Dr. K on Fixing Your Anxiety, Redpill Men Are Good, & Beating Cheap Dopamine

Summary

Podcast Summary

Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh

Episode: Dr. K on Fixing Your Anxiety, Redpill Men Are Good, & Beating Cheap Dopamine
Guest: Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K, HealthyGamerGG)
Date: September 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K), psychiatrist and founder of HealthyGamerGG, known for bridging clinical mental health with spirituality, gaming culture, and practical self-improvement. The hosts and Dr. K dive into modern men's psychological challenges, the evolution (and potential positives) of "redpill" culture, practical strategies for managing anxiety and anger, and how cheap dopamine through tech usage is rewiring minds. The conversation strikes a balance between depth, humor, and actionable advice, resonating especially with young men navigating modern life’s emotional landscape.

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Key Discussion Points, Insights, & Notable Moments

1. Dr. K’s Personal Journey: Crisis, Spirituality, and Success

• [02:44] Dr. K shares how a midlife crisis led him deeper into spirituality and reconsidering success:
  "Walking away from good things is how you achieve peace and freedom in life." ([05:16])
• Describes the pressure of traditional expectations ("be a doctor") and his non-linear path—rejected from 120 med schools before acceptance.
• Emphasizes that crises (quarter-life, midlife) are natural inflection points for reevaluating life strategy, not pathologies.
• [07:21] _"Success was survival" for immigrant parents, but that doesn't map onto our era of debt, unstable job markets, or housing issues.
• Compares Eastern philosophies (monk training, yoga, ashram life) with Western definitions of achievement and self-control.

2. Samskaras, Trauma, and Emotional Baggage

• Introduction to Indian/Yogic Psychology ([30:23], [33:12], [35:08])
  Dr. K breaks down the components of the mind per yogic philosophy:
  • Chitta: The backdrop (“the sky” of mind)
  • Buddhi: Intellect, analysis
  • Manas: Emotions and judgments/preferences
  • Ahamkar: Ego/“I am” identity
  • Samskara: Imprints of past emotional experiences (“emotional baggage”)
• Trauma and prior experiences (samskaras) drive disproportionate emotional reactions.
• [26:00] “If you look at what really weighs people down in life, it’s that they accumulate stuff that they don’t know how to put down.”
• Explanation via vivid examples (relationships, academic failures, parental expectations).

3. Ego and Masculinity: Why Men Struggle Emotionally

• [41:17] "When the ego arises, anger will come with it. So these two things will happen."
• Ego as an adaptive (and sometimes maladaptive) protector—either inflates or deflates (“I suck”/“I’m the best”) to defend against pain and rejection.
• [43:48] "When someone else is behaving emotionally, egotistically, and you try to point it out to them, their mind is like a steel wall. No amount of logic seems to work."
• [48:23] “Giving up on life is actually a protective mechanism because then you don’t have to try.”
• Points out the prevalence of anger in men, who often mask sadness and vulnerability due to lack of societal support for men’s emotional needs.
• [66:27] "We expect men to help themselves... When a man needs help, what does society do? It does nothing."

4. Social Connection & Touch for Men

• [77:24] Podcast culture as a modern “male hangout”—one of the last approved places for men to express themselves deeply.
• [81:56] Impact of homophobia on male affection: “At some point, we started demonizing homosexuality and when we started doing that, men stopped touching each other... Now men are so starved for touch.”
• [82:50] "If men can start doing that [emotional connection] for each other, our relationships with women will vastly improve."

5. Cheap Dopamine: Phones, Motivation, and Emotional Exhaustion

• [53:00] "Right now in our society we are messing up our emotional circuitry ... especially through technology use."
• Cheap dopamine from online content, endless scrolling, porn, and gaming drains emotional batteries and creates “learned helplessness.”
• [54:19] “They will ping pong you. And if they don't ping pong you, you will switch to a different app that does a better job of ping ponging.”
• Exhausted emotional circuits = no motivation, more procrastination, depression.

6. Practical Tools for Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Healing

• [55:43] Perfectionism seen as an antidote to anxiety, leading to procrastination.
• [57:18] For overcoming procrastination:
  • Notice big/emotional triggers and the role of ego.
  • Review where reactions first arose (digging samskaras)
  • Use emotional regulation (breathing, journaling), not just overthinking.
  • "Higher IQ is associated with depression and procrastination... because our EQ does not balance." ([58:02])
• Body-based work (breathwork, yoga, physical exercise) is especially valuable for men, who often struggle with traditional "talk therapy."

7. Men, Therapy, & Communication

• [74:01] "Talk therapy is the gold standard for women, but 70% of therapists and 70% of clients have historically been women."
• Men benefit from different therapeutic approaches: physical language, action, somatic experiences over pure talking.
• "Men do something special with anger. We turn all our negative emotions into anger, which is why men are so angry."

8. Redpill Culture: The Good, Bad, and Evolving

• [91:54] The redpill community is heterogeneous and shifting:
  "I think there's a red pill 2.0 that's happening right now, which I think is actually quite healthy... they tell each other to get to the gym, become professionally successful, and go to therapy."
• Why these movements grow: "Anytime we see human beings changing... they are adapting to their environment. In a world where the systems do not support men, men support each other."

9. Anxiety: Mechanisms and Management

• [131:46] Dr. K explains Heart Rate Variability (HRV):
  "People who have anxiety have a very low heart rate variability... This has nothing to do with what you're worried about, it's the way you're physiologically wired."
• Techniques to increase HRV and manage anxiety:
  • Sprint for 60 seconds, then relax (physiological stretch)
  • Daily mind-body practices (yoga, tai chi)
• Acceptance differs from giving up—accept emotion, know some things can't be controlled, and focus on action anyway.

10. Meditation & Psychedelics for Self-Work

• [111:44] Distinguishing meditation from psychedelics: "A psychedelic is like boarding a helicopter up the mountain; meditation is like building the endurance to climb it yourself—with more robust and lasting benefits."
• [108:44] The "ahamkar" (ego) is the source of most suffering—and egolessness is linked to true confidence and freedom.
• [112:41] "Kids are the most confident people on the planet because they have no ego."

11. Acceptance, Responsibility, and Moving Forward

• [153:31] Dr. K distinguishes acceptance from resignation: "Ambition is about the last step you’re looking to take. Acceptance is about the next step. Acceptance means, 'This is my reality. What am I going to do next?'"
• "Acceptance is way harder than people think it is... but the alternative, believing you have no control, is more hopeless."

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Selected Notable Quotes & Timestamps

On Crisis and Personal Evolution

• "Walking away from good things is how you achieve peace and freedom in life." —Dr. K ([05:16])
• _"There are periods of time in our lives where we have to go through crises... we reach a certain point and realize the strategy got us to the wrong place." —Dr. K ([02:52])

On Ego and Anger

• _"When the ego arises, anger will come with it." —Dr. K ([41:17])
• _"Men turn all their negative emotions into anger, which is why men are so angry." —Dr. K ([63:38])

On the Modern Male Experience

• _"We expect men to help themselves... When a man needs help, what does society do? It does nothing." —Dr. K ([66:27])
• _"Podcast is like: it’s all podcast bros because we don’t have this anymore anywhere else." —Dr. K ([77:24])

On Trauma/Samskaras

• _"If you look at what really weighs people down in life, it’s that they accumulate stuff that they don’t know how to put down." —Dr. K ([26:00])
• _"When you have a disproportionate emotional response, that's how you know there's a samskara...that's not coming from now, it's coming from past." —Dr. K ([41:32])

On Cheap Dopamine and Tech

• _"When you scroll on your phone, there’s a ping pong of emotions...it exhausts our emotional circuitry." —Dr. K ([54:19])

On Healing and Growth

• _"You don't need to conquer your anxiety. It doesn't have shit on you, my friend." —Dr. K to Miles Jai ([150:00])
• _"Awareness is enough. You don't actually need to do anything. Just observe." —Dr. K ([104:28])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------|-------------| | Dr. K’s midlife crisis & personal change | 02:37–06:41 | | Samskara, trauma, and emotional baggage | 25:59–41:32 | | Structure of the mind (yogic psychology) | 30:23–36:25 | | Ego’s function in emotional pain | 41:17–48:04 | | Cheap dopamine & emotional circuitry | 53:00–56:25 | | Perfectionism, procrastination | 55:43–59:00 | | Men, anger, & societal expectations | 63:38–67:45 | | Social connection & men’s lack of affection | 77:24–83:52 | | Therapy for men vs. women | 74:01–76:09 | | Meditation, psychedelics, and ego | 104:02–116:55 | | Anxiety, Heart Rate Variability | 131:46–136:12 | | Acceptance and responsibility | 151:04–155:11 |

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Tone and Style

True to Flagrant’s comedic, irreverent, and deeply conversational style, the episode balances insightful, often profound discussion with constant ribbing, realness, occasional raw language, and self-deprecating humor. Dr. K is both earnest and witty, deftly adapting to the wild podcast dynamic but consistently providing grounded, practical wisdom.

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• Crisis is normal and often opens the path to deeper self-examination and growth.
• Modern masculinity is struggling not for lack of strength but from lack of space—emotional, physical, and communal.
• Healing from anxiety and anger involves both accepting what is (and isn’t) in your control and learning bodily as well as mental strategies.
• Technology’s emotional ping-pong is burning out entire generations; cheap dopamine is a silent killer of long-term emotional vitality.
• The so-called “redpill” community is evolving and includes positive, pro-therapy, and self-improvement threads worth learning from.
• Meditation, acceptance, and ego-dissolution are recurring pillars of healing—whether pursued through Eastern tradition, modern apps, or even, for some, psychedelics.
• Men: your emotional experience is valid, and breaking the pattern of hiding emotion, denying touch, and converting all pain into anger can change not just you, but your relationships.

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Final Words

As Dr. K notes, the journey from suffering to healing is not linear or guaranteed, but hinges on courageous self-insight and action:
"Accept that this is the reality now, and what am I going to do about it? That’s the really important thing." ([154:52])

Transcript

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

People who have anxiety have a very low heart rate variability. This has nothing to do with what you're worried about. This is the way that you're physiologically wired. So what you need to do is there's like a red pill 2.0 that's kind of like happening right now, which I think is actually quite healthy. So really, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. If there was not good stuff in there, it would not be growing, right? That's why you're angry all the time.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, no, that's true.

[Miles Jai]

He's reading you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

All those women be yapping. But look at all these podcast bros, right? So at some point we started demonizing homosexuality and went. We started doing that. Men stopped touching each other. We can't just do this, right? We got to do like a. Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

It'S got to be borderline aggressive.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's got to be like, ah, borderline aggressive or borderline homosexual. We can't touch someone unless it's a joke. I want a girlfriend. I want a girlfriend. I want a girlfriend. Just, bro, like, there's no way you can get this person to fall in love with you. Go be the best person that you can and accept that sometimes they're going to say no. So we could all kiss each other on the cheek and we could ask each other, what is your experience of this?

[Miles Jai]

This has been a great podcast, guys.

[Akash Singh]

See, this is where he blames his autism. That's why I don't believe it's autistic. He's just black and homophobic.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I don't even know how to respond.

[Akash Singh]

What's up, everybody? On the podcast today, we are honored to have healthy gamer GG, also known as Dr. K if you're not Indian and if you are Indian, Dr. Alok Kanoja. He is a Harvard trained psychiatrist, maybe a monk, judging by the way he's sitting. I believe him. And the single best source to address mental health in today's duel doom scrolling society. He's here to fix Alex's autism, my anger, and Mark's paralyzing fear of conflict. Guys, give it up for Dr. Locomotion. Give it up for me.

[Mark Hagnon]

How are you, sir?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So autism, paralyzing fear of conflict and just general anger.

[Akash Singh]

And anger and just hold on.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay?

[Akash Singh]

I don't even know how man speedrun this, but if I got a grudge, it ain't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It ain't.

[Akash Singh]

I'm not letting go of it. Like Andrew, who's normally in this seat, he's like, as I've gotten more Successful. Especially if I get more successful than the person I didn't like. I let go of it. I don't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay.

[Akash Singh]

I still am like, nah, that guy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. Okay.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Are we talking about that?

[Akash Singh]

Okay, so here's Fix him.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, they. They have a real problem with this. Even though I'm right 95% of the time, these guys can't handle that. But point is, you're. I. I listened to your Diary of a CEO. I thought it was awesome. I think you're awesome. I've listened to a couple of your videos, but I feel like, and I was just saying this to you. I feel like you're in a different place than you were a year ago when you recorded There is a. You said I've connected more to my spirituality. I'm looking at. You're sitting in half Lotus.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay.

[Akash Singh]

You got the Rudrakshan. I don't think you had that on. You were in a suit. You were like, now you're in the black tee. What's going on?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So probably what? So I went through a midlife crisis a couple of years ago, or started a midlife crisis. We'll see whether I'm done or not.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And, you know, this is something that I think, first thing that a lot of people don't understand is that it's, like, developmentally appropriate. So there are periods of time in our lives where we have to go through crises. I think we're seeing a lot of quarter life crises now. You know, the classic perception of a midlife crisis is like, dude is in his 40s, check. You know, starts, buys a sports car, like, dyes his hair, maybe is going through a divorce or something like that. So I think we tend to, like, first of all, pathologize it. A lot we say that this is a bad thing, but I think that many people, you know, there, there are periods in your life where, like, you are operating based on a certain strategy, and then you reach a certain point and you're like, that strategy is not working anymore.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. There's a ceiling on it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. Or it's just like you, you feel like you're taking all the right steps and you sort of end up in the wrong place. Right. Which is oftentimes how we, like, live our lives. Right. So we're both brown.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so when I was growing up, it's like, look, you're going to be a doctor.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. Yeah. So you did it. I did not.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So. But I, I, I mean, I did it super late. So I started med school at 28.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so I remember, like, you know, going. Going home for Christmas one day, and. And I was like, 24, 25 at the time. And, you know, one of my friends from high school, I was like, hey, what are you up to? And she's like, you know, I'm in my first year of ophthalmology residency, and she's like, what are you up to? And I'm like, I'm applying to medical school for the third time.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You know.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, and you applied three times.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh, yeah. I got rejected from 120 medical schools. Wow.

[Miles Jai]

It's not too late, man.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Right. So. So. And that's what happens, Right. I mean, we joke about it, but that's really what happens. Especially, like, men are, you know, taught to be a particular thing, and then you do all of those things, and you end up in a place where you're kind of like, what am I doing here? Like, what's the point?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So was somewhat unhappy, which is kind of ironic because we, you know, I was successful.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But then as, like, stuff started happening, it sort of felt like it was growing out of control in a good way. So I started streaming back in 2019 and sort of, like, blew up during the pandemic. And then a couple years later, you know, we started this company, and we have, like, this research division, and we have this coaching program. And, you know, I'm going on these podcasts and stuff, and I was like, I don't know if this is actually what I want to do. Oh, right. So what happens is, like, opportunities start coming towards you.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I think a big lesson that I've learned is, like, walking away from good things is how you achieve peace and freedom in life.

[Akash Singh]

Wow. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So you're like, you. Someone sends you, like, a good opportunity, and you're like, oh, I should really take advantage of this.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But is that really what you want to do?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So went through sort of a midlife crisis. Had a lot of problems in my marriage at the time, too. I was just unhappy. And I think my wife is awesome. I think she dealt with it really well and then started to really engage in spiritual practice. So was coasting for a long time. So I spent about seven years studying to become a monk, and then basically, like, went to med school and all that good stuff, and then was like, in residency.

[Akash Singh]

What is studying to become a monk?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So when I was failing out of college. Yeah. So now I'm 19 years old. Just finished my sophomore year. Have like a 2.0 GPA, you know, my parents had tried kind of everything. They tried like tough love. They tried like, you know, being loving and supportive, but I was just playing video games for 16 to 20 hours a day, joined a fraternity. I mean, it was great. Like, I actually don't regret it at all. I think if you wanna, you know, if you wanna screw up your 20s is the time to do it.

[Akash Singh]

That is true.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I also think it's really weird because, like, especially like a lot of Indian people, you know, they'll be like, oh, like I gotta like, get all my stuff done. And I'm like super, like type A, right?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so what they're. The earlier I start working, the earlier I can retire.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah. But you're.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You're trading your 20s for more free. You're giving up the freedom in your TW for more freedom in your 60s.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That doesn't sound like a good job.

[Akash Singh]

It's not. I, I think we define. We are taught by our parents and they didn't mean to, but we're kind of taught success is one metric. It is financial and academic and whatever, and that's it. There's not like a 360 degree view of what success is for us. Like, success is being a great father. Like, if you're a billionaire and not a great father, I think most Indians would still be like, look that guy. But most Indian parents, or at least we would look at that as that successful. But now I'm learning that's failure. If my wife hates me and I have kids who don't resent me, it don't matter what I do in my career, I failed.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So I think that that's a virtue of the world they grew up in and a virtue of the world that we grow up in. Right. So my parents, you know, emigrated from India and like my dad, you know, grew up living in like a 8 by 10 room with like 9 people. So they would sleep like outside the house in the stairwell. Like, so they'd put out like sleeping. Not sleeping bags, but, you know, God was.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Know what that is. But they put out like basically like their beds. They would sleep like in the stairwell, like every, you know, area where you kind of climb up and then, you know, you kind of turn around. So it'd be like one or two people sleeping there.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so they grew up in a, in a situation where like, success was survival.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Like financial success, financial stability and security. Security, absolutely. So, you know, my grandmother would tell me that, like, we'd run out of money on the 25th of every month. And, like, out of money. And so you have to figure out how to, like, stretch for, like, five or six more days. So I think that they grew up with a set of value system, a value system that was sort of determined by the system around them. I think the reason we all. I don't know about y', all, but, you know, I'm making assumptions about Akash, but I can't imagine your path to being a comedian was, like, looked at me favorably. Yeah, right.

[Akash Singh]

No.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so we have to learn a different system. And I think that's why people are struggling so much, because, like, the rules that applied 20 or 30 years ago about how to become successful at the top of the list is go to college, get a good job. Right now that doesn't work anymore. Like, you show up with a ton of debt. Jobs are being replaced by AI. You know, like, 50% of people under the age of 30 are living at home. Buying a house is, like, not really a possibility for most people of, like, the Gen Z millennial generation. So, like, all the old rules don't work, and so we have to discover a new set of rules. And that's what I really tried to start helping people with on the Internet. We got far away from the question.

[Akash Singh]

No, not at all.

