← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
"I Can Handle This!" The Neuroscience Behind The Mantra (A Live From The Breaker Community on Substack)
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- [00:04]
Jonathan Cohen
My ambulance breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep.
- [00:08]
Mayim Bialik
Like so many of us spending a lot more time indoors as winter's in full swing, sleep's even more important. During the colder season, it's peak cold and flu time. So now's the perfect time to invest in a new mattress. I've had every sleep issue you can imagine. Night sweats, back pain, motion transfer. We are so excited when we heard that Helix wanted to partner with us years ago after all the incredible feedback.
- [00:31]
Ellen
We've heard about them over the. I've had my Helix for about, gosh, five years now, and it's made a
- [00:36]
Mayim Bialik
huge change in our lives. Jonathan loves his Helix.
- [00:38]
Ellen
My our kids love their Helix.
- [00:41]
Mayim Bialik
We highly recommend taking the Helix Sleep quiz to find your perfect mattress in under two minutes. That's how we did it. Everyone sleeps differently. We're confident you'll find a Helix mattress specifically designed for your specific sleep positions and feel preferences. When I took the quiz, I was matched with a midnight because I like something a little firm and I sleep on my side. Jonathan, though, is a Twilight person, but both of our mattresses are a huge upgrade from their models with memory foam layers, provide optimal pressure relief and cradle your body in the areas that it need it most. It's the perfect combination of comfort and support. And Jonathan loves the cooling features of his Helix Mattress. Go to helixleep.com breakdown for 27 off site wide exclusive for listeners of mind Bialix breakdown. That's helixsleep.com breakdown for 27 off site wide.
- [01:26]
Jonathan Cohen
Make sure you enter our show after checkout so that they know that we sent you helixsleep.com breakdown hey, Sal.
- [01:35]
Hank
Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
- [01:58]
Mayim Bialik
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
- [02:04]
Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
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Mayim Bialik
And welcome to our Breakdown.
- [02:07]
Ellen
Today.
- [02:07]
Mayim Bialik
We're going to be sharing something very
- [02:09]
Ellen
special with you all.
- [02:11]
Mayim Bialik
The conversation that we're sharing with you today was one that focused around initially our conversation with Michael Singer, author of Untethered Soul, Living Untethered, who. Who has a very, very special connection for me and Jonathan and the formation of this podcast. But the conversation gets expanded out into so much more. We talk about what does it mean to stay high spiritually? How do we maintain that? How do we maintain a notion of awareness? How do we deconstruct fear? Where is the intersection of ancient wisdom with our current biology?
- [02:51]
Jonathan Cohen
This is a very special conversation that was previously only available to our Breaker community on Substack. Mayim and I go live there. There is so much in each of the interviews that we do that we need time to actually unpack these ideas, helping expand them, make them practical and tangible, and also answering questions from the community to help them better interact and experience the episodes.
- [03:17]
Ellen
We also know that there are those
- [03:18]
Mayim Bialik
of you out there who love to hear me and Jonathan go meta on meta conversations. And that's why we're choosing to share this conversation with you. If you want in on any of this, make sure to join us over on Substack. And we're so excited to share this very special conversation surrounding what it's like to rid yourself of emotional garbage and what that means practically. We really hope you enjoy this conversation. Mayim and Jonathan, live following our conversation with Michael Singer. Break it down.
- [03:53]
Jonathan Cohen
First of all, welcome to 2026. We're here. We've made it.
- [03:57]
Ellen
Speak for yourself.
- [03:59]
Jonathan Cohen
There's a lot of conversation on the Internet about 2026. Let's make it the best year ever. How do you feel about those conversations?
- [04:06]
Ellen
My general response would be like, they make me want to throw open my mouth. But when I think about how I used to feel about, like, vision boards and I used to think they're really silly and they don't make sense and like, why am I doing this? And then I got to understand the purpose behind what it means to imagine something different and how that, as we've talked to a lot of experts, that can change your physiology. It can change your ability to heal, to connect, to thrive, as it were. I would say that I could have somewhat of a positive attitude about this. But I also should say I find a lot of it very arbitrary because it's sort of like, this is genuine. But, you know, the Jewish New Year's in the fall, other, you know, other traditions and other cultures have New Year's at different times. So I happen to like a fall feeling for my new year. Cause that's kind of what I'm used to. But like the whole like, oh, winter, Christmas tree, New Year's, it just, it's not. It doesn't have the same vibe for me, but it's very important. And I've been learning a lot about Secular Eastern European celebration of New Year's. So that also has been something new that I'm bringing into the New Year.
