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Julian Dorey Podcast
#365 - Dr. K on LIES of Western Med, 3rd Spirituality Layer & Org*sms | Healthy Gamer GG
03:25:40
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- [00:00]
A
We as human beings have the ability to affect change in our life, don't we? Yeah. So you asked me what I learned in India. I see I've got you excited. So if we look at, like, psychotherapy of behavioral change, patient comes into my office fucking addicted to their mind out of fentanyl. And how do we get this person to change their mind? So if we look at conscious experience, it cannot be detected, but it has a profound impact. And I think there's like a third dimension of, like, spiritual. It's about control of your mind. Meditation doesn't work for you because you haven't been doing it right. You need to do hardcore meditation, my friend. But you'll be able to handle it. And if you want to try it now, we can. Please don't try this at home, boys and girls. So close your eyes. Breathe in. 12131 exhale. What was that like?
- [00:39]
B
Wild.
- [00:40]
A
And then this is just the beginning. Dude, I've been teaching you for 15 minutes. We can spend like two or three hours on weird, esoteric, meditative stuff if you want.
- [00:47]
B
Listen, I think our audience will like that. You can go wherever you want. Done.
- [00:51]
A
Okay, so.
- [00:54]
B
Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge, huge help.
- [01:01]
A
Thank you. She likes your podcast quite a bit. She's the one who introduced me to it.
- [01:15]
B
Your wife likes my podcast?
- [01:16]
A
Yeah, she was the one that got me on the Julian Dorey train. Wow.
- [01:24]
B
Shout out Dr. Mrs. K. Mrs. Dr. K. Thank you. That's awesome. Well, it's great to have you here. I'm glad you fit this in last minute as well.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [01:33]
B
Of course, I had told you I had seen what you've done multiple, but I'd seen one of your podcasts maybe like a year and a half ago, I want to say, on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO. Just thought it was excellent. And, you know, you're like a really smart guy, but you're also. You've taken your expertise and you pick around on a lot of different areas and really dig into it and go layer by layer and make it digestible for people like me who are doctors, which I really appreciate. But, you know, for people who aren't familiar with your backstory, obviously you said you were addicted to gaming at one point. Was that like just your entire childhood gaming or.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah, I mean, I started gaming when I was really young, so I didn't realize, you know, my brother was Two years ahead in school and I was one year ahead. And so I didn't realize. I always thought I was bad at sports, but really what it was is when I was like five, I was competing against six or seven year olds. And so very early on I had this idea that I was like, physically just not very good. And it's because I was a year younger. And then so I got into games because games were the only place that I could compete where I could sort of, because it's cognitive.
- [02:46]
B
Right.
- [02:46]
A
So I started playing a lot of video games when I was young. Was sort of like a gifted kid. And then started to become problematic in high school and then I went to college and then like, suddenly I had no longer had like restricted parenting.
- [03:00]
B
Oh, so your parents at least were put in some barriers.
- [03:03]
A
Yeah, so, I mean, I was, I was probably gaming way more than I should have, but my dad worked a lot, my mom was, Wasn't really, you know, parents back then didn't really know that games were a problem. Their biggest concern was like, it'll mess up your eyes, so sit back from the screen and then everything is fine. So I really struggled a lot with gaming. Basically failed. My first two years of college was on academic probation. And then, you know, my parents kind of tried everything. They tried tough love and they tried being supportive. They were really great parents, but we just didn't really understand back then how addictive games could be.
- [03:38]
B
Yeah.
- [03:39]
A
And then, so then after a couple of years of trying all kinds of stuff, my dad was like, you gotta go to India.
- [03:45]
B
What? Well, I mean, that's a wild, wild jump right there. Which obviously worked out for you. But like, what, what kinds of things would you try? I mean, obviously it's like any other form of addiction. It almost becomes involuntary. You start to be like, I have to have it. But what kinds of things weren't working?
- [04:03]
A
I mean, so I think my basic problem was, man, let me think about this. So, you know, I tried a lot of different stuff. So my parents, my mom sent me, I think, to a therapist when I was in high school. Maybe they were going through a divorce at the time. So I'd sort of had some access to mental health treatment. But when I was in college, I didn't think I had a mental health problem. I thought I was just like undisciplined or lazy or whatever. And I felt like I wasn't living a real life. I was living this kind of half life. And I was just spending all day long playing video games. And so I tried things like, joining a fraternity. And so I was like, okay, let me join a fraternity, and then I'll go to parties and I'll hang out with girls and I'll get laid.
- [04:47]
B
And all this good stuff where they play video games. Games in the fucking. In. In the. In the main room all the time.
- [04:53]
A
By the way, in fraternities now they do. So. So back when I was in college, so I was. I mean, this is like 2001, so gaming was, like, very rare. There was one guy in my fraternity who also watched anime, so we sort of instantly bonded over that. But, like, no one else in the frat watched anime, really played video games. It was, like, quite rare back then. It's not ubiquitous the way it is now.
- [05:15]
B
Okay.
- [05:15]
A
So I tried hanging out with people. I tried running for student council. I tried anything to get myself out of this rut.
- [05:23]
B
What was it that you loved about it so much? Like, the problem solving aspect.
- [05:28]
A
So a couple of things. So one is, if you look at kids who are attracted to video games, oftentimes they are intellectually engaged by them. So I always found school to be boring. And so now when I work with kids who are, like, addicted to games, my first question is, is this kid, like, challenged intellectually? So I think it's one of the only ways that you can kind of compete, like, if you're bored at school. The cool thing about a video game is that when you beat level one, level two is there. So it sort of naturally, you will hit your threshold of what is challenging for you. I was sort of trying to play a little bit competitively, like, sucked, but, you know, I got some sense of agency, progress, control. I was, like, good at something. But I think there was a lot of other stuff which I wasn't aware of, like, at least explicitly. So a lot of emotional suppression. Emotional suppression, yeah. So I would. So I remember when I would go to bed every night, so I'd set my alarm at like 7am and I would never wake up for it because I would sleep at, like 2am or 3am or 4am and I remember the worst thing was when I would go to bed, I would, like, have all of these thoughts about how can I use profanity?
- [06:40]
B
You can say whatever the fuck you want.
- [06:42]
A
All right? So I'd have all these thoughts about how I'm, like, fucking up my life. Right?
- [06:45]
B
Like, so we love that in Jersey.
- [06:48]
A
I mean, that's just. I mean, that's what it was like. I remember, like, you know, hearing from. Looking at my syllabus for Spanish. And my syllabus was like, you know, if you miss a certain number of days, you, like, start to lose, like, points. Right. And so I was just. Every day I skipped, I was like. My total grade was, like, dropping by a couple of points. And so I was fucking up my life and I was like. But I just couldn't get myself out of it. And so when I would go to bed, I would be so filled with, like, shame and regret and self hatred. So I couldn't tolerate that. It was so painful. So what I would do is play to the point of absolute exhaustion to where my. When my head hit the pillow, I would pass out. So I was playing until I was so tired that I didn't have to deal with anything on the inside. Then when I wake up in the morning, I have some degree of, like, regret, Right. Because I'm. I've overslept again. And then the only thing I could do to, like, manage those feelings was to, like, start playing games. So the moment you start playing a game, then you're focused on the game. You're not thinking about anything else in life. You know, you kind of. It's really interesting because everyone's, like, so interested in meditation nowadays because it brings you to the present moment. And I think if you look at games, like, they do that too.
- [07:55]
B
Yes.
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A
You're not thinking about anything else.
- [07:57]
B
When you put it that way, though, by the way, it actually creates the visual where people can see the exact parallels with, like, alcohol addiction or something like that. People get so drunk to get themselves out of realizing it that they can just crash on the pillow. And then when they wake up in the morning, they have the need to hit it again.
- [08:16]
A
Yeah. So I think one of the things about alcohol, I mean, I'd say that specifically with alcohol addiction, marijuana addiction, with the patients that I've worked with, insomnia is such a huge problem for them. And so this whole, like, going to bed and, like, hitting the pillow and having no time for your thoughts. Right. You're trying to get away from those. Yeah. And I think what I see with my patients who are addicted to stuff is they're usually running away from something that they feel like they cannot control.
- [08:44]
B
Right.
- [08:45]
A
So it's sort of this, like, day by day slide into absolute failure.
- [08:51]
B
Real quick, Doc, I just want to. They're drilling over there. I want to stop them from drilling. So we'll be right back. All right, we're back. Sorry about that, but you and I were just talking off camera, actually, on what you've Been saying at the end there. So what kinds of games were you generally playing at this time?
- [09:06]
A
So I was playing a lot of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 and was was climbing the Warcraft 3 ladder, which is like a ranking system. And my claim to fame was I was one of the top 250 players in North America.
- [09:20]
B
Oh, wow. So you were nice.
- [09:22]
A
Yeah, I played. I still remember I played one game against like a tier 3 professional player. Like a player who's a professional but had never even made it to a major tournament. And I just got absolutely demolished. It was like, not even close.
- [09:35]
B
You're like, why am I playing this 12 hours?
- [09:37]
A
Absolutely, man.
- [09:38]
B
Start to question.
- [09:39]
A
But then I was stuck to this. I was already screwing up life, so.
- [09:43]
B
So your dad eventually says to you, you're a couple of years into college, you're not doing well in school, when.
- [09:48]
A
You should be sub 2.0 GPA. Yeah, that's crazy for you.
- [09:52]
B
You're definitely a 4O sleeping, but yeah.
- [09:55]
A
I don't know about that.
- [09:56]
B
But close, close. You obviously you got something going on up.
- [10:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, but sure.
- [10:01]
B
Meaning you were underachieving for sure. And your dad says you got to go to India.
- [10:06]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, because they tried, right? So they tried like punishing me. And he had like, we'd done lots of heart to hearts and we had taken trips and things like that. Right. So like some good, like father son time. And. And so he was like, you just got to go to India. And. And I think he had gone through probably something like a midlife crisis and he had gone to India. So he was an oncologist. And then started to really think there were like some problems with the way that we practice medicine. Like he was like, there has to be something better. And so he started looking and then found some weird stuff in India. And so he was like, you should go.
- [10:39]
B
Now, when you say found weird stuff in India, what kind of weird stuff we talking?
- [10:42]
A
I mean, so things that would arguably be medical impossibilities. Right. So things like. So now we have more evidence to this stuff. But when you go like traveling in the Himalayas and things like that, you meet these like, weird yogis that do all kinds of things that are not scientifically possible. Now we have research to verify some of these things. So a really good example is there's a guy named Herb Benson who I was sort of. He started an institute at Harvard Medical School, and that's where I was kind of based for a little while. But Herb was testing alterations in body temperature and what they found. They found that someone who's trained in yoga could alter their peripheral body temperature by 9 to 11 degrees Celsius. Right. So that's the largest variation that, like, a yogi is able to induce in their fingers and toes. And so that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg. So the other problem with, like, sort of medical verification of this stuff is most of our studies on things like meditation and mindfulness are not like, we're gonna go find a yogi living in a cave in the Himalayas. It's like, we're gonna take someone like me or you, we're going to teach them a mindfulness technique for about eight weeks, and then we're going to see what kind of change we can see. There are a couple of good studies of veteran meditators, usually from Buddhist traditions that they'll do like this. Yeah, Buddhists.
- [12:07]
B
Sorry. Yeah, that's the proper way to say it.
- [12:10]
A
Sorry. Yeah. I mean, Buddha here in the U.S. buddha.
- [12:14]
B
Right.
- [12:15]
A
And so, yeah, so there are a couple of good studies on basically, like, veteran meditators, but even that, those are from more of the, like, the more common traditions, the more worldly traditions. And then you have, like, all the esoteric traditions which are, like, not really, you know, popularized. They don't have centers that you can go to and sign up for classes. No Internet presence, things like that.
- [12:35]
B
The ones you talked about in the Himalayas, though, who were able to alter body temperatures by 11 degrees Celsius to what?
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A
What was the range? Yeah, 9 to 11 degrees for peripheral digits.
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B
How do they do that?
- [12:49]
A
That's a great question. How long of an answer do you want?
- [12:53]
B
As long as you want.
- [12:55]
A
Okay.
- [12:56]
B
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- [14:22]
A
Can I think for a second, please? Okay. We can spend like two or three hours on weird, esoteric, meditative stuff if you want.
- [14:33]
B
Listen, I think our audience will like that. You can go wherever you want, Doc. You can come back too.
- [14:45]
A
Okay, so the first thing to understand is that we're going to have to talk about. This is going to sound weird. We have to talk about layers. Okay? So if I look at, like humans, right there. There are many layers we can look at. Like, we can look at something called a family, which is like not technically a real thing, but it's sort of like a layer of human interaction. We can look at a human, so we can look at a human as a part of a family. So that can be part of what being a human is. But we can also look at sort of an individual physical layer. Right? So I can look at you and I can say Julian is like this thing that I can touch. Julian is also like thoughts and emotions, but you understand how those things are not the same as your physical body. Right. So there's a couple of really interesting things when it comes to the science of weird stuff in meditation, and that is that a lot of meditation takes place. This is going to sound so wonky in layers of reality that we don't really understand or even acknowledge. So I'll give you a really simple example of this. Okay, so you have thoughts. Do you know if there's any scientific evidence of the proof of thoughts?
- [15:59]
B
I feel like that's a trick question. I would assume there's scientific evidence that we can prove our brain fires and parts of its centers to create something that's a thought.
- [16:08]
A
Oh, whole. Okay, excellent. Very good. Right. So we can detect that your brain fires. So we usually study the brain in two ways. A couple of advanced ways. But generally speaking, we look at something called a functional mri, which is functional magnetic resonance imaging, which looks at blood flow to different parts of the brain. And then we can also look at something called eeg, which is electroencephalogram, which looks at electrical activity on the brain. So we can look at, like, electrical activity, or we can look at blood flow and where it goes. Then there's also things like PET scans and things like that. But basically, we can measure electrical activity or blood flow. But is that a thought?
- [16:45]
B
I would say no.
- [16:46]
A
Okay, so how do we know? So there's this part of our brain called the amygdala. Okay? So the amygdala is like our fear and survival center of the brain. It's really primitive part of the brain. It's where we feel anxiety, fear, like crocodiles have an amygdala, too. How do we know that fear comes from the amygdala?
- [17:05]
B
Ooh, now you're getting above my pay grade.
- [17:08]
A
I don't think I am.
- [17:09]
B
I mean, a lot of scientists have studied that, and they've determined, based on brain scans that, like, when something happens.
- [17:16]
A
Okay, great. So let's slow down, right? So let's say you're in an FMRI machine.
- [17:20]
B
Like, fuck.
- [17:20]
A
No, no, no, no, no. You're doing great. You're doing great. You're doing great, right? So this is perfect because this is what everyone who's listening needs to understand. So we slap you in a brain scanner and we measure your electrical activity. How do we know that you're afraid? Let's say we see blood flow to the amygdala as opposed to the blood flow to a different part of your brain.
- [17:39]
B
Well, that would be my guess. You see where the blood's flowing.
- [17:42]
A
But how do we know that that blood flow correlates with you being afraid?
- [17:47]
B
I don't know.
- [17:48]
A
We ask you. Right? So when we see blood flow in a particular place, we ask you, what are you feeling?
- [17:55]
B
What if I lie?
- [17:57]
A
Then we would get incorrect data. Right? So this is what people need to understand. I've asked, like, so trained at Harvard Medical School was faculty. There was in a neuroscience lab there. I've asked a lot of neuroscientists, do we have any proof that thoughts exist? No, is the short answer. So everything that we know about the psychology, right? So psychology is what happens in our mind. Like, I know this sounds kind of weird, but you have no idea if I have thoughts, right? I could be A bot. You have no idea. If anyone who's listening to this, they have no idea. If we're AIs, like we have no subjective experience of someone else's subjective experience.
- [18:40]
B
Hypothetically, yes.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah, okay, fair enough. So here's the first thing. So objectively, there's this whole material world which science measures, right? So we can do brain scans, we can measure your heart rate, we can measure your blood pressure, we can touch you, we can X ray you, we can do all these kinds of things. So when you asked the original question of how do they elevate their body temperature? So on a physiologic level, they engage in certain practices that we probably don't really know. So we know that body temperature is regulated somewhat by brown fat, which is like the fat in our cells that we basically burn to maintain body temperature probably has something to do with thyroid hormone and things like that. As your thyroid hormone goes up, your brown fat activity will increase. That's why people at equatorial climates are usually a little bit more overweight than people who are living super north or super south.
- [19:33]
B
Right.
- [19:34]
A
So if you go to Texas, you're going to see a higher rate of obesity than you will in a place like New York or Boston. Part of that has to do with walkable cities and things like that. But thyroid levels I think are probably a little bit higher up here. Okay, right. So someone from Texas will feel cold when like you won't feel cold. Right. And the reason for that is because your body regulates temperature. So we know that there's some long term temperature regulation, things that involve things like thyroid hormone. So hormones will be active for extended periods of time. Then there are certain short term mechanisms. Okay, so short term mechanisms include things like shivering. So when our muscles contract at a very, very rapid rate, it's going to generate heat. We don't really know. I don't know the physiology of how yogi increases the blood flow to their toes by 9 degrees Celsius. I would guess it has something to do with vasodilation and vasoconstriction. So this is the dilation or constricting of our blood vessels. So if your hands, like right now when I look at your hands, they're like nice and red. But if you go out into cold temperature or you stick them in ice, they'll turn white. Yes, right. And the reason they turn white is because the blood vessels are contracting in your hands. And so as the blood vessels contract, they do that to preserve heat. By the way, your hands will look whiter. So I guess that the only short. Because these studies are short term. Okay. So they'll, like, turn it on and turn it off. It has to be vasodilation and vasoconstriction. That's the only thing that I can think of medically that makes sense.
- [20:59]
B
A little bit of that in the Himalayas, for sure.
- [21:02]
A
The interesting thing is that if you ask them, they talk about a system that is not something that has been medically verified. And there was a really great colleague of my original PI when I was at Benson Henry and Harvard, or sorry, this was Osher, also Harvard, but a different place, who's trying to figure out, like, this stuff called Qi or life energy. I don't know if you guys have heard of this. So what a yogi will tell you. And the practices that they do have nothing to do with what we call biology or physiology. That's not what they're trying to do when they're doing it. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, they're working on the pranic or the chi level. So there are certain practices that you can do that will elevate your chi or your prana, which will then allow you to maintain body temperature. So there are certain yogic practices that I do that. So as you. I've been doing a little bit more intense yogic practice over the last two years. And, like, your body temperature will go up. So, like, now it's really weird, but, like, I'll start. I've started meditating naked because I just am. I feel so hot, like, when I meditate. Not, like sexual hot. Hey, I wasn't gonna go there, but it's weird. Like, as you start to. And there you. A couple of these hilarious things on social media of yogis in the Himalayas wearing loincloths. And I finally get it, because yoga generates heat in the body. So that's what they'll say. You do these practices, like kundalini practices and things like that, and you just feel an incredible amount of heat. You'll start to sweat, even though you're just kind of sitting there. And then I was also taught a couple of things that I sort of now understand, but after doing intense yoga or meditative practice, first of all, it should be done on an empty stomach. So you gotta wait about four hours at a minimum before you do yoga practice.
- [22:47]
B
Why is that?
- [22:48]
A
I think it has something to do with this, like, prana flow or this Qi flow. So if you have food in your belly, it's going to. Well, one thing we definitely know is that it'll alter where your blood goes to. Right. So anytime you eat something, your visceral vasculature, so all the blood flow to your liver, your stomach, your intestines, all the blood flow goes there. That's why we get into food comas. Right. So if we like the blood literally goes away from our brain and goes like to our liver and intestines especially. So probably has something to do with that on a physiologic level. But then I'll notice that the type of meditation that you can achieve, and I know that sounds kind of weird, varies wildly depending on your diet and whether you've eaten or not.
- [23:33]
B
Oh, I believe that.
- [23:35]
A
And then the other thing is that after you do yogic practice, so one of my teachers told me you shouldn't drink or eat. You shouldn't drink, especially nothing cold for one hour after practicing because it has that residual heat. And you'll basically counteract the effect of the intense yogic practice or meditative practice. Wow.
- [23:53]
B
Even just with like drinking water?
- [23:54]
A
Yeah, absolutely no water, Nothing. And so I think when we talk about meditation, you know, what I'm noticing is that. But there's kind of like these two sides of meditation in the world today. There's the scientific side, like cardiac coherence, breathing and non sleep, deep rest and stuff like that. And all of the studies that we're doing on this stuff does not adhere to the yogic system, the true meditative system. And so I think the benefits that we see are kind. I'm trying to figure out how to say this. It's like, let's say I teach you how to swim and then there's an Olympic athlete who follows a regimen that is not just the swimming. It's a certain kind of diet, it's a certain kind of sleep, it's a certain kind of like preparation. Right. And then if you look at the effect of swimming from the Olympic athlete to like the regular person who just learned how to swim, even though they're doing the same thing physically, the effect is night and day.
- [24:48]
B
Yep.
- [24:50]
A
So I think these guys are, they're doing all this like pranic stuff, basically, like using all these things that, you know, are stimulating the flow of your Qi in particular ways. And the problem is that we have no scientific evidence, probably because there is none, actually. There's some very limited evidence that in the interstitial space, which is the space between cells, or our body is filled with cells. Right. But we have like space between cells that there's alterations in electrical conductance. In the interstitial space between cells. So this is where they're basically like, there's a bunch of cells and there's a bunch. They're floating in a bunch of stuff. But there are actually channels with altered electrical conductance. That's the best evidence I've seen and it is still sketchy at best. And there was a guy at Osher who was. I don't know if he's still there or not, but he was trying to basically discover like the scientific evidence of Qi.
- [25:44]
B
What was he doing to try to discover?
- [25:46]
A
He was measuring interstitial conductance. So he was measuring the electrical conductance between cells because.
- [25:52]
B
Which he had to prove existed.
- [25:54]
A
Well, no. So he's looking. So there's the system of Qi. Okay. And the system of Qi says that we have all these things called meridians, which are like. These things that are basically like blood vessels or nerves through which our life energy travels. And if you look at these practices like Tai Chi or Qigong or yoga or meditation, I mean, Pranayam, what we know is that these practices have medical benefits that are disproportionate to what is happening to the body. So I know that sounds weird, so I'll explain. So if I do a head to head trial, there's a great paper from maybe 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine by Chen. Chen Wong. I was in her lab. So she's an osteoarthritis researcher, and so she's a Tai Chi researcher. So she did a trial on Tai Chi where she was basically taking people who have arthritis of the joints and then had them do physical exercise. That's the control group and Tai Chi is the non control group. And what she basically found was that Tai Chi was superior to physical exercise, which means there's something going on now as we've learned more. So what people who believe in Tai Chi will say is that that's because we're adding a QI component. I don't think it's a fair study because we also know that in physical exercise there's not a mental component. And in these mind body practices, there is a mental component. There's an attentional component.
