← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
The Truth About Stress, Belly Fat, Alcohol and Journalling & How To Tune Into Your Body & Mind with Neuroscientist Tara Swart (re-release) #516
02:11:10
This insightful and often unusual episode takes a deep and meaningful look at stress - what exactly it is, what impact it has on health and how it predisposes us to storing fat. We also discuss the most effective ways to manage stress, the best ways to build resilience and the benefits of practices like journalling.
Loading summary
Transcript234 lines
- [00:02]
A
What characteristic do you most dislike in other people? Because the chances are that the opposite of that is your most strongly held value.
- [00:11]
B
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 this podcast is getting so many new listeners at the moment because of the global release of my brand new book, the number one Sunday Times bestseller Make Change that Lasts nine simple ways to break free from the habits that hold you back. And so for the next few Sundays, I will be re releasing some classic evergreen conversations from this podcast's back catalog to give new listeners a real flavor of what my podcast is all about. And today's rerelease is a quite wonderful conversation with the neuroscientist and former psychiatrist Dr. Tara Swart. In today's conversation, we talk about so many different topics, including the relationship between stress and the fat we store on our bodies, the best ways to build resilience, the power of rituals and practices like journaling, the importance of creativity and spending time in nature. And we also explore some big questions about spirituality and death. If you're someone who's interested in alternative thinking and new ideas, but likes the reassurance of scientific backing, Tara's warmth and wisdom I'm sure will tick all off your boxes. And if you're a skeptic, well, this conversation might just open your mind. Tara, you have been a medical doctor, psychiatrist, executive coach, you're a neuroscientist, and I think one of the topics that people are talking a lot about these days is stress. So right at the top, I'd love to understand when you hear the word stress, what does it mean to you?
- [02:26]
A
So when you introduce me like that, like, you know, you're a doctor psychiatrist, it made me feel a bit like, oh, I'm just like a jack of all trades. But as soon as you said the word stress, each of those roles made sense to me. So I define stress as when the load on your body or mind is too much for you to bear. So as a medical doctor, as a junior doctor, if I saw somebody in AE that was having a heart attack, that's stress on their cardiovascular system. As a psychiatrist, if I saw people who had a breakdown of their psychosis or their depression, that stress on their mental state. And then I changed career to a really interesting time because having been a psychiatrist and starting from the bottom of the ladder into executive coaching, the fact that it was the time of the financial crisis when people were under a lot of Stress. There were high profile suicides and, you know, in Canary Wharf in London, there were a lot more people having heart attacks from, you know, caused by stress. That was actually something that I could address. So it sort of made sense that a psychiatrist and medical doctor would come into the executive coaching space in financial services at that time. And then as a neuroscientist, I would say that's where the stress piece really lands for me. Because your brain's perception of what is going on is going to have this cascade effect on the rest of your body. So if you perceive, basically your brain perceives that there's a threat to your survival, then it's going to signal for your cortisol levels to rise. So your adrenal glands will release more cortisol that goes around in the blood. It crosses the blood brain barrier and the receptors in the brain can see that you're on high alert all the time. And so that process is pro inflammatory. So that has all sorts of knock on effects on your cardiovascular system, your immunity, your gastrointestinal system. And it's very dehydrating. So you know, that can show up on your skin and your hairs, your scalp. And the other thing is that as a very ancient survival mechanism that encourages storage of fat in the abdominal fat cells. So basically you would kind of have very dry skin, frizzy hair, a bigger belly that you can't shift, sleep disturbance, probably some kind of digestive problems. And it's all, you know, what's behind all of that is stress.
- [05:04]
B
Yeah, it's incredible. Like, when you really understand the physiology of the stress response and how it affects every single organ system, then you understand why many doctors, including myself, say that 80 to 90% of what we see in any given day is in some way related to stress.
- [05:26]
A
Right, absolutely.
- [05:28]
B
Stress has such a massive impact on physical health, mental health, emotional, emotional health. You mentioned stress and belly fat there. And I think if we just stay on stress and physical health for a moment, clearly many people around the world are trying to lose excess fat on their bodies for a variety of reasons. Sometimes vanity, sometimes health, whatever it might be. Right. And there is this obsession around diet, and of course diet is important, but I think we underestimate how much stress is behind our weight, the amount of fat that we're storing, you know, and so many other things. Would you agree with that?
- [06:16]
A
Yeah, totally. Because again, referring particularly back to the time of the financial crisis, this was happening a lot more then people would report to me that they had gained weight, that as a result of that they had started to eat a bit differently, whether it's a bit less or a bit more healthily. And they started doing some more exercise, but they still couldn't shift the weight. And as soon as I heard that, I knew that it was promoted by cortisol. So even if you eat less or you move more or both, if you've got these high levels of cortisol, it's still driving that, you know, depositing the fat into your belly. So it's kind of, you know, we have subcutaneous fat and then we have visceral fat. So you're not getting fat all over. But it's mostly the belt that people would say, you know, I've had to like undo it a notch and I just can't shift it. And that's definitely driven by the stress hormone.
- [07:06]
B
I once heard you say in an interview that you have seen quite a lot of people have stress induced heart attacks as well.
- [07:16]
A
I was teaching a class at MIT where I was talking about exactly what we've just mentioned, and a really young woman stood up and said, when I was in a really busy, stressful job, I had a heart attack. And it was interesting because in your mind, when you're talking about the kind of people that have heart attacks and stress, you are imagining like an older guy, maybe someone a bit overweight. So to see this, you know, just woman that looks so young and slim and healthy, to hear her say that actually had a really, you know, kind of big impact on me. But it was when I was working with a really big global bank in several different capacities. So I had seen their employee engagement survey, and then they came and told me that they were seeing a lot of either deaths from or, or heart attacks that didn't cause death on the trading floor. And they wanted, because I was a former doctor, wanted me to help them deal with that. And I said, but I've seen your employee engagement survey. So I know people are really stressed. So I know those two things are connected. So we actually need to deal with that. They couldn't understand that. I mean, it was like 15 years ago now. So the whole idea of the brain body connection has evolved quite a lot since then. But what was so obvious to me as a doctor was really not obvious to them to the point that they wanted to help these employees, but they could not understand that you had to deal with the stress. You couldn't just deal with the heart attacks.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah, it's interesting that that client who you saw with a stress induced heart attack was A woman. It reminds me of a patient that I had 10, maybe even 15 years ago. She was in her 30s, she was slim, and she developed pre diabetes from stress alone. And the reason I know that is because a, I knew that she looked after herself with her diet and her exercise, but her job was mega, mega stressful. And when we helped her address that, when she realized that she needs to address that, within a few months, without changing her diet and her exercise, her blood sugar came back into the normal range, really. So it's kind of. Stress's impact on our physical health, I think, is profound. And I don't think the public know enough about it. And frankly, I don't think our profession knows enough about it.
- [09:54]
A
No, it's because it's kind of behind whatever inflammatory marker you're seeing. It's almost like it's hidden. So even if we understand that a certain disease is kind of like underpinned by inflammation, we're still not necessarily taking that step back and saying, what are the stress factors in your life? We're much more likely as a profession of doctors to say, keep a food diary. How much exercise do you do? How do you sleep? And keep focusing on those physical things. And I think that's a problem, but I also think it's. Do you remember when we did the episode during the pandemic, early on in the pandemic, and I said to you, this is either going to be a mental health crisis or a spiritual revolution. I think we've still got our options open. So I feel like some of the things that we learned during the pandemic, whether it was just the benefits of being in nature more or whether it was understanding mental health better, I think is opening the door to the medical profession and, you know, and educating the population about stress and how big an impact it has on all of those other things?
- [11:09]
B
Yeah, I do remember you saying that there's a lot to unpick there. Spiritual revolution, nature. I definitely want to get into all of that because we focus on women a little bit. We've said, you know, your client, my patient, and what happens on the back of stress. I'd love to know, in your experience, do women and men handle stress differently?
- [11:41]
A
Obviously, these are generalizations.
- [11:43]
B
Yeah.
- [11:43]
A
But I would say, you know, what I hear when I'm, you know, in a taxi talking to the taxi driver or just, you know, me with my girlfriends or whatever, is still this idea that men don't talk to each other about things like stress and mental health as much as women do. But on the other side of the coin, I think that because of this myth that women are better at multitasking than men, women put a lot of pressure on themselves to do everything, be everything, you know, be the mum, the wife, still have a career, you know, do your fitness often with the kind of type A personalities that I work with. They've got a super, super stressful job, like they're a law firm partner and they go and do really high intensity exercise. And I'm always telling them that is spiking your cortisol. So actually you are exactly the kind of person that should be doing more gentle exercise because of your like, you know, your personality type and the stress of the job that you've got. And I think that women under stress can either, you know, skip meals or because of the pressure of being a certain weight, they can be dieting in a way that's not actually healthy and helpful. So I think that contributes to, you know, stress on the system because if you're not properly fueled, then it's really hard to do all the things that you need to do. So I think there are different issues for the two genders that we're talking about. And there is some research that shows that men are very good at adaptive stress responses. So if there's a crisis, they can deal with that for a short period of time, but they need then to just go away and hide in the cave and recover. Whereas women find ways to recoup their resilience better during long periods of stress.
- [13:38]
B
Wow, that's interesting. You mentioned men and it's a bit of a cliche, but it also is true. From what I've seen, both as a doctor, but also in my personal life or what I've experienced and what I've seen in my friends. You say that men traditionally haven't opened up as much as women. Why is that important, especially if we think about it through the lens of the brain?
- [14:06]
A
Because there's two main ways to offload stress from your system. One is physical exercise, which sweats out the cortisol from your body, and the other one is speaking out loud or possibly journaling as well. But I think speaking, you know, speaking with someone because then you've got that sort of social connection piece. But instead of ruminating on your thoughts, if you actually get them out of your brain body system, that reduces your cortisol levels too. And I think, you know, I imagine that you confide in your wife. I think a lot of men confide in their wife. But I think that confiding in other men is still not happening as much as it could.
- [14:51]
B
Look, the truth is, Tara, this is something I've realized is an issue in my own life over the last few years because my best mates are still the mates I made at university.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah.
- [15:02]
B
And they live hundreds of miles away from me. And so literally four weekends ago we got together, we went to Wales for a weekend.
- [15:10]
A
Oh yes.
- [15:11]
B
And it was a very different weekend from how we might have done it in our 20s. We went walking in the hills and it was amazing. It was just three of us actually, but I think we really opened up and shared things with each other that I don't think we have done in ages. And I think we all felt lighter when we left and, you know, drove home and returned home to our families.
- [15:36]
A
So that would have been, you know, the being, being in nature. Don't underestimate the power of being in nature. I know we're going to come to that later, but yeah, you know, being with people that you trust, that you've got such a long history with that you can share things with that maybe you find that some of the issues that you're facing in life, you're not alone in them. You know, there's just so much benefit from that.
