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- [00:01]
Dan Buettner
The Dan Bueter podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Financially responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are all things people say about the drivers who switched their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paid in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on your car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states and situations.
- [00:43]
Hassan Minhaj
Hey, it's Hassan Minhaj here from the Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know podcast. Among other things. And I hate the smell of rotting food almost as much as I hate wasting it in the first place. Thankfully, now I have mill. Mill is a food recycler that is odorless, guiltless and completely effortless. See, I've always wanted to reduce food waste. It is one of the easiest ways for an individual to make a big impact on the environment. But I just cannot stand the mess of a compost bin in the kitchen. But with mill, all you do is drop in your scraps and you let it go. It works quickly and quietly, turning your food, even small bones, into nutrient rich grounds. Now I take out the trash way less, yet my kitchen smells way better and I don't have to feel guilty when my zucchini gets moldy. Plus it looks cool. Yeah, this trash can alternative is so fly. People keep asking me where I got the giant Alexa. It's chic and savvy, but you have to live with Mille to really get it. Good thing you can try it risk free for 90 days right now and get $75 off with code HMDK visit mill.com HMDK that is mill.com HMDK
- [01:51]
Dan Buettner
I sense that a lot of your work is harnessing wisdom of traditional people.
- [01:56]
Kelly Noonan Gores
These conveniences of modern life have made us sick. Find out the diagnosis, find out what's physically going on in your body, but don't accept someone's prognosis.
- [02:07]
Dan Buettner
What's the big life change you're going through right now?
- [02:10]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Well, which one?
- [02:12]
Dan Buettner
You know, the work we do in the Blue Zones is about finding the environmental and social secrets to living a long and happy life. We found that it's never one thing but the synergy of many factors, including what we eat, how we move, who our friends are and our mindset, our sense of purpose, and how we shed our stress. This latter factor may be much more powerful than we think, and the idea that our health is controlled by our thoughts, beliefs and mindset is exactly what today's guest is, has spent her career investigating. I'm thrilled to welcome Kelly Noonan Gores. She's an award winning filmmaker, producer, and the creative force behind the documentary Heal, which explores the connection between our emotions, our thoughts, and our ability to actually heal ourselves. Her work features top scientists and spiritual leaders discussing everything from epigenetics to the power of placebos. In a way, Kelly's work doves tails perfectly with ours where we find people in the blue zones who are passively using a great lifestyle to live no. 100. Kelly is actively teaching us how to harness the internal power of purpose, community and mindset to achieve optimal wellness right now. If you've ever wondered how your emotional baggage translates into physical health or how a shift in perspective can fundamentally change your biological future, this is the conversation for you. So I actually watched Heal here. Excellent, excellent documentary. And by the way, it's a very Blue Zones exploration of a health topic. In a way, with Blue Zones, I set off on a journey to discover the secret of longevity and you struck off on a journey to find the secret to healing, which I thought was so brilliant. And you're a great narrator and you're a great character to take us through the story. And I know it got really big in Covid when the rest of the world was looking for scientific answers to this pandemic and at the beginning there weren't any. So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you really hit a chord because Heal was really an exploration of non medical solutions. Right. Maybe you could start off by telling us why you went off in this journey and a little bit about what you were doing before you struck off on Heal.
- [04:48]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Well, thanks for watching it.
- [04:50]
Dan Buettner
You're welcome. You probably made 3 cents from the download.