- [27:15]
B
Yeah. What do you mean there's not a mental component in physical exercise?
- [27:19]
A
It is not an intentional attentional mental.
- [27:24]
B
Component, meaning you're not purposely getting in touch with the interior of your mind for mindfulness when you're lifting.
- [27:30]
A
So I'll give you a great example. So there's absolutely a mental component to exercise. The most fascinating study about this so when someone visualizes exercising. Great study. In people over the age of 65, if they visualize strengthening their arms and hands, how much do you think it improves their physical grip strength? If I just visualize my arm muscles getting stronger and I'm a geriatric person.
- [28:01]
B
25%, 60%. Whoa.
- [28:04]
A
It's insane.
- [28:06]
B
Right?
- [28:06]
A
So the reason we study geriatric populations is because they're weaker. So that there's the. You can detect bigger range. Bigger range.
- [28:12]
B
Yeah.
- [28:13]
A
But. So we absolutely know there's a mental component to exercise. You can talk to bodybuilders, athletes, et cetera. They will all say that.
- [28:18]
B
I agree.
- [28:19]
A
The difference is that if you look at these tai chi and yoga practices, the way these practices are designed is to activate your mind. So if you look at a yoga practice. Right. So let's say I'm doing something like a headstand. The whole point of a yoga practice, the reason we turn into human pretzels is not to increase. Well, there's the pranic stuff, the chi stuff, but it's going to bring your attention to the present. So anytime you do a yoga posture, it's hard to think about other things. So you're physically doing something that has you in a sustained mental focusing state. Whereas, let's say I'm bench pressing. Is it mental? Absolutely. But the mental. The attentional component is in bursts.
- [29:00]
B
Yes.
- [29:00]
A
Right. So I'm gonna do a set and I'm focusing for, like. How long does it take you to do one set of bench press?
- [29:07]
B
Am I doing 10 reps?
- [29:08]
A
Sure.
- [29:10]
B
20 to 30 seconds.
- [29:12]
A
Okay, great. And then how much time do you have between sets?
- [29:15]
B
Depends what weight I'm doing. And if I'm doing progressive weight.
- [29:18]
A
Ballpark a minute. Okay, there we go. Right. So, like, it's gonna be somewhere. Your rest time is gonna be greater than your exercise time if you're lifting, usually.
- [29:27]
B
Right. Yes, absolutely.
- [29:27]
A
Whereas in yoga, what you've got is you're holding a posture for eight minutes.
- [29:31]
B
I see.
- [29:32]
A
So. So I don't think it's a fair control, honestly.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah.
- [29:36]
A
And as much as I love. I mean, I believe in all this stuff, but, like, there's a difference between, like, in the reasons for that. But just because I believe it doesn't mean that there's scientific evidence for it. Right. That's something that a lot of people don't really acknowledge. But there are lots of studies that show that yoga and tai chi are superior to physical exercise. They will say that. Oh, that's because it's working on the Prana. Whereas I would say that those. I think it is working on the prana. I think that's true, but I don't think that they're fairly designed studies. And if you do something that has that attentional component, that's. That would really be how we tell the difference.
- [30:08]
B
It's also like a subjective kind of thing in the sense that if you're saying just broadly, yoga is better for your physical health than, you know, deadlifting, squatting and bench pressing. Obviously the person who deadlifts, squats and bench presses like crazy is going to get very big, whereas the person that does yoga is going to be muscular, but they're not going to be, you know, someone who can bench, you know, £400 or something like that. So it's a different kind of physical health.
- [30:36]
A
No, absolutely. I mean, so I would say you use the word better, which is like, what. In what. In what category? Right. So I think that yoga has very discrete effects that are physiologically neuroscientifically measurable. Same is true for weightlifting. Right. So it's just, what do you want? Each. Each intervention has a scientifically verifiable effect.
- [31:00]
B
Yeah, I agree. Once you also extrapolated the point of, like, oh, within lifting, you have more rest time than you do actually doing the lift and stuff. And then you think about, like, what yoga is as someone who is outside of yoga, like, I don't really do yoga, but I know people that do, and I know how much focus is put into that. It makes sense to me why it would be much considered much more of a mindful exercise as well than lifting or even doing cardio or something like that.
- [31:25]
A
Oh, absolute.
- [31:26]
B
Where you're still moving, but it's kind of the same thing.
- [31:29]
A
Yeah. So I think that there's, you know, but even if you talk to weightlifters and stuff. Right. They'll enter meditative states. Long distance runners will sort of enter this zone, Right? Yeah, I do every day. And I think that, like, so not. I think we sometimes undervalue the mental component of exercise.
- [31:46]
B
Sure.
- [31:47]
A
Especially in psychiatry. So a lot of people will say, oh, you know, you're depressed or you just got dumped by your girlfriend. And then the manosphere will be like, just lift, bro. And then a lot of people will be like, no, you need to go to a therapist and talk about your emotions. Talk about emotions. Honestly, there's a lot of men that I've worked with where I think we grossly underestimate the value of intense physical activity for mental health.
- [32:13]
B
There is an Amazing clip that our mutual friend Chris Williamson has on Piers Morgan Show. Have you seen. You know what I'm talking about.
- [32:20]
A
I haven't seen the clip, but I'm familiar with it.
- [32:21]
B
Piers Morgan goes, mental health or physical health? And. And Chris goes physical. And Pierce goes, oh, I disagree. I think we have such a mental crisis. I have a terrible English accent. Sorry. I think it's absolutely mental. And Chris goes, you often can't have. And I'm paraphrasing, you can't have mental without physical strength and being able to get your biological body healthy itself, to have your brain firing. He is, in my opinion, a thousand percent right about that. And that's why, like with yoga as well, and the examples you're giving, those two are perfectly married from start to finish of the mental and the physical. When you're actually in the middle of doing yoga.
- [33:00]
A
Yeah. So two or three things there. I see I've got you excited.
- [33:03]
B
Yeah.
- [33:04]
A
So first thing is, I think we oftentimes forget that the brain exists within our body. So one of the biggest problems in the way that we've organized information in the west is we split the mind from the body. This is a huge mistake. So as much as I love my colleagues who are therapists and psychologists, I really think if we want a mentally healthy society, every person who is working on your mind should understand your body. And there is now a ton of evidence to support this. There are studies that show that depression involves inflammation in the brain. We know that alterations to diet. And there are a couple of particular bacteria. It's hilarious. There's a bacteria that is implicated in anxiety called Ruminobacter, I think, or Ruminococcus, which is not rumination, but I think it has something to do with the. I don't remember what the prefix is, but there are certain gut bacteria that will do everything from. Make neurotransmitter precursors. I know that's a big term. Make the building blocks for things like serotonin and dopamine in our brain. And so when they'll do that. And then the other thing is that there's some bacteria that are symbiotic and they don't cause inflammation. And there are other bacteria that do cause inflammation. And the bacteria that cause inflammation are the ones that eat highly processed food. And the reason for that is because we've evolved for millions of years and we eat certain foods and the bacteria actually help us digest those foods.
- [34:32]
B
Yes.
- [34:32]
A
So our body cells learn, hey, these are our friends. These are our neighbors. These are the Guys that are going to make us turn that tryptophan into a serotonin precursor or neurotransmitters. And then there are these other bacteria that eat Twinkies. We have not evolved with these guys because a million years ago we didn't have Twinkies. These are foreign bacteria. And when you have these kinds of bacteria in the gut, they cause inflammation. That inflammation will be whole body will affect things like our brain. So we know that there's evidence of inflammation and depression. And the other big thing that we see is that if you have a gut problem, there's a really good chance you have a mental problem and vice versa.
- [35:09]
B
Did you know that one in eight Americans are currently prescribed anti anxiety medications? It's a quiet epidemic that's sweeping the west right now. And people who start on these medications have a very difficult time quitting. Recovering from benzodiazepine addiction or alcohol addiction is essentially like recovering from brain damage. But what if I told you that a legal mushroom that has been weirdly embedded into our culture is helping people to finally get off these gabaergic substances. I'm talking about Amanita muscaria, the little red top mushroom with the white dots that's depicted in Alice in Wonderland and Mario. This is a legal mushroom to buy, possess and sell in every state except Louisiana. And thousands of people are using it to get off benzodiazepines and alcohol. There's really interesting pharmacological activity. It plays on the same receptor sites as something like benzos or alcohol, but in a non addictive way. And this mushroom isn't only for people looking to quit their anti anxiety medications. People are tapping into its power. Power as a natural nootropic for focus during studies or work, A non addictive alcohol replacement at parties, A dream enhancing tool for vivid nights and even a gentle aid for pain recovery. For years there was a massive gap in the market where no one in the US was reliably importing this mushroom. That's where Amantara comes in. Providing you with the highest quality raw Amanita and consumer ready made Amanita products at a price that you can afford. They're the number one supplier of Amanita in the US and right now Amantara wants to help you find your harmony. Just go to www.amantara.com gojulian that link is in my description below and use code JD22 to get 22% off your first order. That's www.amantara.com gojulian link in my description below, JD22 at checkout. Much love.
- [36:48]
A
So diagnoses like IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, very tightly correlated with things like anxiety. So I don't think you can separate brain and body.
- [36:57]
B
Yeah, people are talking about now that like their science is saying that like the gut is like the second brain itself. I've heard that phrase. Obviously it's not literal, but figuratively.
- [37:08]
A
No, I think it is literal.
- [37:09]
B
You think it's literal?
- [37:10]
A
Oh, yeah. So how do you define brain?
- [37:12]
B
Well, just by the organ itself, the brain is the center of the nervous system.
- [37:16]
A
Very good. Right. So largest concentration of neurons is in our brain. Second largest concentration of neurons is in our gut. So serotonin production happens in the brain, happens in the gut. That's why most of our antidepressant, anti anxiety medications. Number one side effect is GI upset. So we literally have tons of neurons in our gut and tons of serotonin production. So I think it's like, sure, there's a physical. The thing that floats around inside our skull is our brain, but if you look at our central nervous system, our central nervous system doesn't end up here. It actually goes all the way down our spine. Right. And the second largest concentration of neurons that we have is in our gut. I think there's absolutely a brain down there.
- [37:58]
B
And they're so completely tied, as you were just saying, with our health problems. And that's, you know, from the outside, that seems to be something that has been talked about a lot more over like the last 10, 15 years as opposed to before that. That wasn't really a conversation like, oh, for example, the one you use, like ibs, it's going to cause anxiety and vice versa and something like that. And now I hear a lot more doctors like, putting those two together.
- [38:21]
A
And I think that's just because the data's there now.
- [38:23]
B
Yeah.
- [38:24]
A
And the really sad thing is that I think they understood that a lot in the East. Like, not to overly romanticize, but in traditional Indian medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, first line treatment for mental illness is dietary change. That's what they start with.
- [38:41]
B
Yep, they're right about that, I think.
- [38:42]
A
Yeah. So I think there's a lot about physical health that you can't separate. I mean, I don't separate the two. I think that you've got one system. And we also know that when you're feeling anxious about something, it's going to affect your GI system.
- [38:59]
B
Yes.
- [39:01]
A
There's some really fascinating evidence that Alzheimer's is actually, I think, the forefront hypothesis for Alzheimer's disease is actually that there's some problem in the gut that travels up the vagus nerve into your brain, which is like where Alzheimer's comes from. It gets a little bit complicated, but.
- [39:19]
B
I did not know that.
- [39:20]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, man. There's all kinds of stuff from neurology about the vagus nerve and just how tightly these two things are connected.
- [39:28]
B
Have you ever talked to my friend Luisa Nicola?
- [39:30]
A
No.
- [39:30]
B
On her show.
- [39:31]
A
No.
- [39:31]
B
She's a neurophysiologist. One of the. She does several different things, but one of her lifelong goals is helping to solve the problem of Alzheimer's.
- [39:39]
A
Cool.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. She's talked to me about a lot of stuff with that. That's a. She might yell at me if I forgot that. But that's a new one. I don't remember.
- [39:46]
A
Yeah, I could be a little bit wrong there. So, I mean, I don't know that it's the forefront hypothesis, but when I. You know, I've seen several publications in major journals suggesting that Alzheimer's is somehow tied to the gut. There's also some evidence that dental health also correlates with dementia.
- [40:05]
B
I've heard that.
- [40:06]
A
Right. So I think all this, like, inflammation stuff and like the GI tract in general is. It's the only part of our. It's the most sensitive part of our body that is outside of us, which I know sounds weird, but if you really look at it, your mouth is outside of you, your esophagus. There's a tube of the external environment that runs from your mouth to your anus. Right. And that's the GI system. So.
- [40:33]
B
Yeah, I don't. You know, Eastern medicine is one of those things I'm fascinated by, but I've never liked, like, done the deep dive on it. I know some of the basic tenets, like what you just said, for example, the run. They'll try to. Instead of throwing a pill at the problem, they're going to try to fix your diet and things like that. But there's like an official term for it. Ria. I knew I was gonna this up. What is it again? Perveda.
- [40:53]
A
Ayurveda.
- [40:54]
B
Ayurveda. Sorry, I know it's gonna mess that up, but emanates. Does. Would you say it emanates more from India or China or like.
- [41:01]
A
Oh, Ayurveda is Indian for sure.
- [41:02]
B
You're right.
- [41:03]
A
Yeah. So veda. IU means life, I think. And veda is a text, an open text.
- [41:11]
B
Yeah.
- [41:12]
A
So tcm, traditional Chinese medicine is what we. What the Chinese system is. And then ayurveda is one of the systems in India. It's the one that's the most well known.
- [41:23]
B
Right. How why is so much of Eastern medicine even still to this day, like kind of poo pooed by people in Western medicine?
- [41:32]
A
Oh my God. So this is such a cool topic. So I was, my mentors hosted an integrative medicine conference at Harvard a couple of years ago and I was still a trainee. And someone asked that same question to one of my mentors who was faculty at Benson Henry. And so he said the biggest problem with these systems like Ayurveda and TCM is y' all don't let your treatments fail. So if you ask an Ayurvedic doctor, let's say there's 15 treatments and you ask them which of these work, do they all work the same? That is a foreign concept to them. So I don't think everything in Ayurveda works. They're just not rigorous about testing what's good and what sucks.
- [42:15]
B
Right.
- [42:15]
A
So I think that the system of testing of these Eastern methodologies is very, very, very poor. That's a huge part of it. I think that's probably the biggest piece. As a medical doctor, I'd say that's the biggest problem. Then there are certain other things which just how the system of medicine works, it doesn't lend itself to the kind of scientific study that we consider very good. So simple example of this, this gets a bit technical, but a big part of Ayurveda is they don't treat a disease, they treat a person. And we may think that we do that in the west, but we don't do that in the West. What we do with allopathic medicine is we treat diseases, right? So I diagnose, I diagnose you with a thing. And the treatment that I give you is not based on you, it's based on the thing. So if I diagnose you with ibs, I'm giving you treatment for ibs. I'm going to give her treatment for ibs, I'm going to give your neighbors treatment for ibs, right? So this is what we call evidence based medicine, where we look at populations of people, we derive patterns, and then.
- [43:20]
B
We treat that pattern with something that we derive from all of them. To be able to say, you all.
- [43:25]
A
Can kind of have this same thing, same thing, right. And so if you look at like a treatment algorithm for major depressive disorder, what we find is that if I give someone an antidepressant medication, like an ssri, there is about, I'M going to summarize for the sake of simplicity, but there's about a 1 in 3 chance that you'll have remission. So statistically. Right. So we operate in statistics. Statistics is not about individuals. It requires populations with me. And the more people we have, the better statistical validity we have. So that's our gold standard in allopathic medicine, is statistical validity. But statistics by nature are not individual. So there is about a 1 in 3 chance that you'll have a remission, which means that your symptoms will improve by at least 50%. There's a 1 in 3 chance that you'll have something called a partial remission, which is that you'll get about a 30 to 50% improvement in your symptoms. There's a 1 in 3 chance that nothing will happen. That won't really help you in any substantive way. That's not how these Eastern medical docs work. So they'll look at a person, they diagnose you with a particular pattern that's kind of individualized. They still have diagnostic schemes and stuff. They'll say that your fire level is too high or your water level is too low, and they'll kind of balance that sort of stuff.
- [44:38]
B
Do you mean they may not acknowledge, for example, like, oh, you have cancer?
- [44:42]
A
No, no, no. So they understand. A lot of them will understand that, but their diagnostic system is different. I'm trying to think about an analogy. You know, so you can have a family structure and you can have a job structure, and you can kind of say, like, okay, a boss is kind of like your mom, but it's not really your. Like, you know, the mother and the boss are different.
- [45:04]
B
Right.
- [45:05]
A
And if all. If I was an alien and all I understood was workplace things, I could look at a family and I could say, oh, that's kind of the same. Right. I understand. Oh, so this person's the boss, you're the employee. This person is the janitor. You know, I could try to map it on, but it doesn't quite fit. That's kind of how Eastern Western medicine are.
- [45:23]
B
Okay, so with Western medicine, like you said, they're going to diagnose the disease and then try to attack that with the evidence that they found from the entire population. And then they just do it based on percentages. And as a little tangent, like you brought up SSRIs, IT. You know, I try to live in the world in nuance as best I can. Right. People want to demonize every single thing. What it does seem like to me, though, is that for whatever reason, there's been sort of a group think ideology that has entered a lot of the medical system where, for example, with SSRIs and there are other things as well, there is an overwhelming, I guess, like western principle to throw a pill at the problem rather than look at other underlying causes like we're talking about with Eastern medicine.
- [46:11]
A
So, Julian, why do you think that is wrong? 100% wrong.
- [46:18]
B
I'm 100% wrong.
- [46:18]
A
I said you're funny. 100% wrong. So this is where. So I love that you like to think with nuance. So let's understand this.
- [46:25]
B
He's like, that's cute.
- [46:26]
A
No, I love it. I love it. So let's understand a couple of things, okay? First of all, doctors are absolutely incentivized to prescribe medication financially, okay? So let's understand this. So if I'm a practicing psychiatrist, so I prescribe medication, but I never do pure psychopharmacology. So I will never have a patient who just comes to you for medication. Either you're gonna do the whole thing or you're gonna do nothing. And medication is a tool, okay? That's where I come from. When I prescribe medication, I get paid $250. This is a ballpark for a 15 minute appointment, okay? So in one hour I can get paid about $1,000. If I do psychotherapy plus medication management, I get paid about $350 an hour. So there is absolutely a financial incentive, which is why we see so many people prescribing. But that's not why we reach for pills. We reach for pills because human beings would rather take a pill than do hard work, right? So as much as we want to demonize big pharma and stuff like that, I'm not saying they're great. There are all kinds of problems with the way that FDA drug approved and things like that. So, for example, I'm rusty. This is not my area of expertise. But if you're a drug company and you have 20 failed trials of a drug, you only need to have a couple of successful trials. So there's some amount. You have to register every trial that you do. But when you're putting a drug through the process, you don't have to show all the failures in some way. I don't know the details of that, so maybe someone can correct me. But the real fact of the matter is. So I have patients who come into my office and, well, my office is different. But back when I was working at Mass General Hospital, I'd be working in the psychiatry, psychopharm Clinic and I'd have patients who come in. And the truth of the matter is that most human beings on the planet would rather have a pill, right? So how many people do you know that would rather take a cholesterol medication or ozempic? Case in point, right? So almost no one on the planet needs Ozempic. If everyone exercises.
- [48:22]
B
I agree.
- [48:23]
A
And starts to eat food in the right way, they don't eat Ozempic.
- [48:27]
B
Is it because we're lazy?
- [48:28]
A
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, right. So that's one word for it. I have different words. I think there's a little nuance there. But the short answer is that this system is dictated because people would rather have pills. But it's not laziness. I think that's not fair. Generally speaking. Yes. But here's what I'd say. So when a patient comes into my office, right. They come in, they say, okay, I'm depressed. And I'd say, okay, let's do a thorough diagnostic evaluation, things like that. And I come up with the Dr. K treatment plan. Okay, what are we going to do? We're going to change your diet. You're going to eat whole, whole food, plant based salmon for meal three times a week. Chicken you can have once or twice as a kid. No. Okay. You know what's really fascinating? You know what's crazy is so my parents had Indian accents when I was growing up. My. I don't have an Indian accent.
- [49:21]
B
No.
- [49:21]
A
But my kids can do the accent. I don't even know how they got is genetic. It's got to be because they don't. They. But their Indian accent are like fire, dude. They're so good.
- [49:32]
B
Oh my God.
- [49:33]
A
Like I will laugh. My. I, I don't know where they learn this stuff.
- [49:36]
B
Right.
- [49:37]
A
Because it's not. I mean I'll do that with you because you're, you're a white dude. But like I'm not talking to my kids in an Indiana. You know, it's like I'll do a.
- [49:47]
B
Little harder for punishment if you do that.
- [49:49]
A
I, I think it'll hit way less hard. Right. Go to your room, sit down, Sit down. First you do the shitting, then we'll talk. Yeah. So we give them the Dr. K treatment plan, which is like you're going to do this kind of diet. We're going to put you on an ayurvedic diet that's going to boost your endogenous serotonin production, help your gut make more serotonin.
- [50:11]
B
What does that mean in English?
- [50:14]
A
So your body will naturally make More serotonin. And once you have more serotonin. So the antidepressant medication, serotonin boosts your serotonin signal in the brain. Okay. So we're like ramping up your serotonin signal when I prescribe a patient on an antidepressant medication that boosts their serotonin transmission. How successful they are at getting off of it depends on their dietary change. So over the course of a year, if they stick with their kind of pro serotonin diet, then if I take them off, they rarely have a remission.
- [50:46]
B
Because they're naturally producing it. And. But there's like some. There's some serious side effects with that stuff too.
- [50:53]
A
With SSRIs. There can be, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So top one is gi. Upset. That usually gets better over time. Most problematic one for most people is sexual side effects.
- [51:04]
B
Right.
- [51:05]
A
Which is specifically anorgasmia. So it's not erectile dysfunction. This is what really confuses a lot of people.
- [51:10]
B
Yeah. But even with women though, too. Oh, yeah. Girl that got on Prozac, she didn't want to fuck anymore after.
- [51:15]
A
Yeah. So that's because it's very hard for her to achieve climax. There's some yogic techniques there too.
- [51:20]
B
Okay, we can talk about that after.
- [51:22]
A
I'll show you.
- [51:23]
B
Okay, Pause.
- [51:25]
A
Anyway, yeah, so going back to the patient who comes in and I lay out this diet plan, and then we're going to be doing psychotherapy once a week and I put them on a meditation regimen and a yoga regimen and all this kind of stuff. We're going to be doing sauna and light therapy and whatever. And then sometimes I'll ask my patients, Right. Because some of my patients are like, I'm a 36 year old dude, I have a 2 year old at home, my wife is pregnant. I don't have time for that. Right. So when we say lazy, like, sure. But I think we sometimes grossly underestimate how little time people have to take care of themselves.