- [05:16]
Jonathan Cohen
This went a direction I never expected, which was deconstructing the fact of when the New Year is. But that is why asking you a question will never result in exactly the answer that I'm expecting, which makes things interesting. It's true that especially if you live in a snowy place, nothing seems new. It seems totally dead.
- [05:36]
Ellen
If you live on the other side of the equator, it's not even winter. It's summer. Imagine a summer Christmas. And that's how the whole bottom of the world does it.
- [05:45]
Jonathan Cohen
Feliz Navidad. In all seriousness, we got to speak to Michael Singer for a second time. We never thought we would speak to him a first time. There were many things that he talked to us about.
- [05:58]
Ellen
Spiritual awakening is not a permanent high.
- [06:02]
Jonathan Cohen
It is not a permanent high.
- [06:03]
Ellen
One of the things that Michael Singer talked about is, or that we asked him to speak about was spiritual awakenings. And there are different kinds of spiritual awakenings. Obviously, there can be like, oh, my gosh, moments where it's fireworks go off and you're like, oh, God exists. Or whatever your particular spiritual awakening looks or feels like. And that intensity is not supposed to last. It doesn't last. But the question is, what can we take from that that will sustain us as we have further challenges? You know, the metaphor that Jonathan and I use a lot is like, you know, what do you bring down from the mountaintop? You know, it's really, you know, fine and good and, you know, some might say easier to be isolated from people and be in a meditative state. And, like, I've figured out meditation and I'm. It's amazing. And I went up to the mountain and I became one with God. But what. When you come down off the mountain and you have to deal with, like, people, things, places, traffic, humans, that's when the challenge is, what does that spiritual awakening leave you with? What is. What's the residue of it? And also this kind of gradual notion of a spiritual awakening, which is sort of a. An unfolding and an information gathering and a sort of coming to, as it were, as opposed to, like, the spiritual awakening that a lot of people have, which, honestly, Michael Singer had. He talked about that in his first episode where just one day he was like, there's voices in my head. What's up? I get it.
- [07:28]
Jonathan Cohen
The myth of spiritual awakening is that we need to wake up versus we are already awake. And we are constantly sleeping ourselves, putting Ourselves back to sleep through our emotional garbage that he describes that we are holding on so tightly to those things that have hurt us and we are fighting the universe.
- [07:55]
Ellen
The religious notion is that God is always there. We're just sometimes turning away. And sometimes all it takes is that turning towards to see. Like, oh, was there all along. Which I think for a lot of people, and we've talked about this a lot with spiritual experiences, with psychedelic experiences, with transcendental, you know, experiences, however you get to them, it's like, oh, it's. It's a remembering, right? You're. You're taking all the members that are you and you're remembering them. It's not necessarily that there's something new. It's that you have a new awareness of a thing that has always been there and available to you. And for many people, you know, I was thinking, when you hear people. People talk about, you know, when people find, let's say for people who like medication for things, you know, like, oh, I didn't know that I could be this way. I didn't know I could have peace. I didn't know I didn't have to experience depression or anxiety or whatever it is that was always there. Right? It's kind of like the same things that annoy you when you're irritable and anxious and discontented. Those things won't affect you as much because you have changed. That's the change. But it was always kind of there, you know, like the beauty of the sky, right? There's different times when it's always beautiful, it's always there, it's always available.
- [09:13]
Jonathan Cohen
Sometimes the light just hits quite right, but there are many times where the light is hitting quite right, but I'm not available to notice it. So what does it mean to stop fighting the universe? That was very impactful for me.
- [09:26]
Ellen
Give us a little bit of context for people who may not have. Sometimes you talk about the episodes as if people just listened three minutes ago and they.