[Miles Jai]

Oh, yeah. So just before we get too far, so you said you were doing bad in school, and then that's when you, like, left to practice.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So my dad, I still remember the conversation. We'd been talking for, like, three hours, and it was like one in the morning. And he was like, alok, you need to go to India.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And. And I was like, that's your solution? Yeah. Well, so I think it was a good one. So. So I was like, why? And he's like, you just need to go. And that was the one time in my life that I just, like, listened to him. And so about 10 days later, I think eight days later, I was, you know, getting on a plane and then went to a part of India that I've never been to before. Don't speak the language there, you know, got picked up, like. So I remember, like, walking out of the airport and, like, I didn't understand, like, who was picking me up.

[Akash Singh]

Where in India?

[Mark Hagnon]

Bangalore.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh, okay.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I still remember, like, there was no one with a sign or anything. Like, I just walked out of the airport and I was just, like, there waiting with my suitcases, and there was a, you know, a bunch of people milling about. I Don't know if y' all have ever been to India. And then eventually everyone left.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And there was like one guy there.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And he walked up to me and we like, kind of shook hands. He didn't tell me his name. And he started walking and I started following him. And it's like he's there to pick up someone. He doesn't know who he's there to pick up. I'm there to be picked up. So I just got in a car with this stranger and we started driving.

[Akash Singh]

Sorry, this might not be important. Why'd you go to Bangalore? To me, it's the most western city. So maybe that's why I would.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No. So I was going to an ashram outside of Bangalore.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I flew into Bangalore.

[Akash Singh]

Okay, got it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And this is like reverse Home Alone.

[Miles Jai]

Like instead of them leaving you behind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. So they just sent me. Right. And I was like, desperate. I mean, I had tried so hard to like, get control of my life. Like, I didn't understand, you know, I would. I remember like, every morning I would set my alarm clock and like, my alarm would go off at like 7am Because I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but I started signing up for 8am classes because I thought, like, okay, like, if I sign up for an 8am class, then I have to wake up, right? And then if I. If I get up early, then, like, then I can take control of my day.

[Miles Jai]

I tried that one semester. It didn't work.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's so interesting. So I, like, would try to set up all these structures around me to, like, get me to do the things that I couldn't make myself do. And that just failed catastrophically. The alarm clock would go off, I'd turn it off. I'd go back to sleep. What I discovered, interestingly enough, is the best way to sleep through my alarm clock and avoid all the guilt and shame was to go to sleep at like 5. Then I was so dead tired.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So dead tired that it feels impossible to get out. And I'd just be like, okay, I'll get out of bed tomorrow then. Since I have this morning class load, I wake up around one or two o'. Clock. I have. Oh, if I get my ass out of bed, I can go to like one class at 2:30. But I missed the whole day. Like, might as well just start fresh tomorrow.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then the cycle would continue.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I went to an ashram.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I still remember the first you. Is it okay? That I'm telling stories.

[Akash Singh]

Not. Yeah, everything. Whatever you want to do. We're at it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So, you know, I still remember, like, I got to the ashram around, like, 3am There was no power, so their power had gone out. So they took me to a room, and there was a bed. And then I go to sleep. The moon was out. And then I wake up a little bit later because there's this bell ringing. Someone's ringing a bell. I look outside, the moon is still up. I'm like, I don't know what time it is. I didn't have a cell phone back then.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

This was 2003.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, this is a long time ago. Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then I walk outside, and I see that there are people milling about. I hear, like, toilets flushing, things like that. So I'm like, okay, I guess I have to get ready. And then, you know, I start walking with the. Just following the herd of people in the moonlight. And then I hear this. I'm like, what was that? And then I hear. And then I'm like, that sounds like vomiting. And then I hear a lot of it. Like, people. Like. Like 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 people. And then I'm following these people, and I see there's, like, a ditch.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

With a row of people vomiting, like, liters of stuff into the ditch.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, fuck.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And there's a group of people walking behind them, like, kind of patting them on the shoulder and being like, oh, you're just like, okay. Like. And I'm like, what the is going on? Did I come to the plague? Like, what's happening? Did they eat?

[Akash Singh]

Did they drink the water?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So, yeah. So it turns out it's a yogic practice called vaman dhoti, where you drink a bunch of isotonic water. So like, basically, like, salinated water with electrolytes. And then you vomit it out, and it, like, cleans out your whole system. Oh, shit. He was right. And so it was just this weird, like, bizarre, like, kind of esoteric yogic practice. And what I found in India was basically a system to understand why I could not control myself. Like, I wanted to get up, but I wouldn't get up. And so how does that work? Like, if you want something, why don't you do it? You know, it's, like, such a simple thing, but we don't teach this stuff, right? So fell in love with it because I felt in control for the first time in my life, you know, found someone who was something like a guru, who just really helped me immensely. And then I decided three months later that I was going to become a monk. So I went to one of my teachers and I said, I'm ready to become a monk. Going to take my vows. And so my teacher said, you know, becoming a monk is about giving up a life. And you don't have a life to give up. You're like, nothing. Oh, God. So he said to me, that's the.

[Akash Singh]

Most Indian parent shit ever.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You're a loser.

[Akash Singh]

What are you giving up?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So he said, you know, I'll teach you so you can come back every summer and every December and you'll continue learning. Like, you can progress and do, like, more advanced spiritual practices and things like that, but you're also going to go get a doctoral degree. And then if you decide at the age of 30 that you want to take your vows, if you still want to do it nine years later, you can still continue learning, then we'll take you.

[Akash Singh]

Okay?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I was like, okay. So then I went back to the US and I was like, okay, I'm going to go get a doctoral degree. Met my wife. She's Indian, right?

[Akash Singh]

So, Jesus. I knew I liked this guy. I knew I like this guy.

[Mark Hagnon]

He's a big, brown love guy.

[Akash Singh]

I love brown love.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I also love brown love.

[Akash Singh]

You didn't even know you loved it. Yeah, this guy acts like a monk, dude.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay? It's the first time he's ever said.

[Mark Hagnon]

Brown love in his life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

When I'm really doing brown love, I don't know if I look like a monk. Y' all gotta check out the OnlyFans, too. Which is interesting, because actually, one of the things that we discussed, like, literally a week ago, my wife was like, you know, we should really start an OnlyFans. And she's CEO of Healthy Gamer. She's my boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she wasn't even so Indian.

[Akash Singh]

It's unbelievable.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Unfucking believable, dude.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

We need to talk about the Kamasudra, by the way. But that's a later conversation. We can talk about that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So, yeah, she was saying, like, you know, you should, like, start helping people on OnlyFans. And anyway, so going back to the monk story, so then I went back and I met her and then promptly fell head over heels. We were dating for a couple of years, and then at some point, I was like, okay, I have to get a doctoral degree. And she was like, I want to be married. She was watching Grey's Anatomy at the time, and she was like, I want to be married to a neurosurgeon. So I was like, why the hell. So it's so funny because people think that, you know, the, the early when I like, was I majored in pre med, obviously.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But like, I was like, oh, I'm going to be doctor. You know, like, I'm going to be best doctor, I'm going to go to Harvard. I'm going to be the best. And then years later, it's like, we're gonna do this so that we can get laid until we're 30 years old and then we're gonna give it all up. And so I was also like telling her, I was like, you know, there's no like long term potential here because, like, I really wanna become a monk and that's my path in life. She's like, yeah, whatever. She was like, okay, fine, whatever. Like she did at all. And so ended up going to med school and then really didn't care about like grades and stuff because I wasn't like, you know, oriented towards that stuff at that point. And then it was actually kind of embarrassing because my mentor called me after like the day of graduation. He's like, where are you? And I was like, oh, you know, I'm not coming to the dinner or whatever. And he's like, you're like, I'm presenting an award for you, like, why aren't you here? And I was like, oh, shit. Because I didn't even know, like, I'd never looked at my grades, like, so I ended up winning a couple of awards.

[Akash Singh]

How do you not look at your grades?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, so like, that's a big part of like spiritual practice is not being oriented towards the outcome of your actions. Okay. So you focus on the action itself.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so everyone around me, I still remember, like the first year of med school, I like kind of came in, I was a little bit older. It's a bunch of like 22, 24 year old kids. I was 28 at the time. And then they're so paranoid about like, grades, grades, grades. There are a bunch of these, like, you know, brown kids and Asian kids and white kids and black kids and Hispanic kids. And they're all not a bunch in.

[Mark Hagnon]

Order, by the way.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So it's funny you say that. So I still remember my. The day I walked into intern orientation at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Like, a third of the room was brown, a third of the room was Asian. Yeah, like East Station. And then the third of the room was everything else. And I was like, this is insane. I never.

[Mark Hagnon]

Our jobs.

[Miles Jai]

Yeah, absolutely, man.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

All over the world.

[Akash Singh]

I mean, there's.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's a big problem right now. Someone's talking about it, and then they also litter all over the place. Wait, what? Like. Like brown?

[Akash Singh]

Have you guys not heard about real things?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's. It's a real problem.

[Akash Singh]

I remember going in. I'm in my uncle's house. I had, like, a wrapper or some junk food, obviously, because I'm fat. And I was like, hey, where should I throw this away? I don't see a trash can.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

He's like, I just throw it outside. Yeah, it's. It's.

[Mark Hagnon]

I did see a video of a hotel, I think, in Mumbai, where a girl brought her trash can, and the guy goes, oh, thank you so much.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then tossed it over the fence.

[Mark Hagnon]

I was like, well, what's their culture?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Not gonna judge. Yeah. It's like when you have 1.4 billion people, like. Yeah. Maintaining civil order is, like, super hard. A little tricky.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Anyway, so I don't remember where I was.

[Akash Singh]

You're in med school. You're getting an award. You miss it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So. So that's what.

[Akash Singh]

You just know that you pass. That's all you know?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. I mean, I. I knew I had passed. Like, you know, you sit down, you take a test, you know, whether you know the answers or not. I didn't know about this. Didn't know about this. And really, I mean, when I was in med school, my orientation was like, okay, I'm gonna be a doctor one day. You know, I'm gonna just try to learn as much as I can because I'm not gonna, like, practice. I don't know if I'm going to practice for long, but. And then was 30 years old when I was still in med school and had gotten married at that point, I think. Yeah. So decided to get married. Decided not to become a monk, so. But really was just about. And this is what I even tell, like, the medical students and stuff that, you know, I'll mentor. I think a lot of people think, like, medical school is all about getting grades because this is the way we've been conditioned, right? So, like, you got to get A's in high school. You got to make the decision to become a doctor at the age of 15.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then you got to be, like, do good in high school so you can get into a good college. Be at the top of your class in college so that you can, you know, so your grades. Grades, Grades, grades, grades. Parents. Parents. Parents. Parents, parents. So all these kids are, like, oriented towards getting good grades. But Like, I still remember I was doing interviews for residency. So I was like on a flight, and then there's like, you know, you hear this intercom and it's like, is there a doctor on the plane? And I was like, like, I'm a fourth year medical student. I'm not a doctor.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then like, I'm like, okay, hopefully somebody else will answer.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And then like a few minutes later, they're like, is there a doctor on a plane? And I was like, oh, yeah. You know, so then I, I like ring the call bell and I go to the back. Thankfully, there was another doctor on the plane. So I was like, you know, I'm a fourth year medical student, happy to help. And there's like a dude, like, laid out.

[Akash Singh]

Yes. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And it's like, is he having a heart attack or a panic attack? And so I, I felt lucky. But that's what I sort of realized at that moment. And this is what I tell everyone who goes to medical school is one day you could be somewhere, like a wedding. So 50% of the weddings I go to will have at least one medical emergency, you know, that are Indian because there's like hundreds of people there. And you don't get to say, I didn't study hard enough. I don't know what's wrong with you. Right, right. At the end of the day, like, the practice of medicine is like a human being walks into your office and if you make a mistake, like, this person could die. So you should learn as much as you can about the human body. Don't just focus on the thing that you want to do. Like, everyone sort of focuses on their specialty. But I strongly recommend that if you're going to be a psychiatrist, you should focus on everything else in medical school because you have your whole life to learn psychiatry. But this is the last time you're going to get a chance. Like, I haven't delivered a baby in like, you know, what, 10, 10 years? And so every baby that I delivered, like, hopefully those are the last babies that I'm going to deliver and I won't have to deliver a baby. But if you're on a cruise ship or something and some woman goes into labor, you don't get to say, yeah, I'm a medical doctor, but I'm a psychiatrist and I just know how to talk about feelings. Like, I don't know how to do that.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So went through medical school and then how do we. Why, why am I talking about my life story? Oh, hello.

[Miles Jai]

I was wondering if you ever went like did the whole shave head Taoist silence.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So the other big decision I realized is that like after years of spiritual practice, I realized that I wanted to become a monk out of ego. So like I had failed at life. Right. So I remember like being 26 and hearing from my friend who was like finishing med school and I'm like applying for the third year in a row. And then so like, you know, what happened in my ego was like, oh, these people are better than me. How do I become better than them? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to become a monk. I'm going to become non materialistic. Give it up. I'm better than you. You are successful, but I am a monk. I see you are chasing all of these monies. I'm better.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. I'm developing these fantastic accent. If mine was that good, I'd have a whole different career.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, I'd be selling out the garden right now. Unbelievable.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Your accents, dude.

[Akash Singh]

It's not that good because my mom moved here when she 14, so she hasn't. She has an accent, but it's not like the traditional accent. And my dad's is kind of off too. It's not like it's so hot. I didn't have that like Indian accent in my house, so I didn't learn that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So what's funny is my kids will do the accent really, But I don't know where they're learning it because we're not. They don't speak that way. My mom doesn't have it anymore. It's so weird. Like it's like genetic or something.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, maybe it's so they're like, I'd be a doctor if I had the accent. I'm missing this genetic component.

[Mark Hagnon]

Because you're Pashtun this whole time. That's really what it is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Exactly.

[Akash Singh]

Fucking unbelievable.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So I decided that spiritual practice is like not about wearing robes and shaving your head. It's how you live on the inside. It's all like internal. Like that's what it is. Like you don't. It's not about what you physically do. It's about your attitude and what happens in your mind and what happens internally. So I was like, oh, I don't need to do that.

[Mark Hagnon]

It seems like there's a transformative like point. Like I don't know if there's like a specific moment or it kind of happens over time. But I'm curious, were you able to sort of self diagnose the things you were going through? In that period while you're in college, dealing with this sort of lethargy and, like, maybe depression again, I don't want to diagnose you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

And what exactly is underlying there? And what are the tools you use to get yourself out of that rut?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I can absolutely look back retrospectively and understand exactly what was going on. So I don't know if there was, like, a moment, but would I have qualified for clinical depression? Absolutely. If I saw a psychiatrist, like, I met all the criteria, wasn't getting out of bed, all this kind of stuff. I mean, I was addicted to video games. And so I think I probably could have been diagnosed that way. But I think in terms of the understanding, I think it happened really in phases. Right. So the first thing that happened was I sort of learned from a perspective of ego and stuff like that. I was like, okay, I'm, like, doing all this stuff out of ego, so I'm going to just devote myself to action. So that's also where, like, you know, if you. If you look at getting rejected from med school for basically three years in a row, a lot of people would, like, give up. Right. But the reason you give up is because each rejection is not an individual event. It becomes a pile that you carry.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So if you look at what really weighs people down in life, it's that they accumulate stuff that they don't know how to put down. So in my case, every rejection, I'm like, oh, this is like me holding onto stuff that's called a samskar. So I'm going to let that go. I'm going to change the way that I view this, that I have a bunch of. I have the storm. Samskar. Samskar.

[Akash Singh]

What does that mean? Samskar is teaching.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. It's the same word, but it has a couple of different meanings. The way that I understand this is so you know, when we say, like, oh, I've been traumatized, like, you carry emotional baggage, right? So if you sort of look at the way that human beings work, we have emotional experiences and we internalize them in some way. We carry them around. So a great example is I had a patient once who was engaged to be married. When she found out her husband was, like, living a lie. So husband claimed to have a job, would leave the house every day, or fiance would leave the house every day, would go to his parents place. Brown guy, okay. Would go to his parents place, would just hang out there during work hours, and then would drive back and his parents were Putting money in his bank account. Wow.

[Akash Singh]

Yikes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So all of them were maintaining this lie that he's got, like, a career so that he can get married. And so she ends up, like, discovering this one day because someone sees him somewhere, and then he's, you know, he, like, goes to McDonald's or something, and he gets spotted, I think, literally at a fast food drive through.

[Akash Singh]

Yikes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

On in a different part of town. And she thinks that he's got an office over there. So she starts asking him about it, and he's like, oh, yeah, like I had something. But she can tell that he's kind of BSing. So then she starts digging, digging, digging. And then basically, like, discovers, like, he's not employed and his parents are in on it, and they're, like, depositing money in his account. That's great. That's crazy. And so she's so terrified of this. Then she gets into another relationship. And then this is how she ended up in my office because she's now scared because her husband won't let her look at her phone. Right. So she's like, I want to look at his phone, and I want to make sure he's not having an affair. So the second person has given her no indication that he's unfaithful. But what happens is when she sees certain things. So when she sees him on his phone, like texting people or whatever, like, late at night, her brain has these prior experiences which then interpret this completely normal thing with the context of her experience. Does that make sense?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So even there's nothing wrong. I had this experience in the past. I'm carrying this experience forward and injecting it in the present. And if I don't know what yalls like, relationships are like, but we see this all the time in relationships where, like, they're not judging you.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

They're. They're judging all of their past, and they see their past in you. Yeah, Right. Which is why we'll talk about relationship baggage. We know is a society that people, like, carry stuff forward. So what is the mechanism through which we carry that stuff forward? That's what in Sanskrit is called samskar. This is in psychiatry. We'll call it trauma.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Where now you've been traumatized, so you see the world in a different way.

[Akash Singh]

Guys, big announcement. First of all, we have a lot of dates from now until the end of the year@akash singh.com but the Generational Triumph Tour, we're entering theaters starting 2026. We're going to be at theaters probably near you. Pre sale starts now. Go to akashing.com the code is akash and then the full on sale is Friday. Thank you guys so much. We're in theaters, baby. We got some big announcements coming that I left off the list. You'll see what they are soon. I'm very excited. Let's get back to the show. I love you.

[Mark Hagnon]

And we're back with a brand new ad rate ASMR style. We're going to be in Dubai October 7th, Nashville, Tennessee, Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Denver, Hoboken, Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Detroit and a bunch of other places.

[Akash Singh]

You can suck his dick.

[Mark Hagnon]

You can get it. Mark Hagnon live. I'll see you guys all the show. Thanks so much.