- [52:04]
B
You know, you make a really good point there. There's something Jesse Itzler said, I heard him say it seven, eight years ago, where he talked about the number of decisions from the most micro things to the most macro things that the average human being makes a day. And I believe the number was around 30 to 50,000 decisions. And he's like. And then if you're like an entrepreneur or someone who, you know, you also had the family and everything like that, that number is probably higher. So he had made his whole life about trying to limit the Places where he. Where decisions were less important to not have to think about. And so when you. I. I've always translated this to like, self care and stuff like that. When you talk about people not wanting to do things not because they're lazy, I think a lot of it actually would be better said is like, it could be decision fatigue as well.
- [52:55]
A
I mean, decision fatigue is just the tip of the iceberg, right? So. So I think if you look at. Let's understand, what is laziness? What do you think laziness is.
- [53:04]
B
At the base level? I would define it as deciding you don't give a shit to do the thing that you know you're supposed to do do.
- [53:12]
A
So are there things. Can I ask you a couple questions?
- [53:15]
B
Sure.
- [53:15]
A
Are there things that you should do that you do do?
- [53:18]
B
Yes.
- [53:19]
A
Are there things that you should do that you won't do, don't do sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, right. What's the difference?
- [53:26]
B
The personal motivation I have to do it or not?
- [53:30]
A
What determines your personal motivation?
- [53:34]
B
How I view the quote, unquote, reward. On the other side of it, does it feel. I'll give you an example. Sometimes, especially like if thief's not here, and I know I'm supposed to do, like, ads for three days from now, and it's ones that I've done like a million times, I won't want to do it, even though there is a reward on the other side, there's a bigger reward for me wanting to sit down and make thumbnails for two episodes from now, because that's artistic, creative, and it actually impacts how I perform in my business. So I will make a decision when really I need to focus on the ads. Right now, that is the more important priority. I don't need to worry about next week's thumbnail, but because my mind is like, I like that better. I do that. And then this gets put to the last minute, and then Alessi's yelling at me because we don't have the ads till the night before.
- [54:19]
A
Okay, so there's a couple of really interesting things in there. So, first of all, I don't think laziness exists. I think laziness is a lazy term for a lot of complex processes.
- [54:33]
B
Right? So I see what you did there.
- [54:35]
A
So I don't know if this makes sense, but we have no. We have scientific measurements that can measure your procrastination, your perfectionism, your mood, your anxiety, your willpower, but we have no scientific instrument that measures laziness. That's because it doesn't exist. It's an amalgamation of all kinds of other things. And if we listen to your answer, we will find. And this is what's crazy. So I work six to seven days a week. I would describe myself as a lazy person. Like, I'm still lazy. Like I was watching. I should have been writing a chapter for a book, but I was watching anime on the train up here. So, like, I struggle with this stuff. Right. I work a fair amount. But I think there are a couple of important things in your answer that a lot of people don't realize. The first is that you can't get your mind to do what you want it to do.
- [55:26]
B
Right.
- [55:26]
A
So you say, I should be doing this, but the reward is greater. And this is where I think everyone talking about dopamine, this is the biggest mistake that people make. Everyone thinks it's about reward. It's about reward. It's about reward, right? No, it's about control of your mind. Right. So even if the reward is greater over here, I don't know if this makes sense. So you're saying the reward is greater for you to do thumbnails than it is for you to do whatever ad read.
- [55:51]
B
Because the ads are always just kind of a consistent same thing. Whatever.
- [55:55]
A
Yeah. So the reward is greater over here and lower over here. And this is where we make a huge mistake. We're like, okay, let's figure out how to craft our environment so that we can optimize our reward system. Right?
- [56:05]
B
Yes.
- [56:05]
A
You're turning yourself into a bot. Like, you get that? Where you're shaping this environment, where you're autopiloting towards rewards. Like, this is terrible. So everyone's like super into building habits nowadays, right? And I kind of, I appreciate this. So I think good habits are better than bad habits, but no habits are better than any habits.
- [56:28]
B
No habits?
- [56:29]
A
No. So let's understand what a habit is. I know, we've got a thousand different threads.
- [56:32]
B
Oh, this is great. I like this.
- [56:34]
A
So why would you want to make a habit? What happens to you when you are behaving habitually? What is your subjective experience when you are behaving?
- [56:42]
B
That totally depends. Habitually doing nothing and sitting around and watching TV, very bad things happen. Habitually waking up at 6:15 every morning to go to the gym, very good things happen.
- [56:54]
A
So that is a good habit versus a bad habit. When you are behaving in habitual behavior, what is happening in your mind?
- [57:02]
B
You're using neuroplasticity.
- [57:05]
A
Can't use any of that scientific crap. What is happening in your mind? There's no neuroplasticity in habit, by the way. Very good.
- [57:12]
B
Yeah.
- [57:13]
A
So you're not conscious, right? You're programming it. You're turning yourself into a bot, a productive bot, but a bot nonetheless. So this is where, like, this is what's really wild, right? So you can't habitually get into a flow. The flow state is not a habit, right? So a flow state is a state of high engagement and high presence. Habit is automaticity. It's being automatic, right? So if I'm. If I'm a habitual. If I have trichotillomania and I'm habitually picking this, I'm not thinking about it, I'm just doing it. You're just doing it?
- [57:45]
B
Yes.
- [57:46]
A
Right. You're doing it without thinking. So what we've tried to do. This is so scary. We used to be programmed in bad ways. Now we're programmed in good ways, but we're still fucking programmed. So I think this is where, like, when we really talk about the height of performance, it is to be, like, present and aware and to be using your conscious energy, right? Like you want to be focused. Like, that's where really the best stuff comes from. And this is where I said I'm lazy. And the reason I get away with being lazy is because I do a couple of things. One is that, like you said, when you're, you know, there's a lot of this reward stuff. The other thing that you. I forgot what I was. I asked you. Oh, yeah. I asked you what laziness is or why you don't do certain things. Why you don't do certain things, right? And I think you talked about reward, right? So reward is a big part. But the key thing here, the reason I talked about habits and stuff, is the basic problem is the more good habits you have, the weaker your mind will get because you're not using it. It's all automatic.
- [58:49]
B
What if you're present in doing it.
- [58:51]
A
Then it's not a habit. So what is the definition of a habit?
- [58:55]
B
Oh, now your brain fucking me.
- [58:57]
A
Okay. What is a habit? Tell me. Define it.
- [59:01]
B
Something that you do on a regular basis of some sort of.
- [59:06]
A
Not regular, automatic.
- [59:08]
B
Yes.
- [59:08]
A
Isn't that. The whole point is that we want to program ourselves so we don't have to think about it. So it requires no willpower. It requires no discipline. It is automatic. The key thing, the endocannabinoid circuitry in the brain, which is where our habits come from. They're all about automaticity. There's no neuroplasticity with a habit forming a habit has a ton of neuroplasticity. Getting rid of a habit has a ton of neuroplasticity. Right, but that's the wiring stage. The whole point of habits. When you wake up every morning, which hand do you brush your teeth with? We're assuming you brush your teeth in the morning. Yeah, yeah, right. And do you. What are you thinking about when you brush your teeth?
- [59:42]
B
Not much, because I do the same thing every day with that.
- [59:45]
A
Are you thinking about brushing your teeth?
- [59:48]
B
A little? Because like, you know, you know, basic, like, oh, making sure I'm getting the back or like getting the inside the back. But it's very in the right.
- [59:56]
A
So oftentimes second nature human, that's the point of a happy is to make it second nature.
- [60:00]
B
Yes.
- [60:01]
A
So the more habits we build, the weaker we become at getting our mind to listen to us. So when I tell my hand to raise up and it listens to me when it obeys me, that's what we want. And we've created a society where our mind is being shaped by our technology. On the one hand, we're trying to counteract the technological programming with our own internal programming. It's still all programming.
- [60:31]
B
So you basically what you're getting at and I want you to get also explain the presence point you had because I think that's interesting and that's kind of going to explain some of my question here. But what you're getting at is that we have convinced ourselves that good habits, using that term exactly, is helpful for life. And yet that is the wrong way to package what needs to be good actions we take.
- [60:57]
A
Okay, not the wrong way. It is a way. It is an incomplete way. Let's just understand habits are great, but let's not try to have them be a substitute for everything. So if you're trying to get rid of bad habits, you should absolutely have good habits. This is good. Good habits are not the enemy. Okay, but let's be very clear that good habits are not the same as mental training. Mental training. And literally this comes from completely different parts of the brain. The endocannabinoid habit circuitry is one part of your brain. Your frontal lobes, your anterior cingulate cortex, your insula. These are the parts of your brain where like willpower and like executive function come from. These are not the same parts of the brain. It's actually the opposite. So when you are mentally struggling with yourself, the part of your brain that lights up is not habit circuitry. Right. And if you formed a habit you know that because you are fighting against yourself, internal conflict is actually the same thing as willpower. Okay. Anyway. Okay, but so when we're talking about why people are lazy, it's fine if you want to make yourself a habit, because then you never have to become unlazy. You know what I mean? If I have good habits and I'm lazy, it's not a big deal, because habitually I'm doing all the right things. Right?
- [62:06]
B
Yeah.
- [62:06]
A
That's the whole point. So there's value to it. Don't get me wrong. But overcoming laziness involves two things. First thing is control of your mind. So in the same way that if you tell a dog to sit, if you tell your mind enough is enough, your mind says, yes, sir or yes, ma'. Am. The second thing is you mentioned understanding. So this is where we really start to get into the weird place. So if we look at, like, psychotherapy of behavioral change, okay, So a patient comes into my office fucking addicted to their mind out of fentanyl. Okay? So, you know, investment banker, started using investment bank. Oh, yeah, yeah. Started using cocaine, then started getting into opiates, now uses fentanyl because they've burned through so much money on cocaine. Cocaine's an expensive drug. Fentanyl. Yeah. And so, you know. And how do we get this person to change their mind? Right. How do we get this person to, like, stop using fentanyl?
- [62:57]
B
Well, now, they're chemically dependent.
- [62:59]
A
Oh, absolutely. Chemical. But that's different.
- [63:01]
B
That's different.
- [63:02]
A
Yeah. So there's a lot of different layers to this stuff. Okay, so they're chemically dependent. But. But if they're. And so I don't know if this makes sense. If their mind is made up in the right way, they'll withdraw and they'll get through the chemical dependence. Does that make sense?
- [63:15]
B
Yes.
- [63:15]
A
Anytime someone goes sober, their mind overcomes the chemical dependence. It may make the hill that you have to get over higher, but the key thing is their mind has to be in the right way. Right? So the more chemically dependent they become, the more true. The point that I'm gonna make is, is that once they understand their situation, truly understand it, then behavior will change. So the second thing that makes people ignorant, I mean, lazy, is ignorance. And I know this sounds really weird.
- [63:45]
B
It doesn't say. You keep saying that about stuff.
- [63:47]
A
It doesn't.
- [63:48]
B
You explain stuff well.
- [63:49]
A
So people are lazy because they literally don't understand. And if I think about, like. Think about anything in your life, right? Where I say, like, oh, Julian, don't touch that hot pan. And you're like, I'm gonna touch the hot pan. And then you touch the hot pan. And then you're like, oh, shit, that's hard.
- [64:03]
B
Yes.
- [64:03]
A
And then I tell you, julian, don't touch the hot pan. You're like, all right, fine.
- [64:06]
B
Yes.
- [64:07]
A
So if we literally look at, you know, how does human behavior change? It changes through understanding. True understanding. This is not the same as information. Information and understanding are two entirely different things. But if you sort of think about the mistakes that you used to make and the mistakes that you don't make anymore, it's because you just understand. So you look like you're in shape. You work out.
- [64:27]
B
Yes.
- [64:27]
A
Did you always work out?
- [64:29]
B
Yes.
- [64:30]
A
Shit. Bad example. What, like, even when you were, like, six?
- [64:36]
B
Well, actually, yeah. I grew up running, and then I got into weightlifting heavy at 20. But then I was sick for four years, so I couldn't do it during that.
- [64:43]
A
So the bad example. But there's got to be something, some stupid mistake that you used to make that you don't make anymore.
- [64:50]
B
There's got a lot of those. Now. You're putting me on the spot.
- [64:52]
A
And is that because you developed good habits? Is that because you use willpower every time you don't make the mistake? No, it's because you understand.
- [65:01]
B
Yes.
- [65:01]
A
Right.
- [65:02]
B
Okay.
- [65:02]
A
So here's the beautiful thing. Once you understand, you don't have to exert effort, right? Like, you don't have to, like, once you understand, oh, this is stupid for me to do. Like, once that really gets into your brain and really sinks in. And, like, my favorite example is I had a patient who had a really toxic relationship, right? And. And the problem is, like, they just don't get it. They don't get it. Right? They don't get that this person is harmful for you. And even if you ask them, is this person good for you or bad for you, they'll say, they're bad for me. But they don't get it. You know what I mean? But I love it. Yeah. Right. But deep down, they don't understand that this is bad for me. And so the process of psychotherapy there is. Don't tell me everything that she does wrong. I'll tell you a story. You wanna hear a story?
- [65:47]
B
Please.
- [65:47]
A
Okay. So I have patient.
- [65:49]
B
I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna start saying no when he asks me questions.
- [65:52]
A
No. You could say no. Okay. So I had a patient, a dude in his 40s. And so he came in and he was depressed, and so I was A third year psychiatry resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital. And so he had been in the clinic for about eight or nine years, gets passed down from resident to resident. You know, he comes in, he talks to me about his problems, tells me about how everything is going wrong in his life, and I listen to him, and I'm very empathic and reflective, and I'm like, hey, bro, that sounds hard for you. Oh, how did that make you feel? That sounds hard for you. That must be tough. How does that make you feel? So I was doing what a therapist does, right? That's what therapists do. They ask you how you feel, and then they tell you that, like, that must be hard for you. So eight or nine months into this, I'm kind of getting bored. And he comes in one day and I'm like, hey, is this helping? And he's like, what do you mean, is it helping? I was like, are you any better than when we started? He was like, I thought that's what we're supposed to do. I'm supposed to come in, I'm supposed to tell you about how bad my life is, and then you're supposed to be nice to me. And I was like, is it helping? And he's like, I don't know. I mean, it's just how it is, right? So we started, like. I just started trying to get to know the guy. So I was like. We stopped talking about why he was depressed, and I was like, tell me a little bit about what you like in life and things like that. And it was really great. There was a lot of, like, bro energy in the room, which I think something we need more of in therapy. And so we were talking about, you know, not to be indelicate about it, but women that he had had sexual relationships with. And what we talked about, we actually use this term, which is why I say it. I was like, you know, he's like, you want to tell. You want me to tell you about the chicks I fucked? And I was like, yeah, man, tell me about the chicks you fucked. And so he was telling me about, you know, his. His favorite, like, the. The best lay he ever had. Okay. And sometimes therapy, I think, can look like this and should, like, look like this. We sort of. We've demonized this kind of language so much. I think it's important not to be, like, to denigrate those people or really objectify them, but to use a language that feels safe and acceptable and really helps people open up.
- [67:55]
B
Like, you're at the bar chilling.
- [67:57]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I'VE talked to my female patients about the dudes they fuck too.
- [68:01]
B
So you hit the Indian accent when they do that. Tell me about the good one.
- [68:07]
A
I have never done that. So I'm more careful with my female patients, for sure. But, you know, dick jokes abound with the male patients.
- [68:19]
B
Yeah, there you go.
- [68:21]
A
So, you know, he was telling me about this woman, and so he loved it because she was like, they would go eat at expensive restaurants and they would have very crazy, like, sex and things like that. And then he told me this one story of so. But she was divorced and she had a couple of kids. And what he actually really liked about it was that, like, he was starting to get to know her kids. And he loved that because he'd always wanted kids and he didn't even care. Like, they weren't his. But, like, he just really genuinely enjoyed spending time with these kids. The kids were amazing. He was really forming, like, a relationship and bond with them. And then one day he. On Christmas Day, he goes to her house with gifts for the kids. And she opens the door and he's like, hey, you know, I brought your kids gifts. It was a little bit of surprise. She said, thank you so much. One of the kids sees him standing in the doorway, runs out and gives him a hug. Oh, thank you so much for coming. And so his girlfriend, on again, off again, situationship kind of thing, tells her daughter. She says, you know, go put these by the tree. And so the kid runs to go put him by the tree, and then he's standing there literally, like, out in the cold, in the snow, and she says, thank you for coming, and shuts the door in his face. And so this relationship, the problem for this guy is that this relationship was perfect half the time and it was terrible the other half the time.
- [69:47]
B
Yeah.
- [69:49]
A
So, you know, he would be like, I don't understand why I can't stop. Right. Like, he looks at this and the reason he can't stop is not because it's bad for him, but because it's so damn good. Yeah. So a lot of the things that we do that are bad for us where our head, our cognition, our analytical reasoning tells us this is bad for you. That's not the same as understanding.
- [70:13]
B
Yes, that's a great point.
- [70:15]
A
Right.
- [70:15]
B
Yeah. Because essentially he's drawn to the drama of it and the idea of, like, it's a problem he's got to find a way to solve in some ways, you know, because, like, she's hot half the time and cold half. Half the time. How Do I get her hot all the time?
- [70:29]
A
Exactly. Right? So that's why we look at this and everyone around him says, hey, this is a bad relationship. This is an unhealthy relationship. No, it isn't. So for him to walk away, it's a perfect relationship half the time, right? So now he's thinking, oh, if I play my cards right, if I do this right, if I figure this out right, then it'll be. Then it won't be an unhealthy. Like, sure, this piece is unhealthy, but this piece is amazing. And all I have to do is figure out how to it make. Make this right. Because we as human beings have the ability to affect change in our life, don't we, Julian? Yeah. So he's like, I just got to figure this out. I got to figure this out, and if I can figure out, I can have everything that I want. So for him to walk away from this relationship, he needs to understand not that it's a toxic relationship, but that it's the perfect relationship half the time. And then what does he want from life? Does he want to play this game? Does he think that this person is going to come around? Does he want to wait for this person to come around? Right? This is the kind of understanding that he needs. He needs to look at his life and realize, I'm putting all my eggs in the basket of this person. Am I counting on this person? Can I count on this person to ever love me and respect me the way that I love her? Is this something that she has demonstrated to me that she's capable of? Right. She's perfect in so many ways, but bad in others.
- [71:48]
B
So in some ways, maybe the best outcome in a situation like that is you realize that she's not going to be right in what you deserve, which is 100% of the. Or as close to 100% of the time as possible. So kind of like that old Bruce Lee quote. You take what you like about it, you move on from it, you discard what's bad, which is maybe the relationship itself, and you look for what was good in it. In a more healthy relationship that does not have those two sides, the hot and cold.
- [72:20]
A
I mean, that sounds great. That's not actually what happened. Right. So what we came down to is this is a guy, and this is like, what I love about being a psychiatrist. Like, it came down to some deep work. This is a guy who the reason he was so chronically depressed is because he had never won anything. We think about people winning things and everyone gets participation trophies and things like that. But this is a guy who had just gotten the short end of the stick. And this is what's really, really sad. This is actually the common man. The common man you meet is not the best at anything. So this is a guy who had been chasing his whole life. This is a guy who had been, like, disappointed his whole life.
- [73:05]
B
Right?
- [73:06]
A
Like, and not disappointed because he deserved better or anything like that. He just wasn't the smartest kid in the class. Had a pretty toxic upbringing in a lot of ways. So had a lot of family, mental illness. So was kind of deprived in some ways. Like, that's not his fault though, right? So, like, he just wasn't taught how to socialize well and things like that, actually. I mean, he learned a lot of good things, but so, I mean, this was just a dude who was always sort of like, left with a choice. He never made a choice. So for him, what it came down to is like, bro, do you want to ever make a choice? Like, sure, I agree. Maybe if you wait around in three months time, six months time, a year's time, 15 months time, like, you know, it could be tomorrow. You never know. Could you get her to love you the way that you want? I'm not saying it's impossible. See, a lot of people will say, like, oh, it's not possible. You know, you can't control other people's actions. Like, I'll say that shit. But I think that's not the point for him. The point for him is, do you want to wait around while someone else decides your future? Right. Or for once in your fucking life, like, take some control.
- [74:08]
B
Yes.
- [74:10]
A
And go. I don't know what you're going to find. You may find. And he had a lot of problems with future relationships, too, that were interesting, but. But not in the same way.
- [74:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, the point is you can't. You use the term chasing as well. And this is related. You're using in a relationship context. But this is related to a lot of things. You have to be willing to walk out the door on things when it's not working for you and be okay with whatever's on the other side of the door to not following you out. And I think a lot of us, including myself, we struggle with that because it's like, especially when it involves people, friendships, whatever it is, or a personal relationship, like, you want that person to be who you want them to be, but they're going to have to prove that to you in some way or another or you're going to be stuck in this loop forever.
- [74:54]
A
Well, so that's why I'd say, like, the way to break out of that loop is understanding. Really, like, looking at your situation and understanding your situation for what is it is not what you want it to be. Right? You need to really look at yourself and look at the people around you. And could they change? Could they not change? And, like, you can make whatever kind of truisms you want. But what I've sort of found, and there's an ancient kind of Sanskrit concept that avidya, or ignorance, is the root of all suffering, right? So I don't know if you guys have heard that story about, you know, the monk who's. There's a scorpion that's drowning.
- [75:27]
B
I don't think I've heard this.
- [75:28]
A
And so there's a scorpion that's drowning or something. And then the monk is like, oh, like, let me save the scorpion. So he picks up the scorpion, scorpion sting, stings him. And so then he, like, drops it, right, and starts drowning again. And it picks it up a second time. It stings him again, and he's like, ah. And he drops it again, picks it up a third time, and it stings him a third time. And then someone is watching on the bank, and they're like, you know, why do you keep on doing that? And he said, it's in the scorpion's nature to sting me. It's in my nature to try to save it. Right? So, like, this is where once you understand the nature of the people around you, oh, my God, life becomes so easy. First thing you got to understand. Yeah, go ahead.
- [76:06]
B
Do you find that people can have a moment where, let's say, they. They don't understand that at all, and they can't, like, get that through their head. And then they kind of have, like. I don't want to say, one day they wake up and suddenly it's all good. But literally, like, people's perspective. You're able to work with them, and then it just completely shifts, and they're like, oh, now, oh, that's just how I got to look at the situation now.
- [76:28]
A
All the time.
- [76:28]
B
All the time.
