← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
How To Break Unconscious Patterns, The Power of Meditation, The Truth About Dopamine & Creating Lasting Change with Dr Joe Dispenza #549
01:31:12
Almost everyone today is addicted to something. From phones and social media to alcohol and drugs, our modern life has created an unprecedented epidemic of dependency. But what is actually driving this addiction and how can we actually break free?
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- [00:01]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
You could have the most organic, vegan, gluten free, ketogenic, triple filtered water. Take all your vitamins, take all your nutrients, work out, do pilates, do yoga, do your breathing, do all of that. Get your body chemically balanced, get your body physically balanced. But if you're not going to get your body emotionally balanced, forget it.
- [00:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast Feel Better, Live More Almost everyone today is addicted to something. From phones and social media to alcohol and drugs, our modern life has created an unprecedented epidemic of dependency. But what is actually driving this addiction? And how can we actually break free? This week's returning guest is Dr. Joe Dispenza. Dr. Joe is a best selling author, speaker, researcher and someone who has for decades been studying neuroscience, meditation and stress. Dr. Joe believes that every single one of us has a lot more potential than we think. And once we start to tap into that potential, we can create huge changes in our lives for both our health and our happiness. In this week's conversation, we explore how every addiction is, at its core, an attempt to change how we feel emotionally, why activities like gaming or social media scrolling can make it harder to enjoy the simple pleasures in life how novice meditators in Dr. Joe's week long advanced retreats demonstrate measurable biological changes after just seven days how to heal and move on from the past by releasing emotional baggage rather than simply reliving painful memories the critical importance of how you start each day and the Precise structure of Dr. Joe's own morning routine, including how he prepares his mind before meditation and why even small moments of presence can have a powerful effect on our lives. Throughout this conversation, Dr. Joe emphasizes that change requires becoming conscious of our unconscious patterns. Breaking free requires noticing these patterns and making different choices, even when those choices are uncomfortable. So whether you're struggling with addiction, processing past traumas, or simply want to create a more fulfilling life, this episode is full of profound, thought provoking wisdom that will leave you feeling reassured, motivated and inspired. I thought today I wanted to talk a little bit about addiction. These days it's very hard not to draw the conclusion that almost everyone is addicted to something, whether that be their phones, Instagram, alcohol, online pornography, drugs, whatever it might be. And so I'm interested, Dr. Joe, what's your view on addiction? What's driving so much addiction and what can people do to try and break free?
- [03:50]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Sure, I think it's a question worthy of a conversation. I think that we've been programmed. And it's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just how we've been programmed. So I think behind every substance addiction or some addiction on some gaming or media or whatever, there's an emotion that the person is doing their best to regulate. So let's just say a person has been exposed to a trauma, right? And when we have an event in our life that changes our emotional state, the stronger the emotion we feel from the shock, the betrayal, the trauma, the news, whatever it is, the more altered we are inside of us, the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot. And that's called a long term memory. And long term memories, we remember them because we can remember the feeling associated with them. So what most people don't know is that trauma or those series of events alters our internal state. And every time we think about or remember the trauma, we produce the same chemistry in the brain and body as if the event was occurring. Now the body is so objective that it doesn't know the difference between the real life experience that's creating that emotion or the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone. And it only takes a thought and a feeling, an image and emotion and stimulus and response. And you're actually conditioning the body subconsciously into that emotional state. And that sets the baseline of that person's emotional state. So then the person goes, God, I feel empty, I feel anxious, I feel unworthy, I feel resentment, I feel frustrated and I don't know how to change it. So then they look for things in their outer world to make that feeling go away. So whether it's a drug, whether it's gaming, whether it's pornography, whether it's complaining, doesn't matter what it is. But let's just use a pill as an example or a drug, a recreational drug. A person takes a recreational drug. The moment they take the recreational drug, they notice a change in their emotional state. And the moment they notice that change in their emotional state, they associate that change with what caused it and they remember what caused it. So that starts to create a dependency. Now, I think there are degrees of addiction. Some are very physiological. Receptors are modified. But when you get right down to it, an addiction is when the body has been conditioned to be the mind. So then the person, every time they start feeling the emptiness, they feel the unworthiness, they feel the frustration, they feel the anxiety. Their brain creates the image of what they need to do to make that feeling go away. And the last time or the last series of Times it was that exogenous substance or that activity that made it go away. Now, here's the problem. Let's use gaming as an example, okay? So when you blow someone up, or you break through a certain level, or you shoot someone, or you get points for whatever you're doing in a game, there's a release of dopamine in the brain. And dopamine is the reward chemical. It's the pleasure chemical. The problem is, is that the amount of dopamine that's released in a very short interval of time is outside of normal. So now rush dopamine into the brain and the receptor sites on the outside of the cell say, this is way too much dopamine than I'm used to processing. So the receptor sites actually close down. They shut down. So now in order for the person to get that same feeling, they gotta play more. Yeah, they gotta do more. The stimulus has gotta be greater. So over time, we start recalibrating those pleasure centers, those receptors, to a higher level. Now, what's the significance of that? In the absence of that stimulation, our pleasure centers have been hijacked to such a high level that we can't find pleasure in anything. You can't find pleasure from a sunset. You can't find pleasure from sitting down at the table and having a meal with your family, playing with a dog, going to see your grandparents. Especially for a lot of children, you can look at them and you can see that something happened to them where they're just glazed over. That's because they're kidnapped by the technology. And so in order for them to get that same rush, they have to play more, they have to do more. Now here's really the big problem. Learning should be a reward in and of itself, right? I mean, learning should be a reward. But now for most people, they need a stimulus. They need something to drive their attention to whatever they're learning. And now attention is dependent on something outside of us. And when you capture people's attention, you capture their energy, and you can program them as a result of it. So the solution then is to teach people how to self regulate. So we see people that come to our work that have had problems with addictions, all kinds of addictions, but really it's some emotional addiction that really they're trying to change, right? And so they just program the thing that has to happen outside of us. So what we discovered in our research is that you could actually turn that hypnosis, that conditioning around and not wait for the experience to produce the emotion, but teach People how to self regulate their emotional states. And be able to trade resentment, frustration, anxiety for an elevated emotion. And if you keep practicing it, you get really good at what you practice. So good at it that you actually become it. So then when people start to self regulate, we actually measure what happens to their physiology when they do it properly. And it becomes a habit. And so then when the person notices then that their body's out of balance, they have one of two choices. They can rely on some exogenous substance or something outside of them. Or they can take a moment and recalibrate their emotions, emotional state. And the only challenge I think with addictions is that the moment you say, I'm not gonna drink coffee, I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes, I'm not gonna drink alcohol, I'm not gonna have sugar. The moment you make that conscious declaration with your conscious mind. The body has been conditioned and dependent on that substance. So two hours goes by and the body has modified its receptor sites. And it starts talking to the brain. It starts saying, rangan, why don't you start tomorrow? Tomorrow's a better day. Any other day but this day. This is not a good day for you. It's my parents fault. It's my boss, it's the news. And that thought is being driven by the body mind. Now if we act on that thought and we make the same choice, we do the same thing, we create the same experience, we feel the same emotion. And then all of a sudden that emptiness or that emotional state goes away. And the person returns back to the known. So there is a biological, there is a neurological, there's a chemical, there's a hormonal genetic death of the old self. Because you're breaking that stimulus and response. That inhibition then causes the body to feel chaos. It's looking for the known, the familiar. So instead of white knuckling it to the other side, we teach people how to regulate their internal emotional states. And over time, you start seeing the moment you're feeling an elevated emotion like gratitude or appreciation or kindness or care or in love with life. You don't need anything outside of you to make you feel better. You're actually doing it by yourself. And people can sustain these states like any habit, for an extended period of time.
- [11:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. There's a phrase I've heard you say before, Dr. Joe, that people often mistake love for pleasure. And when people start to feel whole again, they have less of a need for pleasure. And I think that really speaks to what you've just said. You know, when you feel these as you call them elevated emotions. You have less of a need for these quick dopamine fixes, right?