[Miles Jai]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Let's just understand what a Samskara is. Yeah, actually, let's take a step back and understand what the mind is. So what I like about the theory of mind from yoga in the karmic religions is that it's kind of a DIY theory. So if we look at like, if you study psychology, it's really hard to understand like Freud's theories in terms of like what's going on in your head. So Freud was like, there's an anal stage, a phallic stage, an oral stage, and like, I don't know what that looks like in my own life. Right. I mean, maybe if we're talking about onlyfans, but you know, like a lot of these psychological concepts, if you sort of look at the way that psychiatry developed is like you're sitting in that chair and you're talking to me. You're making observations about my mind and you're the psychiatrist and then you develop these theories. But fundamentally you have no idea what I'm thinking or what my. You don't know what my internal experience is. So Western psychology and psychiatry is about observation from the outside. That's how our whole system of medicine works.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So how do we know if you have.

[Akash Singh]

And I'm trusting that you tell me everything.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Well, we account for the fact that I'm not telling. Right. So. So that's how we learn how to detect things. But if we look at like even how do we know if you have Covid or not? We'll like, you know, do a swab, we'll take a chest X ray. So western medicine is like, you're over there and I'm going to look from the outside. So if you look at the application of psychological theories, it's really hard to do yourself, right? It's very hard to like therapize yourself, right? Whereas in the yogic system they had one bit of information which western science doesn't have access to, which is they could observe the mind. So I know what's going on in my mind. None of y' all know what's going on in my mind, but I know what's going on in my mind. So the yogic system I think is way better if you want to do self work, which is all what yoga is about. Like yoga is not about helping another human being. It's about my journey to enlightenment, right? I'm only working on myself. So in their system of mind, which I think is super cool, I've taught this to like 8 year olds and it's amazing how accessible it is to people. So the first is that you've got four parts of the mind or five. So chitta. Chitta is what I would call like the sky. It like if you look at the sky, there's like clouds in it, there's the sun, there's the moon, but there's like a backdrop. So the chitta is sort of the backdrop on which other things exist. People will also call the chitta the unconscious. But I don't think that's really fair. Second part of the mind is something called buddhi. This is intellect. So we all have a capability of reasoning and analysis. Third part of the mind is the manas. So this is the emotional mind. Also the judgmental mind. Also the part of us that gives us like or not like. Okay, so just to give you a simple example, if you give me almond butter versus peanut butter. Do you like almond butter or peanut butter?

[Akash Singh]

Peanut butter.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Peanut. Peanut. Okay, so all three all like peanut butter more than almond butter. Which part of you does the liking.

[Mark Hagnon]

The muna, the manas, right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So there is this thing within us that gives us preferences. We don't choose them. It's not our intellect, it's not analysis. And if you pay attention to that thing, that's the same thing that gives you emotions because the emotions just come up. You don't choose to feel a certain way, right? It is a preference or a reaction that arises within you. Then you can analyze it, you can think about it. But if I touch you over Here, that's gonna make an emotional reaction. Right? Now you're suppressing it, right? But as I'm touching you, what's going on within you?

[Mark Hagnon]

Fucking get off me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? So that's the manas reaction. And then your Buddhi is like, it's Catholic.

[Akash Singh]

He's afraid of how much he likes you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

When you feel uncomfortable, you lock down. And when you feel uncomfortable, you make a joke. So then we have this initial reaction and then we respond to it in a particular way.

[Mark Hagnon]

Natasha is like, nope.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So, yeah, you got lucky or unlucky. Then the third part of the mind, and this is, I think the main thing that, that Western psychology sort of doesn't get right, is the third part is the Ahamkar. The Ahamkar is what we call ego, but is the feeling of I. So this is not whether you like peanut butter. Do you all see how, like, liking peanut butter is like, qualitatively different from an emotion which is qualitatively different from, like, my ability to do logic. So Ahamkar is if I. If you make the statement I am dot, dot, dot, anything that comes after the is your ego. That's the Ahamkar. So if I say I'm a man, that's my ego. Now that seems really weird because we'll say, well, like, you are a man. Because I've got. So let me ask y'. All. Are y' all men? Yes. How do you know?

[Mark Hagnon]

You say XY chromosomes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

You could say, you know, okay, biology, the way we operate in society.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So let's say that, like, you have an accident and something happened, that you no longer have a penis. Are you still a man?

[Akash Singh]

I don't know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right.

[Mark Hagnon]

It challenges yourself. Scope of masculinity, certainly.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Right. So if you sort of think about your experience of life, like when I take a sip of this water, if all of my existence was just. What if. Let's say I was conscious of just one moment of life, which is this moment, would I be a man?

[Akash Singh]

I don't know. You don't know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So that it's just sipping water.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That's all it is. So if we really look at our lives, like whether I'm taking a dump or eating a taco or sipping water. Right. Like 99% of our lives, me being a man is like, not a real thing. You wouldn't be able to detect being a man. You know, when. When I'm. When I pull the covers over my head, like, I'm not a man or a woman. I'm Just a dude with covers over my head. So this is where a lot of, like, our identity, our Ahamkar, is like, this is our. It causes us a lot of problems. Maybe the reason that you get angry. We'll talk about that.

[Akash Singh]

Can't wait.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Conflict avoidant.

[Mark Hagnon]

Also, this notion of like, the I am blank, like, this is tied into like, machismo. We're describing, like.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Sure.

[Mark Hagnon]

You know, masculinity, for example.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

Like, I guess we can understand physiologically people may be, you know, male or female based on, like, chromosomal makeup. But in terms of how that actually manifests in society, that's ego.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

So.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So you. If I say I'm a doctor.

[Mark Hagnon]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. So question number one. Am I me? Yes. Okay. Am I a doctor? Yes. Yes. Was I me before I was a doctor?

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes. Okay. So is being a doctor part of me? Yes or no? Yes. It.

[Akash Singh]

So which part of you?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's a part of me. But. So if we sort of do that exercise with every attribute of ourself. I'm successful. I'm rich. What we'll discover is that, like, all those things are temporary. Right. Like, I could lose my license. Like, I could retire. Then am I still a doctor? All of the things that we think we are are actually illusions. Okay, so like, let's say I'm a doctor. If I got trapped on a desert island for the rest of my life, would I be a doctor? Right.

[Akash Singh]

I would say yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But why?

[Miles Jai]

His license would expire.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right.

[Mark Hagnon]

And then there's no longer a practice of.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, this is interesting. Maybe this is how I look at the world. But your achievements are something that live on. They cannot.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Where do they live on? Very good.

[Akash Singh]

In your. I guess in your ego or like, what?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely right. So it lives on within me in my psychology.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. What I used to say is, as I climb in the career, like early, early, early on, I'd be like, oh, they. They can't ever take that away from me. Even if I don't make it, if I stop after my first good review and I don't become, I can't sustain as a comic. I did these things. You can't take away from me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right.

[Akash Singh]

And being a doctor is something they can't take from you. They did.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You've done that. Yeah, but so you notice how that structure requires a me. Right? So remember, we're talking about parts of the mind that's not an emotion. It's not even logic. That cannot exist unless there's a me. So that's the third structure. Of the mind, or fourth, if you can cliche that, then we get to Samskara. So Samskara is basically, I kind of think about it like emotional baggage that lives within you. So it's sort of like when we feel powerful emotions. Generally speaking, what happens is some of those emotions go dormant. They don't disappear. Right. So if I get, like, bitten by a dog, the next time I see a dog, I'm going to feel fear. Where is that fear coming from? I'm not in any danger. So what happened is when I got bit by the dog in the first place, let's say my mom or dad comes up to me and let's say I'm a kid and they're like, oh, you're crying, crying, you're crying bit. I'm like, let's get you an ice cream. They get me the ice cream and suddenly I'm happy. So even though the emotion seemingly has disappeared, it can absolutely come back. So that's how a Samskara works. So usually what happens is we go through life, we are accumulating this emotional energy which then comes up. Right. We call triggered.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So if I say this particular thing, just don't comment about my beard. Like, don't ever talk about my beard. You know, like that. Oh, just like, you can say anything, but you just don't do this. Like, how does that work? I'm not saying whether it's, like, fair or unfair or kind or unkind. Just how does that work mentally? So generally speaking, what we find is that if you have a Samskara, here's the first way to detect it. When you have a disproportionate emotional response to a situation. I've been doing that. Yes, you have. Right. That's why you're angry all the time. Because that dormant energy comes up over and over and over again because the source of it is in your subconscious. Okay. And you calm yourself down. You calm yourself down. You make jokes about it. You make jokes about it, right? That's when you respond to it in the right way. But it'll bubble up.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, no, that's true.

[Miles Jai]

He's reading.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You're awesome.

[Akash Singh]

My wife be pissing me off and I'd be making jokes a lot. Or I'll just kind of look at her and laugh because it's like, like, ah. I don't want to get angry.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

See, that's beautiful. You know the root of that?

[Akash Singh]

I've never lost my temper with any of these guys. I have a temper, but this. This thing that he. It's a. Whatever, dude.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's okay. It's all right. You know, I hate you, dude.

[Akash Singh]

All right, go ahead.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So. So here's the really interesting thing. So if you guys.

[Miles Jai]

You triggered something.

[Akash Singh]

He triggered. Yeah, I feel. I find it's a bit unfair, but go ahead.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Go ahead. You find it unfair?

[Akash Singh]

I find it a bit unfair.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I'm misjudging you.

[Akash Singh]

I feel they're misjudging me. You're not. If you did that, then I'll believe it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So which part of you gets judged? The intellect, the manas or the ego?

[Akash Singh]

The ego.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

100%.

[Akash Singh]

100%.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And when the ego arises, anger will come with it. So these two things will happen. So another key thing to understand. So let me finish this. Okay. So first thing is, if you have a disproportionate emotional response, that's how you know there's a sum. Scott. Because that's not coming from now, it's coming from past.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Second thing to understand is when your Samskara activates, your ego will activate to protect you. So when I was in college and I joined a fraternity, I was hanging with my homies, and what we would do is we.

[Akash Singh]

Brown fraternity.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No.

[Akash Singh]

Damn.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So, yeah, Brown fraternity. Dude, there's. I mean, no offense to people who join Brown. They're, like, so toxic. At least they were at UT back when I was there. There was, like, two of them, and they'd always get.

[Akash Singh]

Dude, I know. Probably the Brown attorneys. There was a Beta Chi Theta, and there was fucking. That was my cousin. DSP Delta.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. Okay.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So, like, they would always go to 6th Street. They'd go to clubs, and then they'd always fight with each other. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It was like. It was just.

[Akash Singh]

Anyway, funny.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So. So one. Once you have that negative. So I like. I like a girl, right?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I'd be like, oh. Like, my friends would be like, who do you like? And I'd be like, oh, yeah, she's hot.

[Akash Singh]

Like, whatever.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Then you, like, ask her out, and she says no. Right. That's not good. Then what happens?

[Mark Hagnon]

Oh, your ego.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh, she's not worth it.

[Akash Singh]

She sucks.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

She.

[Akash Singh]

This.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, she's ugly. Like, I was doing her a favor. Right. So how do I feel emotionally? I feel rejected. And then my ego comes in and it does one of two things. It either puts them down or it pumps me up. That's how the ego works.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. So the sequence of event is, I'm going through life. I have a disproportionate Emotional response. I feel a ton of emotion. Happens a ton for men, by the way. Yeah, Women to. But I see this a lot in the men that I work with. Then what happens is you'll have some kind of thought and you can pay attention. You can track this in your mind. I will start thinking negatively about somebody else or I will think positively about me. And then here's the really interesting thing. So if you argue with someone who says I didn't like her anyway, no amount of argument is going to work, right?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

If you didn't like her anyway, why did you ask her out? Ah, it's just I felt like it at the moment.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So this is where a lot of people get so frustrated because they'll try to use when someone else is behaving emotionally, egotistically and you try to point it out to them, their mind is like a steel wall. Like there's no amount of logic that seems to work.

[Akash Singh]

The defense mechanism is so strong.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely.

[Mark Hagnon]

Can I ask you about a third option? Do you want to continue on this? I guess what if you agree, like, is it possible that a woman could reject you and you go, you know what? She's right, I am the worst. I do suck. Is the ego getting attacked in that case?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So this is where there's two. Yes, so this is where there's two kinds of ego. So this is what's really interesting. So in the west we're very familiar with narcissism, right? And narcissism is like, I have a big ego, so I'm the best, I'm better than everybody else. Everybody should, you know, get in line to spend time with me. There's another kind of ego, this gets a bit technical, called Dom Sik ego, which is just as powerful of an ego, but it is negative in direction. I'm a loser, I'm pathetic. I'm an incel. And if you try to talk to a narcissist about how they're not the best shit on the planet, they will never understand. And if you talk to an incel, which I've done a lot about how they're not pathetic. You're not a loser. You're, you know, like you've had some bad experiences. But believe in yourself, man, that low self esteem is also ego. Because the really strong thing is I, I, I, I, I. And when I work with patients who are depressed, it's really interesting what they say. I'm a loser. My family is better off without me. My kids would be so much better if I was not alive anymore. Everyone at my job hates me, but it's still me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Which is what's really interesting. Because if we look at meditation and psychedelics and their usage in treatment, refractory depression, the mechanism through which they work is they shut off a part of our brain called the Default Mode network. This is the part of our brain that gives us self awareness and allows us to think about ourselves and self reflect. So when someone is hyper super depressed, they're constantly thinking about themselves. I'm a loser, I'm pathetic. When someone is narcissistic, they're constantly thinking about themselves. When we shut off that part of the brain, that's what correlates with healing and depression. Healing from some degrees of trauma and meditation shuts off that part of the brain too. So then we start stop thinking about myself, right? That's sort of like I'm not trying to get an A in class, I'm not looking at my grades. I don't care about achievement, right. It's just I'm going to try to learn medicine as best as I can. So once the Default Mode network shuts off, and this is why people with psychic who use psychedelics like they feel connected to everything, I realize I wasn't what I thought I was. This whole life has there's this bigger purpose, this grander thing. I used to exist like this and now I realize that I'm so much more than that. So it's really fascinating how all these things there's a lot of. And the reason I sort of talk about these yogic concepts is because I think there's a ton of scientific evidence for them. Now.

[Mark Hagnon]

I detoured you a little bit. You were talking about how the ego will pump you up.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So here's the sequence of events. First of all, you have an experience where there's more emotion than you can metabolize. And we'll get to that in a second. That emotion goes dormant. Second thing that happens is you are going about your life and you encounter something that pisses you off, makes you way more sad. Really good example is you're walking down the street, you see two people. This happens a lot in my community. I see two people holding hands and it just makes me so angry. It's like, what did they do to you? They did nothing. That, that powerful jealousy arise. I want that. I hate them for having that. I want it. I hate myself for feeling this way. There's all kinds of just emotion that comes up.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Then the ego arises. So how does the ego protect us. Let's see if we can do this, okay? It's okay if y' all don't get it. It's a hard question because I'm just introducing these concepts. But for people listening at home, how does the ego protect someone? What does it say to you when you see two people holding hands and you feel incredibly jealous and incredibly angry?

[Akash Singh]

They're probably not even happy. They're probably just doing this because they don't love each other and they're pretending.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Or that's one way of the ego. Yeah, you don't need that. That's another way of the ego, right? We see that all the time, right? Dudes who are like, yeah, I don't need anybody else. I'm a pillar, I'm a mountain. I'm a stoic, right? I don't need anybody.

[Mark Hagnon]

That guy's probably gay, holding hands with a woman. You know what I mean? What's he doing?

[Akash Singh]

That's what a bitch.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That's one way of doing it, right? So I think the more common way is I'm a loser. That's never possible for me. Right. Because that's protective. It's 100% right. Because if it's impossible for me to get a girlfriend, if I'm so ugly, so pathetic, what does that allow me to do?

[Akash Singh]

Not go after it, not have to.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. And when I don't go after it.

[Mark Hagnon]

You can't get rejected.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Which means I protect myself. From what?

[Akash Singh]

Rejection.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Rejection, pain, negative emotion. Right. So giving up on life is actually a protective mechanism because then you don't have to try.

[Mark Hagnon]

And so when you see people that are self sabotaging, is this going in line with this sort of thinking here?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It could be. That's one form of self sabotage. But there's all kinds of other reasons why people will, quote, unquote, self sabotage. But I think that a lot of people. So a lot of people who are stuck in life have a certain identity which excuses them from action, right? So you'll look at these people and you'll see like, oh, like this person isn't trying. They've given up. Because giving up protects you from pain. It's also why people stay in abusive relationships, right? Because if I just give up and I just take it, all I have to focus on is survival. And these people who have these identities that protect them from trying, these are the people. We see this so much. They're just existing. Every day I'm on my phone, I'm playing video games, I'm using drugs. I'm doing pornography. Why? To advance the clock until I die.

[Miles Jai]

So what's happening when you actually want to do something, but you're procrastinating and you're not doing it, but you actually want to do that thing like, say, do something productive. And it's like you just find a bunch of other bullshit to do instead of the thing you actually want to do.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So that the short answer is it depends. Okay, so it depends on. So this is where I think one of the key things that I learn and I try to teach is that good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So right now, if you look at the world, right, including influencers like myself, we're out there on YouTube giving people all kinds of answers. You should do this. Get your testosterone tested, learn about stoicism, take these supplements, do all these things. And so everyone's focused on solutions. Yeah, but the problem, I mean, you learn this the hard way in medicine real quick where like, I try treatment number one, it doesn't work. I try treatment number two, it doesn't work. I try treatment number three, doesn't work. What's the problem? My diagnosis is wrong. So there are a ton of people out there. Why is the self help industry so big? Because everyone is selling answers. And the reason people keep buying it is because it's not working.

[Akash Singh]

Because the diagnosis is incorrect.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Because the diagnosis is incorrect.

[Mark Hagnon]

And maybe it works for the influencer, but the influencer is different than the person listening.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. So that's another key point. Right? So people will sell what worked for them, but their diagnosis could be different. And this is where the word for words like procrastination and motivation, these things do not exist. Hmm.

[Miles Jai]

What do you mean?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Motivation is a umbrella term that describes a ton of neuroscience deficits. Procrastination can come from many places.

[Akash Singh]

So neuroscience deficits is interesting.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, yeah. So motivation is like, is that a deficit of willpower? Is it a deficit of emotional activation? Just to give you a couple of examples. So if I see, if I say that I'm not motivated, why is this?