- [76:29]
A
And not just me, you, anyone who's listening. Who among us has not woken up one day and you're like, this is fucking dumb. I'm done with this, right? And it could be like never buying a Twinkie again. It could be deciding to quit. It could be like, I'm even uninstalling a video game. So this is a key thing. There's some really fascinating research on. I'm going to go off on a quick tangent, but there's a lot of fascinating research on the nature of consciousness. Okay. And so people are like, okay, like. So we can detect whether you're going to push this button with your right hand or your left hand, 0.04 milliseconds or 0.4 milliseconds before you do it. So your brain is making this decision for you. There's no consciousness. The decision has been made even though you become consciously aware of it. So here's what a lot of people don't understand. So when I work with a patient with addiction, they don't become sober overnight.
- [77:20]
B
Right.
- [77:21]
A
But they wake up one day. I know this sounds kind of weird. And they say if you talk to people, they'll be like, enough is enough. I'm done. Right. What they don't understand is that. That binary shift, because on the one hand, they don't become sober overnight, but on the other hand, that's literally what the subjective experience is. Does that kind of make sense?
- [77:37]
B
Yes.
- [77:37]
A
You wake up one day, or you're dating a boy or a girl or whatever, your boss, you're like, enough is enough. I'm fucking done. You make up your mind.
- [77:44]
B
Yes.
- [77:44]
A
What people don't realize is that making up up your mind is a thousand subconscious decisions. It's a thousand neuroscientific calculations that are happening underneath the surface. We only experience it as binary. Right. So I don't know if there's a really great simple experiment that you can do. Like anytime you go to the grocery store, anytime you go to a restaurant, you're sitting there, you're looking at the menu, and you're thinking about it, Right? And then you decide. Yeah. Does that make sense?
- [78:12]
B
Yes.
- [78:12]
A
So the decision is binary, but there's lots of processing going on underneath the surface. So this is one of the key things that I've learned about people who are struggling to wake up one day and have that understanding. What a lot of people don't realize is that you have to do a lot of subsurface work. So you have to put in a thousand steps that you are not consciously aware of to wake up one day and have the realization every.
- [78:39]
B
That's always how it is. You'd say.
- [78:43]
A
There are some very rare exceptions.
- [78:45]
B
Okay.
- [78:46]
A
So higher states of consciousness, connecting with divinity, things like that. That's the weird yogic stuff, I think when you have certain very, very rare states of mind, there are times that it can happen very quickly. But generally speaking, the reason why psychotherapy is an evidence based psychological program is because if someone shows up in my office for one hour a week for 12 to 20 weeks, they will change by the end of it. Right? And that was the, like, we designed this coaching program where like at 20 weeks there's a 58% increase in a sense of life purpose. So this is absolutely something that. But the first four weeks someone shows up, they don't get anything. They're like, I don't, I'm not, I don't see any benefit. So I don't know if this makes sense. But you're. Just because you don't see the benefit doesn't mean that change isn't happening.
- [79:36]
B
Just because you don't see the benefit doesn't mean change isn't happening. Meaning at least if you're putting your two feet down in the thing that's getting you into a position to do something better and you're not feeling the effects of it, the fact that you've shown up to put your two feet right there, if you continue to do that, I'm not going to use the word habit, but continue to build that willpower to do that, eventually it is, it is going to cross that boundary and you're gonna be like, oh my God, yeah. Of course.
- [80:02]
A
If I, if I, if I go to the gym with you today and I lift weights, what change am I going to see?
- [80:08]
B
Not much. But if you do it for 90 days, you'll see something, right?
- [80:11]
A
So I wouldn't even say not much. Incorrect.
- [80:13]
B
I see nothing.
- [80:14]
A
There we go. Be precise. Right? And that's what a lot of people don't understand about the way their mind works. If you put in the right reps, you will change.
- [80:26]
B
I mean, I think also, I don't know if you're getting at this as well, but I think this is exactly the same family, at least how I think of it, that, that like momentum comes from, you know, people talk about, oh, oh, what's a good example? Stay with a gym example. So someone will be like, oh, here's like the six minute ABS program. I just got to jump in and do that right away and then get into the habit of doing that and I'll have a six pack in 30 days. It's not like that. You'll probably burn out in three days trying to get through that if you do it the first time. But if you just start with, hey, I'm going to do 10 crunches, 10 half sit ups and, you know, 10 leg raises, and I'm Going to do that, that for like 21 straight days and then maybe I'll move to 11. You're. You're starting at a smaller bite, but you're building reasonable momentum of something you can actually stick with that will eventually get you to the point that you have a result.
- [81:12]
A
I like that. But let's be precise.
- [81:14]
B
Okay.
- [81:14]
A
If I wake up and I say I'm going to do 10 push ups, 10 leg res is, 10 squats, whatever, 10 crunches, I'm going to do it for 21 days. How many people do it for 21 days?
- [81:23]
B
Not a lot.
- [81:23]
A
There we go. Okay, so let's start with the. That second thing is if you get really excited about, why doesn't that build momentum? So when you get excited by something, which part of your brain is active? You don't have to give me the neuroanatomical.
- [81:35]
B
The planning part.
- [81:36]
A
Nope. When you get excited.
- [81:38]
B
When I get excited about. Well, I'm thinking it. Sorry, I'm thinking of it in the context of planning something. Now. When I get excited, is that also the amygdala?
- [81:45]
A
It's the excitement part. Right. That's not the planning part. Like when I get excited, like I'm a get swole, Julian, I'm going to do it and it's going to be great and I get so excited. You said, well, there's a lot of passion, right?
- [81:59]
B
Yes.
- [82:00]
A
That means that your motivation is coming from the passion, but the moment that emotion turns off, your motivation will go with it. Right, Right. Which is what you're describing is very different. So your success story is you're spot on with your example. Right. But let's understand the neuroscience. When you are doing it without excitement, that's when you're gonna succeed.
- [82:19]
B
Yes.
- [82:19]
A
Because when you're excited about something. Oh my God, I see this all the time, you know, I'm so in love. I'm so in love. She's so in love. Oh my God, we're so in love. We're so in love. And like six months in, eh, Right. This is what's so sad is like everyone's like this really kind of random fact, but there's this really interesting bait and switch that happens with people in ADHD in relationships.
- [82:41]
B
And what is that?
- [82:42]
A
So they get hyper focused. People with ADHD get really, really excited. And so when they, they enter a relationship, they are so attuned to this person, they're so attentive, they're so excited, their mind is constantly on them. And when they enter the relationship and that adhd hyper focus disappears. So a human being can be the object of your hyperfocus. There's this weird whiplash effect that's actually been described in scientific papers. There's a whiplash effect where if you are the recipient of someone with ADHD's attention and then once that excitement disappears, you're like, what the fuck? Where did they go? They're not texting me anymore anymore. It's been scientifically described one of the reasons why people with ADHD have a lot of challenges in romantic relationships. So if we are using the excitement part of our brain to trigger motivation, if we're using an emotion to trigger our motivation, we're in big trouble. There's no sustainability. The reason there's no sustainability is because our emotions are designed to disappear. So what do we have to trigger to create understanding?
- [83:40]
B
Just the understanding.
- [83:41]
A
Yeah. Do you wipe your ass every day?
- [83:43]
B
Yeah.
- [83:43]
A
Is that habitual? Sometimes take a second wipe, sometimes a third wipe.
- [83:48]
B
Oh, yeah, right.
- [83:49]
A
So why do you take three wipes on one day and one and a half on a day?
- [83:53]
B
I mean, I want to make sure I'm clean.
- [83:56]
A
Right. So you understand that this behavior sometimes. Because it's not a habit, because it's not just one wipe.
- [84:02]
B
Right.
- [84:02]
A
Sometimes it's three.
- [84:04]
B
Oh, yeah. It's definitely multiple.
- [84:05]
A
Yeah, multiple. Right. So, yeah. Okay. Guess it says more about me than it does about you. So let me know when you're ready to keep going. All right. So if you think about the wiping of the ass, the wiping the ass is a great example of understanding. And you know, some days, like you get a little bit of a liquidy one and you're like, I need a couple more. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?
- [84:31]
B
Right, right.
- [84:31]
A
Everybody knows it. Right. And so this is where understanding naturally motivates you. Do you have to use willpower? Oh my God. You realize that when you wipe six times instead of three, you have to spend twice as much energy. It's twice as much effort.
- [84:43]
B
Julian, I don't think that at all.
- [84:44]
A
No, but it's twice as much effort.
- [84:47]
B
No, I'm just making sure I don't sandpaper my ass. That's it.
- [84:50]
A
Okay, there we go. Right. So that too is born of what? What happened? One day you wipe, Julian doth wipeth too much and then he hath 24 hours of sandpaper ass. Once again, understanding. Understanding shapes your behavior automatically. Avidya is the root of all suffering. Ignorance is the root of all suffering. So as you understand, behavior will change naturally. It'll change in the right way.
- [85:18]
B
So, and I want to make. Because, like, understanding is such a simple word. Like, we all know that, but, like, looking at it at the meta level that you are right now, because you're looking at the simple level, but also there's like, a metaphorical, like, kind of blanket. This puts over a lot of things in a good way. I was talking with my friend Nico about, you know, like, the resistance to getting up in the morning to work out. Because, like, I work out six days a week. I'm very good about getting up at the same exact time and having that schedule and going in there. My body's on my mind is not when I get in there, but, like, my body's always on in the morning. But I told him, I'm like, there's still some days, probably at least once a week where when that alarm goes off at 6:15, I might have slept eight hours. I might have slept great. But, like, that little thought goes in your head, like, ah, maybe. Maybe I could just skip today. And I told him what I do, and this is literal, is I just go and I just, like, kind of jam myself out of bed, like, jump like that. I'm like, all right, let's go. And it's not because, like, I'm suddenly now excited or I'm trying to trick myself into being motivated. It's more because, like, I'm thinking about it now, like, what this actually is. It's more because it's like, this is what I'm supposed to do. And if I don't just quickly make a motion to get my feet moving, I know that I will get into that fucking mode and be able to go to the gym and show up and do what I got to do. Is that because I understand what the goodness of going to the gym and having that routine is versus the ulterior.
- [86:41]
A
Almost. Almost. Here's the key thing. How did you learn how to do that? You did it once, and then you were like, this works.
- [86:51]
B
Yeah.
- [86:51]
A
Then you understood it's not even about this abstract benefit.
- [86:54]
B
Benefit.
- [86:55]
A
Right. It's about you understood. Okay. If I want to go to the gym, this is what I need to do with myself. Right? So. And you're talking about understanding, and we can define it. So this is why I love Sanskrit. So I think Sanskrit is a beautiful language because you know how they say, like, Eskimos have 100 words for snow or whatever?
- [87:11]
B
So I did not.
- [87:12]
A
But okay, so Sanskrit has a lot of great words for mental states. So they have two words. One is Vidya. It gets translated as information. And they have another one that is nyan, which is understanded as. Which is translated as understanding. Okay, so here's where we get into trouble. Vidya is objective. Is transmissible, is information. Understanding. Jnana is subjective. Not transmissible.
- [87:46]
B
Not. What do you mean by not transmissible?
- [87:49]
A
This thing worked for you, right?
- [87:50]
B
Yeah.
- [87:50]
A
Are you able to communicate that to me? Are you able to transfer it to me? Now that I've heard you say this is the same thing going to happen with me?
- [87:59]
B
Maybe.
- [88:01]
A
Tell me how.
- [88:02]
B
Good, because I've told you something that worked for me. And now you may, let's say you wake up at 6am or something. That's your habit. But you don't go to the gym. You may have that thought creep in your head, like, oh, shit, maybe if I just jump. And then if it works, you're like.
- [88:16]
A
Oh, shit, that worked. Hold on a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Your audience, I think, picked it up. I don't know if you did.
- [88:23]
B
I definitely didn't.
- [88:24]
A
You try it and if it works, and then you say, oh, that's the understanding. Do you understand? Right. So you have to try it. So pay attention to your example. You're like, but that's not transmissible then. No, the understanding. So the moment you told me, did I understand? No.
- [88:42]
B
Oh, okay. All right.
- [88:43]
A
Say, say, go ahead. What'd you understand?
- [88:45]
B
Yeah, so when I. When I tell you it, I don't understand it, I have to try it first to understand it.
- [88:50]
A
And if I try, and you even described the scenario that creates the understanding, you're like, and I tried. I'm like, oh, wow, that works.
- [88:57]
B
Yes.
- [88:58]
A
So that is. That is the same revelation that you had. You can't transmit to me. You can only tell me what to do, and then I have to do it, and then I have to have the same understanding.
- [89:08]
B
Yeah.
- [89:08]
A
Okay. Okay. Give you another example. A little bit indelicate, but I'm having a good time.
- [89:13]
B
Okay, I'm glad. That's what we do here. We have a good time.
- [89:17]
A
You ever had an orgasm?
- [89:18]
B
Yes.
- [89:19]
A
Okay. You understand what that feels like?
- [89:21]
B
Fucking amazing.
- [89:22]
A
Okay, Right. So you can describe it to me or not, your choice. And there's no way that I'm going to know. Right. Unless I've had one myself.
- [89:30]
B
Yeah.
- [89:31]
A
So you can transmit the information for an orgasm, but the understanding of it can't do. So understanding is related to experience, not information. And the big problem that we have in society, Right. The reason why podcasts like yours and channels like Mine are successful is because everyone is looking for information and we're looking for. And you do a beautiful job. Right? You're trying to get people into an understanding state through the transmission of information.
- [89:59]
B
Now you're making sense. Because the way I look at this is like I have on people who are from all walks of life with all different perspectives on stuff, whatever it is. And I'm here talking with you to get my own understanding. But my hope and hopeful expectation is that people at home can listen and get their own understanding from it.
- [90:19]
A
Absolutely right.
- [90:20]
B
Good, bad or indifferent.
- [90:20]
A
But hold on a second. So this is interesting because you're saying I'm going to get my understanding. They're going to get their understanding. But if I'm saying the same words, how can you get two different understanding.
- [90:28]
B
Understandings based on an opinion of whether or not you agree with what's said on your own experience or personal whatever.
- [90:35]
A
Okay, fair enough. I'm transmitting the same thing. Right. So information can be transmitted.
- [90:42]
B
That's right.
- [90:42]
A
Vidya can be transmitted understanding if the same information is transmitted in the same. Everyone is hearing the same words, but their understanding is different.
- [90:51]
B
That's correct.
- [90:51]
A
Right. And as they're understanding, if anyone who has listened to your show has not implemented, if there's an episode that they have not found useful, that's because they didn't understand it, they didn't try it. Right. They didn't experience it. Experience is ultimately how we gain understanding. And that's why if we are a bot and we use lots of habits, we stop experiencing. Right. We're just. So experience involves a certain amount of conscious awareness. Generally speaking. Did you.
- [91:22]
B
So going back to your personal story, because you had tried a bunch of things, and this is obviously before you're a psychiatrist and before you're fully trained and you know, you weren't even doing well in school because you were skipping a lot of school, but you spent a couple years in college and you were trying so many things and they wouldn't work to be able to get you to remove video game addiction. So obviously you didn't have an understanding of all the things.
- [91:43]
A
Absolutely.
- [91:43]
B
You understand now?
- [91:44]
A
Yeah.
- [91:45]
B
Pun intended. But. But did you learn all this when you went to India for seven years or is this stuff that you've also picked up after the fact or from other things as well?
- [91:56]
A
No. Yeah. So I have new understandings all the time. Right. So that's how human beings work. So I would say that a lot of what I'm teaching now I learned the kernel of when I Went to India. Right. And I learned a lot. And we didn't even get to the weird esoteric stuff.
- [92:13]
B
But, yeah, we'll come back to the esoteric stuff. What did your dad even say you were gonna be doing in India?
- [92:18]
A
So I asked him, I said, what am I gonna do there? And he's like, I don't know. And he's like, you need to go. So he had some sixth sense kind of shit going on. So he was like a really good doctor. And I think that he was operating on some levels that. So you mentioned a union of physical and mental. And I think there's a third dimension of spiritual. And I think that's like a real thing.
- [92:44]
B
Yes, right.
- [92:46]
A
And this is where the reason I was getting in all that shit with the layers at the beginning. The layers is because there's. So if we look at conscious experience. Conscious experience cannot be measured, but it has a profound impact. It cannot be detected. Right. So we don't know if anyone else. Like, even if I look at, like, if I'm assessing your consciousness, which I can do, Right. Using certain medical terms, I'm still using, like, physical stimuli. I don't know if you have thoughts. I could be in a dream right now. There's another really scary story if you.
- [93:14]
B
Want to hear it, please.
- [93:15]
A
So I had. This is one of my favorite stories. I've told it a couple times, but it's just super cool. So I had a patient, I was on the consult service at MGH and we had a consult in the neuro icu. So I'm on the psychiatry service, but we get consulted for the neurological icu. So there was a guy who had been in a car accident, and he had been in a coma for about two weeks. Comes out of the coma. Physical therapy is progressing well. He's expected to make a full recovery. So we got called and we're like, what's the problem? And this is something that seems like a bullshit consult. So sometimes you get these where, like, the primary team is just like, calling you, and they don't really have a great reason. Right. So they're like, yeah, we don't know. Like, he seems depressed. And I'm like, what do you mean he seems depressed? And they're like, I don't know. He just seems depressed and like, that's not a reason to consult us. Does he have a functional problem? What's his prognosis like? Like, is he, like, crying? Like, what is going on?
- [94:05]
B
I don't know.
- [94:06]
A
He seems depressed. We're like, okay, fine. So I trained at a place where, thankfully, where we try to be helpful. There are some hospitals where people don't try that because they're toxic environments. But I had some awesome teachers and great, fucking fantastic hospital. So we go see him, and I go see the guy, and I try to get a sense of, okay, like, you know, what's your recovery? Right? Like, okay, so this is your wife. These are your kids. Okay. Older one's 19. She's going to college. Younger one is 17. She's applying to college. You know, how's your job? Okay, like, no problems at work. You're a partner at this firm, and they've let you take six months of medical leave. But let me talk to the rehab person. Rehab is progressing well, so everything seems good. So I go and see this person every day for about six days, and I kind of ask them, like, you know, how are you feeling? They're like, I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. So on day six, I go and I'm like, look, I feel like I'm missing something, because everything I know about you, you're doing fine, fine. Work is fine. Family loves you. Everything's great. Like, you're making a full recovery. Sounds like the nursing staff loves you. Right? So he's, like, cracking jokes and, like, you're doing well. And I'm like, what's the deal? Am I like. And if you don't want to say anything, that's fine, but this is the last day I'm going to see you. You're being discharged tomorrow, so if there's, like, any, like, you know. But I feel like you're sad. Just, like, sitting with you, it feels like there's something off. And that's when the dude starts crying, and I'm like, what is this? So he tells me that while he was in a coma, he had this whole other life, and he was, like, married to someone, and he had two boys instead of two girls.
- [95:33]
B
Oh, my God.
- [95:34]
A
And he's, like, basically grieving because he's like, I realize that those people aren't real, but I, like, miss them. And I'm never gonna see my sons again. I'm never gonna see, like, that. And he's just all fucked up on the inside because it's really weird because it's like he just woke up and he knows that this is his real life. He's like, he has all these memories, but he has all these other memories from, like, this other life.
- [95:56]
B
And he had been afraid to tell people.
- [95:57]
A
Yeah, because it sounds crazy.
- [95:59]
B
It sounds crazy, but it's not.
- [96:01]
A
I mean.
- [96:02]
B
No, but he's in a coma. Your mind dreams things. That's why it wouldn't sound crazy to me. But it's a wild thing.
- [96:09]
A
Yeah. So. So it. You got to be careful, once again, with dream, because I don't know if it was a dream. Okay, so an illusion. I don't know. So I don't think it was an illusion. I don't think it was a dream. Because dreams have certain. I don't know if this makes sense. They have certain, like, scientific qualities. Right? So in a dream, like, your feet can be gigantic and you can fly, and, like, objects can. There's an internal. The logical rules of a dream are not what this person experienced. It was not a dream. So it was consistent with prolonged memories. The other thing that's really common with dreams is you don't remember your dreams, like, 30 minutes after you wake up. This guy, six days post coma, was grieving because he's still thinking about his wedding day from this alternate life. Like, what the fuck is that? I have no idea. Right. Yeah. So this is where there's some weird stuff going on that I don't think can be explained. Now. You can come up with hypotheses, neuroscientifically, psychologically. My sense of having worked with this shit is that there is more to the body and more to the mind. And what I'm talking about is this subjective, qualitative experience of existence.
- [97:20]
B
Can you explain that?
- [97:22]
A
Yeah. So you can experience stuff. Right. That's not the same as, like, neurons in your head firing. They may correlate, but, like, neurons in the head doesn't necessarily equal experience. Right, Right. It's just qualitatively different. So understanding happens at that level. So I think it's not even psychological. I think it's like, when I work with patients, there's, like, this breakthrough, which is not quite mental. It's not like you can put the mental blocks in a certain order. There's kind of this weird experiential moment of catharsis. Right. We even have a word for it. It's catharsis. But catharsis is not something. I think catharsis is, like, more than mental. Now, that's not a scientifically defensible statement because we have no evidence of this stuff. Because we have no. We can't. Science can't study subjective experience. It can only study the reports of subjective experience.
- [98:16]
B
So what are you basing that on, then? Saying that just like your subjective Opinion on it?
- [98:21]
A
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Right. So there's no scientific evidence of subjective experience. We only have reports of subjective experience. Right. So this is some philosophical problem. I'm not a philosopher, but do I see the same red that you see? Like, I don't. The problem still persists that we can all acknowledge that there's a quality of existence that is subjective experience. And when we're talking about really, where understanding, or nyan, comes from in these ancient. You asked me what I learned there, so I'm making my way there. So what I learned is, like, accessing that shit, right? So there are certain states of mind that you can enter. States of mind. It's not really states of mind. You shut off mind, your body becomes basically inert, your mind becomes inert, and then you're like. All you're left with is subjective experience. And then you start exploring weird shit. And if that doesn't make any sense, I can.
- [99:15]
B
Yeah, can you unpack that a little more?
- [99:17]
A
So, best example I have is, so right now you're aware of your existence. Right. Anyone at home? As long as y' all aren't driving, you can do this, too. So I notice you're sitting in a particular posture. Close your eyes. What do you notice about your experience of this moment? Now that your eyes are closed.
- [99:36]
B
What do I notice about.
- [99:37]
A
Yeah, where is your attention going?
- [99:39]
B
My attention's. I was just looking at you. So my attention is imagining you saying this. Because my eyes are shut and I can't. I can't physically seeing you say this.
- [99:46]
A
Okay, keep going. Tell me where your attention is again.
- [99:51]
B
It's still at you, and it's actually more focused at you because now I can only hear you, and so my hearing is more sensitively aware.
- [100:00]
A
Okay, there we go. You can open your eyes. So as we remove one sense, your attention in the other senses increases, Right? So if you're listening to a really good piece of music or you're in that mythical state of orgasm, closing your eyes makes it better, Right? Okay. Okay, so now let's understand something. So if I cut out sight, everything else gets better, right? What happens if I cut out sight and sound and touch?