- [04:53]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Thank you. Yes, I'll buy dinner. Yes. So I like actually funny thought I remember back. I'm a seeker. I'm curious. I want to understand how to, you know, just squeeze the nectar out of life and have the best life experience you can and what our human potential is, why, why we're here, what the purpose of it all is. Now that led me to like wanting to understand consciousness and quantum physics and energy and all of that, how we're all connected. And I actually was curious about happiness and longevity before healing, but as I was starting to understand energy and I started stumbling upon these spontaneous healing stories and those just fascinate me. Like Anita Moorjani is one of the characters in the film and she had stage four cancer, was on her way out, and had a near death experience in the hospital. Her organs had shut down. She had lemon sized tumors from her abdomen to her neck. There's not a human being, medical professional or otherwise, that would look at her body and think that she could come back from that. She had a shift in consciousness. In her near death experience. She recalls everything very clearly and she realized that every decision she had made in her later life was from fear. And she lived from a lot of fear. And once she was in this other realm, and this is very spiritual for your audience, she just felt this total unity, this love that surpasses any kind of human language or understanding. And she realized that fear is what gave her the cancer in, you know, the simplest terms. And she was having this interaction with her father in the other realm and they had a very tumultuous, you know, relationship in life. And he. And there was nothing. There was no judgment, there was no dissonance. They were just one and loving and just. It was this beautiful encounter. So much so that she didn't want to go back to her body. But her father told her, go back and live your life without fear.
- [07:02]
Dan Buettner
Her father was dead.
- [07:03]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Her father, in that oneness moment, her father was dead. He had passed over and he was in that other realm. And she knew if she went back into her body, she would heal. And that's exactly what happened. So she regained consciousness, reanimated her body, and within three weeks all the cancer was gone from her body. She walked out. She's traveling the world, speaking about it still today, however many.
- [07:25]
Dan Buettner
Do you think it was an acceptance of death that allowed her to release that angst, that build up emotional turmoil.
- [07:32]
Kelly Noonan Gores
That's such a great question. I've never been asked that. I think our greatest fear is death.
- [07:38]
Dan Buettner
Or bad hair.
- [07:39]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, or bad hair. There's some solutions for bad hair death. Not so many solutions. We're all going to get there. But because she had gone to the other side and felt that there was really nothing to fear. And I've heard thousands of other near death experiences that kind of corroborate her experience. She doesn't fear death. She knows that it's just kind of like another transition into. You lose your body, but you regain everything else. You get back with your loved ones and you're expansive and oneness and love. Sounds pretty awesome, actually.
- [08:10]
Dan Buettner
She had a type of cancer.
- [08:11]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, she had lymphoma.
- [08:13]
Dan Buettner
Okay. She also had some sort of modern medical treatments along with it, right?
- [08:18]
Kelly Noonan Gores
She did. She was Indian from heritage. And so she had Ayurveda and all of that. She tried all that first. Her best. She witnessed her best friend die of cancer. So there was a lot of fear once the Ayurveda wasn't working, then I think she tried chemo. She did. She tried it all.
- [08:33]
Dan Buettner
So, Kelly, heaven forbid that you ever get a terrible disease. What did you learn from Anita that you think you could put to work in very specific terms? Because a lot of people are out there listening, and they have breast cancer or they have type 2 diabetes or some horrible disease. What is it about Anita's experience that you could universalize?
- [08:55]
Kelly Noonan Gores
That's the question. It's like, how do we access that massive shift in consciousness and release a fear without having that felt experience of being on the other side? Like, that's what I'm trying to crack. But with Anita's story and then every other story that I include in heal, including Dr. Joe Dispenza healing his spine and leading him to do this, like, meditation work that he does today. What. Like, some of the biggest takeaways are accept, you know, find out the diagnosis, find out what's physically going on in your body, but don't accept someone's prognosis. Like, be very careful about the prognosis that you take in. That's why they call it getting a second and third opinion, because it is just a doctor's informed opinion based on averages and history and their own lens of their own, you know, experience. So. And biases and biases.
- [09:47]
Dan Buettner
So, like, there's often a very kind of red line between what is modern medicine and. And what is traditional medicine. And very rarely do they. Do they overlap or take advantage of each other. And, you know, I sense that a lot of your work is harnessing wisdom of traditional peoples or observed modalities that we can't necessarily put through a clinical trial but have seemed to work for
- [10:17]
Kelly Noonan Gores
a lot of people for thousands of years.
- [10:19]
Dan Buettner
Yeah. And I don't think we pay enough attention to it.