[Akash Singh]

Oh, I thought, okay, motivation. Being motivated is deficits.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh, being. Motivation can be a deficit too, which we can talk about, which is really interesting. But so if I say I'm not motivated, one place that this could come from is my emotional circuitry. So if we sort of look at what our primary source of motivation is as humans is emotion. Okay. Right. So if I like, if I like, show up at Yalls house in the middle of the night, like you're in your bathroom and Like I step inside and I'm like, hey Akash, you said I couldn't come by anytime, you know, and like your reaction to that, like you're going to be motivated to do something.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So here's the lucky.

[Akash Singh]

Probably.

[Mark Hagnon]

What I'd be like, why are you talking like that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I guess I walked into that one, I was like, what did I expect?

[Mark Hagnon]

You're outside my apartment.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Keep going.

[Akash Singh]

I like it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So if you sort of think about it like most of like, you know, if I like slap someone across the face, I feel anger and then I want to slap back. So if we look at like anger. Anger suppresses are risk assessment circuitry which is on purpose because I gotta be angry in order to. Because if I think about what's gonna happen like you know, I need to act fast. So here's the problem is right now in our society we are messing up our emotional circuitry so much especially through technology use. So everyone thinks about dopamine. But the key thing is if you spend your time, if you spend time on, let's say you scroll on your phone. Do you all know what your average cell phone use is, by the way?

[Akash Singh]

Oh, it's probably high. Six hours a day.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Six hours is about average. What is your emotional experience on your phone?

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, I mean neutral to negative.

[Akash Singh]

Neutral to negative is exactly what I would say.

[Miles Jai]

Sometimes some laughs, like sometimes positive.

[Mark Hagnon]

It's variable, I guess.

[Akash Singh]

Overall, very good.

[Mark Hagnon]

It is variable reward, right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, no, no. So when you scroll on your phone, let's be precise here. Okay, okay. I'm not talking about overall. What is your emotional experience for like five minutes or ten minutes.

[Akash Singh]

Joy, I guess.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Some joy. And then what?

[Akash Singh]

It's a sadness, probably emptiness.

[Mark Hagnon]

I think it's probably perfectly neutral. It's probably a slot machine, right? Like it's.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So you guys are thinking, you guys are thinking it's probably. No, I want you to pay attention to your experience. Don't think about, forget about slot machine and random reinforcement schedule. If you look at the Internet, what we see is there's variable emotional engagement. That's what all the algorithms do. So you see some terrible shit happening. People are dying over here. There's inflation. You know, this prime president is saying this, this prime minister is doing this. Then you see cat videos. Then I see my boy Akash show up on some short because he was at the Comedy Cellar or whatever, right? And then I'm laughing over there and I scroll and they give me something else. So what happens is there's a ping pong. If you really pay attention. They will ping pong you. And if they don't ping pong you, what you will do is switch to a different app that does a better job of ping ponging.

[Akash Singh]

Wow.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? So I'll see. I'm following some. Some, you know, person on Instagram who's showing me a lot of flesh. And then some people make me feel really good. Some people actually make me feel really bad. Right. So there's a ping pong of emotions. Then what happens is it exhausts our emotional circuitry. So when I'm sitting in therapy with a patient, really powerful session or a podcast, I'm drained afterward. I'm emotionally activated. We're expressing so much emotion. And so then once my emotional battery is empty, there's no motivation left. What is it that gets us doing things in life? I'm excited, I'm curious. Or I'm angry. I'm never gonna let that guy. Yeah, this. My girlfriend dumped me, and now she's dating a different dude. I'm gonna get sexier. I'm gonna get a hair transplant. I'm a show her. Right. So so much of motivation comes from emotion. And then there's the dopaminergic circuitry, which is a completely different system. But this is when we talk about reward and stuff like that. So when we talk about something like procrastination, oftentimes procrastination is correlated with things like perfectionism. So are you perfectionistic? Do you. Do you need it to be perfect before you get started? Right. So I have to figure everything out, and then I want to do it. Now, why are we perfectionist how I used to be, Right.

[Akash Singh]

Because insecurity of I don't want to get rejected. I don't want to fail and face that failure. So I procrastinate.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. So if you can't afford to fail, then it needs to be perfect. So perfectionism is an antidote to anxiety, because anxiety is like, this could go wrong, this could go wrong. This could go wrong. How do I fix this problem? I make it perfect. Then there's no room for anything to go wrong. And so if I become perfectionistic now, everything has to be perfect before I get started. That means I'm procrastinating because getting things perfect is hard. Right. So I know so many people who will, like, they want to do something, but they want to do it perfectly.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

There are other reasons that we can procrastinate. So I think oftentimes procrastination is about emotional avoidance. So my favorite example of this is Something that I struggled with a lot and I'm on the receiving end of, or I used to be when I was faculty. And teaching is like, sometimes, you know, you have to email a professor, hey, can I get an extension? But what if they say no?

[Akash Singh]

Right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So there's this part of your brain that is like, this is a bad outcome. If I never send the email, I can never get rejected. So there's a certain amount of emotional avoidance in procrastination. So if you're trying to overcome procrastination, a couple of things that you can do is do you have anxiety? Is there an emotional consequence that you're avoiding?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Why are you avoiding that emotional consequence? Because of a sumskot? Because you know that if you're in that situation, there's going to be a ton of emotional stuff that you can't handle.

[Mark Hagnon]

And so once you've identified that sum score, how do you ameliorate that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So it involves a couple of steps. The first is notice it, right? So notice that, okay, this is a disproportionate emotional reaction. Second thing is observe what your ego does. And this is the other part that I was getting to. Then the ego hijacks the intellect. The ego goes to the intellect and says, hey bro, we're feeling terrible about ourselves. I need you to help me feel better. So give me a very, very selective logic that justifies why this bitch doesn't deserve us. And then the intellect is like, yes, sir, she does this, she does this, she does this, she does this.

[Mark Hagnon]

And the smarter you are, the more reasons you can come up with.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. So this is why higher IQ is associated with depression. Higher IQ is associated with procrastination. Higher IQ has become really maladaptive in our current world because our EQ does not balance. We don't know enough. As people become hyper intellectualized, they lean into their iq. They lean into their iq. There's a really great study that showed that how well you understand your diagnosis correlates with the degree of suicidality that you have. So if you're smart and you can look at your life and you can project out, I never dated a girl in high school, I never dated a girl in college because it was Covid. Now I'm 23 years old. I've had no experience the likelihood. And then I read all this stuff on the Internet and I see how bad things are, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. That is a hard calculation to argue against. If you're super smart because you're Right.

[Mark Hagnon]

Statistically.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What I mean is that if you have high iq, the likelihood that you make a correct calculation is higher than if you have moderate IQ or lower iq. There's still cognitive biases at play.

[Akash Singh]

It's easy to feel hopeless, I think, if you're really. If you are smarter because you just look at the state of the world and you're like, what is all this for?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, so IQ also correlates with like existential depression.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I did a whole lecture about that that was fantastic. It's on YouTube. But, and, and so there's all these problems that we think of. IQ is just like a good thing. And generally speaking, it is a good thing, but you need an EQ to balance it. And the reason that people with high IQ tend to be emotionally stunted is because early on when you're like a kid, you learn what you're good at and then you use that think. Right. So if I'm right handed, I don't go around using my left hand for things. My brain defaults to the most efficient thing possible. So we start using our intellect. We start using our intellect. We start using our intellect and then our emotional circuits become underdeveloped.

[Mark Hagnon]

Okay, that's really interesting. Now in this case, why is the. I'm sorry, what is the term again for the baggage? The samskara. Why is it different than the. The munas? Is that what it is?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So. So, so manas is where we experience the like or dislike. It's where we experience the emotion. But the manas just creates emotion right now. So I'll give you a simple example. So the first time I touched your leg, there was no baggage. Right. But now if I do this, what's happening?

[Mark Hagnon]

Like how he's gonna grab my thigh again.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right, but I'm not grabbing your thigh. Right, but you're feeling emotion now. Where did that come from? Some of it comes from this experience. Some of it comes from the last experience, which you haven't metabolized. So it is a storehouse of emotion. That's what a samskara is. And then it activates.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

So now is it not the inverse of like, my mom would make me a specific soup and I would have it, and it reminded me of this time I would spend with my mom.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You can have positive samskars too.

[Mark Hagnon]

So that would be allocated under samskar.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Right. So when you have a disproportionate reaction, emotional reaction, that's what a samskara is. They're not all negative.

[Akash Singh]

Good or bad. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

So this is interesting because through therapy, I've learned. And I know, I guess you're a proponent of therapy, but maybe not on one thing I learned. My wife and I, if we got in, like, a really explosive argument, usually be me. Because she'll, like, get annoyed and say stuff. And she's just getting annoyed and venting. I would take it as I'm not good enough. Because that's what I. My sums God was, I'm not good enough. So I had to learn when I would explode. And I've gotten much better at this. Take a little pause and I literally just write a thing out to myself. Hey, I'm good enough. And she knows that this is not about that. She's just frustrated that XYZ, if I take 10 minutes, I can come back and be like, okay, I think I see what you were feeling. I was feeling this, but I understand you were feeling that. Cool.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Great. So now let's ask y' all a tough question. Why you said that when she gets mad at you, you feel like you're not good enough. Why does he feel that way? What in his history would create emotional experiences of him being insufficient?

[Mark Hagnon]

I could think of a few things.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, like what?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, can we share? Like.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, like, Akash just talked about his relationship with his father.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Great.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. I grew up in a house where there was, like, abuse. And I felt like I could have stopped it or done something, and I didn't. And I carry that a little bit. I also think there's a little survivor's remorse that I'm here and I see they're doing better now. But, like, my mom's family in India, I remember going there 2008, and they were studying with the Torch. And I'm like, I'm here with electricity and a house and whatever, and I can't become a doctor. I can't xyz. And these guys studying by Torch cannot. And I carry a lot of guilt of, like, why did I get that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Now the question for you, when I sit like this, how do you feel?

[Akash Singh]

Not good enough. Not Indian enough.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

There we go. You guys see it? So he. He shows it as respect. He's like, oh, you're a real Indian.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I'm about as. I'm like, every Indian parents dream and every Indian kid's nightmare. I wear this. I sit like this. I became a doctor at Harvard Medical School.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh, my God. Right?

[Akash Singh]

Indian kids would always get straight A's. I would not.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So all of that every time. Every single time.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You get an 88 or an 86.

[Akash Singh]

78.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

78. Look at that. Gosh. And you feel bad.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so these samskars accumulate over time. And now they're so big that when you see things and these things, the reason that you use anger, this is really important to understand. So men do something very special with anger. We turn all of our negative emotions into anger, which is why men are so angry. So now let me ask y', all, what is the evolutionary function of sadness? What does sadness make us do?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, we cry. We good.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Excellent.

[Mark Hagnon]

It connects with grief, maybe to process.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, okay. Don't use psychological talk.

[Akash Singh]

Okay. I can't think of an evolutionary advantage to grief. I can think sadness. I can't think. I can think of one for anger. I go do things.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What does sadness do when I am sad? So, first of all, sadness has high visibility, high auditory stuff, right? You can see someone is sad, you can hear someone is sad. So sadness is the most outward facing emotion if you really look at it. Now, when you see someone crying on a park bench, what do you do?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, you want to go and pat them on the back and be.

[Akash Singh]

Like, here in New York long enough, you're like, shut the fuck up.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay.

[Mark Hagnon]

At the very least, you want to know what happened.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Happened, right?

[Mark Hagnon]

Like, instinctually, you see someone crying.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Look at the evolutionary purpose of sadness. I feel sad because I can't handle something. I'm hurting. Fundamentally, we feel sad when we can't handle the world around us. So what do we do? We signal for help. SOS and then people, what do we feel like as human beings because we're communal animals? I want to find out. Hey, what's going on? Oh, my God. Are you doing okay? It is a signal for help when you feel like you can't handle the world around you. That's literally what sadness does us, right? Why does a kid cry? Because they're like, hey, I need help. Now. This is the really tricky thing. When a man needs help, what does society do?

[Akash Singh]

What does society do?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So when I signal when I'm a dude and you cry, crying, what's gonna happen?

[Mark Hagnon]

Rub dirt in it?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, right. Make fun of you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? What are you crying about? Men are privileged.

[Mark Hagnon]

I'll give you something to cry about.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, right. So. So we don't respond to men. So we have. There's one really trou thing in our society right now, which is that we expect men to solve their own problems. We don't help men. Right. So Male rates of matriculation. So their ability to go to college is like. I think 60 plus percent of people in college are women. But there's no male. Only scholarships or very few. Right. We're not trying to fix that problem.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Male suicide has been four times the rate of female suicide for the last 60 plus years. That's not a problem that there's any real systemic movement around. Right. So we expect men to help themselves.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So what men learn is that when I cry, it doesn't work. So sadness is a signal for help. And so what we do is we turn it into anger. Because when I.

[Akash Singh]

It's the only masculine way. Masculine, acceptable way too.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And it's not even about masculine acceptability. I think it even goes deeper than that. What is the purpose of anger? What is anger like?

[Mark Hagnon]

Rectifying injustice.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, so rectifying. Right. So sadness makes me do what? Cry. Good. And that makes me do what? To fix my problems.

[Akash Singh]

Get help.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Nothing.

[Mark Hagnon]

Nothing in America.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Nothing. Right. So sadness is like, I'm not. I'm not doing the problem. You guys fix it.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But what does anger make me do?

[Akash Singh]

I fix it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Rectify.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Now I'm gonna do it. Now I'm gonna show them anger is a motivating emotion. Right. So anytime we feel angry, feel like doing something right. And oftentimes when people get really, really angry, we tell them, don't do anything. But what do you want to do when you get pissed? Anything. Everything.

[Akash Singh]

All of it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So it's a. So this is where what we've learned as men is like, okay, the sadness signal doesn't work. So instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to transmute that into anger. And once it gets transmuted into anger, now I have the motivation to fix this problem, because ain't no one going to fix it for me.

[Akash Singh]

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[Miles Jai]

Let me just jump in not to throw you off but like I grew up feeling that I can't show emotion. It's weakness. And for probably up until my mid-20s would never cry. And I kind of felt like emotionless at times. And so now I'm way more secure in myself. I'm in a better place. I actually force myself to cry. Like I'll purposely watch a sad movie because I just need to feel something, make sure that's still in there. And then I feel way better after I get those tears out. Why am I doing that? What the hell's wrong with me?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What makes you think there's something wrong with you?

[Miles Jai]

Well, diagnose me.

[Akash Singh]

Why am I something wrong with him or Something he texted me. He said.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What do you think is. What do you think is wrong with you? I'm confused about why. So view that as something that's wrong.

[Miles Jai]

Initially, I would do it because I was worried that I was emotionless.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay.

[Miles Jai]

And then I was like, oh, okay, I feel something when I watch these sad movies. And then it actually felt good when I felt something. So I'm like, oh, let me pick a time and place where I can get it out. And now it's like, I have some nice balance in my life. Like, I'm happy.

[Akash Singh]

I have high highs.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Do you feel like you have a lot of sadness in your heart way deep down? Mm.

[Miles Jai]

Like, if I look at the state of the world and stuff like that, yeah, that'll make me sad.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But. Okay. But do you feel like you carry sadness? Not the state of the world, but do you have. If the world was a good place, would you still be sad on the inside?

[Miles Jai]

I don't think so.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. So I think. I mean, we don't know. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that people on the autism spectrum love anime. And the reason. One of the reasons I really think they love anime, I've worked with a ton of people who are on the spectrum is that. So if we look at autism, autism affects the emotional circuits of our brain in a very profound way. So it affects social circuits in our brain and it affects emotional circuits in our brain. Generally speaking, the intellectual circuits are completely intact and not affected at all. So oftentimes, people with autism spectrum, this is also why people on the autism spectrum are more likely to be transgender or non binary identity, because people who are non binary, our sense of gender identity comes from our emotional, like, our emotional experience. Right. So, like, how do you know you're a man? Well, I feel like a man. Wait, hold on a second. Which part of your brain does the feeling like a man? That's fundamentally usually an emotional and social circuitry. So both of those things. There's a very high correlation between autism spectrum and being transgender. And this is why I think that there's, like, a good biological basis for being transgender, because we know that there's. There's social alterations and emotional alterations. And if those two things contribute to gender identity, then we would expect if we tamper with those circuits, gender identity will be affected. Now, the reason that people watch anime is because anime tends to have a hyperactive, a hyper elevated signal of emotion. And what my patients who are on the spectrum, they just love because it helps Them feel. So I think what you're doing is. Isn't unhealthy. There's nothing wrong with you. You are doing what a hungry person does when they eat. You are discovering that there are some environmental stimuli that are almost like self medicating, that are bringing out these emotions that you don't know how to bring out in other ways, but they absolutely need to get out. And especially when we talk about things like sadness. I mean, there's so many physiologic things with sadness that are helpful. The rate of our breathing when we become sad and we start crying and then we. Right when we do that kind of thing, that alters our parasympathetic nervous system activity ends up reducing our stress level and things like that. So there's all kinds of benefits to getting your emotions outside of you. And I think what you've discovered, like many people who are on the spectrum, is that I need a particular kind of emotional trigger to help me get that stuff out. The other really important thing there is, I think we make a huge mistake in the field of psychiatry, which is that somewhere along the way we got into this idea that talk therapy is the gold standard. Talk therapy is the gold standard for women. 70% of psychiatric patients historically have been women. 70% of therapists and psychiatrists historically have been women.

[Akash Singh]

So what do men need to do to be better off? Less angry. Whatever.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

If it's not, watch anime.

[Akash Singh]

Really?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think. I think talking about it is correct, but I think the way we should talk about it is different. We should use more physical language. Right. When I get dumped by my girlfriend, it feels like she kicked me in the nuts, man. Right. So we force men into using like these. These very, like certain kind of emotional words which we just don't have access to. There's a. There are a couple of great studies about why men don't like to go to couples therapy. And it's because they feel outgunned.

[Akash Singh]

Like, not me, Doug. I'll be dunking on my damn.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So, so hold on. No, hold on, let's. What just happened?

[Miles Jai]

He's feminine.

[Akash Singh]

I made a joke.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, he's. He's. He made a joke. Right? So what just happened? Happened like this. Did we see it? Men feel outgunned. What? Does he feel outgunned in therapy?

[Mark Hagnon]

What do you all think I'm gonna say?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes. Good.

[Mark Hagnon]

Because just like when he said that you're a real Indian, he also said that he dunks on his girl in therapy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? So what is he. Is he putting himself up and putting somebody else down. Yeah. Right. I don't. That doesn't happen to me.