- [100:31]
B
Yeah, that's no good.
- [100:33]
A
Why is that no good?
- [100:35]
B
I mean, talk to Helen Keller. I think she would make that trade if she had all that back. No, no.
- [100:39]
A
What happens to your attention? Right, so if I remove sight, all of your other senses increase by 20%, right?
- [100:47]
B
Yeah, but, like, if I lost my hearing and my sight and my touch at the same time, that would fucking Blow.
- [100:54]
A
I'm talking about a temporary state.
- [100:56]
B
Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I was.
- [100:58]
A
No, no, no. Fair enough, fair enough. So if we remove. So when you close your eyes for a moment, everything else intensifies, right?
- [101:05]
B
Yeah.
- [101:07]
A
So if you stop hearing and you stop seeing, everything else will intensify, right?
- [101:12]
B
Yeah.
- [101:12]
A
And then if you remove the sense of touch, which happens all the time. So I was asking you, where was your attention? You weren't really aware of where your body was. Now everyone who's listening to this is suddenly aware of where their body is. You feel that you're aware of your body.
- [101:25]
B
Now, I would amend that a little bit and say my focus was more on thinking where you were, but I was still aware that my body is sitting in this.
- [101:33]
A
Were you more aware when your eyes were closed?
- [101:36]
B
No.
- [101:36]
A
Okay, so the key thing here is that as we remove a sense, our attentional awareness of the other senses increases. Right. If I listen to music with my eyes closed, I will hear it better.
- [101:51]
B
Yes.
- [101:52]
A
So what a key part of meditation is. Is removing all five senses. So all you're left with is attention. Now, a lot of people may think, well, then I would think about my thoughts. That's why we shut off mind, too. So you shut off mind, you shut off emotion, you shut off touch, smell, taste, proprioception, sight, sound, and then all you're left with is attention. And then it goes to this, like, other place.
- [102:20]
B
Question on this. When you say, and I've heard this phrase used a bunch, talking about mindfulness and meditation in particular.
- [102:26]
A
Yes.
- [102:27]
B
When you say shut off the mind, though. Right. And I've never been particularly great at meditation, I'll be honest about that. The best I do is actually, ironically, in between sets in the gym.
- [102:37]
A
Absolutely.
- [102:37]
B
When I'm lifting, I do lifting for an hour, and then I do cardio for a half hour. When I lift, I do not have headphones. And it's my time. Right. And I'm very focused in between. And I will get in touch with my thoughts and have a little bit of peace. But my mind is never empty. Like when people say, like, shut off the mind. I've never understood that because it's like. Like a thought is not a vacuum. It's always going to be replaced with another thought.
- [103:00]
A
I'll tell you, two times that you've had that, your mind has been empty. Okay?
- [103:05]
B
Okay.
- [103:06]
A
Both involving the penis. Orgasm is one of them. So in the moment of orgasm, you have no thoughts. You have thoughts before, you have thoughts after the moment, second one, when you really need to take A piss and you first start to piss. The second most common no mind state that people experience.
- [103:28]
B
I would actually also buy that one too.
- [103:30]
A
Right. You're not thinking about anything.
- [103:31]
B
Yeah.
- [103:32]
A
So how do those states feel by the way?
- [103:34]
B
Fucking great.
- [103:36]
A
So now you know what yogis are doing for years at a time. Sitting in caves, pissing and fucking. Nope. They're attaining. So here's the key thing. Pissing and fucking important. Great, great, great question. You think you're being funny, but that's a good question. Pissing and fucking induce that state of mind. It's not the fucking itself, it's the experience of fucking. Does that make sense? And if you want to understand this, I mean this is unfortunate but I've had a lot of patients who are, you know, have had bad sexual experiences. Which means it's not the physical act, it is the mental state that determines. Right. And it can be the most like I've seen this. It can be the most horrible thing that can ever happen to a human being or it can be the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to the human being being. But the sexual act. Right. So depending on the willingness. Okay, Right. But the act is identical. Right. Is the mental state that determines what people happen to people. So the reason we are all addicted to orgasm is because it induces the state of samadhi. It induces a no mind state. Very, very briefly. And so there are some practices of meditation where when we empty our mind and we empty everything, all of our, our physical senses. And the reason we empty our physical senses is because many of our thoughts come from our physical senses. Right. So if I go like this, you're having thoughts now let's think. Right. So if I, if I do that like it's going to create thoughts.
- [104:59]
B
Yes.
- [105:00]
A
So all of our senses are going to make thoughts. But sometimes they can slow down our thoughts. If you look at a sunset or something like that, I remember for me another big one was smelling the top of my kids heads when they were born. I don't know if you guys have ever smelled the top of a baby. I know, it's kind of a weird creepy thing.
- [105:15]
B
No, it's, no, it's not like very pure.
- [105:18]
A
Yeah, like there's something about that that is just, you know, really calms you down and empties you and you're kind of like in the moment. And the way that that works is we'll oftentimes use something called an Alambana. Okay. This is for you. So we'll use an Alambana. So an Alambana is an object that pulls your attention towards it. So it is like an object of meditation. So when we use an Alambana like we're using, we're putting our attention towards something and removing everything else. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, and I think sex is a really good example because when you're doing that, you're focused. And I've had plenty of patients who are not focused and then they have trouble and they don't orgasm. Like makes sense, right?
- [105:58]
B
Yeah.
- [105:59]
A
So an alumni, like pulls your, your, your mind in to one place and then even. I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but even then you won't have thoughts. So if you really get pulled in, like watching a sunset is a good example. Like, so you watch a sunset, you're not technically thinking if you're really in the zone. Right. But even then there's one stage beyond that, which is that still when you're absorbed in a sunset, there's you in the sunset. So you are absorbed in one thing. Orgasm. You're absorbed in one thing. Urinating out on a full bladder, you're absorbed in one thing. If you stay in that state for an extended period of time, then you will enter, then that will acclimatize. So now there's one more thing which is like you're wearing a shirt, I'm wearing a shirt, but you don't feel your shirt after the first few seconds you put it on.
- [106:48]
B
Right?
- [106:48]
A
Right. So there's one other principle which is once you acclimatize to that, that state. Right. And usually we don't acclimatize to it because it's temporary. So like pissing and orgasm are like super temporary. And that's where we get to tantric sex, by the way, because then you're extending that state for a very, very, very long period of time. And then, you know, the bliss of that moment will. Then you go to this other place which is basically impossible to describe. There's no Vidya for it, there's only Nyan. I can't. I mean, I can try, but it's not going to make sense to people and you have to experience it.
- [107:22]
B
Meaning, like all these things we're talking about, whether it's sitting with the sunset or like the moment you got to begin peeing or something like that, where your thought has just been like, oh, I really gotta go. You still have one thought technically.
- [107:34]
A
No, you don't. I really gotta go as a thought. So this is where you guys gotta try this at home. The moment that you start Peeing. There's no thinking.
- [107:46]
B
Can you define. All right, I don't want to get, like, too meta here, but can you define a thought for me?
- [107:51]
A
Yeah. A thought is a. A fluctuation within the mind. That's what I would call thought.
- [107:58]
B
No matter how big or how small. Just a fluctuation.
- [108:00]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, emotions are not thoughts, but thoughts usually have, like, can have an analytical reasoning. They have some activation of, like, some of the verbal parts of your brain. Right? So. But it is a temporary. Like, the thing about a thought is it's never permanent. Thoughts come and go.
- [108:16]
B
That's what I'm saying. And I'm getting a little bit literal with this, but I kind of have to.
- [108:21]
A
You have to. You should get literal.
- [108:23]
B
But, like, when I really got a pee and I've been holding it, maybe some guy was going on and talking on a stage, and I wasn't allowed to leave the room for a while. I'm like, oh, now he's done. And I can go out and leave the room. Like that first moment where I start to pee, where you're like, your thoughts are empty. Even if I go, oh, that's a thought.
- [108:41]
A
No, it's not.
- [108:42]
B
It's not.
- [108:42]
A
Oh, so you gotta. You gotta.
- [108:44]
B
Because I saw something in my head when I did that. I was like, oh, my God, I'm peeing.
- [108:48]
A
Yeah, but. But that's not a thought. It's. You're just one with the experience. You are just a pisser. Like, you're pure pisser. There's no thinking, right? So I'll give you an example. Let's say, oh, my God, I'm not allowed to leave the room. You run outside and you see there's a line. Thoughts increase. Oh, my God, how many people are there? How many pianos are there? Thoughts go up, up, up, up, up, up. Thoughts are very rapid. And then you just become, oh, my God, I'm a pisser. Oh, my God. And everything in your mind empties, and it feels so, so good. And here's the crazy thing. Here's the crazy thing. Okay, this is gonna be so hard, but if you. If you. Maybe I'll be able to explain. The key thing is you're suffering, right? So. So let's say that I'm waiting to take a piss, and I see that there's an exit on the highway, and it says, gas station is five miles away. So it takes me. Expected time to urinal is six minutes.
- [109:43]
B
You slow driver.
- [109:45]
A
Fine, okay, whatever. So six minutes is expected time to urinal. I'm fine with that. No problem. Okay. If next exit is one mile away and I exit and I walk into the bathroom and there's a line, much more suffering. Right, Right. Even though technically the two scenarios could be the 5, 6 minutes, in both cases, waiting 5 minutes to piss or driving 5 minutes to piss, subjectively, completely different. Agree?
- [110:14]
B
Yes.
- [110:15]
A
So here's the key thing I was gonna ask you. How are they different? Maybe I can ask, how are they different? What's different about these things?
- [110:22]
B
Because when I see the line, I've now encountered a new obstacle that I wasn't previously expecting to encounter.
- [110:28]
A
That is the surface of it. What happens within you, that's the external circumstance. But in both cases, you're just waiting six minutes, which you can handle. So why is one harder for you?
- [110:39]
B
Expectations. My expectations.
- [110:41]
A
Where do expectations exist?
- [110:44]
B
A thought.
- [110:45]
A
Very good. And as your expectations increase and as your mental activity increases, what happens to your suffering?
- [110:54]
B
It increases.
- [110:55]
A
Absolutely.
- [110:56]
B
Yeah.
- [110:57]
A
Right. Oh, my God. Is she gonna call me back? Is she not gonna call me back? I texted. Should I text her again? Should I double text? Is it okay to double text? Let me ask my friend if it's okay to double test. Oh, my God. My boss. Are they gonna see my presentation? Oh, my God. My fucking co worker, they sent this presentation. I sent it to them for revisions. I sent it to them. Hey, can you guys take a look at this presentation before I send it to the boss? They looked at it and they sent it. They attached it. They told my boss, here's the presentation that we worked on. They're taking my fucking credit. The more our mind becomes active, the more suffering we engage, the less our mind becomes active. Pisser. Orgasm, meditation, lifting. For those moments. And you know what I'm talking about.
- [111:41]
B
Oh, I know.
- [111:42]
A
For those moments.
- [111:44]
B
It's all making sense now. It's really coming home. Yeah.
- [111:47]
A
Empty mind. So you asked me what I learned in India, and now you understand.
- [111:53]
B
Yeah. And that was seven years out there, right? Right.
- [111:58]
A
Summers. For seven years. So I summers for seven years and sometimes winters. But I. I would go there, I would learn particular practices, I would come back, do those practices diligently for a year, and then I'd go back and learn more stuff.
- [112:09]
B
Wow. So it's. It's almost like programmatic in it.
- [112:13]
A
Oh, 100%, bro.
- [112:14]
B
Yeah. So take me into the first summer when you went there, because at this time, you're, like, addicted to video games. Are you, like, jonesing on the plane all the way there? Like, what?
- [112:23]
A
I mean, yeah, sort of. But I mean, I would say first two weeks there were the worst weeks of my life. Just felt really incredibly alone. The food was terrible. I couldn't eat. Probably some amount of dopamine withdrawal or whatever from video games. That was not how I experienced it.
- [112:37]
B
Where were you?
- [112:38]
A
I was in an ashram outside of Bangalore, India. Southern India.
- [112:42]
B
Okay. And what was it like? Like what, you got dumped into this? So when you get there, like, are you like, oh, I'm becoming a monk or what's the.
- [112:50]
A
No. So, I mean, my experience was. So I went to the airport. So this was before the days of cell phones. Okay. So, like, I went there and I got off the plane. I didn't speak the language. So I speak one Indian language, but not the one where I was going. And I remember, like, walking out of the airport at 2 in the morning. And basically there were like a bunch of people there. And so everyone eventually left. And I was the last person there, like, outside the airport at like 2:30 in the morning. And there was one other guy who was there who'd clearly come to pick someone up. And then I just kind of, like, pointed at him and I was like, are you here to pick me up? And he went like, this is that.
- [113:28]
B
Yes.
- [113:31]
A
No one knows. Right. So the Indian head bobble can mean all sorts of things. So then I just started going with him. So I just went to a car. He doesn't speak English. I don't know if he's there to pick me up. I told him my name, and then he was like this. And then he shook my hand like this. Okay, give me your hand. This is how he shakes hands. Like how people in India shake hands.
- [113:52]
B
Like dead fish?
- [113:53]
A
Yeah. Like, it's just they, you know, that's.
- [113:55]
B
Not even a dead fish.
- [113:56]
A
That's a frozen fish. Yeah, it was just really, really weird. So then I'm with this guy for about an hour and a half in the truck. We leave the city. We're going out into the wilderness. And then we, like, park somewhere eventually. Or there's a gate that opens. I remember. And then we're at this place in the wilderness. And it's pitch black outside because they lost power. So there were no lights or anything. And so I go to my room. I end up in my room at around. No, sorry. I think the flight landed at 12:30. I think I was in my room by 2. 2:30. They gave me a candle. And so I did discover that I was in the right place. And someone was like, yeah, Dr. Kanoja mentioned you were coming and you're in the right place.
- [114:34]
B
Oh, so they do talk to you. It's not like a quiet monkey.
- [114:37]
A
Eventually. So there was someone who's spoke English. So after I got there, but I didn't know, like, I was like, really scared. And I was like. It felt right. Like I wasn't. But I was like, okay, this is crazy. I'm just. Got into a car with a stranger and we left town and I don't know where I am. But so. And eventually I was. I was. There was a wonderful woman there who was one of the administrators of the ashram. So she basically took me to my room and said, you know, here's. Here's a candle and, sorry, the power's out. So I go to sleep at like, about. About 2. 2:30 in the morning. And then a couple hours later, I wake up to the sound of a bell. And I look outside, the moon is still out. So it's like, what the fuck is this? It's like, is it a fire or whatever? And so I rush outside and then I see that I hear the sound of toilets flushing and people sinks turning on and stuff. So no one seems to be panicking. So I was like, this is an alarm clock. So let me get ready. So I brush my teeth, I walk outside, and there's like this. I still remember because it was dark and there's no power, but there's like a little bit of moonlight. So I saw like, you know, these groups of people, like, coalescing and moving down a path. So I'm like following this, like, herd of people when I hear. I was like, what the fuck was that? And then I like, what is going on? So I'm walking down this road and I see that there's a row of people who are projectile vomiting. And I'm like, what have I committed? Like, is there some plague or something? Turns out it's a yogic practice called vaman dhoti. And so what you do is you drink a bunch of isotonic saline water. So it's not. It's the right concentration as your blood. Same concentration as your blood. You drink it. You drink it. Yeah. So you drink like 2 liters or more of isotonic saline and then you vomit it all out. Oh, and it really cleans you out.
- [116:27]
B
Yeah, I use saline every day in my nose in the morning.
- [116:30]
A
And that whole neti pot thing. So there's like, you know, you are asking about the levels of practice. So neti pot is like level one. Sutra neti. So that's called jal Neti Sutra Neti is level two. That's where you take a catheter, you insert it into the nose. And don't try this at home or without proper guidance. You take the catheter, you stick it in your nose, and then you. You put your fingers in the back and you pull it out your throat. Right. And then you floss. It feels terrible, but it really helps with allergies and stuff.
- [117:02]
B
I'll bet.
- [117:02]
A
So that's level two.
- [117:03]
B
Level is working well.
- [117:06]
A
You should not try level two, but if you ever want more, level two is good.
- [117:09]
B
I'm good.
- [117:10]
A
Vamandhoti is level three. Then there's a particular practice where it comes out the other end. So you start with. It's basically like an enemy tube all.
- [117:19]
B
The way through your ass.
- [117:21]
A
Sorry. You drink. I couldn't see through the intestine. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I should have. So you drink a bunch of water and then you basically do a set of yoga practices that force it through your digestive tract. So at the very beginning, you're pooping and then by the end, it's clear water.
- [117:41]
B
That doesn't sound bad.
- [117:43]
A
That's level four. That's level four.
- [117:45]
B
That sounds way better in level three. Yeah.
- [117:48]
A
Yeah. I mean, I think it's level four because it's harder to do.
- [117:51]
B
Okay, so.
- [117:52]
A
So you, you have to drink water. And then you're also like, you know, you're not like vomiting it up right away, so it has to go through your digestive canal. And then, I mean, you just feel like you're walking on air when you're. You're done by the water.
- [118:02]
B
You know what's interesting? In the first 10 minutes of waking up every morning, one of the things I do is drink since 60 ounces of water. And like, I mean this literally, not to be funny, but like cleans out my system right away. Yeah, like same concept.
- [118:13]
A
Yeah, but do you have. You poop water at the end or you just trigger a bowel?
- [118:17]
B
No, you're saying it literally poops water.
- [118:19]
A
Oh, yeah, you're pooping out. When you look in the toilet, it just looks like nothing has happened.
- [118:24]
B
Wow.
- [118:25]
A
Yeah.
- [118:26]
B
That's next level. Nevermind.
- [118:27]
A
So these are the introductory practices at an ashram. So this is like stage one through four for everyday people. Then as you do more advanced yoga, you learn more dangerous. And potent is the right word. More potent practices.
- [118:47]
B
When we're talking more dangerous. Like what are we talking here?
- [118:51]
A
We're talking. So one of my teachers once told me that I'm going to teach you a yogic practice if you want to learn. So you were asking what? I learned this. So there's the introductory yoga and then there's also like Kundalini yoga. So Kundalini yoga is to awaken your Kundalini and stuff like that. So, so these are like more esoteric practices that are more spiritually potent. So these practices, you know, one of my teachers told me that, okay, if you want to learn this, this practice, we have to cleanse your muladhara chakra, which is your root chakra. And during this practice, you have to be with me for. I don't remember if he said a week or a month. You have to be with me in the woods for a couple of weeks, let's say. And during that time, you can't see any other human beings because you're going to get hypersexual. And if you, if there are any other people around, you're going to assault them. So we, we've absolutely. I mean, I've seen, you know, there are case reports of meditation induced psychosis. I realize now that it's probably some, some yogic techniques that do something like induce a state of mania from bipolar disorder. So, and, and then, you know, we. There's a lot of overlap between, like, psychosis and spiritual experiences. So there's a lot of this stuff that we see the negative version of in mental health all the time. Bipolar disorder, mania, psychosis. And there's a lot of interesting neuroscience about these ego death experiences that people have when they use psychedelics. Same parts of the brain get activated when we meditate, basically. So we'll have these ego death experiences. And so a lot of these, the cultivation of things like compassion from the Buddhist tradition involve. And we all try to dissolve the ego, generally speaking, in the Eastern meditative traditions. Right. So like, we sort of figured that out a while ago. So you do these more advanced practices. They are riskier because I think they can induce, like, you know, mental health problems. That's why they're done under the guidance of guru.
- [120:54]
B
And you got to work your way to it.
- [120:55]
A
You have to. Yeah. So there's an immense amount of these first four practices I told you about. Those are shuddhi, which means cleansing. So a more recent practice that I started doing would not recommend that people do. This is a certain kind of cleansing practice which involves inhaling for 16 seconds, holding your breath for 64, and then exhaling for 32, inhaling.
- [121:22]
B
Whoa.
- [121:22]
A
And even if people want to try a safe version of this, you can try 4, 16, 8. But if you try this, and if you want to try it now, we can. You'll. You want to try it or not?
- [121:35]
B
Yeah, the four. The four, 16, eight. Let's start with the basic, okay?
- [121:38]
A
So. So close your eyes. Sit up straight. Your. Your spine needs to be straight. Back is straight, okay? So I'm gonna ask you to inhale. One, two, three, four. And hold it. One. One, two, three, Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Now exhale for eight. So go slow. One, two, three, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Are you fully exhaled?
- [122:20]
B
Yeah.
- [122:20]
A
Okay, let's do it again. Close your eyes. Do another round on your own. So count to four, hold for 16, exhale for eight.
- [122:29]
B
All right, start now.
- [122:30]
A
Yeah, we're gonna do two more rounds. Exhale. Okay, we're going to do eight. I'm going to walk you through eight. You should do eight. Eight.
- [123:11]
B
We're gonna do eight.
- [123:12]
A
Yeah, you can stop if you need to. Okay, so you specifically should do eight. Okay.
- [123:15]
B
Do eight on the inhale.
- [123:17]
A
Yeah, I'm gonna walk you through it. So we're gonna go 8, 32, 16.
- [123:21]
B
All right?
- [123:21]
A
Okay. Okay. So close your eyes. You'll be able to handle it. Okay. If it gets too much, that's okay. But I want you to experience that, okay? Don't try this at home, boys and girls. This is only for Julian, so breathe in. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Hold 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. Exhale for 16. 2, 3, 4, 5%, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15, 16. What was that like?
- [124:35]
B
It was. I don't mean to be, like, too simple with it, but meditative.
- [124:42]
A
Okay. So did you notice? No.
- [124:44]
B
Why is that funny, Joe?
- [124:45]
A
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So meditation doesn't work for you because you haven't been doing it right. You need to do hardcore meditation, my friend.
- [124:55]
B
So I did ayahuasca once.
- [124:57]
A
That's not meditation.
- [124:58]
B
Right.
- [125:01]
A
And ayahuasca, by the way, and we can talk about that in a second. But so. So I want to know when you were breathing, when you were holding. Right? So between, let's say, 24 and 32 seconds, did you notice anything in your body, especially around your shoulders?
- [125:15]
B
No. Where I really started noticing was on the exhale, because I had to control the exhale more because it was going to be 16 seconds instead of eight. The first two rounds were easy.
- [125:24]
A
Yeah. So if you do this practice, you will start to notice all kinds of sensations. Okay. And that's the problem. So it's weird, but you'll notice, like, all these. It's hard to describe, but you'll notice your prana. So you'll notice, like, your chi. You'll notice, like, if you do, like, even three, four or five rounds of this practice. Right. So if you do five breaths, you'll start to notice, like, all kinds of weird, like. Like, I don't know, like, heat and wobbliness and, like, weird things that are not localized to physical sensation.