- [09:33]
Jonathan Cohen
And they haven't memorized. I expect everyone to have taken notes.
- [09:39]
Ellen
Fighting the universe. Can you talk a little bit about what your experience of that is, Jonathan,
- [09:43]
Jonathan Cohen
in relation to what do I think I can control and how much of myself am I consuming with my inner thoughts and feelings, trying to protect against things that may hurt me? I believe people should use a mixture of intuition and intellect to navigate the world to avoid the worst things that are possible and trying to maximize the good things that are possible within reason. But if I am constantly working towards not feeling pain, not feeling discomfort, not wanting anyone to bother me, not acknowledging the fact that every person has had different experiences, therefore will see the world differently than I do. Therefore, I have to accept that and interact with them at that level. Then I am fighting against what is. And I am not looking around saying I see as much as possible reality for what it is. And then from there I can respond. And I may not like it, but if I'm constantly fighting against it, then I cannot actually be in relationship and make any choices. I'm in a reactive state versus having the ability to navigate and make choices, not be. Basically, you know, it's similar to. I tie it back to what Bruce Lipton talked about in terms of the animal part of our brain. How much are we in control and how much are we just reacting to past programming of things that don't even exist?
- [11:13]
Ellen
One of the things that Michael Singer talked about was this. This notion of signs of resistance, noticing signs of resistance in your life. And I was thinking, how many times, you know, are we getting messages that a relationship's not right, that a job's not right, that an interaction's not right? You know, how many times do we see signs of that, but we, like, push through it, or we think we know better, right? And it's kind of like the kind of riddle or joke we always tell of, like the guy who says, the. The town is flooding, and he says, God will save me. And they come knocking on his door, and, like, you gotta get out. There's a flood coming. And he's like, no, God's gonna save me. And then someone comes by on a boat, and he's, like, standing on the roof, and he's like, no, I'm going to wait. God's going to save me. And then the water's all the way up, and the helicopter's like, come, we'll lift you. Oh, God's going to save me. And he gets to heaven, and God's like, you know, what happened? And he says, what happened with you? You were supposed to save me. And God says, I sent you. Someone knocking on your door. I sent you a boat and I sent you a helicopter. You know, how many times do we do. We ignore those signs, right? And kind of push through. And what I see with Michael Singer is there's like an ease, there's a flow. Even in the way he speaks, even in the way, you know, he kind of interacts. Like, there's just like a. It's so even. You know, there's a real evenness to his. To his flow that to me, indicates that he's not. He's taking the signs from the universe, right when there's resistance. He's. He's seeing that as information. And a lot of times I don't, you know, take that as information. I take it as a challenge, you know?
- [12:48]
Jonathan Cohen
Well, this is something I was reminded of this week, and I wonder what your perspective is. I believe that a certain amount of tenacity and grit and perseverance are required in life to achieve anything. And also, if you don't read the writing on the wall and you're being shown that it's time to change course, give something up, the pain of ignoring that will ultimately be worse for you. And I was reminded about that this week, where someone is in a situation that they refuse to see the signs and pushed through and pushed through. And, like, there's this very fine balance between. If you listen to everyone, that something can't happen, then you'll never see the potential. And yet, if you're so into something and it's clearly not working, when is that moment of giving up versus persevering, believing that the next mountaintop is right around the corner?
- [13:42]
Ellen
It's very difficult. And I think we hear it with creativity a lot. When we talk about creative things or trying new things. For those of us who are parents, we also see it because you get to, like. You get to see it in real time. Like, what it's like when you have a child learning something and you're kind of, like, in charge and, like, do you push them to learn it? And what if they say no? And it's like, but, you know, it's good for them? Or, you know, even with sports, like, oh, you want to drop out of soccer? And it's like, do you want to honor their need for autonomy, or do you want to teach them perseverance? Like, it's kind of, you know, it's sort of similar. I think that gets echoed in our. There are certain things I wish I was, like, an expert at. You know, Like, I wish, like, I wasn't just a piano player at the level I'm at. Like, why can't I play? You know, pathetique. Exactly the way, like, concert pianists play, you know? And it's like, how much is it? Do we put in more time? Do we put in more effort? And how much is it, like, I should enjoy the level of piano that I play? And it makes people very happy. Thank you. But, you know, how much is that? I mean, this is. It's very interesting that you Bring this up in the context of Michael Singer, because, yeah, it is a really good example of kind of like, what's resistance? What's a sign? And it really is about perspective. Like, talk about. It's all relative. It's completely relative. Because I would say to you, this substack thing's never going to work. And you were like, yes, it is. And if it were up to me, we wouldn't even be here because I would have been like, this is never going to work. And you have a brain and everybody's got a different brain. You have a brain that, as I famously say, imagines things that don't exist. It's like, it's very useless to me.
