JD

      ... what it's used to, and this is, this is the work. And people come to our work and they say, "I think I'm doing my meditation wrong," 'cause their body's getting aroused and they're getting frustrated. And I say, "No, no, no, no, no. You're actually doing it right." So now instead of reaching for your cellphone, we'll give you something to do. Settle your body back down from that emotional state.

    28. RC

      Yeah.

    29. JD

      Tell it it's no longer the mind, that you're n- you're the mind, and that's a victory. Then the person goes, "I don't like this feeling. I don't know what I'm doing. I wanna get up. I wanna quit. I wanna go eat. I wanna... When's this end?" And they become conscious their body wants to move into the predictable future, and now they're gonna execute a will that's greater than the program and return the body back to the present moment. That's a victory also. And if you keep doing this over and over again, and, you know, the stronger the emotions we feel-

    30. RC

      Yeah

  8. 43:40 – 52:21

    Practical Steps: Become a Scientist of Your Own Life

    1. RC

      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. JD

      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 think they have power over you.

    3. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    4. JD

      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 when 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. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    6. JD

      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. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JD

      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, it 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 he- 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. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    10. JD

      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. 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

    11. RC

      Sorry to interrupt. If you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press Subscribe, hit the notification bell, and now back to the conversation

    12. JD

      Stop telling the story of your past and start telling the story of your future. Stop romancing your past and start romancing your future. 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. RC

      Mm.

    14. JD

      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. RC

      No.

    16. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah.

    18. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    20. JD

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

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. JD

      ... 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. RC

      Yeah.

    24. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    26. JD

      ... 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. RC

      Yeah

    28. JD

      ... 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, I, 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. RC

      Mm-hmm

    30. JD

      ... 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-

  9. 52:21 – 54:16

    Rangan's Own Practice and the Space Between Stressor and Response

    1. RC

      Yeah, I mean, s- [laughs] just, uh, wonderful, right? Wonderful hearing you speak with such passion. I love the idea that we should be our own experiment, because what I'm hearing is, listen, there's no side effects to it. Well, there's no negative side effects said try it, right? Try it. There's no downside to trying to change the way that you think and practicing it and developing it like a skill, and I think that's the, the, the thing for me. This is a skill that you can practice, you can get better at, just as if you get pra- you know, you, you practice running, you may get faster and run for further distances. Well, let's also practice thinking in a different way. So I thought that was really important for people to have in the front of their minds. I practice on myself. I am in my early 40s and genuinely have never felt this good, Dr. Joe. Calm, content, happy. I know I'm responsible for my emotions and my thoughts, so I'm, I've now trained probably over five or six years to get to the point now where external events just don't, I don't allow them anymore to influence my state. And what you said about it not being linear, yeah, I, I have a daily practice and morning routine which has a bit of meditation, a bit of breathwork, a bit of positive mindsets, and you just keep showing up. You keep doing it, and then before you know it, you're in some sort of stressful... Well, you're in a situation in life that previously you would've found incredibly stressful and gone on a negative, um, you know, just like this negative mindset afterwards which would've lead to all kinds of compensatory behaviors, and you're like, "Oh, wow, I, I didn't react to that." I, I, I could see that big space between stressor and response. And, um, I wanna be respectful to your time, but I'd love to just briefly cover meditation and brain waves-

    2. JD

      Sure, sure

    3. RC

      ... if you had time, because-

    4. JD

      Sure

    5. RC

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

  10. 54:16 – 1:01:00

    Brain Waves: From Beta to Alpha to Theta

    1. JD

      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, [laughs] 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. We're, we're l- 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 br- 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, uh, 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.

    2. SP

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JD

      There's a danger. 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- uh, 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 act 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-

    4. SP

      Mm

    5. JD

      ... and pictures. 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 par- 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-

    6. SP

      Mm-hmm

    7. JD

      ... 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 ima- 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.

    8. SP

      Mm.

    9. JD

      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 op- 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 pr- 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-

    10. RC

      Mm

    11. JD

      ... into the subconscious mind to rewrite those programs.

  11. 1:01:00 – 1:03:28

    Heart Coherence, Intention and Elevated Emotion

    1. JD

      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. It'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?

    2. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JD

      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.

    4. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JD

      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-

    6. RC

      Mm

    7. JD

      ... 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-

    8. RC

      Yeah

    9. JD

      ... automatic. It just becomes a skill.

  12. 1:03:28 – 1:08:55

    Starting Out: Learning the Formula and Experimenting

    1. RC

      I know you, um, and, and your team teach a lot of these methods and meditations, um, at retreats and all kinds of, in, 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. Is, 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. JD

      Mm

    3. RC

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

    4. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    6. JD

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

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    10. JD

      ... 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. RC

      Yeah.

    12. JD

      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, but she's all intuitive and feeling. But this, I can do this. It makes sense to me."