- [11:51]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yes, exactly. I mean, think about it. I mean, how could you want if you're whole? If you're whole, there's no need to want, there's no lack, there's no separation.
- [12:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What does that mean, whole?
- [12:03]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, here's how we describe it. We do a lot of studies on brain coherence and heart coherence. And let's talk about what it's not, okay? I mean, so when there's an emergency, or when we're aroused by some threat or some condition in our life, or we can't predict an outcome, we can't control an outcome, we have the perception that something in our world could possibly get worse. We switch on that primitive nervous system, right? That fight or flight nervous system. And now the game is fight, run or hide. The problem is with human beings, when we're at it, we feel like a loss of control. Our brain all of a sudden tries to control everything in our life. So every person, every object, everything, every place, every experience that you've ever had is mapped in your neocortex. So the arousal of the stress hormones drives the brain into a very high brainwave state called high beta. But then as you shift your attention from one meeting to another meeting to another text to another person, to another thing to another place you have to go. And every one of those different elements has a neurological network in the brain. So like a lightning storm in the clouds, the brain starts firing out of order, it starts firing incoherently. And when the brain is incoherent, we're incoherent. And so think about when you're stressed. The most common thing that people do is they over focus. They narrow their focus on whatever it is that's driving them to pay attention to it. And so then the act of paying attention to the problem is actually driving the brain further out of balance. And we've studied this. When you analyze that problem, that circumstance, that condition within the emotion that you are feeling and derived by the hormones of stress, you'll make your brain worse 100% of the time. Because the analysis, the over analysis is driving it further into a higher thinking, higher beta brainwave state. So this kind of narrow focus is what causes the brain to be a house divided against itself. So we thought, well, why don't we do the opposite? Why, instead of narrowing our focus on the cause, something physical, something material. Because the hormones of stress actually heighten the senses and cause us to become Materialists. So matter is the issue. When there's survival, it's whatever's around the corner, it's whatever's going to happen. So we said, okay, let's teach people something else. Let's teach them how to broaden their focus. And as they broaden their focus and take their attention off of everything material and everything known and focus on space, focus on nothing, the act of doing that actually starts slowing down the analytical mind. You can't analyze when you're sensing and it starts to change the person's brainwaves into a slower brainwave pattern. And so now as you start slowing your brainwaves from that high beta, you start slowing down, you're shifting gears, you go into a mid range beta, then you go into a low level beta. And then all of a sudden you get into alpha. Now Alpha, when you're in alpha, the voice in your head, the critic in your mind goes away. That voice that's talking to you stops. And the brain tends to see in images, in pictures, that's the imaginary state, that's a creative state. And in alpha, when you're out of survival, you're looking for answers, you're creative, you're looking for new ways of doing things. So when they broaden their focus, not only do they move into alpha, but all of a sudden we start seeing those different compartments of the brain that were once subdivided, all of a sudden starting to unify. Different communities of neurons that were fragmented start to synchronize.
- [15:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
That's what you call coherence, right?
- [15:34]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
So what sinks in? The brain links in the brain. So when you see the front of the brain talking to the back of the brain, the right side of the brain talking, the left side of the brain, you start knowing something good is starting to happen. And the person's starting to create more order. So when you see those psychic union of two hemispheres coming together, you know, the polarity, that person starts to feel incredibly whole. And coherence. When you have waves that are coherent, when they build or interfere with each other, their waves get bigger. And the higher the amplitude of the wave, the higher the energy in the brain. All of a sudden the person starts to become very relaxed and no longer stress in a program and kind of alert and awake at the same time. When you're resentful or frustrated or impatient and you're sitting in traffic, the same hormones are released and your heart is actually beating like there's a tiger behind you. But you can't run, you can't fight, you can't hide and the traffic is frustrating you even more. You're releasing more of those chemicals. So the heart starts beating against the closed system. And when that happens, the heart starts beating out of order. Now, the heart's incoherent. So when incoherent waves interfere with each other, they're out of order. They diminish energy and the brain energy leaves the heart. And this is when we stop trusting. This is not a time to communicate. This is not a time to learn. This is not a time to be creative. And energy leaves the heart. So we discovered then, when a person truly starts practicing those elevated emotions, the heart gets very orderly, very coherent as well. And now when you start feeling the emotions of the things that you want in your life or that you would like to create in your life ahead of the actual experience, it's impossible for you to want it. Why could you possibly want it if you feel like it's already happened? Now, here's the cool part. Maintain that modified state of being. Get so good at doing it with your eyes closed. Start practicing with your eyes open. And if you can, maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day. Coherent heart. Soon as energy reaches the heart, we've done thousands of studies on this. It's going straight to the brain. The heart starts to inform the brain that it's safe to create. At the exact same time, the heart begins to produce an external magnetic field. You've got a WI fi signal. Now you start feeling connected. You start feeling more whole. The brain is coherent. It's directing a very clear vision of what it wants. Combine that clear intention with an elevated emotion. You have a different WI FI signal. You have a different energy. And now the cool part about that is you start to see those synchronicities, those coincidences, those opportunities start showing up in your life, and you're not going anywhere to get them. They're actually coming to you. Now, let's just look at the biology of this.
- [18:35]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [18:37]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Epigenetics says it's the environment that signals the gene. Genes don't create disease. Our response to the environment actually creates disease. Well, the end product of an experience in the environment is called an emotion. So the person who lives by the same emotion every single day, the body's so objective, it's believing it's living in the same environment, doesn't know the difference. And they keep the same genes signaled in the same way. Genes make proteins. Proteins are responsible for the structure and function of your body. The expression of proteins is the expression of life. And the Person now is in the same emotional state, they're expressing the same genes. And nothing changes in our life until we change. Okay, so now the person who trades resentment and frustration and anger and everything else for an elevated emotion, and they can sustain that state, the body's so objective that it's believing it's living in a different environment. So they're knocking on the genetic door. So the elevated emotion the person memorizes, the body is so objective, it doesn't know the difference between the real life experience that's creating that emotion and the emotion that that person's regulating by thought alone. Keep knocking on the genetic door, you down regulate the gene for disease and you upregulate the gene for health. Because their body's in a different emotional state and the body's believing it's living in a different environment. And we've done studies with novice meditators and we were curious to see what kind of biological changes would take place in one week if you went all in, like, all in, like immersed yourself in the entire week long event like.
- [20:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
People do on their one week retreats.
- [20:13]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, one week retreats, yeah. So we, so we draw blood and we look at about 2,882 metabolites, all exosomes, gene expression. And at the end of seven days, the novice meditators, almost 100% of them, show substantial biological changes in their blood that suggest that they're living in a different environment. Now here's the weird part about it. They're in a ballroom. There's nothing going on in a ballroom. I've been to thousands of ballrooms. There's nothing very exciting going on in a ballroom. They're actually making those changes inwardly. And I say to our research team, where are those chemicals coming from? Where are they coming from? The person's not taking any substance. It's coming from within us. And so the nervous system starts manufacturing a whole pharmacy of chemicals equal to the person's intention and emotional state. And it's how we think and how we feel that begins to alter things in our lives.
- [21:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely incredible to hear this. What kind of metabolites or I guess chemicals are you measuring? Are they to do with markers of inflammation?
- [21:33]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yes, cytokines, markers of inflammation.
- [21:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Markers of the immune system.
- [21:38]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Markers of the immune system. Exosomes that have very positive effects that show the cell is in a state of growth and repair instead of in a state of tissue breakdown or catabolism.
- [21:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I mean, this is profound because a lot of people may not realize that just the way you sleep, if you have a beautiful seven and a half, eight hours of deep sleep compared to, let's say, five hours of sleep the next day, you can measure maybe 700 genes are expressed differently in the body. You can be more pro inflammatory the night after poor sleep. And what you're saying, your research is, show that actually when you take novice meditators, people who don't know how to do this, who don't have years of experience, they're not monks, they have not.
- [22:19]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Been trained, in fact, not to interrupt you. In fact, if they have no experience, they're going to do really well because they're going to do exactly what you tell them to do. Especially guys that come and their wives drag them along. Or people come and their partner wants them to do it and they're like, I don't know anything about this. And I say, you're the perfect person. Just follow the instructions because you have.