- [15:57]
B
What's the impact of stress on our ability to make decisions?
- [16:03]
A
Yeah. So basically, when those receptors in the brain sense these high levels of cortisol, another thing that they do is they reroute the blood supply because they're perceiving an imminent threat to our survival. They don't want to give up resources for things that are not crucial to our survival. So basically, thinking, flexibly, regulating your emotions, suppressing your biases, solving complex problems, being creative, being imaginative, you don't need to do any of that to survive. So I call it going into low power mode. You know, the blood supply is really just going to the parts of the brain that need you to wake up in the morning, do the minimum amount of self care, make sure you don't lose your job. But in terms of, you know, that complex decision making where normally the prefrontal cortex is regulating the emotions that are coming from the amygdala, that regulation becomes less good. So in the stress state, we're likely to experience emotions like fear or anger or shame, and that has a very negative effect on our decision making power.
- [17:14]
B
You mentioned two terms there, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. What are they?
- [17:20]
A
So the amygdala, amygdalae are two almond shaped structures that are in the limbic System, which is the. So it's the sort of size and shape of your clenched fist, it's deep inside your brain. And then the cortex is the part of the brain that surrounds that. And in that system there are these two almond shaped structures, which is where all of our basic emotions start from. But the limbic system in the cortex, they're talking to each other all the time. And the prefrontal cortex is just the part of the outer cortex that's here at the front. When we experience an emotion, the prefrontal cortex can kind of regulate that, so it's not too extreme. But when we have high levels of cortisol, then we're experiencing more of these what we call survival emotions. And the prefrontal cortex is getting less of the blood supply with the oxygen and the glucose in it, so it's less able to regulate those emotions.
- [18:17]
B
It's become very clear to me over the past few years that if who we are in the world is essentially related to the tuning of our nervous system, then it kind of means that if you are chronically busy, overworked and overstressed, you are literally becoming a different person. And then if you follow that logic, it begs the question, like, who are we? Like, do we even know who we are if we are that stress all the time? From my perspective, if I think about who I am today compared to, let's say, 12 years ago, when my dad was alive and I was in the thick of caring for dads whilst I was married, had a family, a job as a busy GP and I was also helping my family care for my father. I cannot believe what I used to do. Now that my life, compared to back then, is so much calmer and more under my control than it was back then, I think I was a different person. I think the same elements of Rangan were still there. But actually the way I saw the world, how I might take on a more victim mentality to the world as opposed to I'm in the driver's seat of the world, I think, was very, very different. And a huge part of that, I think, was due to the state of my nervous system.
- [19:49]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love the way you've put that, that, you know, if you're stressed all the time, you're literally becoming another person. I mean, I've never heard it put like that before. Obviously, I speak a lot about neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to grow and change throughout life, but that's sort of, you know, that's like a longer Term learning. But what you're talking about is the day to day stressors and aggressions that can grind us down and stop us from becoming the best version of ourselves. So I would say, yeah, I think over life we evolve as people, but also at every stage there is the choice to be the best version of yourself or be a stressed version of yourself. And you know, there'll be shades of gray in that. It'll be a spectrum. So absolutely. The point that you made, which is that if you're chronically stressed all the time, then you're going to be at the lower end of that spectrum, but also just day to day. I mean, I was sharing an example with a really close friend the other day that I noticed that on days that I'm feeling stressed, I look in the mirror and I think I look terrible. And the next day, just because I'm in a good mood, I'm like, oh, I'm looking really good today, but I kind of look that different from yesterday to today. But you know, the thought that goes through your mind is like, oh, you look terrible. But that starting, starting with stress, then it's like, you know, the negative self image and then that's just going to spiral, isn't it? Because if I look in the mirror and say, oh, I look terrible, then my day's not really going to get better. And it did. It was just what? It doesn't always happen one day to the next. But it was interesting because it did. And because I tried to practice metacognition as much as possible, which is thinking about your thinking. So even when that thought went through my head, I was able to step back from that and say, okay, wow, you must be stressed today because that is like, you wouldn't say that to your best friend, you know? Yeah. And it did actually kind of. I got the insight into it because the next day I was like, oh, I'm looking really good.
- [21:55]
B
Well, we'll come back to metacognition.
- [21:57]
A
Yeah.
- [21:59]
B
Another way of looking at that is through the lens of sleep. Right. Because sleep deprivation is a huge stressor on the body. And if I just take me today compared to yesterday on Wednesday night, I actually had a really bad night's sleep for a variety of reasons.
- [22:17]
A
Yeah. You said to me yesterday you were tired.
- [22:19]
B
Yeah, we had a long chat on the phone yesterday and my brain just wasn't working. Like I felt that it was just a bit mushy yesterday and you know, things looked bleak and my workload was getting on top of me and I thought, wow, how am I gonna get all this done and all this kind of stuff? I slept really well last night and I'm like a different person today. I feel on top of the world. I feel workload, no problem. At least I get that done. You know, the world's great. I mean, it's pouring down with rain, it's dark. I know, but I'm like buzzing today because of my sleep. So we can be a different person. Literally, I think we can be a different person depending on whether we slept well or not. We can be a different person depending on the levels of stress that we're carrying.
- [23:07]
A
Yeah. And I think getting as much insight about yourself out of that is really important because I'm at the stage now where if I'm on that day where the workload is just, just seems so overwhelming, I actually now say, okay, there's going to be a day soon where you've had a great night's sleep or you're just in a better mood and you're going to just get that to do list done in like minutes. What seems like a mountain now. It's not going to feel like that every day. So that's fine. Don't do it today. Just wait till you have a good day. Because I've got so much evidence of this now. You know, of times where I was thinking, oh, I've got so much to do and like it's creeping closer to the deadline and haven't done anything and I keep putting it off and then finally I do it and it's like, oh, that's not as bad as I thought it was. But it's much more related to what you're saying, which is that. Yeah, the state of your nervous system. System.
- [23:59]
B
What does this metacognition term mean? You sort of gave us a brief explanation, you know, thinking about the thoughts. I know you're a huge fan of journaling. We've covered that in the past. But I'd love to talk about it again because I think it is such a powerful tool for people to improve their physical, mental and emotional well being.
- [24:25]
A
Yeah.
- [24:26]
B
Is journaling a type of metacognition?
- [24:33]
A
It is if you read back over your journal entries. So just the act of writing into it may not be enough because you're writing in that moment where you believe what you've written is absolutely true or it is just a representation of what you're feeling in that moment when you read over it. That's when you can practice metacognition, which is to question what you've said it's very difficult to question it in the moment that you've just written it because you wouldn't have written something that you didn't think was the case. So I think that a few things here. If there are people who say for whatever reason I have nobody, that I would confide my deepest mental emotional issues too, then journaling is a good way to get that out of your brain body system. So I just, you know, I mentioned earlier about speaking out loud, preferably with someone, but journaling is a good second option. So in terms of just, you know, gaining self awareness and practicing metacognition, reading back the last three months or six months or something, seeing if there are patterns, seeing if what you wrote then still feels true now that's a good practice. And you mentioned that journaling is good for physical, mental and emotional well being. But I think it's really great for spiritual evolution as well. Because even if you just do 10 things I'm grateful for, you're practicing gratitude through your journaling. So you're kind of, you know, actually doing a spiritual practice as well. And you could do more than that. You could, you know, whether it's whether you made a decision with your intuition or your logic, or whether it's, you know, recording that you've been practicing some chanting or some drumming or what, you know, what your experiences are mentally and physically of spending time in nature. If you record all that, then you're kind of evolving spiritually as well.
- [26:34]
B
What does spirituality mean to you? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system. Something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. All of this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life no matter how busy you feel. It's also really, really tasty. The scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry. I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10 and these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is is go to drinkag1.com livemore that's drinkag1.com livemore before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theater tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjy.com tour and I can't wait to see you there.
- [29:42]
A
So when I do my quadrant exercise with people, which is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, the way I describe it is physical is what you feel in your body, mental is what's going on in your thoughts, emotional is how you're feeling in your emotions. And spiritual is something that's not described by those other three and is just a sense of how you are in your spirit or your soul. And if you're not comfortable with words like soul or God, then it can be, you know, how you're, how you feel your values are being upheld. Because having your values crossed in any way is kind of like, it's a boundary transgression. And that hurts like deeply. You know, it's not just emotional, mental or physical. It's, it's something more than that. It's your integrity. So, and I say that, you know, I mean, spirituality means a lot more than that to me personally. But in terms of the way that I've posed it in the Source was to take away any, you know, any conflict that someone might have about their own religion or faith or lack of and just think, you know, there is something more than what you feel physically and what goes on in your thoughts and what goes on in your emotions.
- [31:04]
B
We've been talking about stress and the impact that chronic unrelenting stress can. Can have on us. Right. And you just mentioned about spirituality and how if our values are being crossed, that's a boundary transgression. One thing I've been thinking about recently is the causes of burnouts. And obviously it's, you know, we can say, yeah, it's too much work, it's not enough time to rest and recover. And of course, those things are important. But more and more, I'm led to the belief that a huge cause of burnout for people is not living a life in accordance with their values.
- [31:54]
A
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [31:56]
B
And I think that was so interesting me, this boundary transgression. I think we can link that to chronic stress. And yes, I recognize that some people don't have much choice or autonomy in their work. Let's say I recognize that. But I think for many people, it ain't just the workload, it's also what they're doing on a daily basis.
- [32:19]
A
Yeah. And I think it's two things. One is that so you could take two people, let's say you and I, and we could have the same job like we've actually had in the NHS as junior doctors, and one of us could burn out and the other one doesn't. Why is that? So partly there are things that you can do to build your mental resilience, to build your resilience to stress. So if you have those tools and practices, if you've been doing them for years or you incorporate them now, that can help you to withstand stress. But the other thing is that there's clearly different thresholds for different people of what causes them to actually burn out. So let's say someone gets divorced. Someone might find it a difficult experience, but, you know, get through it, move on, and somebody else might completely break down. So, basically, two things. One is that we each have our own starting point or threshold. And two, we can do things to build that up. And I really found that actually in the pandemic around the time that we last, you know, we spoke on the podcast, is that because I had been practicing yoga and meditation and, you know, walking in nature and bathing with salts and, you know, just all the thing journaling, because I'd been doing those things for so long, I could really immediately draw on the help that I can get from those things. But, you know, a message that I kept putting out there is that even if you've never done these things before, if you start now it will help you.
- [34:07]
B
If someone says to you, tara, I hear all this stuff that you're saying about values. I know how important they are, but how do I find my own? What do you say to them?
- [34:18]
A
The first thing I say is, what characteristic do you most dislike in other people? Because the chances are that the opposite of that is your most strongly held value.