- [125:56]
B
What do you mean by not localized? Physical.
- [125:58]
A
So it is not. Your shoulder will not be moving, but you'll feel things around your shoulders. You'll feel things around your neck. Right. So. And I mean, we're not going to do it now, but if you try this at home, you'll understand. And so that's when they talk about prana or qi. It's not something that can be measured, but it can absolutely, absolutely be felt. So I teach my kids this practice called the Squishy Pillow, that's. They gave it the name, where we basically, like, we'll. We'll kind of go like this. So do this. You know, I'll do this. So, yeah, keep your arms at. Yeah, 90 degrees. Okay, now what I want you to do is hold it there for, like, let's go 10 seconds. So kind of namaste position with your. Your arms at your elbows kind of being at 90 degrees. And now I want you to pull them apart a little bit. Now what I want you to do is just feel what's between it. Now move it a little bit. Do you feel the heat between them?
- [126:56]
B
Yes.
- [126:57]
A
Okay, so now what I want you to do is pull a little bit further. Right. You can bend your elbows if you need to, but try to stay in that zone where you feel the heat.
- [127:06]
B
I can still feel some right there.
- [127:08]
A
Okay, good, good. Now try to go a little bit further and hold on. Hold on to the heat. You feel it now?
- [127:14]
B
I'm feeling. Less of it.
- [127:15]
A
Come in. Got it again?
- [127:17]
B
Yeah.
- [127:18]
A
Okay, so then. Now that's wild now. Now come out, Come out. You can do it. Pay attention. You got it now, don't you?
- [127:25]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [127:26]
A
Okay, close your eyes a little bit further. Focus. You got it still?
- [127:34]
B
Yeah. I'm gonna explain after, but I got it.
- [127:37]
A
Okay. You feel like the tube or the pillow?
- [127:41]
B
It's not a pillow. It feels like I'm. I keep picturing an accordion and, like, following me.
- [127:47]
A
Yep. Weird, right?
- [127:49]
B
Yeah.
- [127:50]
A
Yeah. Let's see how far you can go. You feel that resistance?
- [127:55]
B
I still have it in the dead center of my palm.
- [127:57]
A
Good. Okay. Okay.
- [128:01]
B
Yeah.
- [128:01]
A
You want to keep going?
- [128:02]
B
Yeah, I still have it. All right. Now I kind of don't feel it.
- [128:12]
A
Okay. Come in a little bit.
- [128:19]
B
All right. Got it.
- [128:21]
A
Okay, you can open your eyes. So that's a really great introductory practice to give people a sense of product. Okay. So let's try to understand this from a neuroscience perspective. So when we're this close. Absolutely. You have temperature sensors in your hands. Right. But when we're this far, that's a little bit different.
- [128:40]
B
It's in your mind now.
- [128:43]
A
I wouldn't say it's in your mind. So I think it is still a perception. Right? So it's not a thought and it's not an emotion. It's not an imagination. It's a perception. You are perceiving. You're not thinking. It's not a thought you're feeling.
- [128:56]
B
A perception is not in your mind.
- [128:59]
A
No, a perception is not in your mind.
- [129:00]
B
Interesting.
- [129:01]
A
A perception is an experience.
- [129:02]
B
I thought about that wrong my whole life.
- [129:04]
A
So I'm defining mind as the place where thoughts and emotions take place.
- [129:10]
B
Right.
- [129:10]
A
So it's not a thought. A perception is not a thought and it's not an emotion. Do you experience it mentally? Sure. You have experience of it. So that gets a bit complicated, but.
- [129:18]
B
Okay.
- [129:19]
A
Right. But a perception is usually like, it's a perception. That's all it is.
- [129:22]
B
Yeah.
- [129:23]
A
So that's a perception, it's not an imagination. I didn't tell you what you should feel. Right. So I told you what the breath cleansing practice. I've given some people a sense of suggestibility. So maybe that's flawed. That's flawed now, right? Cause I said, this is what you should feel, or this is what you may feel. I said, you'll feel some stuff around the shoulders. You remember when I said that? Yes, but with this one, I didn't tell you what you should be feeling. I just said, hey, look for something, and then you see how far it goes.
- [129:47]
B
You said, look for the heat.
- [129:48]
A
Yeah. Right. And then you're the one who gave me the accordion, right? You're like, it's not a pillow, it's an accordion. Like, what the fuck? Right? That's really weird. Like, stop and think about that for a second. You're like, no, you are incorrect. It is not a pillow, it is an accordion.
- [130:01]
B
Well, that's how I was perceiving it.
- [130:03]
A
There we go. Right, so you weren't thinking. It wasn't analysis. Right. It's not logic. It's not thinking. It's a perception. So that's qualitatively different.
- [130:14]
B
I've never separated the two. That's interesting. I mean, you're separating it, so now I'm gonna separate it.
- [130:19]
A
Yep, yep, yep, yep. And that's just because we're not mentally trained in this stuff. Right? So. So as we do some of these yogic practices, you asked what I learned as we do some of these, so I had my introduction to practices like this, and then this is just the beginning, dude. I've been teaching you for 15 minutes. We've been talking about other stuff, like motivation, whatever. So, like, once you start really exploring, and by exploring, like, you have to. To put yourself through this subjective experience, you have to train your body and train your mind. You have to alter your diet to the point that your diet is incredibly, incredibly pure. And even the water that you breathe, the air that you. I mean, the water that you drink, the air that you breathe, you have to be in the right location. So there's a reason why yogis live in the Himalayas. Like, the power of meditation there. And I'm not talking about, like, alterations to your neurochemistry. I'm sure that shit happens. But your subjective experience is insane. When you go to a spiritually concentrated place and you sit to meditate, it's not something that can be understood. It can only be understood. It can't be explained. But, like. Like. Like what? You. You felt an accordion? There's all kinds of other shit, right? There's, like, places you can go. That's the best way I can describe it. And, like, that's like, you said you felt an accordion. Well, like, people don't know what the fuck. You know? Like, but that's. Dude, this is just like, five seconds. Yeah. You know, and so as you really get into this stuff and you train your body in the right way, as you start using the right accessories. What's that? That's Rudraksha.
- [131:50]
B
Rudraksha. Can you hold that up again for the camera?
- [131:52]
A
Yeah. Rudraksha.
- [131:55]
B
Is that like the yogi rosary bead kind of deal?
- [131:57]
A
Yeah, it's a form of yogi rosary beads, but depending on what practice you want to do, you use. This is the right. This is the right yogi rosary bead for this podcast? Yes.
- [132:09]
B
So you have different ones?
- [132:11]
A
I have an old one. This is the one that I'm Using ever since my midlife crisis.
- [132:16]
B
What happened with your midlife crisis?
- [132:18]
A
I had a midlife crisis, dude. I was like, what the fuck am I doing with my life, bro?
- [132:21]
B
Was this after you were married with kids?
- [132:24]
A
Oh, yeah, this happened about. It started about two years ago, so I brought it on.
- [132:28]
B
Success.
- [132:30]
A
So I started this healthy gamer thing. We're the fastest growing stream on twitch, Got invitations to work with the United nations, the white house, started getting recognized on the street, became the expert in certain things. And I started and I was like, what am I doing with my life? My kids were okay, my wife was. Everything was okay, but I was like, what am I doing with my, my life? Like, what's the point of existence?
- [132:55]
B
Like, you had gone, maybe you had gone past even your wildest expectations with how you could get recognized for what you did and you thought like, wow, how do I go above this?
- [133:06]
A
It was sort of like, okay, like, so I had an opportunity, right? And I had a mission, which is like, I'm going to help the people that no one else is lining up to help. That's really why I started streaming on twitch and why I started healthy gamer. It's like there's just a group of people like my 19 year old self that no one was to trying, trying to help and these guys need help. So I started on twitch, started helping all these people and then, you know, a couple years into it, we still don't make a whole lot of money. So like our services are the holidays.
- [133:33]
B
Mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But lifelock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our u. S based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [134:02]
A
We serve a clientele that is not super wealthy or that's how it used to be. But now I had an event at YouTube a couple years ago where there are like 300 people there that are like big fans of our channel and many of them have done coaching and things like that that so, so now we're, you know, because of podcasts like yours, we're reaching people who are not losers on the Internet. But I was also like struggling with money because I had walked away from a very lucrative career and having a successful startup. I was like. And then I was like, I'm still Not, you know, making very much. I make about a third of what I did when I was a practicing physician. And so I was like, what's the point of doing all this work? And. And. But I'm not making any money. And then I was like, but I didn't set out to make money. But then six years in, it's sort of like, okay, I haven't made a whole lot of money, but I didn't set out to make money. So I was really conflicted about that, because if I had just been a practicing doctor, I would have had a different life. Right. So wrestling with that, also figuring out my relationship, I was, like, unhappy. I was just deeply unhappy. Like, even though everything in my life was going right. And that's when I sort of realized, like, okay, I've been spiritually coast.
- [135:07]
B
Spiritually coasting.
- [135:08]
A
Oh, yeah. So for eight, seven years, I did a lot of intense spiritual activity between the ages of 21 and 28. And then I went to medical school. And so then I tried to become a good doctor, and I did a pretty good job, I think. Right. So all of my energy was, like, going into medical school. Ended up training at Harvard and tried to do a good job there, and then I tried to do a good job at work, and then I tried to do a good job in my marriage, and I tried to do a good job with my kids. I think I did okay. And then I realized, like, oh, I haven't been, like, grinding spiritually. So then I started doing that about two years ago, and I realized, like, oh, even the midlife crisis was like, a call for, like, okay, I've coasted long enough.
- [135:52]
B
In some ways, you had turned it into a habit rather than a present experience.
- [135:56]
A
100%. Yeah. Way to bring it back, dude. Look at. Look at the balls on this guy.
- [136:03]
B
I love this guy. Well done. That's.
- [136:07]
A
So that's top tier podcasting right there.
- [136:11]
B
So you had. You had an understanding of that out of nowhere. And to bring it back to your example, there were a thousand subconscious things or 10,000 subconscious things that kind of led to a moment where you're like, holy shit, I'm having a midlife crisis. And this is why.
- [136:25]
A
Sort of. So I would say that there was a. There was. There were 999 that did not give me the answer. And then ultimately my answer was more of that spiritual thing. So I know that sounds kind of weird, and can you explain that? Yeah. So. So, you know, understanding this is hard. So there are neuroscientifically, there are A thousand decisions that then tip you over. Okay, so that's what I mean about the layers. Now we're coming back to the. So, like, you can. Do you want to answer the question from a neuroscientific perspective or do you want to answer it from a subjective experience perspective?
- [136:56]
B
I want both.
- [136:57]
A
Right. So the neuroscience is there's a thousand tiny decisions. Undoubtedly that is true for me, my subjective experience of it, like, so I started going on a lot of walks, which was sort of the birth of my spiritual tether. So I just walk and spend a lot of time with. I don't listen to music. I don't listen to headphones. I just walk until I figure things out.
- [137:17]
B
Love it.
- [137:18]
A
And when I was really, like, struggling to put my life together, this was like post India, but pre medical school. So I applied to medical school for three years in a row. I got rejected from 120 medical schools because my GPA, I graduated with like a 2.5 GPA. 2.6, if you round up. 2.5, 6. And so, you know, I was like, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. And so I would just walk a lot. I was in Boston. I didn't have a whole lot of money, and I just lived in a place that was cheap. And so I had to walk 45 minutes to the grocery store. So in Boston, it would be like snowing and shit. So I'd like load up and then I would walk with my gloves and I'd take as many groceries as I could carry. And so I would walk a lot. And so I started walking again. And I think it's really, really good. I like to hike and stuff too. Like, not climb as in vertical, but I'll go hiking. So just spent some time with myself. And I was like, what am I doing? Like, what am I on this earth for? And I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. Like, I wanted to achieve as far as I can on the road to enlightenment. And I stopped doing that. I started putting all of my energy into material success and material happiness and doing all the things that I'm supposed to do in life. And I was like, I've stopped striving for spiritual success.
- [138:36]
B
How long did it take for that enlightenment goal to set in after you started on your journey at the ashram?
- [138:44]
A
Two and a half months. So. So after two. So the first two weeks at the ashram were the worst in my life.
- [138:51]
B
And why was that? We got off.
- [138:52]
A
That just. It sucked.
- [138:54]
B
Yeah.
- [138:54]
A
Like, people talk about, you know, we Romanticize. Oh, I went to ashram. Look at this. Dr. K coming back with all this. Oh, giving you such. This. Or you're feeling the accordion and you're understanding. Understanding and didn't realize. Look at this guy is so good, man. Oh, my God, he's dropping all these bombs, bro.
- [139:12]
B
So great.
- [139:13]
A
Okay, so a life at the ashram fucking sucks, dude. The food sucks. People steal your underwear.
- [139:21]
B
Like, they steal your underwear.
- [139:22]
A
Oh, yeah. Like, right, so there are a lot of people there. So ashrams are also, like homeless shelters, basically, in India where, like, they don't. They don't, like, turn anyone away. Right. So there's, like, people that are mentally ill and. And things like that. Like, really wonderful people. So. But it's like, it's not a good. So I. I hadn't eaten fruit in, like, two and a half weeks. Weeks. And one day I found a fruit seller, and I was like, what the. This guy has fruit. I bought a mango. I didn't realize I didn't have a knife. I went back to the. My room and I, like, tore it apart with my hands, and I, like, feasted on it like a monkey. It was the best mango I've ever had in my life. And because the food is really low, it's actually very healthy, very sattvic, which means it's conducive to meditation. But it. But at the beginning, it tastes like. By the end, it tastes amazing because your experience of it has changed. And I don't know if this makes sense, but once you start, you know, this weird shit that we did today, once you start eating food with the same state of mind that you're doing this.
- [140:14]
B
Oh, it's totally different.
- [140:15]
A
It's completely different.
- [140:16]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [140:17]
A
Right.
- [140:17]
B
Yep.
- [140:18]
A
So. So I discovered this, and I was like, this is amazing. I also met someone who is basically my guru for that period of time. So in. The guru taught me, initiated me into some. Some kundalini practices, some tantric practices, things like that. And I was like, let's go.
- [140:36]
B
Right.
- [140:36]
A
So the squishy pillow or accordion or whatever, that's just like, not even 1% of the way there. That's like, this is what you can get in 30 minutes.
- [140:45]
B
Yeah, the first hour.
- [140:46]
A
Right. So once you train for three months with dedication, with the right kind of teacher, you will experience, like, crazy things.
- [140:53]
B
Starts to click.
- [140:54]
A
And then I'm like, okay, this is what I'm doing. Doing. So I went to my teachers and I asked for two things. One is I asked for a tantric initiation, which one of My teachers agreed to and gave me a mantra. Mantra. So that's a practice that I've been doing for 22 years now. And the second thing is, I was like, I want to become a monk, so I want to take my vows. And they said, no. They said, go back to the U.S. my teacher said, in order to become a monk, you have to give up your life. Life. You don't have shit worth giving up. Go and build something. Seriously. That's what he said. He said, go back to the U.S. get a doctoral degree, put a hundred percent of your effort into professional success. And then nine years from now, at the age of 30, if you still want to do it, you can give it up and we'll take you. They said, you can come back every year. We'll still continue to teach you, but no vows until you're 30 and you have a doctoral degree.
- [141:47]
B
So you wanted to give your life to be in a monk out there with them.
- [141:50]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [141:51]
B
Isn't there, like a vowel? Celibacy and shit?
- [141:53]
A
Yep, yep, yep.
- [141:53]
B
You can't talk.
- [141:55]
A
No, you can talk.
- [141:55]
B
You can talk. Yeah.
- [141:56]
A
I mean, there are periods of time where you more. Which is you maintain silence. But yeah, so then I. I went. Went back, met my wife, you know, but. And so.
- [142:05]
B
So.
- [142:06]
A
So we got involved, but I was like, no big deal. Like, I have till I'm 30. So, like, this is part of what I'm supposed to do. And then, you know, that just didn't. It's hilarious because I would tell. I even told her, like, once we started, like, getting serious, you know, I was like, hey, by the way, I'm spiritual, and I don't know if I want to be tethered to this life. You know, I can do this for now, but my heart is over there, and I must take. I'm going to become a monk, and I'm going to give this all up. Okay. Oh, my gosh. And she's like, yeah, whatever, bro. So she. She was. I'll even ask her.
- [142:39]
B
I was like, don't.
- [142:40]
A
Weren't you like. Like, what did you think? She's like, I know you. You're like, so full of it. Like, I knew that you weren't gonna leave.
- [142:46]
B
Well, also, when you were addicted to video games, it's not like you were getting box and stuff, right? You were just sitting up and playing video games all the time.
- [142:52]
A
It wasn't like I was gonna.
- [142:53]
B
Like, you were getting women.
- [142:55]
A
Oh, I was. I was certainly not getting.
- [142:57]
B
So now you come. I mean, come home and you're like, this is fucking awesome. Let's go.
- [143:00]
A
So that was kind of weird, you know, because, like, the interesting thing, I think the reason we got together is because I decided to be Sullivan. So then when. When I would talk to her, she insists that we didn't go on a date. Date. I. In my mind, I wasn't asking her out on a date. I was like, hey, do you like Thai food? I know a great Thai place. We should go get food together. And I was like, completely relaxed. Right. Whereas, like, the rest of the time before that, I was like, I'm gonna get laid. Right?
- [143:25]
B
There's some interesting psychology.
- [143:27]
A
100%, dude. Right. So. So, like, my expectations were gone, right. My thinking was clear. I wasn't like overanalyzing or anything like that. And I wasn't like, invested. And I was like, like, hey, if she wants to come, great. If she doesn't, like, no big deal, right? I enjoyed the way she looked like I wanted to go to lunch with her.
- [143:44]
B
Yeah.
- [143:45]
A
But I really didn't think because I.
- [143:46]
B
Was like, not for me.
- [143:47]
A
Not for me, Right? And then what I realized is, like, even my desire to become monk was fucking ego, dude. It was like, oh, yeah. Like since I had sucked at life, I was going to rise above life by rejecting it. She said no to me. Oh, she's a bitch. That's basically what I was doing with life. I was like, rejecting you because I sucked at it, right? So it's like I'm devaluing the thing that I am bad at, which is another piece of interest.
- [144:13]
B
Like a lot of, by the way, like, if you want to look at it.
- [144:15]
A
Yeah.
- [144:16]
B
I don't want to say parallel, but another type of psychology with that. You see, like, a lot of these, like, voluntary incels now just got turned down by women. So they're like, fuck you, I'm not gonna do it. In some ways, like, this is similar.
- [144:29]
A
So we reject things that reject us.
- [144:31]
B
Yes.
- [144:31]
A
Right. Instead of saying, I suck at this.
- [144:34]
B
That's right.
- [144:35]
A
And. And so even now, like, people get. I respond to compliments in a weird way. So, like, you know, so. So clearly I'm exceptional in some ways, but I really don't feel like that, you know? So, like. And this gets weird, but it's. It's not weird.
- [144:55]
B
It's a little bit of. Are you talking about some imposter syndrome?
- [144:59]
A
No, not imposter syndrome. It's on the other side. So I don't feel bad about it. It's just people don't realize how stupid I Am. And here's the key thing. So for me, it's a realization that even if I'm intelligent or brilliant or whatever, so I do that self denigrating Indian accent thing when I talk about my advantages, but it's also the realization that I did nothing to deserve it. So I remember I had a patient once who had a fetus that had something called anencephaly. So anencephaly is the absence of a brain. It's not like brain damage. It's like there's no brain in there. So it's not a situation that's compatible with life. And even if I have an IQ or I have certain advantages and I'm fucking privileged. I have a great story about that. It's not like I did anything to deserve this. Right? So it's not like I did anything to deserve having parents that could financially support me by sending me to India for seven years in a row. And even, even if you look at things like intelligence or meeting my wife or being born in Houston where I got to like, you know, meet my wife, like, I didn't do anything to deserve most of the cards that I was dealt in life. I played my hand decent. Like, sure. But I also fucked up a lot.
- [146:11]
B
Yeah, but after you fucked up, you, you improved.
- [146:14]
A
I got to be honest, that doesn't track because I've seen it from my patient side. Right. So I improved, but I had so many. My bench is so deep that six of my players could get hurt and I still have like starters on the bench. Right. So that, that's what I mean. If you want to hear a story about privilege, please. So I just learned this, which taught me something really interesting about privilege, which is most people don't know how privileged they are, which is like by definition, because the very nature of privilege is that it's so baked into you. So my parents applied for me to be in the Guinness Book of World Records and we got a certificate for being the youngest kid to go to all seven continents. So I was nine years old when I went to Antarctica.
- [147:00]
B
Wow.
- [147:01]
A
And the reason that no nine year old had ever gone to Antarctica. So when we were booking the trip, my mom just told me the story. This is wild. So you go on, understand privilege. This is like on next level. So we booked a trip to Antarctica and they said, oh, sorry, no kids under the age of 12. And they said, why not? And they're like, there's no medical staff in Antarctica, you know, so like if something happens to your kid, the nearest hospital is like 48 hours away. You gotta, like, truck it to, like, Argentina or something. And so my mom is like, I'm a pediatrician. What if I bring the stuff and he's under my care and they're like, then that's okay. So she fucking. She just told me the story, like, a month ago. I didn't know this. So she packed IV bags, she packed butterfly needles, she packed antibiotics, she packed, like, this medical kit for me to go to Antarctica. And, like, that's insane, man.
- [147:51]
B
Yeah.
- [147:52]
A
You know, and now people go, because I think the medical infrastructure has improved. But this was back in 1990. Like, 1990.
- [147:59]
B
Wow.
- [148:00]
A
Where. And so it's nuts. So, like, when I look at what I've accomplished, like, have I worked hard? Yes, but. But have I worked, like, that much harder than many of my patients? Absolutely not, bro.
- [148:12]
B
You know, I see what you're saying. It's a humble way of looking at it. And it's also. I think you want to err on that side of being like, I'm not all that, rather than I am all that, for sure. But I think what you accomplished after you did get. You had great parents who also were able to give you the push to be able to get you to India. So that's incredible for privilege. But what you accomplished and then immersing yourself in that and actually changing your life through that process, which is an incredible mental game to play as well, is pretty amazing.
- [148:46]
A
Yeah. So I don't think about it as humble, and I don't think about it as prideful. I think about it as. That's what is. So this is my karma. That's really the way that I think about it. I love that lens. So it's like, I have certain advantages. I have certain disadvantages. Have I worked hard? Yes. Could I work harder? Absolutely, yes. And I am what I am, which is what I try to help people understand, is that you're neither good nor bad. You're just you. And all of this relative comparison is relative, but that's not really what difference does it make if I'm smarter or stupider or anything like that? Because the important thing is that whatever hand you've been dealt in life, play it the best that you can.
- [149:26]
B
Yes.