- [15:17]
Jonathan Cohen
I imagined you and then you just appeared.
- [15:21]
Ellen
No, but. But that is what creativity is born from. You know, like, I'm terrible at improv because, like, the answer's always no, right? And improv in life, you don't have
- [15:32]
Jonathan Cohen
to know what it is. Okay, here's the. Here's a tie in.
- [15:34]
Ellen
Not fun at all. Why would you do anything where you don't know what it is? That's not fun at all. That's like, let's open the fridge and close our eyes and just grab things and put them in a pot and boil them and see what happens. Like, you wouldn't cook that way. Why would you live that way?
- [15:53]
Jonathan Cohen
In my version, you just have to. Or, you know, you're just like randomly grabbing and then the things in front of you you may not have expected because if you were scanning, you wouldn't have like chosen that particular ingredient. You wouldn't have gone with the nutritional yeast first and based the recipe around that or the olives. Mayim Bialix Breakdown is supported by Shopify.
- [16:16]
Mayim Bialik
Starting something new isn't just hard, it can be downright terrifying. So much time and effort goes into this thing. In the pre planning phase, you're not even entirely sure it'll work out. It can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust us, we know. When we started this podcast, we weren't
- [16:30]
Ellen
even sure what we're doing.
- [16:31]
Mayim Bialik
What if no one gets wants to be a guest? What if no one listens? What if I make a fool of myself? Now we know we were right in believing in ourselves despite our fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side to
- [16:42]
Ellen
help like we do.
- [16:44]
Mayim Bialik
Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to first time business owners, just getting started to a little podcast like maybe Alex Breakdown Shopify has been our one stop shop for all of our merch store needs for the past few years. Now get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. Accelerate your efficiency Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones,
- [17:13]
Ellen
Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools
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Mayim Bialik
that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. It's time to turn those wh ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com breakdown go to
- [17:28]
Jonathan Cohen
shopify.com breakdown that's shopify.com breakdown my imbalance breakdown is supported by Incogni.
- [17:39]
Mayim Bialik
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- [18:14]
Ellen
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Mayim Bialik
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- [19:07]
Jonathan Cohen
That's code mime@incogni.com mayim mayim bialix breakdown is supported by Rabbit Air I was
- [19:16]
Ellen
one of those people who always sneezed
- [19:18]
Mayim Bialik
and I raised children who always sneezed. I was told that what we needed to cure our ills was a rabbit
- [19:26]
Ellen
error and I have to say it was absolutely correct.
- [19:30]
Mayim Bialik
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- [20:31]
Ellen
that was something I never realized until I saw. I think you doing it like I don't use the Internet the way most humans do and I didn't realize you could like put in like what ingredients you have and it'll tell you what to make.