- [22:39]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
No preconceived notion to undo.
- [22:41]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
They just do exactly what you ask him. There's the guy, his heart's blown wide open, he's crying, he's hugging his wife and she's looking at me like, what happened to him? He just fell into something really big.
- [22:51]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So, yes, of course, is that common? In terms of the people who come to your work, I'm interested as the difference between males and females. And something you said there really resonated with me. So what I've seen time and time again is that men, and they're well known for this, and of course this is a gross generalization, but I've certainly seen it to be true in my observations is they wait, they've got things going on, they don't want to see the doctor, they don't want to go and get help. And often when they turn up, the first thing they will say is, hey, Doc, look, I'm sorry to bother you. My wife made the appointment for me, my girlfriend told me I have to come in and see you. It's almost as if they want to excuse themselves for, hey, I wouldn't be here wasting your time, but actually, you know, my other half made me do this.
- [23:39]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Sure.
- [23:39]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Is that something you see as well in your work?
- [23:43]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Something similar. But in terms of this kind of genre, we have a very high percentage of men that come to our work. And I think the number one reason why Angin is because we use science as the model. We rationalize, we give. We combine quantum physics with neuroscience with neuroendocrinology with psychoneuroimmunology. The mind, body connection, epigenetics, electromagnetism, we build a model. So guys, they like to understand all of that stuff so they can reason with it, so they can leap. Women somehow tend to be a lot more intuitive. It resonates with them. They trust that. And they just seem to flow a little differently. But then again, we have men that come. And of course, a lot of times their partner wants them to come, but they really come because they notice the change in their partner. They're like, wow, they're way different. I can see that. Their response to things, completely different. In other words, my memory of them, this person is not fitting into how I remember them. They're out of phase. So then when men finally do commit and they understand the science and, gosh, I mean, it's a really big thing for a man to get in touch with those feelings, right? Because in the game of competition, you know, the rut, you know, the roost, you're always trying to compete, you're always trying to get ahead. You're always trying, can't be vulnerable. Well, that works for really a good amount of time when you are matter, trying to change matter, when you got to do things and you got to work hard and you got to be driven and all that stuff, sacrifices. But we teach that there's another actually, another way to create, actually. And that is really that opportunity for them to open their hearts. Now, I have stood next to men that have done it and completely reversed the health condition within a very short amount of time. Because here comes the house of cards. They just realized that they've been holding this facade, this image of themselves just so that they can keep up and play the game. And instead of waiting for crisis or disease or diagnosis, and once they get in touch with their feelings again, there's nothing like a man who's leading with his heart. Oh, my God. They consider the whole. And then you take a look at women, and this is just, again, a general observation. Women hold the family together, they make a whole lot of sacrifices, they continue to forgive, they do a lot of things. They put themselves after they've taken care of their family, and all of a sudden they already know how to love. You just teach them how to get very clear on their intention and watch out. I mean, women do amazing, amazing work.
- [26:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
A couple of times in this conversation, the word practice has come up. And you mentioned earlier on what we practice, we get good at. So for many people, the first thing they do in the morning is, is that they practice stress. They get up, whether it's the news or emails or social media, they, in what I consider to be a very important time of the day, they allow the environment to start conditioning their mind, and then that conditions their body. Certainly that's the way I see it. And in a view of what we've been talking about so far, of course, we've mentioned addictions which are rife these days. How important to you is the first part of the day when someone has woken up? Is that a critical part of the day where people have to be very intentional, or can they do some of the work that you promote later on? Or do you think first thing in the morning is a very important part of the day?
- [27:41]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I want to be really careful about this. I think there's two times the door to the subconscious mind opens up when we wake up in the morning and we go to bed at night. And it's simple brain chemistry and simple physiology. We have a circadian rhythm. Soon as there's light, our body has been pretty much programmed that we begin to release serotonin, different chemicals that kind of wake us up. So our brain waves go from delta to theta to alpha to beta, and you kind of slide up this way, and then you're back to conscious awareness, local in space and time. When you go to bed at night, you go from beta to alpha to theta to delta and you slide down. Now, if you're stressed, you can't stop thinking, you stay in beta, and your thinking actually is arousing the body because you're thinking about your problems, you can't slide down. Right. So those two points in the day, when we wake up in the morning, we go to bed at night, when we're in alpha or our analytical facilities are suppressed, we're in theta, we're in a hypnotic state, and the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is wide open. What separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind. So as you suppress analytical facilities, you can program anybody to do anything. So then what really happens for most people before they even reach for their cell phone? And by the way, the statistics are 86% of the people in the Western world, first thing they do is they reach for the cell phone and they connect to everything that's known.
- [29:17]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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- [33:44]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, I would never tell people how to think, but I would give them information to cause them the think. So the device is reminding them of things that are known and every person, every object, everything, every place is mapped neurologically in our brain because we've experienced it. And then we have an emotion associated with our coworker, with our boss, with our ex, with our whoever. And so the moment we start responding, now we start feeling the same way. So now the environment is actually controlling the person's feelings and thoughts and anything that controls the way we feel and the way we think, we're victims to. So something's programming us to think and feel a certain way. There's nothing wrong with that. You should check your text and do whatever you need to do. But the first thing in the morning, if the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is open, why don't we program a new behavior? Why don't we rehearse a different way of being with our children, with our spouse, in our zoom meetings, when we're alone, when we're in traffic? Is there a better way to evolve our experience? So if you're truly in the game of evolution, you're truly in the game. Like one lifetime, one day. What am I working on today? Can I respond a different way to this person? Can I think this way instead of that way? Let me be conscious of my unconscious thoughts. Let me not be in a habit, let me stay away from certain emotions, let me practice feeling these emotions, see if I can maintain it. Now you're in the game. You're out of the bleachers and you're on the playing field. So it actually happens even before the cell phone. Because what most people do is they wake up and the first thing they do is the brain is a record of the past. They think other problems, and those problems are just memories that are etched in the brain that Are connected to certain people and objects at certain times and places. The moment they think of their problems, they're thinking in the past. Then when they think about their problems and they feel unhappy, now their body's in the past. And if you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, wow. And then the emotion that's associated is now the body's in the past. Because thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body. And how we think and how we feel creates our state of being. Now, here's the problem. If you can't think greater than how you feel, and you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, and you understand that feelings and emotions are a record of the past, Then you're thinking in the past and your life will stay the same.
- [36:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So I've always been a fan of morning routines. Personally, for me, I've discovered when I have some intentional times with myself in the morning, and when I don't, I'm a different person. I show up differently. My productivity, the way I am with my wife or my kids Is completely different. So I know mornings are very important for me. And sure, could I do the same thing at lunchtime or later on? Well, technically I could, but I never find time, number one. Number two, I don't think it's as powerful later Because I feel first thing in the morning, I'm priming myself to be a certain way for that day. It's this idea that you spoke about last time. Mental rehearsal. You know, we have no problem thinking about athletes rehearsing how they're gonna perform. We have no problem thinking that, of course, an actor, if they wanna play a part a certain way, they're gonna rehearse. They're gonna keep rehearsing until they're able to do it. Yet most of us don't really apply that in our own life. We don't think, yeah, I need to be rehearsing for the person I want to be in my own life.
- [37:19]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
The game of life.
- [37:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The game of life. The most important game.
- [37:21]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
The most important game. Well, 95% of who we are Is a set of memorized behaviors, Automatic emotional responses, unconscious habits, Hardwired attitudes, beliefs and perceptions that are running pretty much like a computer program. They're automatic, Right? So you can think positively all you want. You can say, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm free, I'm free, I'm worthy, I'm worthy. And your body's Saying, no, you're not. You're miserable. Right? So it makes sense that there's got to be an unlearning process. And we got to stay conscious of our unconscious thoughts that slip by our awareness unnoticed. We got to watch how we speak. We got to observe how we act. We got to pay attention to the way we're feeling. And we have to become so conscious of those unconscious states of mind and body that we don't go unconscious in our waking day. Because how you think, how you act and how you feel is your personality. And your personality creates your personal reality. So if you're thinking the same way, you're acting the same way, and you're feeling the same way, nothing's going to change in your life, right? So then the unlearning process is as valuable as the relearning process. The breaking the habit of the old self has to happen before you reinvent the new self. You got to prune synaptic connections. Before you sprout new connections. You got to unfire and unwire. Before you re fire and rewire. You got to deprogram and then reprogram.