[Akash Singh]

Can I be honest with you? I feel outgunned in every other part of my relationship except when we went to couples therapy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Awesome.

[Akash Singh]

That's probably what it is. Because in couples therapy, if you're a comic, you just. You tend to be, like, good with words. So she would actually have the complaint of, like, he can verbalize everything really well and really coherently, and I'm kind of, like, emotional, and I can't find the words as well as him. But I think in the rest of our relationship, she'd be doing that perfectly.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So I think it's a great example. So I'm wrong, and I think it perfectly illustrates the point. Right. So I think 99 of people will have Akash's experience if. No, not 99 of people. That's wrong. I think it's probably closer to 70%, but 70% of dudes aren't good with their words. They're not good at expressing themselves. They're not good at being emotive. Right. So Akash is all. Y' all are incredibly emotive, but when he laughs, he doesn't. Yeah, Right. If we go back and we watch when all y' all are, like, rolling around, I'm kind of like, this is funny.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But I was kind of like, okay. Right. So he is very emotive, very in touch with, which I think is part of what comedy does. Right. So you have a lot of hurt, and you have to, like, learn how to grapple with that hurt. I think comedy is incredibly therapeutic. Right. So you take that hurt and you turn it into jokes and you help people laugh and you feel connected with people. So I think you're not lucky. But your professional training, I imagine, helps you with that quite a bit, which is great.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think the majority of men will feel outgunned for a couple of reasons. One is that women or girls tend to have a higher verbal fluency than boys do. So this is, like, you can detect this at the age of, like, six. Their ability to, like, put things into words is better.

[Miles Jai]

They'd be yapping.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

They talk a lot. They do talk a lot. Right, so. And we don't. Yeah, Right. Unless we're podcast bros. Yeah. It's the one space we're not allowed to talk. Right. So all those women be yapping. But look at all these podcast bro bros. Right? Like, oh, yeah. Like, we don't talk, but, like, except when we get together.

[Akash Singh]

Is that because this is A one space where it's like acceptable for us.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

To talk a lot. Absolutely, bro.

[Akash Singh]

Wow. Right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Why do you think it's not. Why is the podcast like, it's all podcast bros?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Because we don't have this anymore anywhere else. Ah.

[Akash Singh]

It's not acceptable for guys to just get together and just meet up with their boyfriends and talk.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Exactly. So what do we do and think about this? Right. How do you all select topics. What.

[Akash Singh]

What's I guess trending that we're interested in?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. So how do men address the issues that they deal with? We like listen to podcasts where they address the zeitgeist that all the men are going through. So we're talking about motivation, relationships, pornography. This is all the shit that people are dealing with. So they tune in, they hear us talking about it. And this is the beautiful thing, when y' all laugh, they laugh too. They feel connected. They're not alone anymore. Y' all are doing God's work here. I say that seriously. Seriously, right? So there's a lot of emotional connection. Last thing about women that makes them better at verbal things is estrogen. The amount of estrogen in your system, it correlates with your awareness of your emotions. So a lot of times, you know, we joke about PMS and like when you're dating a woman and she's on her period, you know, there's like this weird, like, emotional fluctuation that's literally because estrogen correlates with like our ability to detect emotions. So it amplifies emotions.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And this is just women.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I think the other thing that you can do is increase your estrogen level. Then you won't need to watch stuff.

[Miles Jai]

And I'm gonna grow tits.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You don't need to do it that much. So there's a. That has other advantages. But I know this is really fascinating. So. So. So, you know, I used to never cry when I would watch a movie. And then I had kids and what happens? It was so weird. Like, I had kids and like my. I have a two year old and we watched like the Lion King and like I started bawling.

[Akash Singh]

It's a movie you've seen before.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's a movie I've seen before, yeah. And I was like crying and I was like, what the hell is going on? And now like, I cry all the time. And what I realized is like, oh, like, in order to understand my six month infant, they don't know how to use words. I need to increase like my empathic detection capabilities.

[Akash Singh]

Started crying more And I might be saying this as a joke. He talked about. He started crying so much more when he had a son.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, absolutely. So this is a universal experience for men. Well, if we're lucky.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So our estrogen level actually increases.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

When we have a kid at home.

[Akash Singh]

That is funny.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And it helps us become.

[Mark Hagnon]

Oh, now you don't want to grab me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, no, no. Not annoyed. I was like, I have. You guys don't understand who I am, man. What I'm going to do. What we should do is we should signal, bro. You go out to one side, won't grab it. Double team.

[Akash Singh]

Double team.

[Miles Jai]

Right, son, by the end of this podcast, you'll be an Eiffel Tower.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I'm going to Taj Mahal, baby. I went to the Eiffel Tower.

[Mark Hagnon]

You never heard of Eiffel Tower?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No.

[Mark Hagnon]

Okay, we'll send you an.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

We'll pull up a picture, send you.

[Mark Hagnon]

An Urban dictionary link later. It's a.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Is that a direction.

[Mark Hagnon]

It's a Kric act.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. I'm intrigued. Show me, like, you and I double.

[Akash Singh]

Team and a girl and two guys, and then they. They. They give each other.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

He'd be supporting the.

[Miles Jai]

Supporting the beans.

[Mark Hagnon]

This is lowbrow. This is crude.

[Akash Singh]

This is how men connect.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes. So another really interesting thing is I think we got way worse when we. So one of the biggest things wrong with our culture right now is when we started demonizing homosexuality. So what happened when I was growing up.

[Akash Singh]

Stop them. Catholics.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

When I was growing up, like, you know, touching another dude. I remember when I went to India, I was 21 years old, and I had a friend there, and, like, he was like. Two of his friends showed up, and it was just the weirdest thing. And I remember thinking, because I grew up in, like, South Texas, and so, like, you know, things were gay. So, like, this dude, my friend was there, and he had his arm around two of his male friends, and they were both rubbing his belly, and they were talking about how he's gonna get married and how he's gonna eat real well.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I was like, what is this stuff? So at some point, we started demonizing homosexuality. And when we started doing that, men stopped touching each other. And now, even as we're talking about this, right? What's the kind of touch that we do? We can't just do this. We gotta do like a. Yeah, it's.

[Mark Hagnon]

Gotta be borderline aggressive.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's gotta be like, ah, no, it's not borderline aggressive or borderline homosexual. Right. So these are the kinds of touches. Like, I mean, you went for the tit, bro.

[Akash Singh]

To be funny.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Funny. Yeah. So we've started doing this thing where.

[Akash Singh]

We can be affectionate.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You can't touch someone unless it's a joke.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. And even the male hug is always pat. You don't hold. There's no like, hold. I think male hugs heterosexual. I'm not trying to fuck you around.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So something weird happened where, like, men stopped touching each other.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And like, people who are going to hear me say that are like, yeah, right. Like, but really. And now men are so, like, starved for touch. Women are too, in today's world. But like, there's so many dudes. Like, I mean, I have held men in my arms as they cry in my arms. Office. And it happens a lot. And it feels great, you know, to, to be a dude and to cry and to just be like, held.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And if men can start doing that for each other, I think our relationships with women will vastly improve.

[Akash Singh]

Really?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Because here's what happens. Like, so a lot of men are struggling to date because the woman becomes all of the things she's not just your life partner, your sexual partner. She also has to become your therapist. Right. So now, like when we share emotions, we only have one person. We basically will cry in front of like two people.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Our wives or our moms. Right, Those. Definitely not our dads.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So we'll kind of do this thing. And so what happens is a lot of times women will feel like there's too much of an emotional burden when they, they date a man. Like, because the man puts all of their emotions on the woman. So many of my female patients experience this because the man doesn't have an emotional outlet outside of his wife. And so as you start to have, as you start to deal with your own outside of that, then you're like a normal human being with her. Drastically improves the quality of the relationship.

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah. It takes some of the burden off.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.

[Miles Jai]

I'll come cuddle you a little.

[Akash Singh]

I would absolutely love that. Physical sex is my love language.

[Miles Jai]

I love it now you made it with you.

[Akash Singh]

You hug. No. See.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Oh. I want you all to pay attention to what happened. You made a joke. He was authentic. And then you said what? You rejected him.

[Akash Singh]

This guy made it wheels and hugs, everybody he meets. And I'm gay for wanting to hug him.

[Miles Jai]

Cuz we want it. You don't want it so much.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So I think this is like a excellent, excellent example of.

[Akash Singh]

I've been trying to Kiss him on the cheek for years. He won't let me.

[Miles Jai]

Jesus Christ. Akash.

[Akash Singh]

What? I kissed Mark on the cheek when he had a baby. I kiss Andrew on the cheek, cheek all the time.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What makes you uncomfortable about. Kiss his lips?

[Miles Jai]

They're nice.

[Akash Singh]

They are. I got a good set of lips.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Dude, you do have good lips.

[Miles Jai]

If he has a white guy like one of these. Yeah, whatever. That's like nothing.

[Akash Singh]

Did you look kissing Miles. Would you kiss Alex right now on there?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Miles kind. He kind of.

[Miles Jai]

Kind of got a bottom.

[Mark Hagnon]

No, See, now everyone has lips.

[Miles Jai]

Just have like some ducklings.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I don't have lips.

[Miles Jai]

I mean, I'm catching straight.

[Akash Singh]

Miles, just kiss Alex on the lips, dude.

[Miles Jai]

All right, let's get back therapy and.

[Akash Singh]

All the good shit.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

We don't have to kiss anybody on the lips. Yeah, let's see. But so the other thing is, if you're on the spectrum too, this is another important thing. People on the spectrum and adhd, their brain processes a touch in a different way. So it's really interesting. It's fascinating. Some people with ADHD have a lot of difficulty with sex because they have something called tactile defensiveness. So the way that literally your brain processes when you feel a physical touch, if you have ADHD or you're on the spectrum, this can be perceived as ticklish or aggressive. So a lot of the foreplay that we'll engage in to loosen people up will actually trigger weird things if you've got ADHD or autism spectrum. Another really good example of this tactile sensitivity is textures for people on the spectrum or adhd. So I have a daughter who probably has adhd. And you guys know what dal is?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. You do? Okay, so dal is like an Indian lentil soup, but we put a bunch of stuff in it. We'll put like curry leaves and mustard seeds and all kinds of stuff. And so one day a couple years ago, you know, my wife was getting mad at my daughter because she had made dal and she wasn't eating dal. And then I asked her a question. I said, you know, what is it that you don't like about the dal? And she doesn't know how to answer that question. I was like, does it taste bad or it feels bad in your mouth? And she's like, I'm not sure. And I said, let me do something. So I took the doll and I strained it and then I gave her the dal. And I was like, how is that? And she's like, that's fine. The really interesting thing is she Ate the dal, and then she can take the individual pieces that I had strained out, and she ate those individually, but she just needs it separated. There's another diagnosis called arfid, which is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, which also has this sensory difference to it. So, I mean, I know we're all joking about, you know, why don't you want to get.

[Miles Jai]

I used to do that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But. But, you know, it'd be really interesting. Like, we could do a very interesting experiment. And I'm not joking here, but I am joking, too, because that's how we. That's how we test boundaries with dudes. Right? I'm gonna make a joke, and, like, if you guys treat it as a joke, then cool. But then, like, if y' all are like, okay, let's really do this. So we could all kiss each other on the cheek, and we could ask each other, what is your experience of this? Right?

[Miles Jai]

This has been a great podcast, guys.

[Akash Singh]

See, this is where he blames his autism. That's why I don't believe it's autistic. He's just black and homophobic. You know what I mean?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I don't even know how to respond to that. It's like, if I say what's in my heart, y' all can say it. It. My ass is going to get canceled.

[Miles Jai]

We'll say it for you.

[Akash Singh]

Let us say it.

[Miles Jai]

N. He not wrong, though.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

It's his culture.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's his upbring culture.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So. So, yeah. The problem is. The problem is, even if that's your culture, the fundamental. I'm going to keep going.

[Akash Singh]

Please, please, please keep lying.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It doesn't bother me. It really does. But I think there's something important, because I think a lot of people struggle with this. Your body's need for oxytocin. Your body's need for connection does not change. Right? So if you grow up in a culture where you're not allowed to touch dudes and it feels really uncomfortable for you, it feels uncomfortable at the beginning. My guess, unless you have this neurodevelopmental thing going on where there's tactile defensiveness and things like that. So we have to be careful, Right? Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So we don't want to force him into a situation because his brain is processing things differently from the way that our brains are processing that shit, but go ahead.

[Miles Jai]

Yeah, no, I think it's more. So growing up, it was, like, taboo. Guys don't touch each other. And then being around more white guys, they do their white boy fun. And I've gotten better with it over the years, like now.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

But does it feel physically uncomfortable for you or does it feel like. Is it just the physical sensation? Does it feel like. Here's the way I would describe it so people want to understand, okay, is this like emotional for me or is it physical for me? If it's physical for you, if it's a sensory processing deficit, or we call it a deficit alteration. Y' all ever had like scrambled eggs with a piece of shell?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You know how, like, it fucking ruins it?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, it's done.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That's what it's like to be autistic and navigate through the world.

[Miles Jai]

That's a good ass way to put it, right?

[Akash Singh]

That's how you feel for real sometimes? Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. Right.

[Miles Jai]

So like a little thing could happen and that just throws me off.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And it's like, it's like ruins your whole. Like, it doesn't matter if it was just one little. And there's four bites left that are totally fine. One little thing is like, ah, it just ruins it, bro.

[Miles Jai]

If you talk to my shorty, she can tell you thousands of.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So this is where I think we should really have a ton of compassion with people for people on the spectrum.

[Akash Singh]

I apologize for not believing you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Is their life is going through a neurotypical world with eggshells in their scrambled eggs all over the place. The clothes we wear, the way that we touch, the sounds that we make. Right. It's like they're just fucking. Their life is just a little bit shittier, but way worse. Their experience of it is just so difficult.

[Mark Hagnon]

So in relevance to like the anger conversation we're having. What can you do to basically disengage that anger?

[Akash Singh]

Disengage that.

[Mark Hagnon]

That is the only way that someone feels emotional.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I'm gonna go back to Samskar thing. Then we're gonna talk about your anger. Because I think that's the best way to do. Do it. Is that okay? Yeah. And let me know if you don't feel comfortable with that. So Samskar, here's the basic sequence. Disproportionate emotion, activation of the ego, hijacking of the intellect. So what we want to do is a couple of things. One is exactly what Aakash does in therapy. So he takes a step back, removes ego from the equation, Just notices what he's feeling, doesn't engage in an intellectual discussion. That's the biggest, biggest mistake that a lot of people make. All these people who are red pilled and Black pilled. They're just operating on the intellectual level. They're not getting to the ego or the emotions underneath.

[Akash Singh]

Okay, that's a great way of putting it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so you could play that game as long as you want to, but it doesn't solve problems. It's a way of coping. And not necessarily in a bad way, but like we said, right. So if I give up on life, that allows me to protect myself. So they sort of adopt this negative worldview.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And like, then that protects them. Because it's not my fault if I'm fundamentally broken. It's not my fault, right. That I am not successful. It's not my fault that I'm single if I'm fundamentally ugly. Right. So then what we want to do is there are two important things to do. One is if you just observe the process. That is.

[Akash Singh]

I'm sorry, just to go back to the red pill thing. What is so their, their process or their cope is it's not my fault fault. It's women's fault. They xyz. Is that what they do?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think they're a lot more heterogeneous than we give them credit for. They're not all one way. They used to be that way. But now I think there's like a red pill 2.0 that's kind of like happening right now, which I think is actually quite healthy. So if you go to red pill subreddits and stuff, they tell each there's a lot of encouragement, get your ass to the gym. Right? Like, do something with your life, become professionally successful and go to therapy. Like they're huge proponents of therapy now.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I think that there's some like adapt.

[Akash Singh]

So there's an evolution of red pill that's not what it used to be. And it's potentially a good thing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. If there was not good stuff in there, it would not be growing. Right. So anytime we see human beings changing in a particular way, that is because they are adapting to their environment. So in a world where the systems do not support men, what choice do men have have? We're going to support each other.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I think the problem is that there's all kinds of negative emotion that gets turned into anger, which we already talked about. Right? So like sadness doesn't work. Crying about it doesn't work. So I'm going to get angry. And then when you get angry, it's very easy to blame someone else. There's also a hum Car at play. So these people will, like, pump themselves up and put someone else down. Who do they pump up?

[Akash Singh]

Men.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Who do they put down?

[Akash Singh]

Women.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

There we go. Right? So this is why I love this model. Like, y' all are a bunch of comedians, I think. Smart, for sure. Right. But once you understand this model, you can understand so much human interaction around you. Right. This is the ego at play. So anytime you see someone being egotistical, the question to ask yourself is, what are they protecting themselves from?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And the moment that you soothe that thing, the ego will disappear. You can disarm ego by giving people kind of what they need. Now, fixing the samskar involves understanding the process, doing kind of what Akash said, where if you just sit down and just write your emotions so you can use an emotional regulation technique. So if you even do, like, deep breathing or something like that, Some, like, meditative stuff. I teach a lot of that stuff and meditation and stuff. I have these guides and things. But if you do that kind of stuff, that'll help. Because then what is activating the ego is the emotion. So the moment that the emotion goes away, the ego will go away, away. And then when the ego goes away, this up logic will go away. Then you'll be okay. The second thing that we want to do, this is the really cool thing. That dormant emotion can be brought to the surface and experienced fully and metabolized. So when you have, like, a breakthrough in therapy, right, this is where something comes up. There's a ton of emotion that comes to the surface, and it's felt and accepted, not suppressed, not distracted from. That's what we usually do, right? We bury it. But instead, what we want is like, so what's going on in therapy is like, they're talking about some time in their life where they really felt hurt. And then they're bawling. I'm holding them. You know, we're all, like, crying. I'm crying. They're crying. And then how do you feel? Oh, I feel so much better. And then they walk out and, like, a chunk of it is gone. So the way that to do that is I would recommend that people, when you feel this disproportionate emotion, ask yourself, when was the first time I felt this? And what you'll discover is that people who feel this disproportionate emotion, there's a time that happened a long time ago where they felt that way, and it was a really powerful moment for them. And so when you go back to that thing and you sort of experience that again, that. That gets a bit technical. And there's a whole. Some scar digestion process that we go through in our trauma guide. But that's the essence of it, is that you go back and you re experience those things. You bring out that emotion. And that's literally what we do in therapy, is we take all these dormant emotions. And once you bring out the dormant emotions and you metabolize them, people feel healthier afterward.