- [20:45]
Jonathan Cohen
What Ellen brings up a really good point which I want to actually address here. Distinguishing between avoiding feelings versus practicing getting beyond the junk is really something that I struggled with a lot because it's like is this fear or is this safety? Do I have an initial aversion to something because I'm clearly not supposed to do it. My background as a writer and thinking about narrative an enormous amount. This is an interesting spot to marry narrative and the stories that we hold onto with our somatic experience. So I remember we were going to take a trip somewhere and it was like a last minute trip. Yeah, this was years ago. You were like let's take a trip. And my first reaction was like absolutely not. Like no, I don't want to do this. And in that tiny micro second of a reaction when I slowed down and this is where time becomes totally non linear there were a dozen or more stories about that, the travel, what I made up about the bedding, and what I made up about how we were gonna spend our time. And like, I had built in a microsecond an entire world view that made me have a visceral reaction that. And the visceral reaction was nothing that I could have understood being influenced by all those stories until I, like, it was like almost I imagine it, like this web of stuff that was floating around mentally that I had to go in and dissect and unpack and say, is that true? And it's like the Byron Katie work is like micro dissections to say, oh, once I peel back all of that reactive explosion that happened, how do I actually feel? And then there's a space of, well, I actually don't know what it might be. And then we, you know, and then we end up going on a trip and having a pretty good time. Well, Mark, that trip had its own problems, and maybe I was picking up psychically on those problems, and I knew that that would be an issue. But all the things that I.
- [22:47]
Ellen
Why? Just because my back went out and I could barely walk the night before, my. My somatic experience could be telling me I should not be around humans, I should not go places, and I shouldn't talk to anyone. It's no laughing matter.
- [23:06]
Jonathan Cohen
You just took a trip that you really liked. You were around a lot of people.
- [23:09]
Ellen
Oh, yeah, I did a good job. What I was thinking, like, the first thing I thought. And like, I again, didn't know that we'd go here. You know, when you interact with someone, and especially if there is tension around it, if you don't feel good, how much of it is you in your present self at the chronological age that you are reacting? How much of it? Because I'm going to go ahead and say, like, if I had to divide me up into percentages, I'd say when. When I'm rejected, when I feel scolded, when someone doesn't like something that I even am around. Like, if we. If I pick a restaurant and people don't like it, it's like, I. I want to jump off a cliff. I can't handle it. How much of that is my adult, like, self?
- [24:02]
Mayim Bialik
Very, very little.
- [24:03]
Ellen
Like, I'd say a good. Jonathan, what percentage do you think I'd say? A good 80% of the time I am not operating, meaning cognitively, like, I'm reacting from a place that is of a different chronological age, which is why, you know, like, this notion of time not being linear internally, I can transport myself to a completely different emotional timeline. Right. Especially when there is resistance. Oh, you're nodding a little too vigorously. Especially when there's resistance, when there's conflict.
- [24:34]
Jonathan Cohen
What's, what's your solution to not having a restaurant that everyone likes? Fine, everyone will eat by themselves.
- [24:39]
Ellen
Totally. Let's go to a food court. You can pick what they want and we all sit in the middle.
- [24:45]
Jonathan Cohen
Everyone go to their respective houses. Let's never talk again.
- [24:48]
Ellen
But you know what? This is something that I will tell my children. You know, one is 17, one is 20. Because this is an important, important thing that no one ever told me that when you are an adult, you don't always act like one.
- [25:06]
Jonathan Cohen
There are very few adults in the world. There are just small children in large meat sticks.
- [25:11]
Ellen
That's right. But. But I definitely think that. And this is one of the things, you know, a lot of people say a lot of negative thing or people can say negative things about, you know, child centered parenting or this kind of like psychological revolution we've had and how we parent, I. E. Speak to them. Look at them, love them. Don't be afraid you'll overlove them. Which is how, you know, my parents generation, in many cases was raised.
- [25:33]
Mayim Bialik
I thought my parents knew everything.
- [25:34]
Ellen
I thought they had figured everything out. Not because they said, I've figured everything out. It's just that's what it seemed like, you know, And I make sure to tell my kids, like, I don't know what to do today. I've never made dinner tonight. We'll see what happens.
- [25:49]
Jonathan Cohen
Some lines from the, from the episode, your eyes aren't actually seeing me. Your brain is rendering me.
- [25:55]
Ellen
That's so romantic. Put that in a Hallmark card.
- [26:00]
Jonathan Cohen
While the world is devolving, I can handle this. We should talk about the most powerful mantra for modern life. It was the OG Let them. Was the surrender experiment, which, that was a realization.
- [26:16]
Ellen
Right?
- [26:17]
Jonathan Cohen
Like he was let them before. Let them.