- [34:30]
B
I love that question. See, it's interesting when I hear that question. I think that. But I also think something else, right. I think that many of us dislike qualities in other people that we have within us as well. And the reason we dislike it so much is because we don't like it in ourselves. But it's easy to not look inward and change something in ourselves. It's much easier to make a judgment of someone else.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah.
- [35:01]
B
What do you think to that?
- [35:02]
A
I mean, there's obviously truth to that because psychologically that would be described as, you know, something that's in your shadow, the shadow of your personality. So what tends to go in there are the things that you worked out as a child that if you did those things, you would get rebuffed by your primary caregivers so you would hide those things away into your shadow. Things like, oh, don't show off or stop being so bossy or, you know, share with your brother. You know, stop being so mean. So those things, yeah, that can absolutely happen. But I think you have to separate that and because, okay, let's say so generosity is my top value. So if I thought that that's because I actually feel like I'm not very generous, I think I would know. But, you know, and I'm not, I'm not just talking about money. I think, you know, generosity of spirit, generous with your time. When I see people who could do something for somebody else, but they don't do it, that, you know, I really notice that and I don't think that I'm guilty of that one, let's say.
- [36:09]
B
So let's say, let's take you, right? You've, you've shared that generosity is one of your, your top values. How does the knowledge of knowing that help you in your day to day life?
- [36:29]
A
Well, for instance, it makes me, you know, sort of preempt things like if I was going to go out for a coffee with you after this podcast, I would want to pay or, you know, even something that you said today, which is that, you know, hey, if you want to, you know, stay for a couple of hours after we finish the podcast, I can drop you to the station. Unless that's Too late for you, you know, and, and I thought, well, I will get home a bit later than I had planned. But actually, how often do I get to see you? I haven't seen you for years. It's quite a long journey. So I'm not easily necessarily going to see you again, like as soon as I would like to. So, you know, sharing my time with you, I think is, you know, I see that as a gift.
- [37:15]
B
Is it something you constantly are assessing, for example, in your journaling practice? I think your daily journaling practice, Unless something's changed over the last few years.
- [37:23]
A
Oh, it's not every single day.
- [37:25]
B
Okay. So your regular journaling practice, do you ask yourself, or, you know, does generosity come up somewhere? You know, am I living in alignment with this value or is it not quite as. I don't know, is it, is it as specific as that?
- [37:42]
A
No, I think that one because I've identified that one a long time ago. And I, you know, I do feel like it is a strong characteristic for me. So what's more likely to happen is if I, if I feel like somebody's not being generous towards me, whether it's with their time listening or, you know, somebody owes you money or whatever it is, you know, like, I, I feel like that would make me question, is this person a true friend? Is this person somebody that I want around me? And you know, I remember when, you know, I was in my 20s, I had a friend who literally gave me her last five pound note. You know, we had no money and she was, oh, I've got a fiver left, but you can have it, you know, and so it's, but to me, I will never forget that that is a really generous person. And then there are people with lots of money that wouldn't do that. So it's about your attitude. It's, it's, it's not even about being equal because I think, you know, you pay things forward, you kind of like you, you get a lot of help from one friend here and you give in a different way to somebody else. But it's just if that, if that value is so important to me, then it's more about making sure that I feel that in my social circle.
- [38:58]
B
What are some of the other values that are important to you?
- [39:02]
A
Trust is a really important one, mostly because what I usually say to my team is, I mean, we do sign contracts, obviously, but mostly I say I operate on trust. I make my decisions on trust. Somebody could break that. But I choose to live my life based on trust. So obviously then If I feel like there's somebody in my life that isn't trustworthy, that would be a serious boundary transgression for me.
- [39:32]
B
I love what you just said and I love it because you're making a very intentional choice about how you want to live your life. You are essentially controlling what you can control. Right. You're basically saying, I'm going to go into things based on trust. Now, if someone chooses to break that trust, you can't do anything about that. That's out of your control. Whereas taking this back to stress state. Right, because trust, you can't really operate from trust if you're stressed.
- [40:14]
A
No.
- [40:15]
B
Right. Because the fear response, I'm in danger. You don't want to trust people if you feel in danger. Right. So trust is that you have to have a calm regulating nervous system to operate from trust, first of all. But what I really love the most about what you said is that look, yeah, people may cheat on you, people may break that trust, people may do those things. But if you choose to live because you're scared of that happening, well, you change who you are and you can't even control it anyway.
- [40:49]
A
No. And let's just use that example because you used it. If somebody cheats on their partner, at the end of the day, the problem is theirs. You know, they've let themselves down as a person. They've, you know, had the impact that it's had on the relationship. I can walk away from that and say, I'm not a cheat, thank goodness, I should feel really good about myself.
- [41:15]
B
But the problem often is then if we take a relationship as an example, that experience of, let's say, someone in a relationship, one party has cheated for whatever reason, the party who hasn't. Yes, as you said, they can walk away, they know that they didn't cheat and maybe, you know, integrity, trust, these are core values to them. So they know they didn't break that. But unfortunately, because of how our brain is wired, often what happens is that that then impacts how we show up in the future. Because we were cheated on once, it's less likely we want to trust in the future.
- [42:04]
A
Yeah, that's true. So I want to go back and pick up on something that you said about that. You can't operate based on trust when you're under a lot of stress. So they're actually opposite states. So the survival emotions, fear, anger, disgust, shame and sadness, which correlate with the hormone cortisol, at the other end of the spectrum, we have joy, excitement, love and trust. And they correlate with the hormone oxytocin. So you can't be in those two states at the same time because one of those hormones is higher than the other. So you literally cannot, like, trust yourself, trust anyone else, trust your decision making when you're in this stressed state.
- [42:48]
B
So you say you trust your gut a lot, I think, when you make decisions. Right. So if we're going to follow everything we've just said throughout the course of this conversation so far. Right. In order to trust your guts, you can't be stressed, rushing around, overly busy. How do you then? Because so many people really struggle with this. The reason I'm spending a long time on this chronic stress is because I've seen firsthand how many people this impacts. Right. Physical health, mental health, emotional health, the whole shebang. When we're chronically stressed. And I genuinely believe that a lot of us don't even realize how stressed we are.
- [43:36]
A
I agree.
- [43:37]
B
We just got used to that as our normal state. So our decision making comes from that place of stress, which is why I think we find it hard to operate from love and trust and joy and compassion because of that. What can people do? How do you do it? How do you know when you're making a decision if it is really coming from trust or it's coming from fear?
- [44:03]
A
Oh, I mean, I can tell the difference. I can feel physically when I'm making a decision, like what state I'm in.
- [44:10]
B
In your head or in your body?
- [44:11]
A
In my body.
- [44:12]
B
So what happens?
- [44:15]
A
So maybe both. But like, if I'm. Because, you know, even I go between those, I'm not constantly, like, walking around in a love bubble. You know, if I'm smiling, if I'm feeling calm, if I'm like, you know, moving relatively more slowly, then, you know, I can tell that I'm in parasympathetic, which is basically like rest and digest or rest and relax. When I'm feeling agitated, you know, my facial expression is not, you know, it's kind of like down. When my, like, thoughts are, like, racing more, then I know that I'm. I'm probably, you know, I'm not going to be making the best decisions that I can. And. And often it comes with that feeling of I can't decide, I can't, you know, like something that. A decision that you need to make, you just feel like you can't make it. It just feels very cloudy. Whereas when you're in the trust and love state, things feel very clear. What I tend to do, what I've learned to do at that time is think of three people and, you know, family or friends that I trust who would have a relevant opinion to the decision that I'm trying to make. So, you know, it's three. It could be three different people each time. And I ask each of them what their opinion is, and. And then I will use that to try to inform my opinion. But also I'll try to wait till I'm, you know, in a better state before I make a final decision.
- [45:58]
B
When you are asking your family or friends, are you literally calling them and asking them? Yeah, and the reason I ask that is because I had Shane Parrish on the show a couple of months ago who just written this book called Clear Thinking. And in that book, Shane talks about having a board of directors that we can always refer to. But those board of directors could be dead. They could be fictional characters from the past. So he, you know, he wouldn't be against what you just said, but he would be, you know, I guess he would make the case that, let's say, for example, someone doesn't have access to friends or family and they feel really, really isolated. Maybe this border direct side is super helpful for that person. You've got friends, you've got family. You can call and ask for help. But it's almost like imagining. Well, you know, let's say someone had you on their board of directors. Well, what would. What would Dr. Tara do here? What would she say in this situation? You know, what would. I don't know, what would. My Grandma, who died 10 years ago, what would she say about that? I guess in both examples, what's going on, in some ways, we're getting out of our own heads and our bodies and minds, and we're getting a bit of distance.
- [47:12]
A
Yeah. So it's basically coming back to that idea of metacognition, which is that when you're embroiled in your own thoughts and feelings, it can be very difficult to be rational and have perspective. But if your brother came to you with the same issue that you're experiencing, you would be able to give him some advice. So by having either the actual friends or the fictional board of directors, you're stepping, like, one step aside from yourself. Another thing that I say to people is what would your sister or best friend say to you? Or, you know, what would your wife say to you? And another exercise I do on my own is I po. I, you know, I sort of acknowledge that I am here in the present today, the age that I am. And I pose a question to myself seven years in the future, and then actually walk seven steps forward and turn around as if I'm looking at Tara today. And I identify myself as Tara plus seven years. And then I answer the question, and that is accessing your intuition. And sometimes it's incredible. You literally feel like a different person. Like you're looking at that Tara and just thinking, if only you knew what I know now.
- [48:29]
B
What does intuition mean to you?
- [48:34]
A
So basically, it means wisdom from all the life lessons that we picked up, you know, throughout our life, but don't necessarily consciously remember. So, you know, let's start with just that basic fact, which is we cannot remember everything that we've experienced in our whole life, but we will have. You know, we didn't quite finish off with that. That cheating example. So let's use that as an example. We may have been in a relationship that we thought was going to last forever, and then the person cheated. And, you know, you took us up to the point where that leaves the person that's been cheated on less willing to trust people in future. And if that happens three or four or five times, then, yes, that's your pattern. But if you say, maybe it's because I'm choosing the wrong kind of person for me, maybe it's because I'm choosing someone that doesn't have the same values as me, then you can use your judgment to make a different decision the next time round or to make it very clear that that is a deal breaker for you. You know, sometimes these things aren't actually said out loud beforehand. So intuition would be, in that example, a way of making your own judgment based on relationships that you've had before, people that, you know. You know, examples of relationships that you have in front of you, of whether this is likely to be a trustworthy person. And then just in all other scenarios, it's the knowing that you have, not based on anything logical or, you know, obvious data, but based on a sense that you have of the world through the experiences that you've built up.