[Akash Singh]

Today's episode is also brought to you by Kraken. It is your go to app for everything. Investing for crypto, stocks, ETFs, all kinds of things. Look, it's been around longer than 99% of those fly by night coins and these other apps where people lose their money, where I lost some of my apps. Anyway, Kraken won't do that. They just give you the basics. It lets you buy, sell, and swap over 450 different cryptocurrencies and 11,000 stocks and ETFs. And we got the crypto challenge. I'm down a little bit because bitcoin has gone down a little bit. But I'm okay long term. I trust bitcoin. I'm done trying to pick stocks or coins. I can't do it. I'm just putting my money in bitcoin. What about y'?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

All?

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, I mean, I'm up.

[Akash Singh]

Up.

[Mark Hagnon]

I basically do the same thing. I just did bitcoin and like, all the big ones and then ETFs.

[Akash Singh]

What are the big ones?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Fart coin. Exactly.

[Mark Hagnon]

No, like ethereum.

[Miles Jai]

Ethereum, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Miles Jai]

That's where I'm at pretty much even.

[Akash Singh]

You sons of bitches. Andrew's up the most. Can you believe this shit? He didn't even know what's in his portfolio. Yeah, he's had someone do it. He's up guys up big.

[Miles Jai]

That don't count. That's cheap.

[Akash Singh]

That's true. That is true. He don't win. He is disqualified. That's the thing.

[Mark Hagnon]

He might have got the most money up, but he didn't get the reward of knowing that.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, I say you give. He takes his big bitcoin, gives it to us. Split three ways.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Four ways. No, no, no, three.

[Akash Singh]

Somehow. Four.

[Miles Jai]

No, no, four.

[Akash Singh]

I'll give you a little money, Miles.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

All right, I'll take that.

[Mark Hagnon]

Like the thrill you got from losing money is probably more than he got from.

[Akash Singh]

I got the gratification of losing my own money and my wife's money.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

She's pissed.

[Akash Singh]

She really got it bad both ways, too. Really? I mean, yeah, she had Nothing to do with it. I lost the money. Who cares? What can you do?

[Miles Jai]

That's cute. You call your wife's money.

[Akash Singh]

That is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, I know. That's. I know.

[Akash Singh]

That's a love, right? Yeah, it is love. It is love.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

It's our money that I work really hard. Guys, sign up now and use the code FLAGRANT50 to get $50 in free Bitcoin that could be worth $2 billion one day. I don't know. But if you go to kraken.com flagrant and use the code FLAGRANT50, you can claim your $50 in Bitcoin and start trading with the best in the game. Also, disclaimer. This is not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers, excluding New York and Maine through PayWord Interactive Inc. Now let's get back to the show.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Show.

[Miles Jai]

Don't be slacking.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Use Kraken.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, I love it.

[Miles Jai]

You could have that.

[Akash Singh]

Guys, we're going to take a break and you know what we're going to do? I'm going to read the copy that their ad person sent us. And I want you to know that this is a guy with a full time job who gets paid. And to use Miles's term, he has benefits which Miles does not have. He has health insurance which Miles doesn't have even though he's taken so many vaccines. Anyway, last time I took a Blue Chew, my dick got sponsored by an energy drink company and refused to do missionary, saying it was bad for the brand. Extreme positions only.

[Mark Hagnon]

Hell yeah.

[Akash Singh]

I carry my inside. This is actually not bad. I carry my encyclopedia brick Tanica everywhere.

[Mark Hagnon]

Well, sometimes I'd say Blue Chew to make standing in line easier because it actually gives me something to lean on.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, okay. Ally number four.

[Miles Jai]

I've been kicked out of four museums for carrying a loaded sculpture.

[Akash Singh]

That's the worst one.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Whoa.

[Mark Hagnon]

What is a loaded sculpture?

[Akash Singh]

Hey, let me ask you this.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

This.

[Akash Singh]

Have you ever tried to tuck in a submarine?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, I never have.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, Mark, what do you think?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, I just. I don't think Blue Chew is a supplement. I think it's an erection resurrection.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, speaking of Trump, Al hit number seven.

[Miles Jai]

Yo, I tried Blue Chew and now my hog has a zip code and voting rights.

[Akash Singh]

Guys, this isn't just about performance. This is about legacy or third legacy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I like that.

[Akash Singh]

Give her group chat something to talk about. You know, when you lay it down, they're talking about how he gets it up or she gets it up or the non bike. They get it Whoever gets it, nothing makes you more of a legend than a little bluechew. Discover your options. It's [e-mail] that's what they wanted. I gave them exactly what they wanted. And I have to give Bluetooth credit, they've actually always been cool about us riffing. But you need to know, some ad companies want you to read that explicitly, verbatim, and if you don't, they have a big problem with it, and then they give you shit like that. Buchu lets us riff.

[Mark Hagnon]

I spoke with a therapist and I was talking to him about early childhood experiences that I had, and he basically said, I don't want to talk about any of those. I want to give you tools to deal with the emotions you're feeling today.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Sure.

[Mark Hagnon]

And I felt frustrated by this because I was like. My suspicion is that the reason I feel these things is because of these initial experiences I had in my childhood through family or whatever else, and I'm just now manifesting them in my adult life. And if I just dealt with it in this first instance, I could probably deal with it better. I'm curious if you've heard of these different therapy tactics.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. I think talking about your past, I'm going to oversimplify, but that's what we call the psychodynamic model, where it's about dormant stuff. But then more recently, what we've had is something called a cognitive behavioral model, which is like, like we're just going to alter your behavior and we're going to deal with the present. And if, if we really look at, like, what's causing problems in your life, it's not the hurt that happened before. It is the way that the hurt that happened before shows up today and affects your life. Right. So even if I, like, even if Akash is, you know, his. His dad was mean to him or abusive or whatever, that's manifesting in the present in a particular way, and we can deal with that manifestation in the present and his problems will be solved. It is the manifestation of that hurt that really screws up your life now. But. So this is kind of like saying, I guess what I could say is like, you know, if I have a well that is ejecting feces, I can clean up the feces every time it comes out or I can go down and empty out the well. Right. But both of them will end up with a clean surface. So in the cognitive behavioral model, I think so some people just like that model more. That's just where their mind naturally goes. And I Don't know if you all caught that, but we sort of included both the Samskara digestion. Right. So you can regulate the emotion directly in the moment with breathing practices. And then the Ahamkar will deactivate, the Buddhi will deactivate. We're not actually solving the Samskar. We're intervening at the level of the manas. Or you go back and what I tend to find works really well is both. Right?

[Akash Singh]

That's what I would think.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So, I mean, when I work with people, I do both. And I think also from, like, a yogic standpoint. Yogic standpoint, they don't give a shit about what happened to you in the past. They just focus on the present. They're like, just understand what is happening. And the beautiful thing is that works, like, incredibly well. Even if you just understand this process and you observe it, that will take the emotional bite out of it. So I don't know if y' all get this, but when your Samskar activates, you activate, like, a program. You all kind of get that, like, you lose control.

[Akash Singh]

I do. I.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. There's like, oh, like, now they're thinking. Like, you think, like, they're judging me. And, like, I feel this way now. I mean, I'm gonna do this. Like, people start operating in a really repetitive way. And if you're in a relationship and, like, you trigger your partner, you're like, oh, shit, they're doing this shit again. And you can predict it. It's like, first they're going to do this, then they're going to do this, then they're going to do this. And until they calm down, like, there's nothing that we can do. Right. Right. So you can stop the. The. In that pattern. A big part of that pattern is a lack of awareness that it's happening. So if you go to your partner and you say, hey, you're doing this again. They're like, no, I'm not. You're doing this. They have no insight into it. So insight. Anytime you have awareness of what goes on within you, you automatically control it. You guys want to test that?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Observe your breathing, but don't change it. Go.

[Akash Singh]

Impossible. I can't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You tried for, like, three seconds. Try for a little bit longer. Can you observe your breathing without changing it?

[Miles Jai]

I think so, but I don't know how I was breathing before I started observing it. So I don't know necessarily.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Are you controlling it if you're observing it right now?

[Miles Jai]

Now, yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Can you stop controlling it and observe it? You can stop breathing?

[Miles Jai]

Yeah, I don't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I don't know. Stopping breathing is controlling it. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Mark Hagnon]

I. I can't.

[Akash Singh]

This is incredibly hard for me when I focus on my breathing. Like, if I'm trying to meditate, I've noticed I'm like. I'm. I feel like I'm breathing. Like, I'm not now I'm in control of how I'm breathing. And that's weird. I'm not just observing the breathing. I'm.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yep. Right. So this is really cool. You guys have heard of this thing called enlightenment? The person who can observe their breath without controlling it will become enlightened. Really?

[Akash Singh]

Okay, so that makes me feel better because it's actually incredibly hard to do, is what you're saying. Because I used to be like, what the.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What's.

[Akash Singh]

Why am I so in my head that I can't even just watch myself breathe? I have to. Now I'm changing it every time.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. Yep. So this is the beautiful thing. You cannot observe without changing. Right. So even in physics, which I'm hesitant to draw correlations from, there's like this idea of the observer effect where we can't measure something without altering it in some way. So the beautiful thing is that even in your own life, if you have patterns, the moment you start observing them, they'll start to dissipate. They'll start to, like, sublimate and become weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker. So this is something that in the west, we really don't understand. Awareness is enough. You don't actually need to do anything. You just need to observe, observe and observe properly. That's a technique that's pretty hard. But as you observe, what happens? As you become, like, think about any problem that you've had in your life. Once you really understood what was going on, it becomes way easier to handle.

[Mark Hagnon]

So even just acknowledging, oh, I'm in this recursive anger program, Just watch out.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Take a step back and watch. Okay, I'm feeling anger. Ah, there's the ego thought. Right. And we've done it a little bit today. Like, y', all, I'll ask y' all to, you know, what is Akash feeling right now? Where does this come from? And y' all are like, hypothesizing, Hypothesizing. So if you do that process for yourself, and this is important because this isn't like analyzing a lot of people. This is the big mistake that a lot of people make. People will analyze their problems, but observation and analysis is different. Biggest mistake that people make, they say, oh, I'm aware of my problem. No, you're not. You're analyzing. You're not watching them in real time. You're thinking about them retrospectively. You are analyzing them. Just watch it.

[Mark Hagnon]

And not to detour us completely, but I find that this is a benefit of psychedelics and that I've spoken to people that have done ketamine therapy or even prescribed ketamine therapy. Like there's psychologists that do ketamine therapy. And basically because it's a disassociative, it will strip the behavior and the emotion or the thing that was done to you in the emotion. You're able to see the thing as a third party and you can kind of see things objectively and as a result of that, be able to draw new conclusions.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think he wanted our attention. Oh, no, you can stay on that topic. Okay, yeah. So psychedelics, I think are really great because they give us a scientific insight into things that meditation have been doing for thousands of years. The hard thing about understanding how meditation affects your brain is that the majority of studies on meditation, in order to be, to be non biased, we take a bunch of random people, we teach them a meditation technique and then we measure the results. One of the exclusion criteria for most of the studies on meditation involve not knowing how to meditate. So what we're basically doing is we're training up a bunch of amateurs. So the hard thing is that you have some of these people who have been meditating for a very long time and successfully too. There's a big difference between just doing it a lot and doing it successfully.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And those people, we don't know how to study. So I saw this, this great, like TikTok of this, like yogi in the Himalayas who's just like running around like, basically he's got a loincloth on. On. But there's a lot of stuff that people do. So there's one study that was done by the Benson Henry Institute, I think, many years ago that showed that you can, through yogic practices, you can alter your body temperature by 9 degrees Celsius. Wow. Right. So there's all kinds of weird stuff. Like there are people in The Himalayas.

[Akash Singh]

That 20 plus degrees Fahrenheit, right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Nine fifths plus 32. But I think the alteration is you'd have to do both conversions. Okay, Right. But So yeah, about 20 degrees. So there's a lot of weird stuff in yoga, but we don't know scientifically how to study that. So the biggest at the top of the list is altered states of consciousness. So the cool thing about psychedelics is that people will really like them. And why? Because they give people dissociative experiences. So let's think about this. In our Vedic model of the mind, which is what I taught y', all, a lot of our problems come from which of those five things? Chitta, Samskar, Ahamkar, Buddhi, and Manas. Which one do you think causes us the most problems in life?

[Akash Singh]

Samskar.

[Mark Hagnon]

Samskar.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That's what one would think.

[Akash Singh]

Or a hamkar.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's a hamkar. So our samskar for a particular problem, it's samskar. But when your khamkar is out of control, every dimension of your life will be a mess.

[Mark Hagnon]

That's your ego again.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Ego, Right. So ketamine comes in dissociative agent. What does it do? It disconnects you from your sense of self. Deactivates the default mode network. Exactly what happens in a practice like shunya meditation. Shunya means void, null, or nothingness. Right. So when I'm going through my midlife crisis, what do I do? What am I doing now? Like, you know, we started this company and, like, I'm actually making way less money than I would have if I just continued being a psychiatrist to like, like, startup companies from MIT and Harvard and all this kind of stuff. Was doing work at Harvard Business School. And, like, you know, I started working with gamers and that, like, felt good for a while, but, like, now what the am I doing? Like, I spend all my days in meetings, and I'm not, you know, so what am I doing? So then do shunya meditation. Go back to being nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. And really, this is beautiful because if you. I don't know if you guys can do this right now, but if you pay attention, what you'll find. I'm trying to debate. Okay, let me try this first. This way. What do you feel at the core of your being? I'm talking about feel. Don't give me an intellectual answer. Say more like a void.

[Akash Singh]

Kind of like where? Deep in the pit of my stomach.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. Do y' all feel nothing?

[Mark Hagnon]

I have sometimes I have issues with mind, body, connection.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. Yes.

[Miles Jai]

I'm not sure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay.

[Mark Hagnon]

I have a hard time answering that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So a lot of people will experience, like, you can feel the outside, but right here, it's kind of empty. You don't feel anything. There's an absence of sensation somewhere in here. So a really powerful shunya meditation is like the simple way to do it is if you want to, if you were, if you feel like you have ego. And by ego, I mean the rajsik ego or the tamasic ego, which means the ego where I'm really great or I'm pathetic. There's a really beautiful practice that you can do is just focus on this. And whatever you think about yourself, send it there. Just send whatever you feel about yourself, just send it. Feel that emptiness within you if you can. And if you feel that emptiness, this is why you shouldn't do breath meditation. You should do this because you have a lot within you that you're trying to get rid of. How do I stop being angry? How do I get rid of my self esteem? Right. And you figured out how to adapt to the stuff on the surface. You've done what his therapist tried to teach him, which is how can I functionally, how can I exist and adapt? How can I be happily married? How can I be professionally successful? How can I survive with this stuff? But the stuff is still there. You've adapted, but you haven't fixed it. And breath meditation doesn't work for you. So you need to do shunya. You need to send all that negative stuff. Just send it in there and you'll be amazed at how much things change.

[Akash Singh]

No, I'll absolutely try that.

[Mark Hagnon]

I think you've said this and correct me if I'm wrong, but it was something to the effect that true confidence is not thinking, oh, I'm so great or thinking like that inverse of oh, I'm so terrible, the universe is conspiring against me. It is a lack of thought about yourself. It is a lack of connection to your performance that you just sort of are existing. Is that a fair assessment?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Sort of, yeah. Yeah. So here's what I would say. When you are egoless, you will be incredibly confident. Right. So if we look at like, okay, who is confident in the world, who is the most confident person that you can think of? It's a class of people, actually. Most class, most confident people on the planet.

[Akash Singh]

Is this the top 1% or something?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Nope, way more common than that. Narcissists? Nope. So narcissists have a sense of inferiority. It's not old people.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, kids.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. And what does a kid think about themselves if I take a one year old?

[Akash Singh]

Nothing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

They have no concept of ego. They have no ahamkar. And look at their confidence. Yeah, it's amazing. It's almost as if when they develop an ego. Oh, you're a good boy. Yeah, you are a bad boy. It doesn't matter whether you're good or bad, it's going to create problems for both of you. I get people in my office who are failed at life. 29 years old, living in mom's basement, watching pornography all day, playing video games. And I get 44 year olds, CEOs of billion dollar companies. I don't know what to do next. I built this thing. I feel stuck. I want to quit. I can't afford to quit. Other people aren't going to be able to do it as good as I can. Now my wife expects me to be able to take her on private planes, or my husband expects me to be able to take him on private planes. The moment you add ego to the equation, Ah. What happens if we give you a drug that dissociates you disables the ego. Now, depression improves treatment. Refractory depression improves the kind of depression that doesn't respond to cognitive behavioral therapy. The kind of depression that is so deep that the regular techniques don't work. What we have to do is unplug it. At its root, disable the ego. Meditation can do it too. It's way harder.

[Mark Hagnon]

So why in this case would I ever meditate if I could do psychedelic drugs and achieve things the same end goal?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Great question. For two reasons. First is you're not going to achieve the same end goal, you're going to move in the same direction. Second reason is because ketamine is a drug of abuse. So I remember when I was training to be a psychiatrist, we got a lecture because the nice thing about being at Mass General and Harvard and all that good stuff is we get a lot of experts there. This person came to talk to us about psychedelic therapy and ketamine. Actually ketamine treatment for depression. And she's an expert in it was doing it, this is back in 2015, so back before it was cool. And so she talks to me and she's like, yeah, some of my patients require ketamine infusions every single day in order to keep their depression at bay. And I was like, hold on a second, that sounds like an addiction, right? So the problem with ketamine is that we can become dependent on it. And that's what we see. I mean, so many people abuse ketamine because we love that state, but it requires a drug to get there, Right? And then there are other problems with ketamine because you're artificially doing something. It's sort of like, you know, I can give you. If you exercise, you can increase your heart rate. I can also inject you with adrenaline to increase your heart rate. Both of them involve the same physiological endpoint, which is increase in heart rate, but the mechanisms through which they achieved are very different.

[Mark Hagnon]

And I imagine the benefit to your.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Cardiovascular health is night and day. Yeah. In the same way, when you meditate, you're not just going to disable the default mode network. You're going to improve your frontal lobes, which allow you to focus your attention and stay on task. They're going to make you better at stopping distractibility. They're going to improve your emotional regulation. So what I tend to find with people who engage in psychedelics is that the amount of transcendental experiences they have is very limited compared to a very experienced meditator. So a psychedelic is like getting on a helicopter and get boarding a train and going from zero to 6,000ft. It just goes from this place to this place. You don't get to control what happens in a psychedelic. When you meditate, you learn how to fly. So you can go beyond 6,000ft, 10,000ft, 12,000ft, 20,000ft, and you can understand things and experience things that people with psychedelics, I don't think I've ever done. I've never heard of a psychedelic experience that takes you that height.