- [149:27]
A
And even then, I mean, I've had so many patients that, you know, we're working two, two and a half jobs, work way harder than. Than I do, are way more resilient than I am, and their life is shit, you know, so it's hard to look at people who are doing such a Better job than you are and end up 5% of where you ended up. I don't think ego can enter the picture. The only way you can feel good about yourself is with, like, ego or narcissistic thinking or whatever. Right?
- [149:58]
B
Only way you can feel good about yourself.
- [150:00]
A
Yeah. You have to be egotistical in order to feel good. Like, when you see people who are like, you know, like, I worked hard in residency, but what people don't realize is, you know, you work, like, 80 hours a week, 100 hours a week. Right. So did I work hard? Absolutely. But what people don't realize is, like, I have patients who will work 40 hours or 32 hours at Walmart, 32 hours at Home Depot, and then, like, 14 hours doing, like, landscaping on the weekend. Those people work way harder than I do.
- [150:28]
B
Perspective with it.
- [150:29]
A
Right. And. And so I. I think. And this is like, if you feel ahead in life or you feel behind in life, both are equally stupid. You just are what you are. You are where you are. Right? And, like. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but, like, there's no. There's no alternate reality. This is what is. And so why attach your ego to what is like, you know, I just don't think it makes any sense.
- [150:52]
B
Yeah, I. I think a similar. Like, in a similar family of what you're talking about right now is also how people think of themselves right now. So there's an old philosophical quote, I'm gonna fuck it up now, but it's like, thinking about the past leads to depression. Thinking about the future leads to anxiety. Thinking about the now can lead to happiness. And I think to focus on the people who look at the past a lot, I think people will look at the decisions they've made in the past or even just the things that have happened to them that weren't their decisions in the past that were, say, not positive. They were negative effects on their life. And I know I've fallen into this trap as well. And they'll still define themselves as those moments or as those decisions or whatever, instead of focusing on the fact that they can make changes or put themselves in a better situation or, you know, even improve 0.1% tomorrow and try to build on that each day from where they're at. You know, what. What do you think it is that throughout, you know, it's a part of humanity that we have a tendency, in many cases when things haven't gone our way, to dwell on that and then let it become who we are.
- [152:03]
A
Great question. So what have we evolved for.
- [152:11]
B
What have we evolved for?
- [152:12]
A
Yeah, what's the purpose of. What has evolution been doing? What determines success in evolution? What is evolution selecting for? You've heard of natural selection? Yeah, Right.
- [152:23]
B
Yeah, of course. Of course.
- [152:23]
A
What are we evolving?
- [152:24]
B
We're evolving towards a stronger species.
- [152:29]
A
Stronger in what way?
- [152:32]
B
Intellectually?
- [152:34]
A
Why? Okay, what's the point? Why do we.
- [152:36]
B
So that we can progress as a community.
- [152:39]
A
No, evolution doesn't give two shits about community.
- [152:43]
B
Let me change the word community there. So we can progress as a species.
- [152:48]
A
Evolution doesn't care about progression as a species.
- [152:50]
B
It doesn't?
- [152:50]
A
Nope.
- [152:51]
B
What does it care about?
- [152:52]
A
Survival of the individual. Survival of the individual and having viable offspring.
- [152:57]
B
Yeah.
- [152:57]
A
So. So, you know male lions killing the offspring of their competitor.
- [153:02]
B
That's right.
- [153:02]
A
Is not about survival of the species. Right. They don't care about other lions.
- [153:07]
B
Okay, I see what you're saying now. Okay.
- [153:09]
A
Right.
- [153:10]
B
So let me. Let me restate then, because I think we were thinking the same thing and I did a shitty job explaining it. In order for like 500 years ago, the birth rate, whatever it was, the average number of babies that died per birth was way higher than it is now. Right?
- [153:28]
A
Yep.
- [153:29]
B
So over time, we were able to. With the offspring, we have improved our ability for that offspring to survive. And a part of that involves all the little, you know, adjectives I was putting on it.
- [153:41]
A
Absolutely, if you will. Right. So. So spot on. So I think you were. I think we're saying the same thing. But basically we've evolved for survival, not happiness.
- [153:48]
B
Yes, I agree.
- [153:50]
A
So that's where, like, why is everyone so mentally unhealthy? Let's be clear. Sadness has an evolutionary purpose. Shame has an evolutionary purpose. Guilt has an evolutionary purpose. This is conserved across our species.
- [154:05]
B
Evolutionary purpose.
- [154:06]
A
Absolutely. It serves a survival function.
- [154:09]
B
Sadness is a survival function?
- [154:10]
A
Yes. 100%. In what way? Great question. So which is the most visible emotion? Noticeable? Maybe I should say that.
- [154:21]
B
I would say anger or sadness. Those two.
- [154:24]
A
Okay. Which one do you think is more.
- [154:25]
B
Visible if we're talking tears? Sadness. Yeah.
- [154:28]
A
Okay, so anger is.
- [154:30]
B
Yeah. The most visible. Yeah.
- [154:34]
A
Okay, so what is a side. Why do we. So we're. We're. It's. We're sending out sensory stimuli, right?
- [154:39]
B
Yes.
- [154:40]
A
What are we. What? It's a signal. What are we signaling when we cry?
- [154:46]
B
Help.
- [154:47]
A
Very good. And what happens when we cry?
- [154:51]
B
People tend to gravitate towards us.
- [154:54]
A
Absolutely. Right. So when my kid falls and bumps her knee, what happens? All the adults in the room. Right. So if we didn't have that and I fell down a crevice, and I didn't cry. If I felt ostracized from society, I start to cry, and people flock around me. That's why everyone feels sad all the time, because it signals to the society around us, hey, I need help. I can't handle this situation. We are a communal species. Tigers do not cry. Any solitary animal on the planet will never cry.
- [155:26]
B
Okay?
- [155:27]
A
Right.
- [155:27]
B
Yeah. Can I ask you a question in here? Let's use a public figure because it's, you know, everyone will know this one, but, like, Robin Williams.
- [155:35]
A
Okay.
- [155:36]
B
It's a guy who spent his whole life making people laugh.
- [155:38]
A
Yep.
- [155:38]
B
Had some amazing performances at the end of his life, too.
- [155:41]
A
Yep.
- [155:41]
B
Didn't reveal that he had, I think he was diagnosed with Parkinson's or early onset Parkinson's or something like that, and didn't reveal his sadness to the world at all, and then ended up taking his own life. He appeared to be a perfectly happy guy to the average person and I think even to his wife.
- [155:56]
A
Yep.
- [155:58]
B
So if it's a survival mechanism, why do people hide it?
- [156:03]
A
What happens when they hide it? It.
- [156:06]
B
They blend in.
- [156:07]
A
Nope. What happened to Robin Williams? What happens. Why are 80% of suicides men? What do men not do?
- [156:17]
B
Survive.
- [156:19]
A
Absolutely. They don't survive. Right. So suicide attempts, arguably even more common in women. Completed suicides. Men. So when we stop crying, we start to hide crying. Literally. Right. And there. There's, like, over a hundred years of evidence about this.
- [156:41]
B
Men don't cry, stop crying, we start dying.
- [156:46]
A
Like, literally. Like, that's not like a. You know, I'm not trying to, like, drop wisdom on a podcast. There's, like, statistical evidence. I've worked with so many men who are suicidal, and we help them cry, like, if that's what they need. And you'd be amazed, like, how little it is. Right? Like, I mean, five, ten minutes. I mean, not now, but, like, you give me five, ten minutes with you or him, we'll get you there, buddy. The amount of hurt that y' all have dealt with, like you said, Robin Williams makes people laugh. What do you do? You help the rest of the world so that they don't get hurt. Hurt the way you've been hurt?
- [157:26]
B
Yeah.
- [157:27]
A
Right?
- [157:28]
B
Yeah. It's a huge, huge problem. And maybe it's a good time to talk about it right now, but it's a huge problem in society with, you know, we kind of put this big bridge term on it, but the. The mental health struggles that are going on, especially with young people, and it's men and women manifest in different ways, in the same ways. But, but I think it's fair to say there's a lot of agreement that we're seeing a lot of lack of purpose with people and especially people who, you know, if we want to go to a stereotypical kind of thing, you know, maybe they go about life, they have a decent enough childhood in some cases, obviously they don't. But let's stay with a base example. They go to college because they're told to go there. They sign up for all this debt that they don't understand. When they're 17, they get a degree they think is, know you useful. They go out, they realize they're not making a lot of money, there's not a lot of upward mobility. Suddenly they're getting weighed down by their debt. They're not gonna be able to buy a home like their parents did at age 28. Then they can't find the girl or the boy, depending on, on what you're looking for. And then suddenly you're like, what the am I doing with my life? So before you even get to a midlife crisis, we're seeing a lot of people in quarter life crisis right now feeling like it's over. How, how do we, what do we got to do to, you know, you're not going to solve every single problem, but what do we got to do to shift the percentages in society to a healthier place in that department with our younger people especially.
- [158:58]
A
I'm going to ask you to clarify your question. Okay, so there are two levels at which we can work. Are you talking about shifting society or are you talking about shifting a person? Those are two very different interventions. Are we talking about public health or are we talking about psychiatry? Right, so public, like there are societal interventions that happen. There are systemic interventions that happen at the levels of a system, and there are individual interventions that happen at the level of an individual.
- [159:25]
B
Meaning you customize it for people based on what they're dealing with.
- [159:29]
A
Yes.
- [159:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. You would do that with any patient. I guess. I'm talking about it. Let me state it this way. At a societal level. I'm going to make up numbers right now because I don't have them in front of me. But like 20 years ago, X number of, you know, males in their 20s was suicidal. Now it's X plus 10. 20 years ago, X number of males in their 20s reported. And let's, let's put females into all these examples too. X number of individuals in their 20s reported depression. Now it's X +20 money.
- [160:00]
A
Right.
- [160:01]
B
So on a social level, we see massive increases in depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, hopelessness, lack of purpose. So I guess I'm asking at a societal level, how do we change that besides like, let's fix the economy.
- [160:14]
A
So my first answer is ask somebody, ask somebody else. That's not my area of expertise. I'm. I'll give you an. But to be honest. Right. So first and foremost what I am and what I'm devoted to is like I'm a clinician, so I work with like a person. Now it so happens that, you know, with a YouTube channel and podcast or whatever, right. So we'll meet, reach millions of people, help millions of people a year. But like I work from the lens of like a single person. So I'm not, you know, I specialize not in feeding everybody at a homeless shelter, but like if you were in your kitchen, here's how you make a meal. Does that make sense?
- [160:51]
B
Yes.
- [160:51]
A
So I can offer you a systemic answer, but that's not, not where my. And I have a degree in public health too, but it's not where my heart is, to be honest. So I don't want to build interventions for like populations. Man, that's no fun. Like I like sit with. Yeah. So a couple of things. So I do think fixing the economy is a big part of it. So you kind of say, except for fix the economy. Well, like, you know, mental health crisis is really masquerading as an economic crisis in a lot of ways. So 50%, here are some statistics, totally fine. That you don't have at your fingertips. 50% of people under the age of 30 live with their parents.
- [161:27]
B
50%.
- [161:28]
A
50%. Okay. Wow. In the United States, so maybe in Europe, probably statistically things used to be different. But so like let's, let's be clear about. And this is something I've seen as a psychiatrist and this is also why we started a coaching program. So as a psychiatrist, what I realized is like, like people are coming into my office and they're depressed, right? So I've got a 24 year old kid who comes into my office, is depressed because doesn't have a job and has never gotten laid. And it's like I can therapize him a lot. Like how does that make you feel? Oh my God, that must be hard for you. But honestly, it's like let's get you laid, bro. Not just take action. The things that you are missing in life, let's help you get the those things. Which is not what psychiatry specializes in. Psychiatry specializes in helping people who have a pathological illness return to a baseline level of function. Right. But it doesn't help them achieve things. So when I was in psychiatry training, I remember I was sort of a misfit. Not really. I mean, I did great. But so I remember, you know, I was in my second year of psychotherapy training and someone comes in and says, if someone comes into your office and says, can you help me find a girlfriend? What's the right answer? And I was like, yes. And he's like, no.
- [162:48]
B
How does that make you feel?
- [162:49]
A
Why do you want a girlfriend? What, what about having a girlfriend is so important to you? Right? This is. And I think that a lot of therapists nowadays would disagree with that. But like, and there's a, there's value to that inquiry as well. Like, that's really important. And I, I do ask that question, but I think it shows us that psychiatry is not about, there's no like quarterly earnings in psychiatry. We're not like really about hitting targets. Right. The targets that we're focused on are surveys around mood and anxiety and things like that. And we sort of have this assumption in psychiatry that if we elevate your mood and we elevate, improve your anxiety, decrease your anxiety, then the rest of the stuff will follow. And we're not wrong. But there is another element to it, hence the whole coaching thing. And, and that's where. So if we really look at it like systemically, okay, there are systemic things. And people live a life right now where, you know, you commute for 45 minutes, you go to your job, you struggle to find employment. Someone just recently reached out to me, someone who I, who I grew up with, one of my parents, friends and you know, they have a son in law who's older than I am, so I'm 43. They have a son in law and then they have someone else. Like one of their kids is dating someone. So they're two dudes that are basically 45 plus between 45 and 55, who've been unemployed for six months. So the truth of the matter is, and I don't know if y', all, I've had just a very, very, very brief period of real financial hardship and like, like damn near close to homeless. And, and the effect on your physiology and mind is profound. Oh yeah, right. So. So let's just start with like, while the economy is shit that needs to get fixed. Yeah. So that's one thing. Then at a systemic level, you know, I think another thing is that we need to So I think what's happening right now is. This is kind of scary. I. I made a video about this and a lot of people took issue with it. I think we're actually under like a natural selection event right now. Like literally. So natural selection is the ability to. Natural selection is someone having viable offspring. So what's happening in this post Covid technological world? See, when I grew up, I fucking sucked at talking to women. I joined a fraternity. I got super drunk, hung out with other chicks who were super drunk, you know, woke up the next morning and was really confused about this person that I was attracted to the night before. Like all kinds of stuff. You know, I sucked at talking to people, but society existed in such a way where it forced me to socially interact and I basically caught up. Does that kind of make sense? Yes, that doesn't happen anymore. So now if you ever leave the pipeline of social interaction, right. So I was in school, like in person. So I had to go up, show up. I got put into group projects, you know, like I had forcible social rehabilitation. That's right Now I don't have to leave the house to get food. I don't have to leave the house to work. I don't have to leave the house to get a job. I don't have to leave the house to get an education. I don't have to leave the house to do therapy. Right. I don't have to leave the house to exercise. I don't have to leave ever. So now what we're happening is we're seeing people who are. There's a bunch of people who are socially behind who basically catch up. They're late blue now, the late bloomers. Their buds are getting picked. They're never blooming at all. So what's happening is we are literally. And I'm not trying to like freak people out because there's certain associations that we have to get into here that natural selection means you're fucked. It doesn't mean you're fucked, but we'll get to that. But I think there's literally a selection event where there are some people who are like literally able to get laid and mate and some people who are not. Right. And these people become incels and they start shooting up schools.
- [166:40]
B
Yeah.
- [166:40]
A
So the key thing, and this is where some people. And the way I realize this is I talk to different people, right? And if you talk to different people, what you'll discover is that people are not living in the same world. One person is just like, hey, just go out and put Yourself out there, Right? And someone else is like, I try to put myself out there. I started talking to women. They called me creep and called the cops. So I forget the statistic around this. I think one out of six men. Men in the workplace. Oh, my God, I'm going to butcher this statistic. One out of six men who tries to talk to. I can. I can send it to y' all afterward if you guys want it, because I found this research, it was shocking. One out of six men who approaches women in the workplace has been reported for it.
- [167:26]
B
Yeah, we have created a toxic environment with that kind of stuff.
- [167:29]
A
So. So it's. It's really challenging, right? So, like, right now, we live in a world where, from, like, a mating state standpoint, everyone has, like, there are super, super clear rules about what you should and shouldn't do. The problem is no one agrees on what the rules are. Everyone's sure that should you hold the door open for a woman, should you pay for a first date, should you split the first date? Everyone is really sure about it. It's just. No one fucking agrees, right? So it's like, no one. Like. And so there are some people who are able to navigate this because they have a secure attachment style. 50% of the population has something called a secure attachment, which means their ability to handle relationships. They can handle some emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, but only 50% of people have secure attachment. 25% of people have something called anxious attachment, which means that they get really, really anxious about relationships. They're afraid that the other person is going to leave them. They engage in a lot of behaviors to pull this person in. 20% of people have avoidant attachment, which means they're afraid of emotional intimacy. So the closer that you get, the more they freak out and pull away. These are dudes with a fear of commitment. It's really interesting. Anxiously attached people use sex to bring someone into an emotional connection. Avoidant attachment. People use sex to keep people away from an emotional connection. So we're just. Hey, it's not a thing. It's just a situationship. Yeah, don't get attached to me. You know, it's friends with benefits. So half of us are doing fine. The other half of us are not. So I think that this is where. And there's like, literally a selection event because there's no system in place right now where if you're like, if you were born right, or you had the right kind of upbringing, you can survive in this technological world.
- [169:11]
B
That's what I was going to ask. Do you think that this is primarily caused. If I could, it's more than this. But if I could whittle it down to one real culprit. Do you think this is primarily caused by the social media world that we've created where every single fucking thing is under the microscope?
- [169:27]
A
It's, I think technology plus Covid.
- [169:30]
B
Yeah, that's a great answer.
- [169:32]
A
So. So I think Covid accelerated some very serious changes. And the interesting thing is we're actually bouncing back. So if you look at like, you know, the rate of people who have not had sex, like dudes, especially in women. So. So the original incel. I don't know if most people know this was a woman. So the person who invented the term was a woman.
- [169:54]
B
Really?
- [169:54]
A
Yeah. Oh yeah. People don't know that. It's crazy.
- [169:56]
B
Who is she?
- [169:57]
A
I don't know. She was like, she posted on some forum somewhere. Yeah. So she coined the term incel. So we are seeing, by the way, the gender based differences in mental health problems is shrinking. So there's like isolation and loneliness in both men and women. Eating disorders are on the rise in dudes, probably a lot due to social media and all this like manosphere Alpha. Oh yeah, scary. Like eating disorders used to. Women used to be like way ahead of us. But like dudes are catching up.
- [170:23]
B
But now it's really a lot of dudes.
- [170:25]
A
Yeah. So. So I think addiction used to be higher in men. Women are catching up. So we're starting to see a homogenization.
- [170:31]
B
Oh, that's so interesting.
- [170:32]
A
Yeah. So I think everyone's getting fucked equally now.
- [170:35]
B
Yeah.
- [170:36]
A
Because that's what we're shooting for in a society. Right. It's equality between men and women. So I think systemically. But the cool thing is that just because there's natural selection, Right. There's selection pressures, there are things that you can do. So social rehabilitation is absolutely. I was stunned. When we make certain videos, people will say, forget about these neuroscience stuff, just tell us what to say. So all kinds of things about how to have a conversation. Everyone says communication is the foundation of a relationship. No one ever tells you how to communicate, right?
- [171:09]
B
Yeah.
- [171:10]
A
So what does that mean?
- [171:11]
B
I think a lot of it stems from overthinking, stemming from what we think expectations are, from what we see online. And we put things, you know, men and women put each other on pedestals and it becomes, I don't even mean it this way, but it becomes like objectified in a way. And you start, you start to, instead of thinking about it, like communicating with another human Being, you're like, you're communicating with this thing, like thinking from the guy perspective.
- [171:36]
A
It's like, oh, she's so hot. Yeah, we're absolutely seeing that. Right. So people don't. You're right. That they're in their own heads. They have a lot of expectations which lead to what, Suffering.
- [171:48]
B
Yeah.
- [171:49]
A
Right. So. And now you're thinking, so this is what's really scary. As you think more, your empathic circuits shut off. When your empathic circuits shut off, you can't form an emotional connection action. So what's happening is everyone is trying to play the game of dating when, when the. I don't know if this makes sense, but like, you know, animals get it on without any like, you know, they like read each other's signals. And even if you've had like, like I don't know if you're dating someone right now or what, but you didn't.
- [172:18]
B
I'm not.
- [172:18]
A
Okay.
- [172:18]
B
No, I'm single.
- [172:19]
A
Had. Had a, had a good romantic relationship in the past.
- [172:22]
B
Yes.
- [172:23]
A
Okay. So like that's like, you feel that.
- [172:25]
B
Oh yeah.
- [172:26]
A
You know, you're not operating from here. And the circuits that get us going and form connections are emotional. There's a really beautiful experiment that illustrates this. So they took people and they had them go on their first date in the middle of a bridge. But there are two bridges. One is a rickety bridge, like rickety rope bridge. The other one is a stone bridge. And the people who went on the date in the middle of the rickety rope bridge, they both feel a little bit scared. And so their emotional connection was higher. So shared emotional experiences is what causes us to bond. But when we're overly cognitive. Right. You're not like. So when you go on a day, the people who say, just, just put yourself out there, just be in the moment. Right. They're people who are operating their empathic circuits of the brain are active. So they're responding to the signals that we're sending. Yeah, right. So there's a lot of like back and forth kind of, of non cognitive communication.
- [173:20]
B
What you're talking about. That bridge example is amazing though, because it's not just, in my opinion, it's not just the shared emotional experience of like, oh shit, this is like a little shaky. You're forced to be present in the moment and focus on something that isn't thinking about how you're going to communicate with this person. It happens in second nature.
- [173:38]
A
So there's a really great, you know, I don't know if y' all have Ever done this or seen people or you've had this experience where you're, like, having a regular conversation, then someone shows up, up, and then you can't talk anymore? You ever had that? Yes, absolutely. So that's. Because when you and I are just hanging out, right? So our parasympathetic nervous system is active. We're just vibing. We're having a good time. And then when someone else shows up, a different part of our brain lights up. Our stress system starts to activate, and now we're, like, judging, right? We're not participating. We're on guard. And we're like, oh, my God, what do I say? Do I say something right? Do I say something wrong? And it's like, I would have this problem all the time. It's. So I went on a series of terrible dates before I met my wife, and they were all with women that I was less attracted to because anytime I was talking to an attractive woman, I wouldn't think clearly.
- [174:26]
B
The Indian accent would turn on.
- [174:28]
A
Huh?
- [174:28]
B
The Indian accent would turn on.
- [174:29]
A
If only, right? Dude, that's. I mean, that's. I was operating. I was like, you know, maximum amount of Indian accent I've ever used in my wife. Actually, I never thought about. This is actually when. When I met my wife. So I. I was a counselor at a camp, and it's a camp for Indian kids, and we were all busting out the Indian accents.
- [174:49]
B
Oh, my God.
- [174:50]
A
Right. But. But also, like, when I use the Indian accent, right? So every time I use it, how do you think I feel?