- [50:26]
B
Yeah, I love that. I asked my wife this question yesterday. I said, what's intuition to you? And she just had a couple of seconds thoughts and said, a knowingness not based on logic. And then she got up and went and put the kettle on. I was like, that's amazing. I love that. That's really, really good. I kind of like that. And it sort of echoes what you just said, right?
- [50:47]
A
Yeah, totally.
- [50:49]
B
But where does that knowingness come from?
- [50:52]
A
Well, it comes from all the experiences that we've had in life, but we don't necessarily remember. So it comes from, you know, like again, let's take up this cheating example. It comes from the relationship that you witnessed between your parents when you were a kid. It comes from the way your parent of the opposite gender, you know, whatever it was that they did to contribute to or belittle your self worth.
- [51:16]
B
Okay, I'm loving this Taro. Right. So let me continue on that thread. Right. So it goes. It's based upon your past experiences and what you've learned because of course the brain doesn't forget, it logs all of this stuff. So let's keep on that cheating example. So that individual who has been cheated on five to 10 times, let's say 10 years on from that, when they make a judgment based on intuition, their intuition is predicated on the fact that they've been cheated on for 10 years, which kind of makes sense because the brain is always trying to predict the future based on past behavior. Right. So it kind of all makes sense. But that can also be problematic because that person can be tapped into their intuition which says, hey, when you get into relationships, someone's gonna cheat on you. But actually that's probably not that helpful. And we, I guess we believe a lot of us that intuition is a good thing. So help us unpack that puzzle if you can.
- [52:25]
A
Yeah, so I wouldn't actually call that intuition because that is based on data. So if you've been cheated on five or 10 times, those are facts. So I would look more then at what is it about the choice of partner that you're making or the dynamic within the relationship, your self worth? You know, I would look at more of, you know, what is it about you and your. How you behave in a romantic relationship that is repeatedly leading to this outcome. So it would be logical for that person to think that the next person they Jews is not going to be faithful to them.
- [53:12]
B
It totally makes sense, doesn't it?
- [53:14]
A
Yeah. So I think intuition is more an example of that is when a relationship is. It's obvious to everybody else that it's going to end soon, but the person is clinging on because they're afraid of being single or they feel ashamed that they couldn't make it work. There are so many times where the two people in the relationship are so unhappy that they should just say, you know what, we used to make each other happy once, we're actually now making each other unhappy. We should probably just let each other go. But you know, that period tends to be quite drawn out and that leads to like more negative experiences and you know, that can definitely then, like, damage your self worth, which is the thing that you must fight for really at all costs is your self esteem, your self worth. Because that's really the filter that shows you whether the world is safe or not, whether a person's trustworthy or not. But what the brain tends to do in a stressed state is. So the amygdala, which I mentioned before, the emotional center, gets together with the hippocampus, which is where our memories are stored, and brings up every example of, oh, the last time someone dumped you, you were single for, you know, six years, which makes you want to, like, hold on to the status quo out of fear, even though you actually know that you're not happy.
- [54:50]
B
Yeah. How do we tap into our intuition if we want to get better at it, if we want to go, look, I like the sound of that, Tara. I want. I've forgotten what intuition feels like, what it looks like for me. How can I re. Tap into it? What would you say to them?
- [55:12]
A
So if I'll just finish off with that example and then I'll speak a bit more generally with. With that example, I would say if you recognize that you have been in that situation before and maybe you've been in that situation and you've said, you know what, if I get to the stage in a relationship where we're actually both miserable, it's not going to last forever. It would be better to, like, end it quick sooner. You know, it's less painful for everyone that you remember that the next time and that you act on it and you do something differently to demonstrate to yourself that you're not just repeating the same pattern. But more generally, I do think journaling is a really great way to hone your intuition. That's how I think. I was. I was using intuition. But when I first started journaling, that was really how I built my intuition into a superpower, was through journaling. So what I would do with every decision that I had to make, I would write down what logic was telling me, and I would write down what intuition was telling me. Now, if they were saying the same thing, that was fine. That's easy. If they weren't, then most people's tendency is to go with logic. So what I would suggest is that in a low risk scenario, if your logic and your intuition aren't aligned, do an experiment and go with the intuition and see what happens and write it down. And then as you become more confident in your intuition, do it with something that's a bit more high stakes and through pretty much, you know, experimenting like that, a period of trial and error for me, I got to the point where I could convince myself with the data that my intuition was always more accurate than my logic.
- [56:58]
B
I love that. So you run an experiment on yourself, basically. I love that in low risk situations, give it a go because who cares? Doesn't really matter. And I guess, you know, what's a common scenario, it might be, I don't know, applying for a job or someone's got three job offers or three jobs, they can't decide. Right. So that's a, presumably for most people, quite a high stakes decision. But I guess the lesson is if you've been practicing for a period of time, let's say with journaling, then when that high stakes decision comes into your life, you've got evidence.
- [57:38]
A
Yeah.
- [57:39]
B
To kind of say, hey, listen, I know that usually my intuition is correct.
- [57:45]
A
Exactly.
- [57:47]
B
It's really interesting when we think about that in relationship to decisions that we have to make in our life. One thing, Tara, I've been thinking a lot about recently is this idea that people, I think, especially today, because we live in this era of information overloads. Right. Let's even talk within our wheelhouse, health and wellbeing. Right. There's a million experts online. We're not all saying the same thing. And what I see often happening is that people have an over reliance on experts. And what I mean by that is not that they shouldn't listen to experts, but that let's say you were saying one thing and they like you and they trust you and they go, wow, you've got all the minerals, you've got all the qualifications and the experience. And let's say you have a particular perspective on one thing and then they also like me and go, yeah, but you've also wrong and got the minerals and the experience and their qualifications. But you're saying different things.
- [58:58]
A
Yeah. So let's give a concrete example for that. So I don't eat breakfast. So I only eat between 12 and 8. So let's say I'm not, I'm just saying what I do. I'm not saying everybody should be doing that. But let's say that I say I don't eat breakfast and you say you do eat breakfast and we've both got the same qualifications. So I think what you're trying to say is that then each person has to think, okay, there are pros and cons to eating breakfast or not eating breakfast. What is right for me? Each person should know their body better than any Doctor or expert.
- [59:33]
B
Agreed. Exactly what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And so I guess what I'd love your perspective on is for people who are listening to this right now who do get into a jam on those things and go, man, I find it confusing when I don't know, this guy says low carb and this person says plant based, and I don't know what I should do. How do you help that person become their own expert? Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong and before you know it, you've slipped back into those habits you're trying so hard to avoid? Like sugar doom scrolling and wine? When it comes to making changes in our lives that actually last, most people think the solution is to try harder. But this is simply not the case. In my new book, Make Change that Lasts, I reveal how exactly you can break free from the habits that hold you back. What many of us don't realize is that our behaviors follow our beliefs. So when you change your beliefs, and my book will show you how to do that, you'll spend less time having to think about your habits because they'll happen automatically. Make Change that Lasts. The number one Sunday Times bestseller is available to buy now all over the world as a paperback ebook and as an audiobook, which I am narrating. And if you've not got your copy yet, what are you waiting for?
- [61:19]
A
It is quite hard because, you know, even with, like, the team of people that work for me, they'll. They come to me for the latest on, you know, what should you be eating? What should you not be eating? And I remember one of them asked for Christmas to get one of those food intolerance tests that you can get. And I said, why don't you just listen to your body? And she said, well, I'm not Utah, I'm not a doctor. Like, I can't. I can't do that. I think it's important for people to know that. Intuition is often referred to as the sixth sense, but the actual sixth sense that we have is called interoception, which is our sense of the physiological state of the inside of our body. It's how we know when we need to go to the loo or how we know when we're hungry or tired. But you can hone that even further. So, you know, a very, very simple thing to do is keep a food diary for a week, write down everything that you eat, and then make some notes about whether you were bloated or whether you went to the loo or not or how your mood was or how you slept and just, you know, try to get to know yourself better. It's kind of not directly related to this, but, you know, I did notice again during the pandemic and since that that book, the Body Keeps the Score, has gone back into the bestseller list. So I think people are realizing that a lot of their trauma or, you know, psychological stress was somatized into their body. So, you know, it was coming up as aches and pains and changes in posture. So the more we can educate ourselves about our own body, which only means listening to and looking at. Do you look dehydrated? Are you bloated? You know, when you eat a certain food, do your lips tingle?
- [63:06]
B
Yeah. I think one of the most powerful things that people can do to become their own experts again is to have some form of daily solitude practice where they're actually practicing. So, you know, it's a great book. The Body Keeps a Score. Bessel came on the show last year, we had a wonderful conversation together. And I know you're a practitioner of yoga. I believe that you've said in an interview before that yoga is one of the things that really helped you learn about your body. And I think for many practitioners and people who love yoga, it absolutely does that. I don't think it's the only way. I think there's many ways, but that is certainly one way. But you mentioned interoception. I think we all need some form of practice. I think daily, even if it's just five minutes where we are practicing that, whether it be a five minute yoga sequence in the morning. And I guess for me, and I've sort of been advising this to patients for years now, I like people to have the same practice every day because I think the consistency of the practice allows you to start detecting what's different. So if you do the same five yoga moves first thing every morning, on some days it's gonna feel fluid and easy and your body's gonna feel light. And on other days it's gonna feel tight or one part of you is gonna have a bit of tension which wasn't there the day before. My belief is if people do that regularly, they start to develop the skill of interoception. And I think that helps them build intuition because they're tuning into themselves.
- [64:59]
A
There's so much. I love what you said. There's so much here. So when I'm really, you know, very strict about doing a daily yoga practice, then on a day where I think I actually can't, then the minimum I have to do is lie on my mat for five minutes because it still means I did something every single day. I mean, ideally I would do much more than that. But if for some reason I can't, I have to lie on the mat, have to make contact with the mat. And so it's funny, sometimes I lie on the mat and I think of myself on a sort of seesaw and I think, how do I feel? Do I feel like my feet are above my head or you know, which way around do I feel? And that tells me something about myself. But I would suggest a body scan is a really good thing to do for this. And you know, we usually do the body scan sort of about the outside of the body. So we go through like the toes and the knees and the hips and the, you know, head and everything. But you can actually then go inside and you can say, how do I feel in my brain, how do I feel in my throat, how do I feel in my lungs, how do I feel in my stomach, how do I feel in my bladder? You know, so you can, you're not getting necessarily physical sensations from those, but you can start to think like that more so that, you know, you are more aware of what's going on on the inside of your body. And then what I wanted to connect that to, where you were talking about interoception being connected to intuition, is to remind us about the two way connection between the brain and the gut itself. And the gut, well, you could almost argue the gut, the gut microbiome and the brain. So there's also a physical, a biological impact on intuition. Because if your gut is inflamed or depleted of good bacteria or leaky or bloated, then you know, you've got to start thinking that's going to have a psychological impact too. And we know that the brain signals to the gut and the gut microbiome and they signal to the brain. We've, you know, we've known for a long time about the vagus nerve, but now we know that they also use other nerves in both directions. Enteric nerves, they send hormonal signals in both directions. They said send other chemical messages in the blood called cytokine messaging. So there's a lot going on between your brain and your gut and both its physical condition and your psychological sense of the inside of your body are really important to that.