    13. RC

      Mm.

    14. JD

      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. RC

      Mm.

    16. JD

      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. RC

      Mm

    18. JD

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

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah

    22. JD

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

    23. RC

      Yeah

    24. JD

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

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. JD

      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. RC

      Mm.

    28. JD

      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. RC

      Yeah.

    30. JD

      They're a magnet. They're some... There are synchronicities, there's 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]

  13. 1:08:55 – 1:14:13

    Final Words: Choose a New Future and Show Others the Way

    1. JD

      Yeah, it's really simple. You already know how to do this. Everybody on this podcast has done something great in their life. Everybody's done something great, and what happened? You got a crazy idea, and that you stuck with that idea long enough for you to begin to feel the emotions of that future before it happened, and no person, no circumstance, no condition in your life would talk you out of that future. And people who truly make the change, I mean, it's, it's... Some people say, "Well, I believe in this. I just believe, I j- just believe it works for everybody else, but it doesn't work for me." Now, this is a defining moment. [laughs] So you gotta make a decision then, and you gotta make a decision with such firm intention that the amplitude of that decision carries a level of energy that causes your body to respond to your mind, that the choice that you make to change your life becomes a moment in time that you never forget. And the stronger the emotion you feel in that choice, the more you'll remember that decision, and that's a huge explosion in the quantum field. And you're giving your body a taste of the future emotionally. And if we did that every day and got up from our meditations or our inward introspection or contemplation differently than when we started, and if you can maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day, get ready because weird things are gonna begin to happen in your life. It's the law, and they're gonna come in ways that you would never predict, that you would never expect. Because if you can predict it and expect it, it's the known. It's gotta come in a way that surprises us, that leaves no doubt that what we're doing inside of us is producing some effect outside of us. And the moment we correlate the changes we're making inside of us with the effect we're producing outside of us, we're gonna pay attention to what we did, and we're gonna do it again. And that's when we start to become more of the creator of our lives instead of the victim of our lives. We know how to do this. We already know how to do it. The brain is wired to be creative. It's just that we have to learn how to break the survival state and those automatic thoughts and those, those habituations of behaviors and, and, and the emotions that we live by every single day-

    2. RC

      Yeah

    3. JD

      ... to a point that when we overcome it, we become somebody else. And who gets to be the beneficiary of that? We do, and then the people we, in our life that we love and then our community and ultimately the world. And we can... You know, people in our work always say this.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. JD

      They, they, they walk back into their life, and people say, "Hey, what's up with you? You're different. You... What is it? What, what did you do? Did you... You, you look differently. What happened?" They're like, "No." And what's happening is the person is showing up, and the person who's viewing them, the memory of them isn't fitting in any longer. [laughs] The person's at a phase. They're, they're... We, we, we, we see people how we remember them.

    6. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JD

      And all of a sudden, something's off, something's different about that person. And why, why is that important? Because if you... There's nothing wrong, wrong with reacting. We all react. The question is how long you react. If your response, like you said earlier, has changed to challenges or conditions in your life and people notice that, you're giving them permission in their life to do the same.

    8. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JD

      You're not saying, "Hey, watch me. Hey, this is how you need to change." This is the time in history where you say, "Let me show you what compassion looks like. Let me, let me demonstrate leadership from my heart. Let me show you. I wanna give you permission, uh, because of mirror neurons, that this is the way it works." And what, what, what happens is an emergent consciousness starts to take place. An emergent consciousness in a week-long retreat with 1,600 people may start in one state of mind and body, but by the end of that week, there's an emergent consciousness.

    10. RC

      Mm.

    11. JD

      And people are completely... The pro-social networks in their brain are activated. They're communing. They're connecting. They're more present, more appreciative of the moment. That's the natural state of being. So is it worth the effort? You ask the person who never missed a day of 18 day- 18 months of doing their meditation to heal their health condition. You ask them if it was worth it. They'll tell you, "My disease was my greatest teacher. I'm so blessed that I have it or had it because now, now I'm a different person." So that's when you're no longer belonging to your past. You're belonging to your future. And, and there's just enough evidence now to say that it is possible. And, and people do the best with what they available, what's available. Now that you know that it's available, you may wanna make a different choice and try it out.

    12. RC

      Change your thinking, change your life. Dr. Joe Dispenza, thank you so much for joining me, and I hope at some point in the future we get to do this again in person and we get to hang out in person. I would really, really like that.

    13. JD

      I'd love that, too. Thank you, Rangan.

    14. RC

      [instrumental music] If you enjoyed that conversation about the power of our thoughts, do check out this one, which will help you find more purpose.

    15. SP

      If you go through that three-step questioning process, you'll get to the truth of what you truly want to pursue and stop yourselves from building a sandcastle which the waves of time will eventually wash away

Episode duration: 1:14:13

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