- [174:59]
B
Like an Indian?
- [175:00]
A
Nope. Think. Come on. You can do it. You can do it. Don't do that. No, you can do it. You can do it. How do you feel right now when I start using the an. How do you feel?
- [175:09]
B
Because you make me laugh. So you feel powerful.
- [175:12]
A
No, I feel fun.
- [175:14]
B
Right? Yeah. That feeling fun is like. That's.
- [175:17]
A
You're.
- [175:17]
B
You're in control of yourself when you feel fun.
- [175:19]
A
That's interesting. I had never. I have to think about that when.
- [175:22]
B
I'm busting balls and, like, it's hitting. I. I own you. And I mean that in a good way. It's like the best feeling ever. It's like, oh, we're good. We got this. Communication is 100% flowing.
- [175:31]
A
Yeah. So. So. So, okay, I. I think I sort of. I think I understand what you mean. But the key thing is, when I'm using the accent, I feel good. And then you empathically feel good, too.
- [175:39]
B
Yeah.
- [175:40]
A
So one thing that's really scary. So A lot of the reason that people struggle, especially dudes, is they don't realize that when. When a girl gets the ick with you, what they're picking on up on empathically, is your lack of confidence.
- [175:54]
B
Yes.
- [175:55]
A
Right? So if I can. If I. When I feel good. Come on. Come on, right? You feel good with me. Come on, Right? So, like, I can't do that shit unless I feel good, right? If I have, like, a patient who's, like, stroking out or, like, having a fucking seizure, I can't be like, oh, we're fucked. So this is what's really interesting. It's really scary. But we need this, like, social rehab where we, like, teach dudes these kinds of things where, like, if you're feeling uncomfortable around a woman, she's gonna get the ick around you.
- [176:24]
B
Yeah.
- [176:24]
A
The ick is an empathic response. If you ask someone, that's what's so confusing.
- [176:28]
B
Right?
- [176:28]
A
Cause people ask, how do girls get the ick? It's something. You feel thick.
- [176:31]
B
Yes.
- [176:32]
A
And so the more confident you feel in yourself, the more you kind of let things go. Hey, like, I'm gonna see this person once, I'm never gonna see them again. Right? This is just a moment in time. That's all it is. I'm gonna spend this time with this person in this moment. Maybe it'll be awkward and I still have those moments, you know?
- [176:48]
B
A moment in time where you are present and not thinking about outcomes or desired outcomes. You are strictly talking with someone.
- [176:56]
A
Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna love it. I love it.
- [176:59]
B
Love it.
- [176:59]
A
But, but, but there are times, and I know you know what I'm talking about, where you can be thinking about desired outcomes, but be present with that desire. It's like, yeah, like, let's go. You feel, I have an out.
- [177:14]
B
I have an out. But it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in the first moment.
- [177:18]
A
It doesn't happen in the first moment. I have it. Yeah, you're right. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
- [177:22]
B
Right?
- [177:23]
A
So it's not a outcome that you have in your mind before the interaction, but there comes a moment in time where you and I are both having drinks, and I'm like, hey, how do you feel? Don't look at me like that. You see, you see the empathy? It's beautiful.
- [177:38]
B
I was just waiting for the accent.
- [177:40]
A
No, I didn't toss it out. I didn't toss it out on purpose.
- [177:43]
B
Yeah, you're looking very good.
- [177:46]
A
Do you. I desire so you can look at me when I do the accent. Set but it, it's too real. Right? So, wow, what a distinction.
- [177:56]
B
You're fascinating, man. Like, you have a, you have a. Obviously you have a real clear cut goal in, in your content and obviously within your work behind the scenes to, to help people, which I think is an awesome thing. But the way you got there was really helping yourself and like, like finding yourself along the way. So much so that like even when you were already an expert and had gone through medical school and had worked with a bunch of patients and had all the success and made all these channels and we're helping all these people, you even got to a point where you're like, wait a second, I don't even feel good in my life. So point being, I think a lot of people, especially online, as we've seen the Internet era progress, we see these people come out and they appear to have it all figured out or like they're so perfect because they're such an expert in something. And the reality is like, we're all humans, we all have our flaws. And I think the fact that you're so self aware of that and you express that in your ability to teach the very things that you're teaching really separates you from a lot of people out there talking about this stuff.
- [179:01]
A
Yeah. Thank you. I think one of the key things that I probably one of the most important things that I learned is like, so when people have it together, it's okay to not have it together. Right? So I think this is. Even when people become successful, you'll see this a lot with successful people who are like really unhappy. And you can sometimes tell, oh yeah, right. They've got deep things in their life that they still don't have and they've learned how to strive and achieve. But achievement doesn't bring peace.
- [179:31]
B
Yes.
- [179:32]
A
This is what's really scary. Like achievement just usually brings a desire for more achievement. Achievement. So we keep on moving the goalposts, like 1 million. Oh man, the first hundred thousand subscribers we got. And then it's like, let's go for a million. Once you get a million, get that, you know, the gold one from YouTube or whatever. And then it's like, let's go for the platinum at 10 million. So it never works. So peace is actually independent of accomplishment, which is wild because that means you can be peaceful now.
- [179:59]
B
Right.
- [179:59]
A
So the work towards achievement is independent it from like the way that you feel about it. And that's what a lot of people don't really get. But I think my big thing is that, and this is, I Guess what makes me exceptional. I can own that in this moment, is that I'm okay not being exceptional. I still suck at some stuff, you know, like I suck at some. I wrote a book, it's really helpful and it's not that great and my wife is going to kill me, but it's a really great book. And if you're struggling with like, you know, kids and how to raise kids, it's a very evidence based, technique based book. If you want to learn how to communicate, you want to learn how to other people, y' all should check it out. It's called how to raise a healthy Gamer.
- [180:44]
B
So why is it not great?
- [180:48]
A
I can do so much better. And that was the first book that I wrote. Right. And it's not. It's evidence based on. It's very, very helpful. But it's not as fun as it could be. And I'm okay with that. Right. Like I feel frustrated with myself. But it's a good book. It's honestly like my publisher's gonna kill me. Right? It's a good book. No, but I mean, but really. Right. Like so. But, but it's not Link down below. It's not really. I mean, the reason I wrote it, even though it's not not the reason I wrote is because I saw that there's a generation of parents who are raising kids that are addicted to technology and then they don't know how to deal with it. Right. Because we were never taught by our parents how to keep your 8 year old from getting addicted to Minecraft.
- [181:39]
B
That's right.
- [181:39]
A
So it's really to. The reason I wrote the book is all the men, usually men and women that I help today. A it's to prevent all of those problems from starting in the first place by catching it young. So it's a great book and it accomplishes that, but it's also my first.
- [181:57]
B
Book.
- [182:00]
A
And I want to write more. Right. And it's okay for you to be a work in progress? Like how? Like why do we expect ourselves to be finished products? I mean, how old are you?
- [182:10]
B
How old are you? Do you think I am?
- [182:12]
A
30?
- [182:13]
B
32? Close. Yeah. I don't think I'm a finished product at all.
- [182:18]
A
When are you gonna be a finished product?
- [182:20]
B
I actually am not. I don't think you ever are.
- [182:24]
A
So we say shit like that. Right. But when you fall short of your expectations, you forget that very easily.
- [182:32]
B
Yeah.
- [182:33]
A
There are times when we're calm and we're like, oh, everyone is work in progress. But when you fuck up, you're not like, hey, bro, you're a work in progress. You're like, why the fuck did I do that again? What the fuck is wrong with me? Right? That's what we say to ourselves. Yeah. And what it comes down to is other people can be work in progress, but not me. I have to be finished product at 2122.
- [183:02]
B
Sound like a lot of Indian parents.
- [183:04]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [183:06]
B
Yeah.
- [183:07]
A
I grew up with Indian parents.
- [183:08]
B
Yeah.
- [183:10]
A
I. I live with Indian parents right now. They're in my own home raising my kids, too. No, no. My. Me and my wife.
- [183:20]
B
Your wife's Indian, too?
- [183:21]
A
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [183:22]
B
Awesome.
- [183:22]
A
Yeah.
- [183:23]
B
I got to send this episode to Oliveira. I'm sending this episode to a lot of people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amazing. What is the. The one other thing I wanted to ask you about? Because there's a million other things, but I'd have you here all day, so I'm gonna have to bring you back. But, you know, you and I were talking right before we got on camera today about, like, epigenetics and how you can literally evolutionarily pass down some traits, and one of the most common ones that people look at like this is with, like, trauma, so. Oh, yeah. I have grandparents who went through a genocide or something. Like that's built into your DNA. And we now have a lot of science to prove that this is right.
- [184:03]
A
Real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think there's a. I forget the guy's name, but there's a guy out of Israel who did a lot of the seminal research. So there was. I think the seminal research, like the. The first stuff that kind of came out, was pretty rigorously done. Still has some methodological problems. But was. Was looking at Holocaust survivors or. Sorry, the children of Holocaust survivors. And even I think there are some studies that will look at people who are adopted from parents, have ptsd, but children are refugees and can be adopted and things like that. So, you know, even if I. If I have. If I've been through a trauma and I raise you, there's a chance that what gets passed down is the way that I raise you. But there's now, I think, enough evidence to suggest that some of these. These epigenetic changes, which is not changes to our DNA, but the way that our DNA is turned on and off, which is really what determines what happens in us. Right? So we have all the silent genetic code that isn't doing anything. What matters is what you turn on and what you turn off.
- [185:07]
B
Right.
- [185:08]
A
So that absolutely gets passed down. And you Know, I see weird, weird versions of this. So oftentimes, you know, I'll have a lot of patients who don't have, don't appear to have a traumatic event, but either have some baseline anxiety disorder, some kind of panic disorder, or some symptoms of ptsd, they'll have some version of like hyper vigilance and things like that. And I was talking to one of your colleagues about speaking of the weird stuff. So I've had some patients that will do like past life psychotherapy, which is really weird.
- [185:45]
B
Yeah.
- [185:47]
A
And so the other really interesting thing is that there's a one guy out of University of Virginia who's done some pretty decent acade academic research around this. Also some, I think some of the research, some people extrapolate too much from the research, in my opinion. But I think that there's clear inheritance of some kind of memory. And the most basic version of this is what we call instinct. So a child will be scared of a snake, like a two year old will be scared of a snake having never seen one. So clearly there is some amount of memory where someone has a reaction to something that they've never had before, which you would think there would be a completely neutral reaction. Does that kind of make sense?
- [186:26]
B
Yeah, because, I mean, maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but the same way that like a baby gazelle maybe hasn't seen a lion before, but they know to run from it.
- [186:33]
A
Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So in the animal kingdom there's a ton of. They have more instinct, right?
- [186:36]
B
Yes.
- [186:37]
A
So we still have instinct as human beings. That's the most simple form of inherited memory. When we get to epigenetic phenomenon, it seems like things can get passed down a lot quicker. So like instinct is also shared amongst the human race, right?
- [186:49]
B
Yes.
- [186:49]
A
So that may be more in the genes than in the epigenetics, but we know that people will inherit certain qualities, certain kind of lived experiences, you say.
- [186:59]
B
In the genes rather than the epigenetics. Can you just explain where the epigenetics exist then?
- [187:06]
A
Yeah. So you have a genome, you have a sequence of nucleotides. Okay. T, A, C, G. These are the four nucleotides we have in our DNA. God, I hope I didn't fuck that up because it's been decades since I looked at this stuff formally. But so and that's your genetic code. Every cell in your body has these genes. So it has all these, all this DNA that is like basically like a blueprint for all kinds of machinery. Okay. That's it gets transcribed to rna. RNA gets translated by ribosomes into proteins. Proteins get folded and that's what becomes our enzymes and our cellular structures and things like that. So that's the genetic code. But what's really important is something called epigenetics, which is not the gene code itself, it's whether the code is activated or deactivated. So a good example of this is like I can have a blender, but the blender can be like under the counter at the table. That means I'm not blending shape. Or I could bring it up, I could plug it in, I could turn it on, then I have a smoothie. So most of our genetic code is like silent, doesn't do anything. So epigenetics is what we turn when we turn things on and off. And so if I have, let's say an enzyme, let's say I have a transporter on a neuron that depolarizes my neuron faster. I'll explain what that means. Basically turns on a particular nerve cell easily. My nerves get jittery, so super easy to turn them on. And if that's like an anxiety neuron, then if that gets turned on really easily, then I experience more anxiety. Does that kind of make sense?
- [188:40]
B
Yes.
- [188:40]
A
So I can activate the neuron based on the machinery inside the neuron. So it's sort of like the neuron has a very low threshold to freak the fuck out.
- [188:49]
B
Yes.
- [188:50]
A
And then that's going to be epigenetically determined. So which, you know, how sensitive is your neuron? And that's why we can wire and rewire. So when I work with patients with ptsd, a lot of what we're doing is like rewiring them. So we calm down their physiology, we calm down their neurology so that they don't.
- [189:07]
B
How do you do that? I mean, it takes a while, but yeah.
- [189:11]
A
So, you know, I. So I. There's two different approaches that I have. One is a clinical approach and one is a non clinical approach. The non clinical approach is we built that into a trauma guide. And that's basically like starts with physiology. So literally what you're doing is you're starting with like, like changes to breathing and your nervous system level activity. You're basically slowing down your nervous system, which has been wired into like a high alertness state.
- [189:39]
B
Yes.
- [189:40]
A
So you can do that gradually through mind, body practices, breathing practices, things like that. So that's the first step is physiology. Second thing is emotions. So you have to be able to. When people have trauma, they tend to run away from their Emotions because their emotions are hyperactive. So you have to be able to reintegrate your emotions. And oftentimes when the emotions get too high, it'll trigger a dissociative response. So I don't know if you're familiar with dissociation and trauma, but when people, when they have really bad flashbacks, when trauma gets very severe, people will dissociate.
- [190:09]
B
Yes.
- [190:09]
A
And that's a protective mechanism in the brain, actually. So as emotions get really, really high, that triggers dissociation. So then we have to help people tolerate negative emotions, feel negative emotions, that, that will prevent the dissociation. And then once we have lots of emotions, then this is what a lot of people don't realize. You were mentioning that people don't have purpose in life. Feeling lots of emotions is how you determine your identity is what a lot of people don't understand. So when I ask you, what is your life like, Tell me about you and tell me about what makes you you. No one's going to say, I eat chicken salad every day. Day. They're going to say the emotionally important events.
- [190:51]
B
Yes.
- [190:51]
A
When I was 15 years old, I got bullied. When I was 18 years old, I went to the gym and I vowed to myself, never again. Right. And if you look at movies, they tell a story, but all movies have emotion because that's how we tell stories. That's how we develop identity.
- [191:05]
B
Yes.
- [191:06]
A
Right. And even if you, if you go back and you listen to the way that you have talked about me, you will reference the emotionally important points in my life, right?
- [191:18]
B
Yes.
- [191:18]
A
That's what makes you a person is like your emotions. Like, this was hard and then I triumphed and then I fucked up.
- [191:24]
B
We relate to it in other people.
- [191:25]
A
Absolutely right. So then a lot of times people with trauma have difficulty with identity. And the reason they have difficulty with identity, they don't know who they are. So after you get traumatized, Right. You lose your sense of self. I don't know who I am anymore. I thought the world was a safe place, but I don't know. The world is unsafe and I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing anymore or I don't know what I'm doing in life. And that's why you were saying that a lot of people lose purpose. The reason they lose purpose is because speaking of systems, we have so much stuff that emotionally numbs us. Social media, video games, pornography, drugs, marijuana, alcohol, whatever. We're shutting down all of our emotions. Right. The sad ones, the unhappy ones. The angry ones. And as we shut down all those emotions, we don't know who we are. We're just numb. And so you lose your sense of identity. Once you lose your sense of identity, you don't have a direction. So if I were to ask you, what are you doing with your life? What would you say?
- [192:18]
B
I'm gonna be the number one in the world at what I do in this.
- [192:23]
A
Okay.
- [192:23]
B
That's what I'm doing with my life.
- [192:24]
A
Who are you?
- [192:26]
B
Julian Dory.
- [192:28]
A
Who's Julian Dory?
- [192:32]
B
Friend, son. YouTuber.
- [192:37]
A
Right. So if you look at your purpose in life, it's tied to your identity. If I asked you, who am I? And you said, I have no fucking clue. And then I asked you, what are you doing with your life? You're not going to have some mission. Does that make sense?
- [192:52]
B
Right?
- [192:53]
A
Identity. If you. There's something called factor analysis. But if you ask someone, what is your purpose? What is your direction? Who are you? If you can answer one, you'll have answers to all three. Not 100%, but they cluster together. Yeah, I agree with that. So when we're working with trauma, like, that's what we try to do. So, you know, epigenetics plays an element, but I think that, like, we're working on the physiology, working on the emotions, and working on narrative and identity building. And then there's a spiritual component as well.
- [193:20]
B
Yeah. It feels like you're in some ways, stripping down to the basics, forcing someone to look inward and consider what they want. And at the same time that you're doing that type of exercise, you are. And I mean this in a positive way, distracting them from thinking about the things that are wrong. To have them sitting in this current mental state right now, the trauma and the things like that, it's not like you're gonna ignore that, but you're putting it aside for a minute to say, what do you want to be? And who are you? Okay. Now, how do we get. How do we stop this thing over here from driving the car so that you can be these things?
- [193:55]
A
Ah, I think that sounds good, but I really don't think it's accurate, and I apologize.
- [194:04]
B
That's okay.
- [194:05]
A
That's why you're here. So let me explain. So we're not distracting anybody from the trauma. Let's understand that the trauma affects every layer of your being, and we don't want to distract from it. We just need to understand that the trauma makes certain changes to your processes, and we're reversing those changes. So we're not running away from the trauma or moving towards the trauma. Okay, Right. So it's just trauma. So this is why trauma is so hard to treat. Trauma is hard to treat because it's the only. It's the only illness that is not something going wrong. Trauma is an adaptation. Right. So I don't know if you've ever, like, seen a feral cat that tries to get rehabilitated, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen cats. I've heard about this. I haven't personally experienced. So it's fascinating. Right? So a cat wants to stay the fuck away from people. That's not a problem. That's because the cat has had some bad experiences with humans and this is helping its survival. So trauma is our survival mechanism. Hyperactivated. And it was necessary. Right. So I had a patient who was once sexually assaulted in a gas station bathroom. And in that moment, dissociating absolutely protects you. Right? Because you don't feel it. You don't remember it. Like, you want to not remember it. You want to not feel.
- [195:26]
B
I see what you're saying.
- [195:27]
A
You want to feel like a shell of your former self. You want to feel like you have disappeared. You don't want to be you in that moment. You want to disappear. That's why it happens to people. But then the way that you have wired for survival over here becomes maladaptive when you. When somebody. Now, when I'm married and my wife walks into the bathroom, I don't want to dissociate. So that's why it's so hard to treat. Because it is actually not something wrong with you. It is just your body's evolutionary capability to handle trauma. But then the problem is that we live in a world where those. That adaptation becomes maladaptive. So we have to reverse all of that. So I wouldn't say it's even directly related to the trauma or not. And that's where, from a clinical perspective, it's different. So in a clinical perspective, it depends. So for some people, this is what really shocks people. A lot of people don't realize that. You look at sexual assault survivors, first of all, 50% of them are totally fine and just never want to think about it again, never want to talk about it again. They'll go take a shower 50% or more. Yeah.
- [196:28]
B
Wow.
- [196:28]
A
So we have this idea, and that's what's so confusing. So I've had patients come into my office and be like, you know, I was sexually assaulted a couple years ago, but I feel fine. Is there Something wrong. Wrong with me. So most human beings will actually respond totally fine. That doesn't make it okay or anything like that.
- [196:41]
B
I understand.
- [196:42]
A
People don't realize how resilient we are. And not every negative thing will break you. Like, some people are just, you know. Yeah. It's interesting. I guess I can share this. I guess this qualifies a sexual assault. But someone. I was at a spa recently, and this guy was following me around and jerking off. And so I went to the. The attendance, and I. It's kind of a funny story, but, like. So, like, you know, that happened to me, and I was okay with it. I'm not okay with it in the sense that I liked it, but, like. Like, it's not like it scarred me for life. Yeah, that's not what I mean. So I went to the attendants, and I was like, they're like, can we help you with something? I was like, yeah, there's a guy following me around and he's. He's jerking off.
- [197:25]
B
Oh, my God. Right.
- [197:27]
A
But I wasn't scarred or anything like that. You know, I noticed that it was actually really great experience from the sense of. I understood what hyper vigilance feels like. I had never understood what my patients had been through. And I was just amazed by how many ins. How many thoughts got inserted into my head that weren't there before. So, like, every time I would, like when I was traveling around, I'm thinking about this stuff more. And I was like, oh, shit, that's weird, because I have some meditative training. And I noticed, like, oh, this is unusual. These thoughts are happening more. And I was okay, because I knew that also would. It'll be high for a while and it'll decline over time.
- [198:03]
B
Do you view that as a form of PTSD from it cause you're hyper vigilant?
- [198:06]
A
I don't think it's PTSD because it didn't impair my function. Right. But it's the natural trauma response that was not harmful in a way, because I was also. So a big part of it was like I was in a position of power. So a big part of trauma is not the bad thing that happens to you. It's what is your power. Power in relation to it. So this guy was out of line. I honestly thought about smacking him on his dick. I got angry and I was gonna, like, smack him and tell him to stop. Right. So I think that the challenge is that now I understand, like, when. Especially my. My patients who are disadvantaged or women. I can only imagine if I was alone with that guy. And he was, like, in an older dude, too. So I, you know, I think I could have kicked his ass in a fight, but, like, if I couldn't, like, that's how terrifying that was. And I appreciate the experience because, like, I was thinking about, oh, if my, if that situation was different. I now understand trauma in a way that I never have. And so that too, in a sense, is a negative experience. But, like, it's all part of my karma and it's like part of who I am. And, like, I'm. I'm grateful for. Not that I want people to do it again, but.
- [199:18]
B
On that note, yeah, this is. This has been awesome, man. Yeah, you are. You're a fountain of information. I love talking with guys like you. It's because it's the kind of thing where it could just go in a million different directions. So we're going to have to do this again at some point when you're in town, if you're down to do that. But we'll link your. Your Twitch, your YouTube, your Instagram, anything else we should put down there? What about that book? That's not that great.
- [199:42]
A
So, I mean, look, the book is really great for two reasons. One is if you've got kids and you want to teach them good, healthy technology habits, that's great. The second thing that is applicable to other people, if you have someone in your life who is addicted to video games or addicted to pornography or addicted to something, we teach some really fundamental communication skills that are very, very, very good.
- [200:03]
B
Excellent. I'll bet it's an awesome book. I haven't read it, but I'm a to read it now. Dr. K, you're the man. All right, thanks a lot, everybody else. You know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.