- [38:46]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
How do you unlearn?
- [38:47]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Sorry.
- [38:47]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Cause I guess we think about addiction. For many of us, this is just living in the past. We're just repeating behaviors that we've done in the past that made us change our state, that gave us that dopamine boost I get. You can meditate, you can feel that elevated emotion with a very, very high degree of emotional intensity. But how do you go about becoming conscious and unlearning those previous paths?
- [39:12]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
It's trial and error. You gotta go out into life and try it out. Okay, I've changed my internal state. You could have a great meditation. You can connect. Your heart could open. This happened to me. You could open your heart. You'd be amazing. You feel like the day is invincible, and you get up, and then the rest of your day, you're unconscious. The 15 hours of your day. So you're going to weigh one hour of being in a different state of being against 15 hours of you being unhappy and rushing it in a program. So then how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's called change. How many times do we have to go unconscious to the point where we no longer go unconscious and we stay conscious? That's the moment of change. Now, if you're truly out of the bleachers and you're on the playing field, and this happens to a lot of people in our work they say, you know, I really believe that this is the truth. I really believe that you could heal yourself. I really believe you could change your life. I've seen the testimonials. I just never believed that it could happen to me. Now, this is a big moment. Now you're really stepping on the playing field. So a person who starts doing their work, they're not interested in healing. The person who's truly interested in this work, they understand that the only way they can heal is, is that they have to change. They're not saying, I'm going to wait for my wealth or my healing to happen in order for me to feel grateful and be joyful in life. They're saying, if I feel grateful, my healing is going to begin, right? If I feel more whole, then there should be some change in my gene expression. So they've studied the content, they've studied the information, and now it becomes extremely practical. So they may have a great meditation. And we've seen this happen to many people. They sleep better, they have less pain, they have more energy, but their blood values never change. Now they don't say, oh, I feel better, but I'm failing. This doesn't work. They say, what is it about me that's stopping this from completely healing? Okay, how am I in my waking day? The moment you begin to ask that question, you turn on the frontal lobe, and the frontal lobe is the seat of your conscience. Now, the moment you start looking at, at the end of your day, how did I do this is such an important question. How did I do today? Did I fall from grace? When did I lose it and who did I lose it with? If I had another opportunity, how would I do it differently? They'll tell you, I've seen them stand on the stage and tell their story and say, I had to start really watching myself in my life. How I was emotionally responding to my ex, how I was emotionally responding to my financial problems. I had to really, really pay attention to that. And that take an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of awareness to stop the program, right? So you forget and you go, damn, I went unconscious there. Now, you didn't lose, you didn't fail. You just became conscious. Now, if you keep becoming so conscious of your unconscious states, you're outside the program. You're only in the program when you're unconscious. The moment you're conscious, you can objectify your subjective self, so you can see yourself through the eyes of someone else. So the learning process comes from the mistake. The brain learns by mistakes and Surprises, I've made enough of them in my life. It's just whether you're going to do it again, you want to do it again, you're back in the habit, back in the routine. If you say, this is it, the next time that happens, I am not going to do that. Not for anybody else, but because those emotions actually my response to that person or that circumstance is actually weakening the organism. Is that person, that circumstance worth it? So then it's evolution. It's evolution. The challenge then has to be met with a greater level of mind. Now if you're just doing your meditation just because you want to please God or do the right thing or feel good about yourself, that's going to get stale after a while because it's just going to become another routine. Between your coffee and your shower and your emails and your drive to work. And people aren't present, right? So the familiar past conditioning is based on the past, that thought and the feeling. But habituation is the programming of predictable future. That's the known. So if you teach a person how to find the present moment, that's where the unknown exists. And that takes a lot of energy and a lot of awareness. And yet if you practice it, the body literally will begin to respond to the mind. It's like training an animal. It finally relaxes. And when that occurs, your response to people and circumstances in your life will be different because you overcame yourself at the beginning of the day. So I'm an early morning guy, just like you. I get up really early. Why? Because nobody bothers me.
- [44:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What time?
- [44:04]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
4:30Ish. Somewhere around there.
- [44:06]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And then what do you do?
- [44:08]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I get in my think box.
- [44:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What's a think box?
- [44:11]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Okay, what am I doing today? I'm not going to sit down and just jump into a meditation. What thoughts? Before I go into this meditation, am I going to stay away from what circumstances, what things I can think about later that aren't that important to me? What emotions, what memories am I going to stay away from if I go there? I know what that's going to do. Why am I doing this meditation? What am I going to be doing? How am I going to do it? Just like anybody who does anything really well, you get in your think box and you organize what you're going to do.
- [44:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You're doing this in bed or you're having coffee first.
- [44:40]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I just get up, move around a little bit, do a few things, maybe write some notes down. Cause then I can assign meaning to the act. I can stay conscious when I'm in It.
- [44:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you do all this before your meditation?
- [44:50]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Always. But then when I get in my Playbox, there's no thinking. I did all my thinking in my think box.
- [44:56]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You did all your thinking in your think box. Is that also when sometimes we wake up and there's these kind of thoughts that are just popping up? Is you writing down a few things? Is you processing them? A way of sort of quietening down the noise. All right, so can drop into meditation.
- [45:10]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
So let's say I have 10 Zoom meetings in one day. I look at my calendar and I go, okay, none of that. I'm going to get to all of that. This is not my time to think about the known. I know all this stuff is going to work out. I know how the zoom meetings are going to go. Okay, but let me just make sure when I'm in these certain zoom meetings that I'm leading with my heart and I'm being the person that I want to be as an example for my team. I want to make sure I'm communicating really clearly. I'll make time for this. That. Okay, get all that out of the way. That's all the known stuff. But when I come to execute now, what am I going to do to open my heart today? Like, what am I really going to do when I do the breath to bring energy into my brain? What am I bringing? Like, where am I going to go to that? What do I want to experience? How do I do that? Let me just review that. Okay. Then I'm going to open my focus. I'm going to go deep into nothing. I'm going to go as far as I can. And then when I get to that point, then I'm going to create. And when I create, this is what I'm going to create. So I'm not thinking in when I'm there, what should I create? I've already got that all worked out. I'm rehearsing. I'm getting clear on what I'm going to do. I'm getting clear clear on what I'm not going to do. I'm getting clear on how my last meditation was and how I want to evolve my next meditation. So then when I get to my playbox, I'm not analyzing and thinking, because I'm analyzing and thinking, I can't do it. So I get that worked out. If it takes me half an hour, I allow for two hours for myself. If it takes me half an hour to get very clear. And then sometimes there's disturbing things that I have to get through because there's meetings and stuff like that, but I just go, that is all always going to work out. This is you, this is your time.
- [46:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's interesting, Dr. Jo, that for many of us, for many people, meditation is almost like your pre day ritual, right? So you meditate to prime yourself for your day, how you're going to be. But when you talk about your morning routine, you have a premeditation ritual, which I find really, really interesting because I.