- [26:20]
Ellen
I mean, look, you know, for people who have not read Untethered Soul, you know, that's the place to start. Like, if you're going to start anywhere, you start with Untethered Soul.
- [26:31]
Jonathan Cohen
I mean, I think, I hope anyone who is listening to this podcast who's like, oh my gosh, how did your podcast start? And all these downloads happen and all these conversations go back to the first Michael Singer episode and you will hear how Michael Singer was the catalyst.
- [26:48]
Ellen
He gave birth to us.
- [26:50]
Jonathan Cohen
He may have.
- [26:51]
Ellen
That first Michael Singer episode was very, very powerful. I think I cried I cried several times.
- [26:56]
Jonathan Cohen
Yeah, you did. He was expecting you to cry more in this one.
- [27:00]
Ellen
I shed all my tears in the first one. That's it.
- [27:03]
Jonathan Cohen
Tell us, for the people who want consciousness and the intersection of neuroscience, what happens when you frame something as. I can handle this.
- [27:13]
Ellen
It's something that I was just researching for an episode that we're going to be recording this week. So I'm trying not to confuse things. I'll use the sort of out of the box term and then I'll bring it back to science. So there's something to vibe. Some people would say there's something to a frequency. And you hear people talk about this, like, ooh, John, how do people say it? Like, I'm vibrating at a higher frequency. Or let's, let's vibrate at a higher frequency, right? You hear this in yoga classes and like Kundalini Rising and all this stuff. And many of us are like, what, what is that? Like, what, what? How do you ground that? And what science, as Michael Singer talked about, is catching up to spirituality, is that there is something to that vibe. And we, we've started being able to actually image it. Usually functional magnetic resonance imaging, that's fmri. Usually FMRI studies can be very, very delicately, kind of tweaked to try and calibrate where and how we resonate when we're in a zone. And this notion of, I can handle this, that is placing yourself in a zone of ease. It's not just about relaxation. You are elevating, right, the frequency that you are, you know, vibrating at. And there's a lot of interesting research with theta waves and things like that. You know, where is the place that you get into, for example, when you meditate, right? If you've ever been deep in meditation. And I don't just mean. And, you know, I listen to guided meditations, but I don't just mean like putting on a guided meditation and listening to the nice lady talk. I'm talking about, like, if you've tried a kind of meditation, for example, like tm, like transcendental meditation, where you're just like repeating a mantra over and over. You know, things like that. You get into a sort of zone, right? And that zone is the place where people like Bruce Lipton, people like Joe Dispenza, like, you can actually quantify this. And what it looks like is immune function improves. What it looks like is, you know, positivity has a positive impact on other systems. But there's a really interesting way to try and calibrate what is Physiologically happening when we say, I can handle this. And the notion that life is easy and perfect is not what Michael Singer was brought here. Because when I first heard about Michael Singer, I'm like, this guy's got it easy. Like, he probably just, like, sits in his house and meditates all day and, like, does consults with people. No, he worked in business. He had stressful things. He had a huge lawsuit that he had to deal with. He has dealt with real life things. And that gave me hope to say, like, I have to be able to get into a place where I can handle it. And you've survived 100% of what you've been through. Like, all of us, you've survived 100% of it. Was it the way that you would program it yourself? No. Like, is this a simulation you have to enjoy all the time? Can you be angry at whatever God you've constructed? Absolutely. But the notion that you can handle this is actually sort of proof that you have the ability to elevate your own right frequency, as it were, and start utilizing better immune function, better physiological and metabolic functioning. For sure.
- [30:37]
Jonathan Cohen
The opposite, which we don't want to encourage, is when we say, we cannot handle this. And you fight the universe, what it does is it puts you in a panicked, high stress state that slowly erodes your ability to fight viruses.
- [30:52]
Ellen
Community. Well. And also then you probably solve. You spiral and your sleep gets wonky and you start eating, you know, foods that make you kind of feel good and give you that rush, like, you know, French fries and chocolate. Just speaking from experience, and, yeah, we're more likely than to drink. We're more likely to not hold boundaries in unhealthy relationships. Like, that really is, like, kind of where that can. I got a thing on my ankle. Like, if that's not an episode, remember you looked at it and you were like, that doesn't look good. I literally said to my acupuncture woman, I was like, is there a worm inside of me that's trying to get out on my ankle? I don't think so. No, it's not what happens, but that's what I thought.