- [67:43]
B
I love that. And I think it's really important to be able to just really understand that what you just said about interoception, you know, you feel, how does Your brain feel? How does your bladder feel? How do your lungs feel? Someone may go and try that tomorrow morning. Look, Tara wronged, I can't feel anything. Right. I don't know what you're talking about. It gets easier with time if you practice, doesn't it? Like suddenly you start to. I think we've lost touch with our bodies, certainly in the West. Right. We're head focused society. I have been for many years. And lost touch with what your body is telling you, but your body can tell you so much. But you gotta practice. So I think the reason why, or one of the reasons why people struggle with this tsunami of expertise out there is because they've lost touch with themselves. And you simply cannot, in my view, regain that without some intentional time alone each day.
- [68:44]
A
No. And I think that if someone said to you, oh, well, like, you know, I can't feel anything from my lungs. Well, a good signal of how your lungs are doing is how you're breathing.
- [68:53]
B
Yeah.
- [68:53]
A
So even if you just focus on your breath for five minutes.
- [68:56]
B
Totally. What is journaling fitted here? And I guess what I'm. What I'm getting at is that there's many ways to tune into ourselves, right? You can do it, I guess, bottom up, sort of through the body. I've got tightness in my abdomen when I breathe. My left side's a bit tighter than my right. So you're building up that body awareness. But journaling is almost top down, isn't it? Where you are using the incredible prefrontal cortex that humans have and you are learning about yourself with the mind as opposed to the body. Like, I think those things can work beautifully in harmony with each other. But what's your perspective on those two different approaches or are they different?
- [69:42]
A
I mean, I think they should definitely be combined. You know, the brain body connection is something that I've been speaking about for a long time and you know, like the brain gut connection, it's a two way thing. So yeah, if you were doing those two things in combination, I feel like you would actually get more than double the benefit of doing one of them.
- [70:03]
B
Are you open to sharing what you do on a daily basis to keep yourself in check with yourself?
- [70:10]
A
So as soon as I wake up in the morning, before I start to think things like, oh, what's the time and what do I have to do? Today I immediately give gratitude for my pillowcase, my pillow, my mattress, my mattress topper and my bedding. So I'm intentionally pushing myself towards that oxytocin state rather than the cortisol state. As soon as I'm aware that I become awake, I then do deep breathing whilst I'm still in bed and I really feel into all the directions that I'm breathing in and I just see is there any tension somewhere or.
- [70:47]
B
So you're tuning into your body immediately.
- [70:50]
A
Immediately, yeah.
- [70:51]
B
You're not allowing yourself I guess often into the emails, the social media, the news where you suddenly you've lost touch with your body and you write into your brain and your thoughts. Right?
- [71:03]
A
Yeah. I mean I don't have my phone in my bedroom so I, and it's several floors down so it's quite a while till I can get to my phone. And yeah, I got an, I got an old fashioned alarm clock because I just didn't want to like have. You know, that's people's biggest excuse isn't I use my phone as my alarm clock.
- [71:23]
B
So gratitude. Breathing, breathing.
- [71:26]
A
And then, then I get up and I, I take my probiotic first thing because I have to give a 10 minute gap before I can eat or drink anything and then I will look at my phone.
- [71:41]
B
But what I love about that is what you have just said you do as a neuroscientist, former doctor coach. Right. With all your knowledge and experience of helping people, you have built into your life a practice, dare I say a ritual each morning whereby within minutes it's not much, that gratitude is not much, that breathing is not much and you know, 10, 15 minutes later you're on your phone. Right. That's very achievable for people.
- [72:15]
A
Yeah. But I'll add that because I have that 10 minute gap until I can drink my cup of tea. That's why I look at my phone, because I'm kind of waiting. But my making my cup of tea, whether it's regular tea or matcha tea, whether I'm using mushroom powders or not, that is a ritual for me that is like a sacred moment, like the phone is left behind and I do that almost like a form of meditation.
- [72:40]
B
Why.
- [72:43]
A
I like rituals.
- [72:46]
B
What is a ritual?
- [72:47]
A
A ritual is something that you do intentionally. So it's not just a routine, it's something that you do regularly but you do it very intentionally. And I actually stopped formally meditating when I realized that if you regularly meditate then for 15 or 30 minutes in your day you are being mindful and for 23 and a half hours you are not. So I try to bring rituals into my life so that I've got. It's like a patchwork quilt. There's moments of mindfulness throughout my day. And that, to me, is one of them. And also then when I drink the cup of tea, I savor it, like, so much, like, so that, you know, that's okay. I've looked at my phone for a few minutes, but I've got another pause there. Yeah. And, you know, then I'll go and get, like, ready for the day. But something that became like a real demarcation between work time and home time was the way that I would prepare my vegetables, peel them, chop them, think about what I'm going to cook. Cook. You know, I've always done mindful. I don't know if you were raised the same way as me, but we had to, like, you know, say thank you to God before we took the first bite of food.
- [74:02]
B
Yeah. Very, very similar. And obviously in our culture, there's also depending on which family you're in, of course, you know, there's also about not cooking in a stressed state. Right?
- [74:15]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [74:15]
B
You know, it's massive that the state you're in. I mean, we've been talking throughout this conversation about the. The state in which you're in impacts who you are in the world. But our culture would have the belief, I think, that the state you're in when you cook impacts the quality of that food. Now, a skeptic will hear that and go, what a load of rubbish. You guys are doctors. You're a neuroscientist. What the hell are you talking about? What would you say to that person?
- [74:45]
A
I would say to them that when you've got high levels of cortisol, the cortisol actually leaks out of your sweat into the atmosphere around you. So if you're in a bad mood and you're cooking and your family are about to come to the dinner table, then simply your elevated levels of cortisol that are leaking out, the particles are going to go in through their skin and stress them out, too. And also it's an opportunity for you to stir something mindfully. I love making risotto because you've got to be so patient and measured that to me, that is like the best form of cooking meditation. So there's an opportunity there for you to chop things slowly, to think about the, you know, the size of the piece of vegetable that somebody's going to put in their mouth to stir it, you know, intentionally. But what you're doing instead is being agitated and, you know, banging things and doing it quickly and making yourself more stressed out and, you know. Yeah, of course, you could argue that it doesn't physically have like an impact on the food, but it's just not. It's not ideal.
- [75:56]
B
Yeah. I love it. And look for that skeptic. Right. Well, we all know that feeling when we've walked into a room at work or at home where something's going down. Right. Where there's been an argument or there's. You can feel it. Right. So all you're doing, walking into a room, there's people there, there's air. Right. But you can tell what the energy is in that room.
- [76:23]
A
Yeah.
- [76:23]
B
You know, that's real. We all know that.
- [76:25]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [76:26]
B
You know, and that makes me think of what you just said about cortisol leaking out.
- [76:29]
A
Yeah.
- [76:30]
B
You mentioned as part of your morning ritual you go to a cup of tea. Now I go to a cup of coffee. And in my book on stress, I referred to caffeine and alcohol as forms of liquid stress.
- [76:46]
A
Oh, nice term.
- [76:49]
B
And so I'm interested. We spent a long time so far talking about stress, the brain, how it affects our physical health, our emotional well being, all these kind of things. How do caffeine and alcohol affect these things?
- [77:03]
A
Yeah. So I did think about giving up that morning cup of tea, but in the end the enjoyment of it for me was so great that I just thought, that's not going to benefit my life to give that one up. I only have one caffeinated drink a day and I never have it after 10am so the reason for that is that the quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours. So 12 hours after you've had your last caffeinated drink, a quarter of it is still circulating in your blood and going to your brain and potentially disturbing your sleep. Now the way that caffeine could contribute as liquid stress is that if you're already stressed and agitated, what drives agitation is basically caffeine and sugar. So in that state, if you are using coffee to keep you going or you're drinking a lot of coffee because you're not really eating properly and you're trying to fill yourself up, then you're also accumulating the amount of caffeine that's in your system. That is not good. And I do see people who are stressed drinking a lot of coffee and I definitely advise them to cut it down. But mostly focus on the last time slot that you would have a caffeinated drink, alcohol. So people will think that it relaxes you, they may even use it proactively to try to reduce stress. But actually it suppresses activity in your prefrontal cortex. So Your ability to regulate your emotions actually becomes lower and your decision making ability is negatively affected by that. Alcohol is a neurotoxin, so it will actually be killing off brain cells. And the other thing is that, you know, obviously because of COVID we all know that we used alcohol gels to kill bacteria. So basically alcohol, like antibiotics and processed food, affects the good bacteria in your gut as well. And we've already talked about how that connects with your intuition, your decision making and the effect on sleep as well.
- [79:20]
B
Of course.
- [79:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I have to say from heart rate variability monitoring, I can tell you that not leaving a two hour gap between finishing eating and going to bed is as disruptive for your sleep as drinking alcohol before you go to bed.
- [79:37]
B
Now, I know what heart rate variability is, but for someone who doesn't, please explain that first and then let's elaborate on what you just said because that's huge.
- [79:47]
A
Yeah, so heart rate variability monitors are. I was using them during the financial crisis. I was using them on, you know, on my banking clients. And at that time they were quite clunky. Gel electrodes.
- [80:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, I remember, yeah, yeah.
- [80:02]
A
But nowadays, you know, people have those bracelets that basically are monitoring your heart rate and also an element of your heart rate, which is called the variability. So you and I, we may both have a heart rate of 60, but mine might be like a metronome, one a second and yours might get faster, sometimes slower, sometimes, you know, and just vary. And the description that I've just made of you is a healthier state because you've got variability.
- [80:30]
B
That's counterintuitive, isn't it? Because you would initially think, I want my heart beating like a metronome. I don't want any variation. I want it to be but, but, but, but, you know, right on time. But it's the opposite that we want.