- [47:00]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Want to get, I want to get into it, I want to assign meaning to what I'm doing. When you assign meaning to the act, you turn on your prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex says, quiet everybody that's not involved in this intention, settle down. So the frontal lobe will actually lower the volumes of the circuits in the brain that are disturbance. So when you assign meaning to something, you get more value from it. So I just learned that if I just get in and just do my meditation, sometimes there are wonderful because I've done it enough times. But if I just drop in, it doesn't have any meaning. If it doesn't have any meaning, then it just becomes another routine. You're doing your meditation, but you're thinking about your coffee. You're drinking your coffee, you're already thinking about your emails. The brain's in anticipation machine and we lose our free will to that kind of programming. So when I get my think box really clear, it's just like when I used to golf. I would just kind of look at where I was going to hit the ball. I was thinking about the, the club I was going to use, how I was going to swing, how I was going to feel. I work it all out in my think box. When I get my play box, I've done all my thinking, now I'm just going to execute. So we found that when people do that, we do this in our week long events. I'll always say to the audience, all right, after we come back from the break, so turn to someone now and I want you to have a conversation about what you love about yourself, that you did really well in that last meditation. What did you stick? What felt right for you? What did you execute really well? I want you to articulate that and remind yourself, reproduce that same level of mind. Install the neurological hardware by firing and wiring so you can step into that footprint and do that again in the next meditation. Then I say to them, now let's light a match in a dark place. If you had another opportunity to do another meditation, what would you bring? What would you Work on improving. What would you become aware of that you don't want to do, that you did in that last meditation. Let's get really clear about what you're not going to do. And if you had another opportunity, what you would do. And somehow that kind of shapes the brain for the next experience, for them to evolve their experience, because they're in the experience now. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm not going down the. I'm not getting off the exit of my job. I'm not getting off the exit of my ex. I'm going to go straight. I'm going to just keep. You can make those turns in the beginning, it's normal. But you start making those turns and then all of a sudden you're realizing, I'm not going to make those turns. And you drive right past the exit. I drive right past them. Too old. I drive right past them. Too out of shape. I drive right past. My disease isn't going to go away. There's something wrong with me. You just keep driving past those, and next, you know, you run into something big. So it's trial and error, you know, I mean, this is like, it's so important for people to realize if it took them. If it took them two years to. Of chronic stress to develop their health condition, it's not going to go away. In two meditations, you know, when I tell them, I say, you're not that good. You're just not that good. Like, just get real here. Like, one foot in the quantum world, one foot in the real world. I'm a pragmatist. I don't want to talk about quantum superimposition if it has no value in my life. I want to talk about what it is that involves my experiences. So if you're truly in the game of change, then you would be rehearsing how you were going to be in the next zoom meeting. If you were really off in the last one, you wouldn't say, oh, I'm this way because of that person or that circumstance. That's that program of being a victim. Saying, that person or that circumstance is actually controlling the way I feel and think. My response to that person is making me sick. It's actually weakening the organism. Okay, the next time I have that opportunity, if I'm truly in the game of evolution, let's see if I can stay in my heart. And the whole time I'm not going to react. That would be a victory for me. That would be a victory. So then at the end of your day, you go I actually kind of love myself. I actually got my behaviors to match my intentions. I got my actions equal to my thoughts. I had a new experience, and it actually felt good. Hey, I'm going to do that again. And you start doing it with your children. You start doing it opening the door for the person who's walking out of the. The office building. You start letting people go ahead of you in traffic. You're just cool. You're no longer in that vigilant state. Now get enough people doing that, all of a sudden you start noticing your wife a little bit differently. Or Rundgen's all of a sudden starting to smile a little bit more. He seems way more relaxed and chilled. People are going to start getting relaxed and chilled around you because mirror neurons in the tribe say, hey, there's somebody doing something that I'd like to do. I just need evidence to be able to do it. And all of a sudden, you start developing a community of people that start behaving differently. What's the significance of that? That's called emergence. An emergent consciousness is that everybody's behaving differently, and that is what's going to change the world.
- [51:52]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, one of the core ideas I get from your work is that we all have a choice. We can choose and practice the way that we want to feel so that we actually start feeling it every day. You mentioned victim mindset a little bit already, and I want to talk a little bit about that shortly because I think many people will say, I'm the way I am because of this. And we'll get to that in just a second before we move to that. For someone who is watching this or listening and is intrigued, and they go, okay, I understand. I've got a choice. I can practice feeling an elevated emotion. They also hear you saying that this can take time. If you spent 10 years in stress, it ain't going to happen overnight.
- [52:44]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
And sometimes it does, though.
- [52:45]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But sometimes it can do. How quickly might someone. If they wake up and they don't reach for the phone and don't put the news on and they decide to engage in a meditation, maybe with a premeditation ritual like you do, how quickly might someone start to feel a difference? One day is two days. Or is it realistic that within seven days someone's gonna start to feel quite differently?
- [53:11]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Okay, let's talk about this, because I don't wanna mislead anybody. Knowledge is the forerunner to experience. The more people understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, the how gets easier. And this is a time in history where it's not enough to know this is a time in history to know how the practical application in understanding that philosophy, that theory, that intellectual knowledge, that information, once you start to apply it and personalize it and demonstrate it, the more you can understand that, why you're doing it, and what you're doing it, you get greater value out of it. So we have people that are diagnosed with serious health conditions, that are nurses, that are cancer researchers, that are physicians, that are engineers, or just a person who just really wants to understand the content. Now this is. It's so much easier to forget this information than to remember it. I always laugh at myself because I have to go back and relearn it again. And I think I know it pretty well, and yet I forget. I don't know why, but it's just the way it is. So when our meditations get stale, it's because we forget what we're doing, right? So the person who really, really takes the time to study instead of watching Netflix, instead of scrolling through TikTok, instead of getting on their phone and doing mindless texts or whatever, they're only going to set aside an hour a day and I'm going to learn this information. When they sit down to do the work, they're present. They understand if they feel this emotion, that they're going to signal a new gene in a new way. If they feel the other emotion, they're going to downregulate that gene and upregulate the gene for their disease. So now it's an understanding. If I rehearse how I'm going to be mentally, I'm going to install the hardware in my brain. If I keep doing this, it's going to become a software program. I'm going to start acting that way. Okay? If I say I can't, it's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't feel good. Those are the things that stop me. Okay, but what if I just start saying anything is possible? I believe in synchronicities. What if I, with my intention and attention, just really get clear on that? Would that be the new voice in my head? So now the person who's truly present and not thinking about their shower or the emails they have to do, or their cell phone or their texts, or when they have to take their kids to ballet or whatever, you're going to get to all of that. The person who's truly present, if they follow the instructions we've seen them, have very significant changes first in their Subjective experience of themselves, like, huh, wow, my back pain isn't fair. That's kind of weird. Or, God, I slept better last night. These small indicators are feedback to tell you that whatever you're doing inside of you is producing a result outside of you. Keep that up over a period of time and you see instrumental changes taking place in the person. Now, another person who has had a series of traumas, been abused in some way from childhood, is facing a lot of health conditions, a lot of emotional and psychological conditions. We don't want them to heal in one week. We want them to work on overcoming those emotional states, and those are the victories. So sitting down in the meditation and when their body starts getting agitated or starts getting anxious, instead of quitting and saying, I can't meditate, because that would be the extent of that person. Just be curious what's on the other side of this? Can I lower the volume to this emotion? My body's craving this emotion. Let me settle it down into the present moment. That would be a victory.
- [56:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So that person with a lot of trauma, there's a moment in the meditation where they feel uncomfortable. The easy thing would be, hey, I'm going to stop, I'm going to put on Instagram, I'm going to get a coffee, I'm going to do anything else to distract me. You're saying that's the key moment. You want to sit with that and hopefully break through that.
- [57:08]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
What I'm saying is there's no such thing as a bad meditation. There's only you overcoming you. People think I'm doing my meditation wrong. No, you're doing it right.
- [57:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Even if it's difficult, that is the.
- [57:20]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Moment that is going to define the person. So then the person goes, oh, God, I feel really uncomfortable. I'm not a good meditator or something wrong with me. It's my trauma, it's my past, it's my parents. It's whatever. The person who says, no, no, I'm going to sit in the presence of this anxiety and I'm going to keep working with my body. I'm going to keep lowering the volume to that emotion. Now listen, you keep lowering the volumes of that emotion, you're going to take your attention off that past problem because you only put your attention on that past problem because of the emotion. I'll never tell anybody to go back and review their past. I'll say, overcome the emotion. Overcome the emotion.