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, yeah. I've also heard people say in relation to this, be concerned about unearned wisdom.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So there's those kinds of truisms which. Sure.

[Mark Hagnon]

I wonder if it's kind of sort of alluding to the same sort of sensation that you're getting access to experiences without really learning and building the.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So that's a problem. I think the other problem is that when you get a psychedelic experience, it's completely decontextualized. Right. So when you meditate for a long period of time, kind of like you said, you kind of pick up things along the way. So as you pick up things along the way, it's kind of like if I. If I take you from zero to 6,000ft and you run around, you're going to have a lot of trouble. You'll get altitude sickness. But if I want to climb, you know, it's really interesting. Many years ago, I climbed Kilimanjaro, and I did it in about five or six days. And as I was looking at it, one of the things that's really interesting is the longer you take, the more successful you are. So the highest failure rates are the shortest trips. So when you take 11 days to climb to the same height. Your body has more time to build red blood cells. You have more time to adapt. Right? So when you meditate for a very long period of time, your. Your capability to stay in that state, explore in that state, actually utilize, utilize. The state is very different.

[Mark Hagnon]

Working out for steroids.

[Miles Jai]

What are some tools for being able to meditate? When I was younger, I used to be in karate for many years. And I actually remember times where it's like, I felt like true meditative state where it was just like nothingness. It wouldn't be often, but I can recall the times it would happen. Now I've been my adult age, I've tried a couple of times, and it's like, I can't meditate for. And I give up because it's just so frustrating. Like, what's something for me for. For Sean?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I. I made a whole guide of meditation precisely because of this. So I think one of the biggest problems in the world right now is that we have all this McMindfulness, right? So you have all these apps that basically give you basically one kind of meditation. Most of them are descended from the Zen tradition, like the Buddhist or Zen tradition. And so there's a lot of different, like, types of meditation in the same. I'd kind of say, like, you know, if we have American cuisine, you can have a lot of derivatives of American cuisine. But, like, sushi is like, completely different. DOSA is, like, completely different. So I think the reason that a lot of people struggle to meditate is because they're not meditating in the right way way. The reason they're not meditating in the right way is because teachers of meditation. So it used to be that if you wanted to be a teacher of meditation, you had to achieve. So the average time it takes to become a zen master is 30 years. And at the end of 30 years, you don't even become a master. Your master says either you are a master or you aren't. So right now, like, the idea of investing 30 years and then not getting a degree. So right now, the way that people teach meditation is they get certifications, and getting a certification in meditation does not mean, like, how do you guys think? What do you think it takes to get a certification in meditation?

[Mark Hagnon]

With all due respect, an online course.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, right. You just have to show up, and sometimes you don't even have to do that. So no one is saying, oh, yeah, I'm gonna. Like, you can teach meditation because you've had transcendental experiences. You've been to 20,000ft now you understand, now you're prepared to teach. So this is why this is a big problem, because everyone is teaching meditation. Very few people are qualified. Now, in terms of you, I think this is where like we get to a lot of details, right? So if you were to ask, like, I would need to know more about what, what you struggle with. So a couple of things that I can already piece together. So one is that especially if you're on the spectrum, once again, the way that you manage sensory input is different. So oftentimes when I have patients on the spectrum, we will do very body oriented meditations. So what I would tell you to do is if you want to achieve a no mind state, stand on one leg. And I don't know if you guys know this meditation posture where you're standing on one leg and this leg is tucked in over here. I can show you all later. But they call it tree pose.

[Akash Singh]

I don't know what the actual name is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, I don't know what the. So just stand on one leg, leg for as long as you can and then switch to the other leg. And what you'll find if you do this practice is that at the beginning, you know you're going to be thinking about all kinds of stuff. You're trying to focus your mind, trying to focus your mind, and your mind wanders. You don't need to try to focus your mind. Try to distract yourself. Try to think about a million different things as you stay in that pose. What do y' all think will happen?

[Miles Jai]

Your leg's gonna get so tired and.

[Akash Singh]

You'Re gonna start focusing on.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Focusing on what?

[Miles Jai]

Just how exhausting your leg is from holding.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Very good, right? So you're going to think about that and then you will enter a no mind state. Now this is the piece that a lot of people miss. When you focus on one thing for an extended period of time, what does your mind do with it? I don't know.

[Miles Jai]

I don't know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

When you put on your shirt first thing in the morning, you feel it. What happens? Do you continue to feel it all day? You're wearing it all day?

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, you lose awareness.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You lose awareness. When I enter a crowded restaurant and I hear everyone talking, what does my brain do with that?

[Mark Hagnon]

Right? It turns into.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Any constant stimulus will then disappear. So the whole point of meditation is I am trying to do one thing because emptying my mind is impossible. If I create an empty mind, there'll be a vacuum. All kinds of thoughts will flood in. So what I try to do is I focus it on one thing and I focus it on this thing so that everything else disappears. I'm kicking it all out. I can get down to one thought. That's it. And as I acclimatize to that thought, then that thought will disappear and then what you will be left with with is emptiness. And those times when you did martial arts, you were fully focused on the art and at the end of full focus becomes empty mind. So whatever it is that brings your mind to one point very, very easily is what you should do to meditate. So I asked y' all a question. What do you feel in here? You didn't feel anything. You didn't feel anything. You felt something. That's what he should do. Forget about breath. Meditation not good for you. You.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. For trauma, I did a breath work session where they like find the points and all that. And that was actually very. I found that talk therapy was really helpful and then now I find that more helpful for like processing stuff like that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So you know, that's earlier I, I mentioned that, you know, we thought talk therapy was the gold standard. So I think men especially need to do a lot more stuff in their body.

[Akash Singh]

Ah. Cuz my wife did it and she was like, I don't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So this was something I remember in 2012 I was in medical school. I'd done research at Harvard for a couple of years. I got an email from a cousin of mine in India and he's like, hey, there's this thing called the emotional freedom technique. Like what do you think about it? And I was like, it sounds like it's bs. And then he's like, shouldn't we. So we got into this debate about it. I looked at some research. It didn't seem very convincing. Many years later, now we have a ton of studies on eft, which is similar to kind of what, like tapping is what they call it. So there's like trauma is like stored in the body.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

In. In some ways. And they're now studies that actually seem like pretty solid.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

That there's ways of bringing stuff out through the body. We see this also in like, you know, masculine communities of when you get dumped, what do we tell people to do? Hit the gym. Right. So physical. And if we think about emotions, we think about emotions as mental. They're not mental, they're physical. Too, too. Heart rate. How do you know? There's a beautiful paper. I'll see if I can send you all and you guys can link. But that maps on. I use it all the time with the men That I work with maps every emotion to your body. So they did a beautiful paper where they measured where people feel things. And what's really cool about it is there's like a hundred emotions there. And even little things like feeling rejected, feeling disappointed, feeling angry, feeling frustrated, feeling like someone denied you something. These are all things that we call anger. But there's subtle variations in where, where that emotion shows up in our body.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And so the really cool thing you said, you struggle with mind body stuff, but this is what's really neat is the research that I did many years ago on mind body stuff is that when you move the body, you activate the brain in different ways. So if I'm feeling like, like I have a, you know, a pit in my stomach is I move my body, literally that sensation will change. And once I fix, if I fix the emotion mentally, it'll change my physiology. Right. If I no longer feel sad, then my physiology will calm down. If I change my body, the emotion will fix itself too. It's like a two way street. Everything in the body is a two way street.

[Mark Hagnon]

I've heard this about like power posing and things like that is like kind of the way people have corporatized and westernized it where like you're feeling nervous, put your hands above your head, be in a large state, or you're feeling sad, try to smile and it'll actually send oxytocin to your brain and make you happier. Is that related to what you're saying?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, so I think it's corporatization. But there's a really cool study about someone was trying to. Someone was studying how we detect emotions and faces. So what they did is they took all their lab students and they had them make facial expressions. And what they specifically were measuring is how quickly can someone detect a change in your facial expression. So if I go like this and then I go like this, if you guys slow that down and make like microsecond cuts, there's a transition from happiness to like anger. Right. So when can people detect that? So they've stumbled upon a really interesting finding, which is that they were training their lab people. Right. So I'm doing experiments with people. So my lab assistant is like making smiling faces and angry face faces. What they discovered is that when they trained the lab assistants, those lab assistants started feeling that way. So the person who had to make the angry face was pissed at everybody and the person who was smiling a lot was happy with everybody. So there's abs. Everything in the brain is like reciprocal and homeostatic Right. And if. If you kind of force yourself to smile, that's hard. Because the forcing yourself to smile, if you just do it, like, I go like, this feels crazy. Crazy.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, it feels crazy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? But if I go like this. Right. You could tell the difference.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. And he didn't get to see it, but yeah.

[Akash Singh]

No, I was thinking about the. The breath work thing. I remember the first time I did it, my male friend had told me about it. He's like, it's crazy. What? Like. And I was like. I was kind of skeptical. I remember going in. She starts poking around. Do you feel anything here? And then I felt this crazy pain. And then she would say, like, thrash around, whatever. And I did, and I just started crying. And then I remember she was like, okay, turn on your stomach. As I turn on my stomach, I look in a mirror. I'm pouring sweat. My eyes are puffy from crying. And I'm like, all right, well, I'm done. And then she goes, okay, this is the heart of the spine. You can store a lot of trauma in here along my spine or the heart of the back. And I was like, what the is she talking about?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

We're done.

[Akash Singh]

She starts going along the back. I felt even more crazy, even more tears. And that was. Since then, it hasn't been as extreme of a thing. But it's interesting that you say men feel that more, because my wife didn't, and she was like, I don't know. I don't feel right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So you feel it less because now it's out.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. So that's emptying the well. Right. So what I love about hearing stories about this is if we come up with a model, we should be able to make predictions. So if there really is a well of emotion down below, if we get rid of it, it should be gone. And that's. And I hear stories like this that makes me think we're kind of on the right track.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. And it was. I. Like, I've stopped doing talk therapy. I thought it was very helpful, but this seems like it's a more helpful thing now.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So I think they help with different things.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What?

[Mark Hagnon]

Can we change gears just to anxiety?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Sure.

[Mark Hagnon]

That's something that I personally deal with.

[Akash Singh]

I think a lot of people probably deal with.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay. So I want to also just be cognizant of time. I'm not saying we should rush, but we want to talk about anger. Do we want to talk about anxiety? Do we want to talk about Kama Sutra?

[Akash Singh]

I think what we feel is that most people struggle with a lot of anger and anxiety.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, let's talk about anger.

[Akash Singh]

So it. We. I think we are the conduits, hopefully for anybody who's feeling these things. And I think these are both things. I'm on Lexapro, low dose. I've actually found it to be pretty helpful with even that super peak anger. I don't get there the way I used to. I don't think I've gotten there early since. But like there was an anger level that I would hit that the Lex Pros help with. I don't know if you find those things helpful or not helpful.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Anxiety.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think I prescribe med medications. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Okay. Oh, you're a psychiatrist.

[Mark Hagnon]

That's right.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. Okay. But yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So let's talk about anxiety. What do you wanna know?

[Mark Hagnon]

So I'm curious if you have helpful tools for, I guess, assessing anxiety and trying to deal with them in different cases. So for me personally, before I have a big show or a big meeting or some type of life event that I'm concerned about, I'll feel intense anxiety. And then there's also sort of a secondary ambient anxiety that I'll feel generally without even really knowing it. So I don't know if there's one of those that's easier to sort of. Of to discuss first.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

What's the problem with what you described?

[Mark Hagnon]

That I will. Before a show, I'll feel this anxiety that then will manifest in different ways. So if I'm feeling really anxious, then I might do nothing and I'll try to just sleep because that is a way that I cope with the anxiety. Or I'll just feel generally uncomfortable.

[Akash Singh]

And even on stage, if you're. I've noticed if I'm nervous, I'm less free and my performance tends to suffer. The times where I'm like almost weirded out that I don't seem to care. Before I get on stage. Stage, I actually kind of do better. Sometimes I'll be so not nervous that it makes me a little nervous.

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

But then I get up there and I'm so free that I can ride any kind of quiet tension without worrying. Yeah. About what it's. And then usually the set is just.

[Mark Hagnon]

I'll rush to a show and I get there right when I'm supposed to get on stage and I have no time to think about it. And then I go on and I have a great set.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

Or if I'm thinking about it all day and ruminating and thinking and thinking and thinking, then there's actually a stiffness that's sort of, you know, goes along with the.

[Akash Singh]

That.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, so you would like to be relaxed because you want to do better or because it feels better?

[Mark Hagnon]

I think both. And I think that, I think there creates a cycle that the better I do, the better I feel, the better I feel.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So let's understand there's so many ways to tackle this, but so we're going to go through all of them. So the first thing to understand is baseline anxiety. So there's this measure of physiology called heart rate variability. Now HRV is the variability in your heart rate, how much it can go up and how much it can go down. So I'm going to ask you all a question. If I take a 29, it's a hard question. Trick question. If I take a 29 year old gamer who's sitting in their basement and I take an Olympic athlete, which one do you think has a greater heart rate variability? The Olympic athlete, Absolutely. Okay, we both had a whoop.

[Akash Singh]

We know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. Why?

[Akash Singh]

I assume it's a heart health thing that's capable of.

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, I wonder. Nervous system.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So if you look at an Olympic athlete, their baseline heart rate is bradycardic, it's 40. So the capacity for their heart, their variability in their heart rate, they can go from 40 to 140. So their HRV is 100. Okay. People who have anxiety have a very low heart rate variability. They are always living high and their body's capacity to respond to stress is lower. So as your heart rate variability increases, your capacity to handle stress increases. So high HRV good, low HRV bad.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

People who have baseline high anxiety have a low heart rate variability. So what we want to do is increase. This has nothing to do with what you're worried about, nothing to do with being on stage. This is the way that you're physiologically wired. Now I really got into the stuff not when I was working with anxiety, but when I was working with trauma. So I was working with a group of first responders for a period of a few months and I kind of noticed they're just like always on edge. There's hyper vigilance, they overreact to things. They're just very, they have very little like, you know, they go from 0 to 100. That's not technically true. So a lot of people think, oh, I go from 0 to 100. The person I'm dating, oh gosh, he gets so angry, he goes from 0 to 100. He doesn't go from 0 to 100. He lives at 80. Yeah. So getting to 110 is only like a plus 30, whereas the rest of us are at 0. And like, you know, we can handle 30 points. So what you need to do is, is alter your baseline physiology. So there's a trauma guide where I kind of like lay all this stuff out. There's a series of practices that you can do to essentially increase your hrv. Now the way that we do it as something called physiologic stretch, that's what I kind of call it. So one thing that I'll do with my patients is I'll tell them to run for 60 seconds as hard as they can. Just stretch your physiology, push it really hard and then relax. So anything that you do that increases the top end will increase the bottom end. So you want to stress your physiology. This is also why people with anxiety find that exercise is so helpful for them that if they exercise regularly, their baseline anxiety level goes down.

[Mark Hagnon]

I find this to be the case.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. But this is the important thing. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So your anxiety is not one mechanism, it's multiple. So your baseline anxiety, it's beautiful the way you described it. You said there's actually two things. Thinks so let's deal with each of those things. Okay, so with this baseline anxiety, I think it's great to start with physiology and to use physiology and to understand that half the reason that we have an anxiety crisis in the world today is because the majority of people who treat anxiety have zero training in the body.

[Miles Jai]

Okay?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Psychologists don't learn medicine, they learn psychology. And it's not a like knock on their profession.

[Mark Hagnon]

But they're not going to prescribe.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, forget about. They're not going to take anatomy. They don't know, they're not going to take physiology. Right. And that's why I think our treatments are fundamentally not as effective as they could be. We have someone like Akash who's been to therapy and what does he say? He said, the moment I started focusing on my body, I got better in a completely different way.

[Mark Hagnon]

But psychologists don't learn like nervous system.

[Akash Singh]

Psychologists don't learn.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

They'll learn nervous system, but they won't learn physiology, they'll learn neuroscience. They won't learn about the four chambers of the heart, you know, your lateral circumflex artery, what it feeds and things like that. Right.

[Miles Jai]

That's just not part of their training, that running exercise. How often do you have to do it and for how long before you start to see the benefits?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Of so the running exercise starts, you see the benefits right away. So if you're feeling anxious and you run for 60 seconds, just run just as hard as you can. Do push ups, jumping guys, doesn't matter, that will activate. So what'll happen the moment that. If you ran for your life for 60 seconds, what would happen in your physiology afterward? It would calm down. Because now we're exhausted. You're not thinking about anything. You can't be anxious, right? You're running for your life. You have one pointed mind. And then, you know, you'll, you'll start. So it can happen immediately. But then the more you stretch your physiology, the more gradual the change will be. Generally speaking, if you do this stuff for about eight weeks, I think that's when we really start to see a lot of change.

[Miles Jai]

And how many, like daily, three times a day, once a week?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I mean, so running really hard is something that, sure, you can do once a day. If you're looking for a daily practice, I would say a mind body practice, like yoga or Tai chi is better. So do 20 minutes of yoga a day. Do 20 minutes of Tai Chi a day. You can take your pick. If you like to move, do tai chi. If you like to be still, do yoga. Oh, okay, okay. So that's baseline anxiety. Second thing we can do for baseline anxiety is some SCARC work. That's the well of anxiety. It's always there. You have this kind of existential dread about, about, you know, why are you anxious? Right? Because like, oh, I can't handle things or something is wrong. There's something that you're very sensitive to. So if you do that kind of inner emotional work, that'll help too. Now, anxiety in the moment. This is where we're going to do a couple of cool things. The first thing is just to change our relationship with anxiety. You see anxiety as a problem. It's not a problem. It's your friend. It's there for a reason. Everyone's like, oh, everyone has anxiety. Like, yeah, we're supposed to.

[Mark Hagnon]

Right? It helps me in some ways, right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So changing the way that. And here's the beautiful thing you said that it kind of becomes a vicious cycle, right? So if you set up, if you start off right, it's a vicious cycle in the right direction. Virtuous cycle, where now I'm relaxed, now I'm vibing, now I'm having a good time, now they're having a good time. That relaxes. Let's just like, you know, I'm relaxed, they're having A good time. Now I'm vibing. Now we're vibing. Now everything is great. Anxiety is the opposite. I'm nervous. I go up there. I screw up my joke. They're not laughing as much now. I get more nervous. It's a vicious cycle.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So you learn to fear the anxiety. You learn to panic. You have anxiety about the anxiety. That's the real problem. That's what creates the cycle. So change your relationship with anxiety. I'm anxious, right? This is my body telling me that this is important to me. This is important to me. It's okay for me to be anxious. I'm gonna go out there. I'm gonna do the best that I can. I could screw up. Up. I may not. Out of my hands. Very foreign to people with anxiety. Yeah.