- [80:41]
A
That seems to correlate more with being in the sympathetic state, which is more the fright flight fight and the, the fact that like, you're adaptable, you're very, you know, variation. If something good happens, it's, you know, then it changes. Something bad happens, you can adapt to it. You know, that's kind of a benefit. So these sorts of monitors, they can give you trends over time. But the ones that I used to use show like down to each 15 minutes, whether you're in stress recovery, light physical activity or heavy physical activity. And so the recovery period is like psychological relaxation. And. Yeah, so I did, I did a few experiments on myself. Like I did a few with jet lag and different types of sleeping aids. And I did one where I had no alcohol, one unit of alcohol and three units of alcohol. And I compared them. And I didn't do this one intentionally, but I went to see. You know, I went to the theater with someone and they were happy to eat afterwards, which, you know, I finish eating by 8. So this was kind of starting to eat really late. And by the time I got home, it was late and I couldn't. Well, at that time, I don't. I didn't know this. I came home, it was late. I went to bed, couldn't sleep for two hours. And when I looked on my heart rate variability monitor, it looked like I'd had three units of alcohol because it was just like two hours of red stress before I actually fell asleep. And now that I know that, I'm very, very conscious that if I haven't digested my food, I know I won't sleep. So I'm conscious of always trying to leave that gap when it's not possible for various reasons. Like, recently, I was filming on the Navajo Nation, you know, basically living out of a van. And when we got to a motel, we had. We hadn't eaten, like, for a long time, so we had to eat. And I worked out that I needed to get eight hours of sleep to be good for the filming the next day. But ideally, I needed to stay awake for two hours to let my food digest. And I had this book about the Navajo people that I needed to get through as well. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna end up going to sleep at one, which is really, really late for me, but I can read the book for two hours because I'm not going to sleep anyway. And I'll still get eight hours sleep because we're not having an early start. So, you know, I kind of work it out like that.
- [83:10]
B
Yeah, I love that. I mean, what it really speaks to. To me is that you have spent time getting to know yourself.
- [83:18]
A
Yeah, right.
- [83:18]
B
So you know what works for you? What you said about caffeine and you knowing that finishing before 10am Works for you. I think there's a wider point here, Tara, which I'd love your perspective on, but there's this kind of. This idea that we'll hear. Coffee is good or bad. Okay. The research shows that two cups of coffee a day does this for your health. It's the biggest source of polyphenols in the American diet. We read all this stuff and then we go, yeah, so coffee's good. Well, it kind of Depends. Right. If you're chronically stressed, overworking and anxious, and you're using caffeine to prop you up, I don't think it matters how many polyphenols it's given you. Like, it's probably not gonna be good for you in the context of your life, but for someone else. And to be clear, you know, I drink coffee. Like, I think that caffeinated drinks can absolutely form part of a healthy, balanced life.
- [84:17]
A
I completely agree.
- [84:18]
B
But you've got to tune into yourself and figure out what works for you, don't you?
- [84:21]
A
Yeah, absolutely agree. I mean, there. There is some evidence that a small amount of caffeine is actually, like, beneficial for your, you know, your brain as well. It's just like, it's. It's the too much and the, you know, what time. That's the issue.
- [84:36]
B
Yeah. We touched on nature earlier. We haven't gone into depth on nature. And there's a term you texted me about yesterday, neuro aesthetics, which I thought, that is a wicked term. I haven't heard of it. Okay, so we've been talking a lot about stress, right, and the damaging effects of too much stress. One of the antidotes is nature. Right?
- [85:05]
A
So neuro aesthetics is basically the science of the impact of beauty on our brains, on our health, our mental health, and our longevity. And so within that. You're frowning.
- [85:17]
B
No, I'm thinking. I'm taking it in because I love it and I've never heard the term before. I absolutely love it. The impact of beauty. I love it.
- [85:27]
A
So it basically says that making or beholding creative activities is good for your health. So that's art, dance, music. And it's both doing a painting or going to an art gallery. It's both, you know, singing in the shower and going to see a musical, and it's, you know, it's both dancing around your living room or going to the ballet. And there are, you know, differential benefits of making and beholding. Both are good for you. But, you know, ideally, you would do a bit of both. And so within that, you and I might have the same taste in art, but different taste in music. But nature is the palette that we have existed in since the beginning of time. And so we all feel a sense of beauty when we're in nature. And, you know, we know that when we're in nature, our blood pressure goes down, our heart rate goes down. There are certain trees that secrete chemicals called phytoncides that boost the natural killer cells in our immune system. So there's a Lot of good stuff going on when we're in nature and yeah, that's pretty much it. Basically thinking of nature as a beautiful scenario and understanding that beauty and creative activities are so beneficial to us. And if you think about it, when we lived in the cave, we, you know, we lived with the seasons. We looked at the stars in the sky at night, we walked barefoot like you try to, and we danced around the fire, we beat drums, we chanted and people, you know, okay, once it went dark, you know, there was not, it's not like you could be hunting or whatever, but it's, you know, people didn't. There was no excess time for luxurious activities when you lived in the cave. It was all about survival. So we really believe that these sorts of activities are somehow crucial to our survival. Whether it's the social connection or whether it is like the benefit on your cardiovascular system of lowering your blood pressure and heart rate.
- [88:00]
B
Yeah, it's such a. It's a beautiful idea. It's a reassuring idea. We all feel good when we're in the forest or in nature. Right. Generally speaking, it's hardwired into us, isn't it? Yes, for a number of reasons. I dunno if you've read the book by Dacher Keltner or he's a Berkeley professor, he's been studying happiness for 20 plus years and he released a book about a year ago, I think it was called Awe or the Science of Awe. You'd love it. Right. And really unpicked what happens to humans when we experience awe, which of course we do in nature. Right. And it lowers stress, it improves mental well being, improves physical health. I think it is related with longevity as well, which is absolutely incredible, isn't it?
- [88:55]
A
Yeah.
- [88:56]
B
So how much nature does one need to get these benefits?
- [89:01]
A
I mean, in the field of neuro aesthetics, they say ideally 20 minutes a day of, you know, either a creative activity, making it or beholding it or being in nature. Personally, when I, you know, used to like go for a walk in the woods every day and for like, you know, just physical purposes, I would do 30 minutes. When I started doing an hour, the effect on my mental health was so noticeable, it was incredible. I didn't realize it would make that much difference. And we don't always have the luxury of being able to go for a one hour walk. But both physically and mentally, I could tell the difference between half an hour and an hour.
- [89:47]
B
Wow.
- [89:49]
A
And I can also tell the difference between walking for an hour in really beautiful nature, like in ancient woods, versus walking for an hour by the river in London.
- [90:00]
B
Which is better?
- [90:03]
A
Definitely. The really beautiful nature. Like no concrete jungle.
- [90:08]
B
The difficulty there, of course, is that the world is becoming more and more urbanized. Many people are living in mega urban environments. And you know, a lot of the time it's people in deprived communities. Right. Who we know have worse health outcomes anyway for a variety of different reasons. And I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, I'm lucky I live in Cheshire. Right. There's nice nature everywhere. It's very easy within five minutes of my house to get that nature.
- [90:43]
A
Yeah.
- [90:45]
B
But not everyone has that, right?
- [90:46]
A
No.
- [90:47]
B
So for that person who doesn't have it, what would you say to them?
- [90:51]
A
So even just having more plants in your house has the effect that I mentioned of the trees in the forest. Yeah. You're doing well.
- [90:59]
B
We're trying to, in this studio.
- [91:03]
A
And you know, I mean, one of the examples that the, you know, the neuro aesthetic researcher that I spoke to gave was just having a small vase of flowers by your bed so that when you wake up, that's the first thing that you smell and see, you know, that's, that's a neuro aesthetic day starting, you know, with a real piece of beauty. Yeah. It is harder if you're living in an urban environment. But there are amazing parks in most cities, so trying to get to them, but even just, you know, noticing the trees that you can see in the skyline kind of thing, or a body of water.
- [91:41]
B
Yeah, it makes a difference. I've seen research on fractals which are these, of course, as you know, these geometric shapes that we only get in nature, that when a human eye sees a fractal, you lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Right. So I think that's one of the many reasons why nature is so powerful. Right. And there's research also showing that just looking at a picture of nature will lower levels of cortisol. I don't think it's to the same degree, but it still does it.
- [92:16]
A
I was gonna say that. I was gonna say if you really literally cannot get to a park near your house, then it's probably not as good. But if you look on your phone or on TV or whatever and just look at naturescapes, I mean, one of the things I'm planning to do next, planning to do later this year is release a series of meditations, guided meditations with my voice, but that are played over some really stunning nature time lapse photography.
- [92:47]
B
I love it. Look forward to that. Might become part of my Morning routine. Yeah, I want to talk about death. Tara, I've watched quite a few of your interviews recently online, and they've been truly, truly fascinating. And death is something I've seen you talk more and more about over the past. I would say year, maybe. Why is that?
- [93:16]
A
Yeah, I would say year or two. Because you know how at the beginning of the pandemic, I said to you, I feel like this is potentially a mental health crisis. What I came out of it feeling like was there were so many people that experienced loss, and I do mean, you know, loss through actual death of loved ones. But also a lot of relationships broke down. A lot of people really suffered during the pandemic, either because they were isolated or things in the way that they work changed that loss of sense of self. So I feel like there's a lot of suffering in the world at the moment. And I also feel like we are more lost and disconnected than I think we've ever been before. And so, as part of my personal spiritual practice, I made season two of my podcast, More About Ancient Wisdom, because I wanted to learn about Sufism and South African traditional healers and Tibetan Buddhist beliefs and things. Yeah. But as part of that, actually, our friend in la, Drew, he suggested a guest for my podcast who was a Austrian doctor called Alexander Bathiani, who works on terminal lucidity. And terminal lucidity is when people who have some kind of brain damage or reduced consciousness because they've had a stroke or they've got dementia suddenly become lucid, completely lucid. So people who've forgotten that they even had children suddenly remember the names of their children and tell them that they love them and have a conversation with them that was, like, completely normal until a few years ago. And that really got me thinking about whether it's possible that consciousness can exist outside of our physical body. Basically, is your spirit still around somewhere after you've physically died? And then there was this documentary on Netflix, Surviving Deaths. I kind of went down a rabbit hole. You know, I get into a topic and then I really. I get into it. But I felt very passionately that this could bring a lot of comfort to people and. And something else, which I'll come on to. So after I interviewed Alexander, I said to Drew this fascinating topic, and he gave me another guest who is a professor of psychiatry from the University of Virginia who works on near death experiences. So these are people who, you know, their heart stopped, and the number of minutes that went by is enough that we would know the brain was starting to decay. But they somehow returned to physical life and could describe the experience that they had had. He's also got a colleague that works on past life memories, but I haven't been able to speak to him, but he works with children who remember being somebody else before. And then I spoke to a Tibetan doctor who does dark retreats, which is the closest experience to a near death experience that you can have without actually nearly dying. So you're in complete darkness for seven days and seven nights and actually the, the monks do it for 49 days.
- [96:39]
B
Oh, wow.