- [57:53]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
This is a key point, I think, which I really want us to talk to you about today. Dr. Jo. Trauma right there's. A lot of awareness growing now about trauma, the impact of our childhoods, how we're spoken to, the beliefs we take on as kids, how that impacts us as adults. Now, one approach to deal with trauma is to go there, to go and unpick it and uncover and see a therapist and detail what happened, why it happened, you know, get an understanding of why you're behaving a certain way as an adult. Now, I think for many people, I include myself in this, that can be incredibly powerful and incredibly important. But I also see when I think of your work, I wouldn't say it's mutually exclusive, necessarily from the outside at least, but is there a danger that we can spend too long in our trauma, processing our trauma, trying to think about it? Because effectively a key message from your work is don't get stuck in those emotions of the past. Don't let your past define you. Think about that vision of the future. Start to feel what you want to feel in the future so you can experience it right now. But can someone go back, revisit their trauma, try and process it? And is that approach consistent with yours? Or would you say it's a better approach or a different approach is to not spend time there, just create the new reality. This episode is sponsored by Thriver, the app that helps you listen to your blood and get personalized guidance on how to optimize your health and fitness. Now I think regular blood tests can be a really valuable tool that can help tell us which lifestyle changes are working and where we might want to make changes. And Thriver is the perfect tool to help us do that. You just take a blood test at home, which is really easy. I do it regularly. Just a simple device you stick on your arm that draws blood automatically, easy, quick, pain free, even if you're not great with needles. And then you just send it off and get all of your results in a matter of days in an easy to understand app. And all of those results come with personalized lifestyle advice from doctors. You can then test again in a few months time and learn what's working well and where you might want to make some changes. For example, your average blood sugar, known as your HBA1C I think is a really important marker that gives you information on the state of your metabolic health. And I personally like to check it every three to six months. The Thriver app is what I use to help me do this and it offers many different options, general non specific blood testing. Or you can get more focused on things like hormonal health, sports performance nutrient levels. And also with Thriver, you can test your APOB levels, a much more reliable indicator for your risk of heart disease than standard cholesterol tests. For listeners and my show Thriver are offering an exclusive offer of 20% off your first Thriver Cycle when you enter the promo code LIVEMORE at checkout. Just visit Thriver Co to get started today. That's T H R I V A co Thriver Listen to your blood. This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Regular listeners of the podcast will have heard me mention this before, but I have been using Airbnb for many years now for pleasure and for work. In fact, I have just booked another Airbnb to record some more episodes of this podcast. And it's not just handy for finding places to stay. Two of my closest friends from medical school recently told me that they regularly host their own places on Airbnb whenever they go away with their family, and that the extra money they make has been super helpful for things like household bills and other family expenses. Which got me thinking. When we're next away as a family and our house sits empty, perhaps we could host our own home on Airbnb and make some extra money to go towards our next holiday days out with the children or even a nice meal out as a family too. Seems like a smart thing to do. And if you have a trip coming up, you could potentially do the same. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.co.uk host.
- [63:02]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I'm down the middle on this, okay. I think there are many modalities that work for trauma. What I've discovered is that insight never really changes behavior. You can see that your father was overbearing or was an alcoholic, or you could see all these different things. You could come up with the insight, all these different things. The problem that I see with people is then they tend to excuse their change by saying, oh, I had a rough childhood. That's why I am the way I am. They are excusing their present position. And again, trauma is a difficult thing. But for me, the person who's living by the identity in their life that they were traumatized as a child or whatever it is, or they've had a trauma in their life. I'm not saying forget the trauma and create another emotion. I'm saying that the person who's willing to go through the emotion and keep working on lowering the volume to it. We have had so many people in this work with brutal pasts, really, really difficult pasts do the work, and finally they reach that point where they just break free from the emotion. They look back, and I have interviewed enough of them, it's the same thing. They look back at their entire past and they don't want to change one thing in their past because it brought them to this elegant moment where they're liberated. They see their betrayers, they see their abusers. They have nothing but love for them. Now, the side effect of that, and many times they'll say, it was like my heart blew wide open. They had to pass through the valley of the shadow of darkness to get there. They just thought, I don't know if I can go any further. And they went one more time. And the body literally was liberated from the past.
- [65:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right.
- [65:00]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Because the trauma is not just in the brain. The trauma is stored emotionally in the body. So you want to take the body out of the past, out of the known. What do you think the body's going to say if it's been conditioned to be the mind? The unknown is a scary place. You step out into the unknown, you're going to be unprepared for that trauma. You don't know how it's going to happen. And so the person keeps clinging to the known. But when the person finally overcomes the emotion, the body literally is freed from the chains of the past. The side effect of that is seeing the past from a greater level of consciousness. Lo and behold, there goes the suicidal tendencies, There goes the dysfunction, there goes the irritable bowel syndrome. That's because the body was still living in that past event by living by the same emotion. So the research on memory is kind of fascinating. And I just, I've studied it enough. The way we recount the past is not the way it happened, even if you absolutely think you remember it being that way. So we don't have the same brain as we did when we were 8 years old or 12 years old or 20 years old. We have a different brain. We have a completely different brain. So the fabrication of the story, for many people, they embellish the story and make it seem even worse than what it was. But really, what you're saying is I changed in those moments. And from a biological standpoint, I haven't been able to change since. So let me tell you why it's been so hard for me to change. And the story becomes dramatized or embellished. A person works them up themselves into this emotional froth and then fires and wires the same circuits in the brain, and they're actually reaffirming their limitation. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I think we're just taking too long, right? So 50% of that story isn't even the truth. It means, in a sense, we're reliving a miserable life that we never even had and we don't want. But the unknown. People would rather cling to their suffering. This is not a judgment. We all do this. We'd rather stay in the known than take a chance in the unknown. Because those emotions of survival are saying what, Run from the unknown. The unknown is a scary place. So now you got to come up against that moment where you're going to actually leave that behind and step into the unknown. This is not a intellectual process. This is David and Goliath. There's a battle going on when the body keeps wanting to go back to its familiar state because it's subconsciously been conditioned to be the mind stay in the known. So then if the person keeps revisiting the trauma from the past, I'm not certain enough that when they revisit the trauma from the past, unless they learn how to desensitize their emotional response to it, that it's going to work for them. What I learned is that if the person overcomes the emotion, the memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom. And now you no longer belong to the past. So the body gets frustrated in the meditation, instead of taking your blindfolds off or turning the lights on and say, listen to the voice. I can't meditate. There's just too much. The sincere person says, what's on the other side of. I can't. What's on the other side of this emotion? Let me see if I can settle my body back down out of that emotion and recondition it to a new mind. And the act of doing that in the beginning is very tedious. And all of a sudden, the person starts getting better at it. And they're telling their body it's no longer the mind, that they're the mind. They're executing a will that's greater than that program. And just like training an animal, you stay. You're not going to die. I'm going to feed you. You can check your emails, you can check your text, but this is my time right now. And you keep doing that. When the body keeps settling it down to the present moment, it acquiesces. It surrenders to a new mind. And when that happens, we've seen this, we've measured it. There's a liberation of energy. We go from particle away we go from matter to energy. That emotion is liberated from the body, and now there's energy to heal, there's energy to create a new life. It's available energy. It's free energy. So the person goes, wow, I see it from a different level of consciousness. I have nothing but love or my goodness, I'm no longer that person. And they're now free from the past. Now the side effect of that is that there's a biological upgrade, there's a neurological upgrade, there's a chemical upgrade, there's a genetic modification that's taking place. Why? You think the same way. You make the same choices, you do the same things, you create the same experiences, you feel the same emotions. Your biology will stay the same because you're the same. Now the person's thinking differently. They're making different choices, they're doing different things or behaving in different ways. They're having new experiences, and they're certainly feeling different emotions. The body reorganizes to a new chemistry. And they'll tell you, I'm not that person any longer. I'm literally not that person. And they're betrayers. Even if they're family members, they have forgiveness for them. And what is forgiveness? You take your attention off the emotion, you overcome the emotion. You don't pay attention to the person or the problem. Now you're free. You free yourself and you free them.
- [70:23]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What if someone says to you, Dr. Jo, look, I get what you're saying, but my ex husband cheated on me, right? They shouldn't have done it. I cannot forgive them for what they did. And the reason I'm asking is because this is exactly what happened with one of my patients, because this often happens. I talk a lot about forgiveness and a lot of people push back. They go, yeah, I want to, but you don't know what happened to me. This was really, really bad. Like, this cannot be forgiven. What would you say to that person?