- [31:34]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm 100% using that as the start of a social media clip.
- [31:38]
Ellen
Is there a worm in my body that's trying to escape through the top of my right ankle? And then I went to the Louise Hay. I'm like, what does Louise Hay say about this part of my body? But that's a different story.
- [31:49]
Jonathan Cohen
You're like, louise, hey, why am I a reptile from my Knees down.
- [31:54]
Ellen
That's me. That feels below the belt. That's below the belt. It's below the knees.
- [32:00]
Jonathan Cohen
I was getting sick this morning.
- [32:02]
Ellen
What do you mean?
- [32:03]
Jonathan Cohen
I woke up, my throat was sore, I had post nasal drip. And I very rarely get sick. You had just been up here. You were working through a cold, whatever. But it's like a while ago. What was really happening is two days ago, I got super stressed. I was on this great new year, new me moments. I had two great days back at work.
- [32:25]
Ellen
You got sick from all that positivity?
- [32:27]
Jonathan Cohen
No, but I had an interaction. Someone brought some. Some news to me that was very stressful and work news, like, you're fine. I'm fine. Something was going on and it just. I started spiraling and I was like, this happened and I feel really bad for them. And this is the. What's. My mind's going 1,000 miles an hour and has some fear or some boom. Didn't sleep well last night. And I started getting sick. And we're doing an episode that you're researching that you were talking about. And not to give too much away, I was like, I acknowledge it. I'm like, this is stress. This is my body responding to an amount of stress. I can handle this. I am fine. I got a decent amount of sleep. I have a good amount of reserve reserves. I just came off holiday. I feel great.
- [33:17]
Ellen
That's really amazing. Yeah. When we think we're getting sick or, you know, even with like, jet lag. Cause I just came back from across the world. My friend Daniel and I, we actually. We're friends from college and we actually traveled together and we Both decided about 20 years ago that we don't believe in jet lag. We just decided it. We just, We. We just went. We. We don't believe in it.
- [33:40]
Mayim Bialik
So, I mean, it's not like I
- [33:41]
Ellen
don't believe in it, like, of course, but I. It doesn't even take that much effort. Like, I feel like if everyone would just listen to me about when to sleep, what to do and when to eat, they too. Meaning in my family, I'm not saying, like the universe, they also wouldn't have jet lag. But I was thinking about that, like, how much of it is like, oh, I'm gonna have jet lag, you know? And then I. I mean, it's been a minute since I've flown at this age. Like, the last time I went this far was like three or four years ago. And I thought, okay, I'm going to be like, comatose couple Mornings I've woken up at 4 or 5. I get a lot done before my kid gets up. I'm like, feeling good, everything's fine.
- [34:19]
Jonathan Cohen
I save a lot of videos and articles that you never see, and every now and again I try and, like, show them all to you. But one of them that I saved, that is probably not credible, but it is interesting nonetheless, is that the athletes speak to their bodies, gain more muscle mass and perform better than the athletes who do not.
- [34:42]
Ellen
That's why you talk to your body all the time.
- [34:45]
Jonathan Cohen
I was like, I'm lifting weights. I should be telling my body how great it's doing and how much muscle it's building and how strong it is.
- [34:51]
Ellen
That's why you always want me to watch you work out, so that I can be like, you're doing great. This is all I've got for today. We know that the year is already complicated. There's a ton in the news, there's a ton in politics. You can very easily get that anywhere. For us here, we, we really hope to provide a little bit of a break from that and a way for you to exercise your brain, exercise your heart, your mind, and all of those things that integrate. So, yes, we are the best ADHD group ever, says Canadian Kim. Happy New Year, everyone, and really look forward to what we're all going to create together and manifest in 2026.
- [35:31]
Hank
It's my Bialix BR break down, she's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's going to break down, so break down, she's going to break it down.
- [35:48]
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