- [96:40]
A
Yeah. So that led me, what it's led me into thinking is, you know, you said to me that you're very interested in intuition at the moment. I've been interested in intuition for a long time. But all of this, you know, potential research that can't prove anything but points to the fact that the mind and the brain could be separated, makes me. I mean, the way that Dr. Grayson put it is that the brain is essentially filtering down the mind because the mind is capable of so much, but to survive in this material world, we can't be overwhelmed like that. So the brain actually makes our mind fit for purpose for this material world. So if you think about the fact that bats and dolphins can see and hear things that we can't see, that means a biological model has a range in their consciousness that's outside of our range. So if we believe that it's true that the mind is being filtered down by the brain, is it possible for us to expand our consciousness in this life, in this lifetime, in this world? And, you know, he said that again, bringing us back to the ancient wisdom that the Greeks and the Egyptians, they had people that discovered that. And they were the seers, you know, they were the people that predicted the future or, you know, knew if someone was going to die or become unwell. So I'm just very fascinated by this fact that I didn't think that the ancient wisdom and all of the kind of death stuff would be, you know, potentially connected. But, you know, I am, I am tempted to look into things like telepathy and extrasensory perception and, you know, from a neuroscience point of view, always with that, that lens of trying to explain it to people in a way that might help them and, you know, not wanting to be too woo woo, really wanting to see if I can create that same balance that I did with the Source.
- [98:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, that was a great book and you did such a wonderful job, as you say, at creating that balance. There was a scientific rigor there as well, which is very Important, I think, for many people. Do you know Anil Seth? He's a bona fide neuroscientist who spent decades studying consciousness. And when he came on my podcast last year, we spoke about near death experiences. We touched on it and you know. Cause you can't ignore the reports. There's plenty.
- [99:31]
A
Yeah, there's thousands.
- [99:33]
B
There's so many people who are reporting these experiences. And a lot of people are saying that it's changing how they experience the world. They come back from it and they're making different decisions. They know what's important now. Right. And he was great. Cause he said, listen, these things have really powerful meanings and I don't want to. He didn't want to take away from that. But he also said, but you could also explain them through the lens of the visual cortex getting less oxygen. Because he says often what people will describe is a white light that's very focused. He goes, well, if your visual cortex is having less oxygen to it, the periphery of your vision starts to shut down. So he was great.
- [100:22]
A
And people do say it. It's like a tunnel as well. Which also makes sense from what he says. Yeah.
- [100:26]
B
So he was kind of saying, well, both things can be true. There can be a physiological, biological explanation, and it can have a transformative effect on people. I guess he would probably, and I don't want to speak for him, stop short of some of the things that you're talking about. As someone who has been to medical school, who has lectured at mit, who is a neuroscientist, it's really interesting to me that you just spoke about those things on a microphone. Would you have done that five years ago?
- [101:04]
A
No.
- [101:06]
B
Why?
- [101:09]
A
Well, five years ago, I think I'd written the Source, but it hadn't come out yet. And so at that stage, by writing it, I was like, yes, I can use cognitive science to explain things like manifestation and visualization. But I was still unsure about whether those two things should be together in my career as a scientist and particularly as representing mit. It was when the book came out, the response that it got, that really had a big impact on me. So, you know, it had an impact on me to see that I could make sense of things like that with cognitive science. But it had more of an impact on me. The com, you know, the sort of comments that I got from both from people I know and, you know, just on Instagram and I think the pandemic, you know, you could say, allowed or pushed me further down the spiritual route. I also have a friend who used to be a client of mine who I met at MIT when he took my class, who's got this, like, eclectic, fascinating background with a lot of spiritual knowledge. And we started speaking a lot. That got me really interested. So I would have to say with that. I'm going to answer your question with something that we've discussed, which was my intuition told me I cannot keep doing corporate work. I have to go down this road. I still can't tell you why, but I think it's becoming a bit clearer. And also, I think something that's been really helpful for me is that I have a lot of icons who are either a doctor or a scientist or both that have gone down a very spiritual path. Deepak Chopra, Daniel Siegel, Bruce Lipton. And I remember when I was younger thinking, like, you know, why have they done that? Or how could they have done that? Or, you know, kind of. And now it makes sense to me because it's a natural persuasion for me. But also I've got evidence of these, you know, other people, and I think it is because I love science, but it's possible that it is reducing our human experience 100%.
- [103:31]
B
But we're all biased by our own experiences, Right? We can try not to be, but I think most of us are. You know, as we mentioned, you know, we build up a pattern of things that we see and that then becomes, in many ways, how we view the world.
- [103:47]
A
Yeah.
- [103:49]
B
Through the lens of medical school training. The amount of patients I've seen over the years who medical school training didn't help me get better. Right. That's the truth. It's like, I don't know what's going on here, but I've not got any tools from my training that's going to help this person. So let me just sit and listen and try and learn something and try and see if together we can make sense of this. I love science, right? But science does not explain everything about life. In fact, you can argue that that's the job of science, is to try and understand the reality of life. And it's a best guess based upon the data you have at that time. It's not fact. It's not like a proven truth that can never be questioned. And it often is put out like that these days. It's like, well, sometimes we don't have science to prove something. It's like, yeah, it doesn't mean it's not true. It just means we. We don't know yet how to explain that. Do you know what I mean?
- [104:50]
A
Yeah, totally. I mean, you know, 20, 20, 20, 25 years ago, we didn't know about neuroplasticity.
- [104:58]
B
Yeah.
- [104:59]
A
So, you know, that's. But what we knew at the time was the truth at the time. But science is continually evolving.
- [105:06]
B
Just give us a one liner on neuroplasticity.
- [105:09]
A
So we used to believe that by the time you stopped physically growing, that your brain was then fixed and that it never changed. So that your personality, your iq, your creativity, those things couldn't change throughout your life. But now we know that the brain actively grows and changes till we're 25, about 25. And that if you take on new experiences, you learn new things, then you can keep changing your brain. So the fact that the brain is flexible, what we in science terms call plastic. I mean, I remember when I was at medical school, which was a bit before you, there was a discovery about the pancreas that we'd never known before. And I remember thinking, humans have had a pancreas for like thousands, you know, tens of thousands of years, but we never knew these particular cells that existed in the pancreas.
- [105:59]
B
I don't know if you heard this at medical school. We were told in first year by one of our professors that 50% of what you learn is going to be shown to be untrue. The problem is we don't know which 50%. No, no, but I actually love that because actually you can either. And as a young, you know, as 18. Young. As a young 18 year old, you know, you probably don't want that uncertainty. You want to believe that you are being told everything, and everything you're being told is the truth. But I actually think that pattern, miss, serves our profession. I think there's a lot of doctors out there who still believe that everything they learned at medical school is absolutely true. And things have moved on. Some of it is. Some of it's partially true, Some of it is not quite true in the way we learned it. We've evolved our understanding. So you have to be okay with not knowing. You have to be okay with thinking. Well, there's something more here. I mean, let's just go back to death for a minute, Tara. Right. Because I think what you said is really interesting. My first real experience with death was when my dad died just over 10 years ago now. And I was a mess for a long time because looking after dad was my identity. So it was a huge hole for me. It's the first time I'd ever really had to deal with death.
- [107:27]
A
Yeah. Personally.
- [107:29]
B
Personally, yeah. Yeah. Now, the last year has been Incredibly challenging for me for a number of reasons. As we record this, you know, 12 months ago today, Mum was actually pretty good. And on Christmas Day last year, everything went took a turn for the worse. She went into hospital for three weeks and since she's come out, she's not the same as she was. And it's interesting as we come up to that one year point, I was reflecting yesterday of how different my life was 12 months ago because I live very near to mum when I see her most days.
- [108:24]
A
Yeah.
- [108:27]
B
And when she was in hospital she had delirium. So she was in A and E for three days. The hospitals were slammed and it was such a traumatic experience to see someone, you know, be, you know, if people have seen delirium, I've seen it in patients. It's clearly a different matter when you see it with your mother. And then since mom's come home, which she's been home for ages now, I've really been questioning my self deterior as to what is the human experience, right, Because Mum's still there, right? So I can see her, I can hold her, I can hold her hand, I can't talk to her in quite the same way as I used to be able to. But actually for the last few months there's a stability there and mum seems really calm to me. Right. So she's pretty dependent on help for most things. Well, for everything, frankly. But I've been questioning what the hell is the human experience, right. Because now when I go and see Mum, it's variable from day to day, but that's a calmness. There's a really beautiful calmness and warm energy. I think. God, for much of mum's life she's been busy. She had dad to look after me and my brothers to look after. Go, go, go, go, go. There's a real calm and I'm experiencing that not through words, through just sitting there and trying to connect with what am I feeling here. Yeah, I feel a calmness from my mum who isn't as she's not the same person, I would say in some ways as she was 12 months ago. But what does that mean, not the same person? Well, it still looks still in the same room. I'm still able to go and be with her and enjoy my time with her. So I don't know, help me through all that. What does that mean? What can we learn from these experiences?
- [110:41]
A
I mean, this is exactly the reason that I'm looking into the stuff that I'm doing because, you know, clearly this is like very upsetting for you. And please don't underestimate how traumatic it is for a doctor to see their own family really sick in hospital. It is, I think, actually worse than if you're not a doctor and I'm not, you know, belittling anyone else's experience, but when you've been used to being a doctor and caring for people and seeing all sorts of things, there's something extra traumatic about that being one of your loved ones. And, you know, you really need to acknowledge that because I think that will help you to heal, you know, better than if you didn't, if you didn't think about it like that. And so, yeah, so this, you know, that like I said, there are, there isn't really anyone I know that didn't. Hasn't lost someone in the last, you know, or, you know, lost in a way. Like you said, your mum is still here, but it's not the same, you know, and then, then there are people who physically aren't here anymore. That as I've looked into death and grief, that there does seem to be a period, a sort of a peaceful period that can be for, you know, very varying lengths of time. For some people it's a matter of days, but it can also go on, you know, for a very long time. And you know what I was thinking, and this is probably something you're going to say, like, really, you said that on a mic, but as you were speaking about your mum and like not necessarily being able to communicate, communicate verbally, remember, like you were physically inside her body at one point. You shared her immune system for the first probably six months minimum of your life. You and her can communicate with each other without words. I am, I'm so sure of that. I can't prove it. But that, that is why I'm doing the research that I'm doing, because I, I think we are capable of so much more with our consciousness than we, than we know. And I think we've actually forgotten stuff that we knew. And I hope, and please tell me if this is true, that, you know, later today or tomorrow when you next go and see your mum, that you might feel that there is some other kind of communication that's possible.