- [70:54]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I'd say to them, I want you to think about something in your life that you've done that you would like forgiveness for that you don't feel good about. And forgive that person the way that you would want to be forgiven and you would be forgiven yourself. I mean, we all have done. We've all had indiscretions. Nobody's perfect. So that person that is in that state is still in the emotional state. The problem with that is that no new information can enter the nervous system that is not equal to the emotion the person experiencing because it's not relevant. So the question really Is how long do you want to do that? How long do you want to do that? And again, knowledge and information about what that is doing to that person's health and their biology. If you reason with. We've had this happen enough times in our work. That's not an uncommon situation. When the person finally, finally takes their attention off that and puts it on something else, they notice that they feel differently. You can't just tell a person to forgive because it's kind of an etherical thing. It's a subjective process, right? So if you're. We've seen this, Our oxytocin levels and a lot of our participants go up 200 times, right? That's a lot of. That's a lot of love. Oxytocin signals nitric oxide. Nitric oxide signals another chemical that literally causes the arteries in your heart and lungs to actually expand. There's more energy. There's more blood going into your heart, okay? So when that person takes their attention off their ex, takes their attention off their past and starts looking at themselves, denaturing that identity that's built on the past. See, that person had a reaction to that circumstance. And that reaction produces a refractory period of chemicals and emotions. And if you don't know how to control that refractory period, and it lasts for hours or days, it's called a mood. You keep that same refractory period going on for weeks or months. Now, it's a temperament, one long emotional reaction. You keep that refractory period going on for years on end. That's a personality trait. And most people's personalities are defined by, I am this way because my husband cheated on me. What you're really saying is you haven't changed in 10 years. And you're giving your voice, vital life force, to that person who is worth 10 years of your life. Who's worth it. So then the stronger the emotion we feel, the more we pay attention to the cause. Where you place your attention is where you place your energy. That person's giving their vital life force to heal their life force, to change to that person or that circumstance, lower the volume to that emotion. You take your attention off that person or problem. It's not the person or the problem. They're using, unconsciously, that person or that circumstance to reaffirm their addiction to that emotion. That's why they keep thinking about it. If they weren't addicted to that emotion, they would stop thinking about it. So then is it the person? No, it's your left. We'll take your Ex husband. Put him in a rocket in a straightjacket. Let's shoot him to the moon. Now what? Now what? Now, now what do you do you still have that embossed in your brain and conditioned in your body. At what point? So then the research on oxytocin is. You can't, you can't, you can only talk around this. You can't say to someone, forgive if they still feel the emotion. That's they're separate from the act of forgiving. Imagine feeling so much love. No one's doing it to you. It's actually coming from within you. You have that moment, that catharsis where you feel that emotion. Oxytocin levels go up just slightly in the research, just a little bit more elevated. An elevation in oxytocin makes it impossible to hold a grudge. They've done the research on the data. You cannot hold a grudge. It's impossible. You just go, I like this feeling better than that feeling. And because I like this feeling better than that feeling, you're okay, forget about it. I'm good. I'm good. That person who falls in love again, whose husband cheated on them, who falls in loves again and finds a person who is intelligent and caring and kind and loving and provides, all of a sudden they can forgive that person. Like, oh my God, that had to happen because now I have a better person, person in my life. Well, if you don't let go of that, you're never going to have this. In fact, if you bring that into the next relationship, you're not going to have a healthy relationship because there's going to be a trust issue on every level. So then you want an equal. Write down exactly what you want and become that person. And see what. And the experiments, see what comes to you. Try it out. Try it out as an experiment. If I really work on my God, this emotion is actually. Now that I understand the science behind this, this emotion is actually weakening me every day. It's knocking my brain and body out of homeostasis. Stress is when our brain and body are knocked out of homeostasis and balance, turning on the stress response just by thought alone. Hormones of stress down regulate genes and create disease. My thoughts are making me sick. Is that person or that circumstance worth it? If my thoughts could make me sick, is it possible that my thoughts can make me well? Well, now you got to come up against the belief. No, I don't really want to believe this. Then that really means that you want to stay in that emotional state. But go see some Testimonials of people who've had that and see the life that they're living now. The miracles, the synchronicities, the opportunities, the coincidences, the healings. They bless their past. They say, my disease, that condition, that was my greatest teacher. That was my greatest teacher. And now the soul is free. Like, let's get on in eternity. It's a big place. You're gonna hold onto that emotion for how long? You're not doing anything wrong. You're just taking too long, that's all. And it works with anything. Some people want wealth somewhere bankrupt. Some people their business partner, you know, took all their money. Some people it's a relationship. Some people it's trauma from childhood. It's all the same. But what we're looking for is wholeness. So then it's not just the emotion. The emotion is driving a certain behavior. The emotion is driving a certain habit of action. The emotion is driving a certain series of thoughts that are associated with, with that, with that person or that circumstance. If you truly believe that you have the power within you to change, the first step would be saying, I have to take responsibility for myself right now because I got to start thinking differently, I got to start acting differently. I start feeling different. It's going to be hard. If it was easy, everybody would be doing this. But how is self love born? I've studied this. When the person sits through the fire and sits through all of that anxiety, all that hatred, all that anger, and keeps lowering the volume, sooner or later the body's going to release it. And when they. When it's released, forgiveness is a side effect. You take your attention off that person because you no longer have the emotion to keep your attention on. And in fact, you feel so good, this feels better that you naturally forgive. It's not like now you're forgiven. It's not like, hey, look at me, I'm forgiving you. It's just kind of like, wow, isn't life great? Whoa, you're good. I mean, you're good. I'm getting on with my life right now, right? So emotions keep us stuck in the past. And we tell that story and we reaffirm it, we get in trouble.
- [78:59]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's, you know, it subjectively feels better to forgive and practice gratitude and joy. But biochemically, you change as well. This particular patient, when she did ultimately learn how to forgive because her lifestyle, her diet was fantastic up to that point, but she had chronic high blood pressure. As soon as she started to learn how to forgive, blood pressure starts coming down. And you know this full well. Like, it's, yes, subjectively feels great, but it is literally changing your physiology at the same time. And you know, oh, let me just.
- [79:32]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Say one thing about that, please. Because you could have the most organic, vegan, gluten free, ketogenic, triple filtered water, take all your vitamins, take all your nutrients, work out, do Pilates, do yoga, do your breathing. You do all of that. Get your body chemically balanced, get your body physically balanced. But if you're not going to get your body emotionally balanced, forget it. Because the moment you get emotional, your body literally goes to the past. That's the one that matters the most. And then people, once they realize it's the emotion that's signaling the gene, oh, my God, I better start really taking care of my emotional balance as much as I do with my physical exercise and my diet and all that other stuff.
- [80:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I completely agree. This is, you know, for many years I was focused on food and movement and sleep. And I still am.
- [80:26]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I am too.
- [80:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Those things are important. But I realize actually, if you want to get to the root of the root, it's up here. It's how you think, it's how you deal with conflict, it's how you approach the world. It's also, Dr. Joe, what you said about awareness, like the really powerful idea, one of the many powerful ideas I get from your work is it's about evolution. Right. So if you never meditate before. Sure, start meditating, learn how to meditate, have a great meditation. Great. That's going to be better than if you weren't doing it. But then learn. Oh, you know, I had a great meditation, but I still was judging my coworker. I still reacted to my boss. Okay, cool. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can show up and not react in that way. So it's not. And again, we're talking about trauma. You're not saying, don't go back and revisit it. You're just saying, hey, maybe don't stay there too long. Maybe if you've been trying to process it for 10 years and you're still there, maybe it's time to shift a little bit. Is that fair to say?