[Mark Hagnon]

Giving up control would be absolutely concerning.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Concerning. And so practice giving up control. So I came to this podcast today. Is this important for me?

[Akash Singh]

I hope so.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, right. Like, think about it. Why do guests come on your podcast?

[Akash Singh]

It's a good platform. Talk about what they want to talk about.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. Right. Y' all are fun to talk with. You guys have a good reach, all this kind of stuff. It's a great podcast. What if I screw up? No, really, you guys are saying is if you learn something, articulate it. What if I screw up?

[Akash Singh]

People might not like you. You might get negative comments. You might. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So what am I gonna do about that?

[Akash Singh]

Nothing.

[Mark Hagnon]

You can prepare. You can think about every possible.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I'll solve that problem when I get to it. But, like, being worried about it now doesn't help me at all. Right. So I show up, and this is sort of the attitude that can get you in trouble because you don't show up to your med school graduation to get your award. But like, you, you know, you can just do the best that you can. The rest of it is out of your hands.

[Mark Hagnon]

You need to have confidence that you can fix it when you get there.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. So that's another. It's a great point. So if you look at people who have anxiety, they misestimate. They underestimate their capacity for damage control. Have you had bad sets before work? You're not. Why not? See, your brain doesn't connect those two dots. So literally, if people have anxiety, focus. Rethink how good you are at damage control. And if you want a complete lack of anxiety, be really good at damage control. This is the big mistake that people make. When I feel anxious, I want everything to be perfect. That's not the winning strategy. The right strategy is be able to handle the. When it gets bad. If you can handle the when it gets bad, it can go good or it can go bad, doesn't matter. And if it doesn't need to go good, then I can relax.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, that's the thing. And.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right.

[Akash Singh]

I do think men are maybe I remember a friend of mine saying, well, women are better at making decisions. And I said, yeah, but at what cost? Like, they're constantly thinking about what could go wrong. And I think men generally are just like, Like, I'm gonna make the decision, it might not be right. Who cares? Yeah, I think that's the thing we're a little better at.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I. I think we can cultivate a sense of detachment. That's kind of what I call it. And I think it's like, it changes your relationship with anxiety. Right. The anxiety is no longer something that you need to be anxious about. That's what you need to change. Then the rest of it is just a physiologic response in the moment. Okay, fine, I'm anxious today. Maybe I'll screw up. Right. Tomorrow's another day. And. And this is really something that I think it's so hard for people to learn. Like, I think I learned this as a doctor because. Because you sort of like, that's how you learned that. Right? So, like, being a doctor is like, maybe it's similar to being a comedian, I don't know. But you're just faced with a lot of situations that there's like, no way to win. Like, you know, kids with cancer and patients who kill themselves. And you did everything that you could. You learn really, really quickly. One of the biggest lessons I learned in medical school or in residency really, is that we think that doctors save lives. Like, I can't save anybody's life. I don't know if you guys get this, but as a doctor, I do not have the power over life and death. What absurdity is this? This. Right. So as a comedian, what do you have power over, Mark?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, the jokes I say, the way I present myself on stage.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, the first thing you have. The second thing you don't. The way you present yourself. No, you don't. You don't have control over that.

[Mark Hagnon]

I guess the way I'm perceived, I don't have control over. But like the.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

My affect, you don't have control over that.

[Mark Hagnon]

Why?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Cuz what if you're anxious? Can you just control that?

[Mark Hagnon]

No.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, just let that go. See, here's the problem with anxiety. We don't understand what we really have control over. And if you think you have control over the way that you present. Well, what are we talking about, bro? We're saying that when you go on stage, you have anxiety. And you don't want anxiety. It changes the way that you act. It changes the way that you talk, changes how locked up you are. You have control over that shit. No. If you did, then you wouldn't be asking this question. So oftentimes if we look at people who are anxious about things, they believe they have control over something that they don't have control over.

[Miles Jai]

But what if those physical things affect. Affect your performance and adds more anxiety? Like, how can you. Like I, for example, I have extreme stage fright. And we have a live show coming up in Saudi Arabia.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And I'm.

[Miles Jai]

Right now I'm worried about the show and it's like, I'll get fidgety, I start sweating and all that type of shit. When I'm on stage, it gets 10 times worse. What can I do to prevent that from happening? Knowing that it's going to happen?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Like, I want you to listen to what you said. Said. How can I prevent that from happening when I know it's going to happen.

[Miles Jai]

Every time I've been in front of a group of people?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

How can I rewind time? Because time keeps moving forward. Yeah. How can I prevent something that I know is going to happen? How is that?

[Mark Hagnon]

Yeah, it's a paradox.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

You can't.

[Miles Jai]

Are there ways or, like, actions I can take to prevent it from happening?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No.

[Miles Jai]

So just forever, I'm always just going to sweat and get the shakes every time I go in front of people?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Isn't that what your experience has been?

[Miles Jai]

Yeah, it sucks.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Okay, so fix me.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, this is not comforting.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah, hold on a second. Right? I can't now. What are you gonna do? It can never be fixed.

[Miles Jai]

Keep doing it or avoiding it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right? So that's the decision you have to make. So this is the interesting thing. You are afraid of your anxiety. The problem here isn't that you're anxious, it's that you're afraid of anxiety. And here you are trying to prevent something that is inevitable. Like, bro, how can you prevent something that is inevitable? You can't. Like, I'm using your framing. I'm not trying to do some, you know, psychiatry magic on you. You're like, you see this as inevitable and you ask me to prevent it. You are setting up up an unwinnable situation. And when you set up an unwinnable situation and you fail and you fail and you fail. How do you. What do you think that does to you?

[Akash Singh]

It confirms it and strengthens it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yeah. And you become more powerless and more powerless and more powerless. You are setting yourself up for constant failure. And then what you have at the end result is this happens every single time because of the way that you're doing again.

[Akash Singh]

So the problem with his sentence was knowing that it's going to happen. If he just said, how do I keep this from happening?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Would change things. No, it's the exact opposite. Now you get it, my dude.

[Miles Jai]

So it's like, hey, all right, I'm going to go on stage, I'm going to sweat, I'm going to shake it is what it is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely right. So, like, look, you're a comedian. You're going to Saudi Arabia. Do you want to go to Saudi Arabia? Yeah.

[Miles Jai]

A little afraid, but yeah, there we go.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes is the wrong answer. Yes and no.

[Miles Jai]

Yes and yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I want to have gone. I want it to be behind me. I want to be done with it. That's the way you really feel about it. But there's a part of me that hates this, but I' ma do it anyway because this is who I want to be in this world. And it ain't going to be easy, it ain't going to be pretty. And there is no way to prevent. Prevent the. The moment you start living life like that, your anxiety will disappear. It won't disappear physiologically, but you'll be able to handle it. Let's put it that way. Right. You can't control. This is the problem with anxiety. The reason that the human brain thinks we can solve our anxiety is because of our perception of control. What is. Are you anxious about getting hit by a nuclear bomb today? No. Why not? Not. Maybe you didn't think about it, but. So people will actually get anxious about things that they can't control. But I think a big part of anxiety is our perception of control. Because if we can control something, then we can do everything right. And if we do everything right and we can control thing, then it'll be perfect and then I won't have to suffer. But the moment that you're like, look, I want a girlfriend, I want a girlfriend, I want a girlfriend. Just, bro, there's no way you can get this person to fall in love with you. You go, be the best person that you can and accept that sometimes they're going to say no as you start living your life that way. And there's a lot of psychological mechanisms that I'm kind of throwing around here or injecting into this, this thing. Your relationship with anxiety will change, right? And then you say, okay, my life is not about preventing anxiety. My life is. I want to go to Saudi Arabia. I want to try to make people laugh. There's a part of this that's going to suck, but I'm choosing to do it anyway. Except don't try to fix your anxiety. Train yourself to act in spite of it. Then you will be free. Because as long as you are trying to get rid of anxiety, if anxiety shows up, then you're fucked. No control over your life. This is something, by the way, that happens to men a lot. So as men, we are trained to fix ourselves by changing our environment. If I feel like I'm ugly and unattractive to women, what do I do?

[Akash Singh]

Work out?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. I change, right? So I had a patient once, 18 years old, I was working in jail. I asked him, bro, how do you get. How do you get in jail at the age of 18? Like what happened? He said, said, When I was 12 years old, my dad left. I have three sisters that are older. They came to me and they said, you got to be the man of the house now. Man of the house provides, right? So we need this. We need this. We need this. We need this. It's time for you to step up. Now that makes him feel. How do you all think that makes him feel?

[Miles Jai]

A lot of pressure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

A lot of pressure. Right, Right. So it's interesting the language that we use. We don't use emotional words. Did you all see that? Pressure. This is the emotional experience of men. Not anger, not sadness, not frustration. Pressure. This is the number one emotional experience of men. Pressure. So then he starts selling drugs because that's the only thing he can do at the age of 12. And then the way that they treat him creates emotions with him. He feels guilty, ashamed of himself if he doesn't bring enough money. And so then something really interesting happens. Whether he feels ashamed or not depends on his environment. If they're proud of him, he feels proud. And if they're disappointed in him, he feels ashamed. So if you look at what happens, what men do, we will shape our whole environment to make us feel a certain way. Right? So if someone's disappointed in me, Akash, you have to go to medical school. You need to do yoga. I need to shape my environment to make me feel a certain way. Because I can't handle the feelings in here. Here. Does that kind of make sense? This is the way that men get emotionally manipulated all the time. Because if someone in Your environment can evoke a feeling in you. They can control your behavior. Right? So if I can make you feel guilty, you're going to do what I want because then I can tell you, oh, I love you, and then you're going to feel better. I control you, right? By evoking your emotions. Because we don't know once we have guilt on the inside. The only way, if I feel ugly, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna change the world outside of me. Instead of dealing with the emotion on the inside, this is how we develop body dysmorphia. Really interesting. Study the drive for muscularity, which is how swole dudes want to be. Correlates with divorce rate, unhappiness in marriage, unhappiness in life. If I'm relying on something else to create an emotion in me, then the moment my environment changes, I change in response to it. When your dad, making your dad happy, avoiding his wrath became the way that you felt safe, Right? That's the only way we shape our environment, to make us feel a certain way. So in this way, learn how to manage your emotions. Learn how to accept your emotions. Learn how to experience your emotions. Emotions. You're anxious. I'm sorry, bro, that sucks. You've got the short end of the stick. You got the short end of the genetic shallow end of the gene pool. You're wired for anxiety. Poor guy. You're a little bit autistic. Your life is going to suck more than other people's. I hate to break it to you, but you know this, I know this, everyone on the spectrum knows this. I'm sorry. Really am. But you are amazing. That stuff doesn't have to dictate the life that you live. Stuff is going to be shittier for you than it would for anyone else. Is that fair? No, but you get to go to Saudi Arabia, you get to do your comedy. It's going to suck for you, but when you're done, you're going to love it. And that's what got you here. You haven't conquered your anxiety and look at where you are. You don't need to conquer your anxiety. It doesn't have shit on you, my friend. Right.

[Mark Hagnon]

How do you balance acceptance with ambition in this regard? Like, I recognize that many successful people probably have a, you know, dearth of self esteem and they might have some insecurity that flares up that then compels them to do these great things. But then you also might have someone that's, you know, playing video games all day. And is overweight and maybe they just are accepting of their position. And we've recognized that both are kind of bad.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

So I don't think that the person who plays video games. So generally speaking, I think ambition, okay, so I think ambition gets you to a certain point. So I think ambition is adaptive and then becomes maladaptive. So for example, you know, I can have ambition and that can drive me to succeed and can even give me some degree of happiness. But like so, so ambition is really good at getting me out of inaction into action, but it won't give me happiness and we don't actually need it to start acting. So I think the problem with ambition is when we become outcome oriented. So if I, if I'm super ambitious and I work towards something and I get it, that's great. But if I'm super ambitious and I don't get it, what do you think will happen?

[Mark Hagnon]

I mean, I get frustrated and disappointed.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

And what do you think it'll do to your motivation.

[Mark Hagnon]

If you don't get it for long enough? It'll discourage you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely right. So ambition will like get you part of the way there, but it's like, I would call it like toxic fuel. Like it'll get you there, but not in a good way. So I think what works way better is actually acceptance. And when we say like the 29 year old at home is accepting his circumstances. No, he's not. He's ignoring his circumstances, he's running away from his circumstances. So ambition is about where you want to go. Acceptance is about where you are. Ambition is about the last step you're looking to take. Right? It's about achieving your goals. Acceptance is about the next step that you're going to take. Okay, I have anxiety. It's there all the time. What am I going to do about it? It. See, he thinks in terms of ambition. How do I end this problem? That's not what you want to do. What do I do about it now? What's the first step that I take? This gets like so confusing because when I work with people with trauma, acceptance is really hard. Accept that this happened to you and take responsibility for it and what are you going to do about it? Right. So when I'm working with someone in an abusive relationship, one of the reasons that they're in the relationship is because their partner has taught them that they're powerless. But what you have to accept is that you're not powerless. But that's really scary. It's hard to do because if you accept you're not powerless. And you have the power to change. What does that come with?

[Mark Hagnon]

You have to do something.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Not just I have to do something. If I have the power to fix my situation, who is to blame for my situation?

[Akash Singh]

Myself.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Right. And this is what's so weird. There's a bunch of pathological self blame. But this is what's so tricky. When someone's in an abusive relationship, you have to show them that they do have power, they do have agency. But then that comes with responsibility, and people don't like that. So acceptance, I think, is way harder than people think it is. It's not just. Just so. A lot of people think that acceptance means giving up. That's not acceptance. It's the opposite. It's like, okay, I'm done. It's giving up. That's what it is. Acceptance is saying, okay, this is the reality now, and what am I going to do about it? That's the really important thing. I have to accept that my child does not love me.

[Akash Singh]

So they go hand in hand, Acceptance and ambition.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, I think they actually don't go hand in hand, I think. So Acceptance oftentimes gets confused for apathy. Like in action. Right. So if I'm like, if I have a patient who comes in and has cancer, we need to start by accepting that you've got cancer. But that doesn't mean we're giving up.

[Akash Singh]

Right?

[Mark Hagnon]

It's acceptance plus responsibility.

[Akash Singh]

So, yeah, that's what I'm saying. You accept where you are, and then this is where I want to go.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, so, so that, that's the subtlety. So where I want to go is the end. I think the, the most healthy way to do it is this is my next step. It's not even about the goal. It's like, this is the direction I'm gonna go. Okay. My child never wants to speak with me again. What do I do about that? I want to repair my relationship with child. It's okay to think about that goal, but I think the most adaptive way to do it is to focus on the next action. You can have some vision and you should think about where that action leads, but don't attach yourself to that outcome. Let me start therapy. But if therapy doesn't work, so be it. And why didn't therapy work? Because I it up too bad with my kid. And you accept that. You accept from the get go that I have damaged this relationship so much that it may not be repairable, but I'm gonna do everything within my power to make it right. The moment you have that attitude, like when you all hear me say that. Right. What does it evoke within you? There's. There's ability, there's capability, there's not guaranteed success. In fact, quite the opposite. When you accept that you have very little control. A lot of people think that means apathy. I think it means freedom.

[Mark Hagnon]

It's a bit daunting, though.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Very daunting.

[Mark Hagnon]

The prospect that all of my problems in life are. Maybe not all, but many of them are fundamentally my own.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes.

[Mark Hagnon]

And that they're my responsibility to then take the first step.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes, it is daunting. It is also the best way to do it.

[Mark Hagnon]

It's better than the alternative, which is I have no control on everything is happening to me.

[Akash Singh]

It seems initially like there's a feeling of hopelessness with that, even though I understand in the end it's not hopeless.

[Mark Hagnon]

But the alternative is more hopeless, though.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

No, no. So, so let's understand why it's hopeless. Why is it hopeless?

[Akash Singh]

Because there's nothing I can do. This is what it is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Yes. Right. So there's hopelessness because you can't control the action, the outcome. Sorry. But there's another layer of hopelessness because you don't have faith in yourself. Right. So what's daunting about it? You're saying it's daunting because it's like so much work that's only daunting. Like when I have an 8 year old daughter. So when my 8 year old daughter tries to take a 50 pound suitcase up the stairs, it's daunting. But that's because she doesn't have the capability. So as you start living like this, you start to realize, okay, what? What is my true capability? When you face a daunting task that you feel is impossible and you even get 25% of the way there. Holy shit. What it will do for your confidence. Right. Did I get what I wanted? No. But I got way further than I thought I would.

[Mark Hagnon]

That's great.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Moment that you realize, holy crap. My understanding of my capabilities is wrong. My understanding of my capabilities comes from which part of the mind.

[Akash Singh]

Ahamkar.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

There we go. So here I am at work. Oh my God. I'm not going to get promoted. I take this dissociative agent and now I'm not worried about it anymore. I'm going to just do my best. Right. So easy. Once we let go of that ego, what am I capable of? Nothing. I showed up today. How is this podcast going to be? I have no idea. I'm just going to show up and do my best. Is it going to be good? Is it going to be bad? I had no idea what y' all would really like to sit with. First sentence out of yalls mouth. Let's fix his anger, fix your anxiety and fix his autistic them Holy. In two hours. That's daunting. That sounds daunting. What am I going to do about it? Let's get started.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

How do you think we did?

[Akash Singh]

Fantastic. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Interesting. Did I know that this was going to work? Did I know? Did I prepare? No. The irony is I did prepare, but for a lot of things. We didn't talk about.

[Akash Singh]

Dr. Kinogia. This was awesome. We would love to have you back. You are great. Do you want to plug anything? Obviously there's a book. How to raise a healthy gamer. We got to talk more about gaming and. And just fixing the youth. I feel like you fixed me, but let's fix the youth too.

[Miles Jai]

No Part two. Andrew will be here.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

He.

[Miles Jai]

He has a lot of fixing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Looking forward to it.

[Akash Singh]

Thank you so much, man. Thanks a lot, man.

[Mark Hagnon]

Thank you so much.

[Akash Singh]

Check them out. Healthy gamer GG guys. Thank y'.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

All.

[Akash Singh]

See y' all next week. God bless.