- [113:07]
B
I mean, I'll definitely let you know. I think what this encourages me to do as next time I'm with mum, is to just sit there. Like, it's really interesting what I've learned. It's interesting. You can learn through science and knowledge or you can learn through experience, right? And they're not always the same. Thing. So I know the science of touch and how powerful, you know, safe, affectionate human touch is and how these CT afferent nerve fibers go all the way into our limbic system and our emotional brain and help lower cortisol. I wrote a chapter on it in my book In Stress, right? So I know the science of it. But I think you could look at this and go, we default to verbal communication because that's what we're trained in. That's what's easier. So this is really interesting. I've not really thought about it like this before because that is no longer where it used to be. And I can't change that. My only option is if I want that deep connection, I can't do it with words. So I've made a. A real effort to not be rushed around. Mum, when she was more able than she is now and was walking around and doing her stuff, you know, I was busy and rushing around, and I'd pop in to see mum and do a few things, but I was always rushing to get out and all this kind of stuff, right? But I never do that. Like, I literally never do that anymore because I'm like, no. You know, in fact, last week I was working from home on one day and I was out for a walk. I thought I'd just drop in and see mum for 10 minutes, but I've got to get back. I've got work to do. And mum was having a good day, and she said, oh, are you going? Oh? I said, oh, Mum, you know, it's. It's kind of Tuesday. I've got. I've got a bit of work to do.
- [115:06]
A
Yeah.
- [115:06]
B
Said, oh, you know, I said, oh, do you want me to stay? Oh, yeah. Cause sometimes I'm just. I'm just by myself. And you know what? I just thought, you know what? Screw it. I'm staying here.
- [115:19]
A
Yeah.
- [115:20]
B
And yes, on that day, I was able to make that decision. I recognize, as I say that, that some people are in jobs or they have days in the week where they can't do that. But I could. And I could have made the case to myself, you've got to get this work done. And would it have been better to get that work done? No. But for my work, it probably would have done, but for me and my mum. And I'm so aware that there's not many more days like this left. And so I want to be present for them all. And just finishing the loop of. What I was saying before is, I'll just sit there and I'll hold and I'll stroke. Because you can have a deep level of communication through touch. You absolutely can. And you can sometimes see Mum smiling. Right. And it's lovely. But I never would have done that in that way if she was speaking. So I like to look at everything in life as an opportunity, while the opportunity of verbal communication is not what it was.
- [116:24]
A
Yeah.
- [116:25]
B
So what's the opportunity? The opportunity is. Well, I can get better at communication through skin.
- [116:30]
A
Yeah. But also you can talk to her, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, you know, she would like. Even if it's a bit of a monologue sometimes.
- [116:42]
B
It's interesting, isn't it?
- [116:43]
A
Yeah. I think, you know, I imagine that in that, you know, in that state, just things, like silly things that the kids did or like, you know, what you had, what you cooked for dinner last night. You know, it's. If she said, because sometimes I'm on my own, then basically she's probably a bit bored and just wants to hear about normal life. Yeah, yeah.
- [117:04]
B
I mean, there's some deep rabbit holes to go down on death for sure. And I think maybe it's a reflection of getting older and coming across death that makes us actually think about it more. Right.
- [117:16]
A
Yeah.
- [117:18]
B
On your last season of your podcast, when you went down this rabbit hole, is there one moment, is there one person, one guest, where you heard something where you thought, I didn't know that. I didn't think that was possible, but now you're making me think.
- [117:41]
A
Yeah. It started with Alexander Bathiani, the Austrian psychologist. And actually, I recorded him quite late on, but I brought him up into the number two slot because I was so excited about that. And a similar message was kind of repeated by Dr. Bruce Grayson. But, you know, I really pushed him on this point of can the consciousness exist after physical death? And he said, you know, even my friends and family are like, it's okay, Alex, you can tell us. We won't tell anyone. And he. And, you know, he again said, it can't be proven, but I have a strong impression. And then he talked for a while, and I said, yeah, you've just said quite a lot without really saying anything. And he said, tara, no one has ever, ever pushed me this hard to actually answer this question. And I said, from what. I'm not going to put words into your mouth, but from what you have just said, I am going to say that the answer to that is yes.
- [118:39]
B
Let'S look at this a different way. Does it actually matter? And where I'm coming from with that question is so let's say that this is all nonsense. Right. And it's not real. Okay. And again, to reiterate, you have said many times, this can't be proven. Right. Or you don't have the proof for it. This is just. No one does your investigation and research and your passion or whatever it might be. If we think about what you said earlier about the brain, and we were talking about the brain and how it's logging all of our experiences. Right. So it may not be conscious, but within our subconscious, we have all this experience.
- [119:29]
A
Yeah.
- [119:29]
B
And therefore, at an appropriate time in my life, maybe it's just all internal and not anything external. You could say that, couldn't you?
- [119:39]
A
You could absolutely say that. What I'm trying to say is because currently we don't believe that it's possible to have any communication with a lost loved one. Right. What if it is possible, but because we don't think it's true, we're not doing it? That's the question that I'm posing.
- [119:59]
B
That's a whole nother podcast in itself.
- [120:02]
A
I know, and I'm still looking into it. I don't have the answers yet.
- [120:06]
B
And when you do, I look forward to that conversation just changing direction slightly at the end of our conversation. A lot of people listen to this show because they want help at. They want help in leading more meaningful, happier, healthier lives. Right. We've covered a lot. I think there's been lots of practical guidance woven in throughout our conversation. I certainly hope so. To finish off, though, I want to talk about why people struggle to make changes in their life. Let's take New Year's resolutions as an example. They are notoriously unsuccessful. Right. What is it? Is it 80% of people who make them by the first week in February are no longer doing them. Something like that. Right. In your opinion, what is the biggest obstacle in people's lives that stops them from moving forward?
- [121:25]
A
That the goal that they've set is too big, and so it's not achievable. So it's not so much to do with the sustainability of it. It's the fact that it's too big in the first place. And therefore the effort that is required for that big a change is so much effort that you're more likely to give up quickly. So the year that was a game changer for me was the year that I decided to add in two or three microhabits per quarter. So I started the year and I identified three things that I was going to do. And also knowing that some quarters One of those was just going to fall by the wayside and not actually get incorporated. But what it meant was, because they were such easy things that by the end of, you know, by the end of March, I was like, okay, like, what else can I do? So another three. And it meant that by the end of the year, I looked back and I had 10 things I was now doing without question that had not been habits the year before. But, you know, when I've set something bigger than that, I don't come to the end of the year and say, oh, I, you know, achieved that New Year's resolution.
- [122:33]
B
So on a kind of rational, conscious mind, practical, through that kind of lens, that is very consistent with what I found in clinical practice. That's very consistent with, let's say, Professor B.J. fogg's research on behavior change from Stanford. This idea that it's tiny habits, it's small changes that actually are the ones that we manage to introduce into our life and make sustainable. Yeah. There's also the subconscious patterning within us though, as well. I believe, and this was definitely true for me, that the reason why a lot of behavior change fails. I completely agree about the small habits, but I think one of the reasons, for example, why New Year's resolutions fail is because I think they come from an energy of lack rather than an energy of abundance. Right. So what can I do to punish myself? I'm not good enough at the moment. My life isn't going the way I need to make this big. Yes. But also, I'm not doing it because I like who I am and I like the person that I am being in the world. I'm doing it in some way to punish myself. And I used to do that. I used to be Damn good for 21 days on meditation, for 20 minutes a day, I'm like, yeah, this year I'm rocking it. I'm doing it. I thought I'd miss it one day.
- [124:01]
A
Yeah.
- [124:02]
B
This is a few years back. Oh, my God, the self talk about what a failure I was and how I couldn't even stick to it that year. Right. That I realized was the issue. The issue wasn't the meditation. It wasn't the wrong habit. The issue was the energy behind that decision. Whereas now I don't make them. I actually really like who I am, you know, I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don't think I did 10 years ago.
- [124:29]
A
That's good.
- [124:30]
B
I like the person. I'm. I've had to do a lot of work to get to that point. So Now I don't beat myself up. And now the changes I choose to make, whether it be in January or July or November, tend to be sustainable because of the energy behind them.
- [124:45]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I love that the lack and abundance point is a really, really good one. And very commonly in my coaching practice, I will see people, you know, miss a day or, you know, miss whatever it. Miss the regularity of the habit, and then say, oh, that's it. You know, I've messed that up now. And I'm always like, don't put any energy into beating yourself up. Just start again. Because next time it will be 31 days. And then maybe you'll miss a day and then, you know, next time it'll be 41. But I think the point is that when we start, we're like, if I'm doing this, I've got to do it every day. Why do you have to do it every day? Like when you said to me at the start, oh, your daily journaling practice, I thought, I'm not going to lie about that. I don't do it every day. But it is a practice in my life, you know, and that's okay.
- [125:39]
B
I also love what you said before about your yoga practice, which is if you don't have time, you'll still go on the mat. And I think that's really powerful because that's keeping the momentum going, isn't it? That's almost the antidote to what some of your clients say. Yeah, it's like, sure, you don't have your 20 minutes or however long you like, but you're still gonna get on the mat.
- [125:58]
A
Exactly.
- [126:00]
B
Tara, I love talking to you. This conversation certainly went in some areas I wasn't expecting it to. I have learned over the years not to expect anything on these conversations and just trust and see where it goes and see what the energy is between us on any given day.
- [126:16]
A
And I don't think it could have been better than this.
- [126:18]
B
Well, I loved it. And I think people really warm to you. I think they really do. I think they like your knowledge and your wisdom, but also the way you put it across.
- [126:27]
A
Thanks.
- [126:27]
B
So, no, I think I and many other people appreciate that.
- [126:33]
A
Well, thank you for trusting me and going into some areas that I know that you weren't necessarily willing to.
- [126:42]
B
No. Well, look, they're meant to be two way conversations to finish off. Simple question. In all of your experience, doctor, neuroscientist, coach, lecturer, whatever it might be, what are some of the most impactful changes and lifestyle choices that people can bring into their lives that will improve the quality of them immediately.
- [127:11]
A
I'm going to start with some really simple basic ones because I think it's always worth repeating these so things like drinking enough water, I mean, just going from being in a slightly dehydrated state to being in a properly hydrated state all the time will make you feel different. Changing your diet today will start changing your gut microbiome and you'll notice the benefits of that within a matter of days, if not a week. Getting enough sleep and going to bed and waking up at regular times has been shown to be really important. But then I'd like to slightly switch and say that the more recent research on the benefits to your mental health, your health, and longevity of spending time in nature and having really positive, meaningful social connections and having a purpose that transcends yourself. These are the three things that I'm more focused on now. Having kind of, you know, got the basics mostly right.
- [128:14]
B
Love it. Brilliant advice. Thanks for coming on the show, Tara.
- [128:18]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [128:24]
B
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 delightful that many of you tell me 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@drchatterjee.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 a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And before you go, I just want to let you know about an exclusive January offer. If you want to listen to every episode without having to hear any of the adverts, you can do so with an Apple subscription. We're extending the free trial from seven days to 30 days. So if you want to take advantage of this offer and support the podcast and enjoy every single episode advert free for an entire year, just go to the Apple Podcast app and subscribe. 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. It.