- [81:27]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah. And look, I mean, look, I mean, human beings, we're so programmed for survival. And when you're in survival and you're threatened and there's a danger, you prepare for the worst. So the person who's traumatized is actually anticipating the event to happen again and they're preparing themselves for the worst case scenario. Because there's better chances of survival if you prepare for the worst. So the brain naturally fabricates an outcome. But actually. And actually says, what if this happens and what if that happens? And now we're actually. This is a really vivid imagination. But it's working against us in a lot of ways. So there's nothing wrong with this. I mean, we've all done it. You've had a trauma, you've had an insult. You've had a betrayal. You have whatever. And then you get wise from the experience. But then you're always. If it's really strong trauma, then you're expecting it to happen again, right? So the brain is selecting out of the infinite potentials in the quantum field. The worst case scenario. And then emotionally embracing the outcome before it happens. A thought and a feeling, an image and an emotion. A stimulus and response. And they're conditioning their body into the mind of that emotion. Their past is. They're reliving their past in their future. Every single day in the present moment. And now it becomes a very visceral and subconscious process. So it takes an enormous amount of will. It takes an enormous amount of awareness and energy to break that apart. And we have so many brain scans of people that have severe anxiety. And you cannot be anxious if you're in the present moment. And they just kept catching themselves going to that thought and feeling that feeling and bringing it back. And then getting frustrated and going. And then all of a sudden, they're there again. Well, why are they there? Because they've been practicing that. You keep practicing feeling anxious. You get really good at it. You start practicing feeling gratitude. You get really good at that. We're doing a study with children in Australia. And I say to them, you practice being angry. You'll get good at being angry. You practice being kind. You get really good at being kind. And it feels better at its core.
- [83:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's that simple.
- [83:43]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
It's that simple, really, is.
- [83:45]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know what? You practice, you get good at exactly. One thing I've heard you say recently. Which has been really helpful for me. Is that you don't get up from your meditation. Until you've overcome that emotion. Until you've reached that place of calm and gratitude and joy. And if I think back to when I started meditating on and off maybe 10 years ago. You know, some days I'd drop in. It would be great. Other days it would be really hard. I think, oh, not today. So I'd walk out of it, oh, you know, not today. With a complete misunderstanding that, oh, it always has to be perfect and joyful. Whereas now I know it's a practice, I sit there for the entire time. Some days it's wonderful, other days it's hard. And I think that's very powerful. What you. What you share there. How long do you really take for your.
- [84:36]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
So I allow for two hours.
- [84:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Two hours.
- [84:37]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I first 20 minutes or so or 30 minutes depends on me. I'm in my think box. And then the next hour and a half. If it takes me an hour, Rangan to get to the present moment, I will not get up for my meditation until I get there. So I'm just uncompromising through that. Because I know that if I overcome myself, it's the overcoming process, that's the becoming process. So if I stretch myself as it doesn't feel good and I break through, then I'm a different person the rest of the day. If I get up and quit, then I'm the same guy. I can't expect anything really magical to happen in my life. So I'm just willing to just go that distance. Because I think that if you get up as the same person that sat down, nothing really happens. Nothing really happens. And we've talked to so many people that have had so many transcendental, profound experiences, and they look back at all the meditations that they've done, and it's not the good ones they remembered. It's the ones where they sat through the fire. And they love themselves for doing it. They love themselves because they sat through it. That's really the value behind all of this. So for the person who's on the journey, like, for me, I'm just the type of guy that if I do a meditation and I get. When I make it through it and it wasn't a pretty meditation, that discomfort bothers me the whole day. It bothers me because I don't want to do that again. And I want to make sure that I'm not thinking about the news or I'm not thinking about what people think about me. I'm not thinking about all that. Any of that stuff. I'm really thinking about what happened there. Joe. Like, where did you go? Why are you feeling this way? Because I'm disturbed by something. Because I think I could do better. It's like a martial artist, you know, you're sparring somebody, you're kicked in the face three or four times. Sooner or later you say, what am I doing? And you sit there and you think about it over and over again, over. And it bothers you until you figure it out, right?
- [86:41]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you feel good because you overcame it. You're like, hey, man, I can overcome it.
- [86:45]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
And so then what people say to me, wow, two hours in the morning, you know, I say, listen, it's really simple. If I can overcome myself at the beginning of the day, the rest of my day, I can overcome anybody. Like, I'm just okay with it. When you're okay with yourself, you're okay with anybody. When you're angry with yourself, you're angry with others. If you're unhappy with yourself, you punish other people that feel unhappy because you want them to feel the way you do. It's just the way it is. You're grateful for you get up grateful. You get up grateful just for the fact that life is a gift. I'm alive. I got a body, I have a family, I have people that love me. I can eat, I have a home, kind of running water in my shower. I feel pretty good. Yeah, I made a bunch of mistakes, but I'm alive. Hey, a new day, new life. You get up grateful that way, and you start seeing these coincidences happening in your life. I guarantee you the meditation will no longer be about a have to. That's what I love about our community. We don't do the work because we have to do the work or to please God or be holy or any of that stuff. People do the work because they don't want the magic to end. The moment you see the coincidence happen in your life, you're going to stop believing that you're the victim of your life, and you start believing you're the creator of your life. And when you do, what do you think that synchronicity creates? You think it creates sadness or pain? The synchronicity wakes you up. You feel a little energy, you feel a little joy, and that inspires you. Like, huh? The experiment's kind of working. And I'll show up tomorrow for the experiment again. Hey, that's kind of weird. Hey, I'm going to do it again. Wow. And then you don't want to stop doing it because you start realizing that you actually can produce effects in your life. I don't care what kind of past you've had. I don't care. You can't even tell me you're too sick to do this work. You can't tell me you're too old to do this work. You can't tell me I never meditated before. You can't even tell me that you had a brutal past. You can't do this work. I've seen it happen. All races, all colors, all sizes, all shapes, all diets, all paths, all social status. Nobody's so special to be excluded from this principle. And so the act of making time to be a creator. Creator in your life. If you make time to be a creator in your life, that means you must believe that you're a creator in your life. If you don't make time or you don't do it, you don't believe that you're the creator in your life. You're believing in your past more than you're believing in your future. You show up to do the work because you want to believe in your future more than you believe in your past. And there's some people that do this work, that get up and believe less in their past because they didn't overcome themselves. And then there's people who do it every day, and they get up and they believe more in their future every day. And the side effect of that are all these wonderful changes that begin to happen in a person's life. And they say what everybody says. I knew it was the truth. I just had to prove it to myself.
- [89:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Dr. Jo, it's always so inspirational being around you, just to finish off for that person who's watching now and listening and says, hey, hey, Doc, I understand what you're saying. I get it. But I don't have time. My life is busy. I don't have time to meditate. What would you say to them?
- [90:03]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I would say you can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or you can learn and change in a state of joy and inspiration. I mean, if you don't have time now, make time when you can. But for the most part, I mean, I want to inspire people to not wait for that crisis or that trauma or that disease or that loss to really change. I want them to be inspired to try it out. It's an experiment. The hardest part about all of this, Rangin, is is actually making the time to do it. That's the hardest part about all of this. When we make time for our precious selves, when we invest in ourselves, we invest in our future. And in order for us to believe in ourselves, we have to believe in possibility. And when we believe in possibility, we believe in ourselves. So it doesn't even have to be a long amount of time. Do a little experiment. Say, I'm not going to think. Think these thoughts. I'll write them down. I'm not going to act this way or speak this way. And today I'm going to work on just staying conscious of these feelings. That's all I'm going to do. I'm just going to close my eyes for a few moments and remember that I'm not going to do these things. If that's the start. You just demystified meditation because meditation means to become familiar with. To become familiar with that symbol is familiarization. To become so familiar with yourself that you can become familiar with a new self and not default back to the old person. We all default. We all react. That's not the question. The question is how long are you going to react? How long are you going to do that for? And so we have a choice. Try it out as an experiment. Little time. Just a little time. If you don't have the time, people say well I don't know the time. I say well get up earlier. And they say well I'm tired. I said well go to bed earlier. What am I going to say? What is it? When is it going to? When do you want to do it? If you don't want to do it and you don't have the time, don't do it. If it inspires you to do it, I want you to do it. Only do it if you're inspired. Don't do it because you have to do it because you want to try the experiment out.
- [92:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Dr. Joe, you're an incredible human being. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
- [92:11]
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Thank you so much Rangan.
- [92:17]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjeet.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated. If you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the Episode Notes in your podcast app and always remember you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better you live more.