- [10:21]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. I would say my overarching and this goes along with the blue zones, like, healing should be as close to nature as possible. If we are so out of sync with nature cycles, our food is ultra processed. As, you know, these conveniences of modern life have made us sick. And so if we can kind of take a step back and simplify and get back in sync with nature, eat food from the ground, eat real food, eat locally in season, like in, you know, get to sleep with the circadian rhythms, watch our blue light and all these screens like if we simplify things, we can make things a lot easier for ourselves. But we also have this amazing technology and the advancements of modern medicine, we don't want to organize. I'm not poo pooing those. They have a place and they're absolutely life saving, like antibiotics, thank God, surgery, all of these things. But in general for chronic things and holistic, like modern medicine kind of teaches us that our bodies are kind of these mechanistic systems and they're specialized medicine and nothing they're not communicating or treating as a whole system. And I think that's kind of paramount. So nature and holistic is treating it as a whole system.
- [11:31]
Dan Buettner
They complement each other. You have a segment about Bruce Lipton and epigenetics. I love that the epigenetics, the idea that our mindset and our environment can actually impact our genes in a way that you actually flip different switches and genes express themselves differently. But what did you discover through Bruce?
- [11:58]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, I mean, I remember where I was. I was like on a stair climber, I think at Equinox in Westwood when I read his book the Biology of Belief. And I learned about epigenetics and how our genes are a blueprint. But this epigenetic factor of our lifestyle, our food choices, our stress, our emotions, our subconscious beliefs, all of those toggle the switches of our genes. So you can have identical twins with, you know, almost identical genes living in two separate environments and they express their health in very different ways. So I just thought that was so empowering. And a lot of it has to do with our belief system. So what we believe and expect actually turns on and off genes. A lot of people think that conditions are genetic, but really if this epigenetic, depending on how powerful it is, like if you're having the same subconscious beliefs and conditioning as your parents and ancestors, same environment, same food, it looks genetic, but it's really epigenetic. And there's so much more you can change and have power over.
- [12:59]
Dan Buettner
There's this great story, related, but not exactly, but a great example of epigenetic expression in Norway in the early part of the 20th century because of World War I, there was starvation, there wasn't enough food to go around. And so there was a four years or so where people really starved. And it turns out that during that period, certain switches were changed in their genes. And the fathers passed down genes not to not only the that his children, but his children's children. And 70 years later, these grandchildren had lower rates of cardiovascular disease that you could trace back to the, the way these triggers were switched. And I can imagine that somebody who is living with a lot of stress is triggering these genes in a negative way that could very well express in our children and children's children. Conversely, if you're experiencing a life of love and a life of social connected, that's all of a sudden a different set of genes. So these are things that in science we know they exist and common sense would tell us how to manipulate them for our benefit.
- [14:15]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think we are all very well aware and we saw it in the pandemic that stress affects our health and that's the epigenetic factor and all the stress hormones and taking energy away from all the systems that we need to be functioning well, like digesting our food, elimination, detox, all of those things. So I think science is showing all of this and it's what seemed to be woo woo is actually aligning with
- [14:46]
Dan Buettner
wow, wow, wow, wow.
- [14:48]
Kelly Noonan Gores
It's becoming wow, wow.
- [14:50]
Dan Buettner
We just coined that right here, you know. I've spent my life exploring the world, not chasing adrenaline, but meaning. From the blue zones of Costa Rica to the highlands of Sardinia, I've learned that adventure isn't about going further, it's about going deeper. That's why the Defender caught my attention. It's not just built for the toughest roads. It's designed for people with a purpose, A vehicle capable of great things, like the people who drive it. When I'm planning a new expedition or just heading up to my lake place, I want something that feels as durable and capable as the journeys themselves. The Defender, whether the 2 door 90, the the 110, or the 8 seat 130, gives you the confidence to explore wherever your path leads. Because adventure isn't just about conquering the landscape, it's about connecting with it. Explore the defender@landroverusa.com so believe it or not, audio is part of my daily life. For some reason, I wake up every night about three in the morning and I don't know what to do with myself. I don't want to get completely jolted awake. So I put on audible.com and listen to an audiobook. And it's actually many days my favorite part of the day. It helps lull me back to sleep in a way that I have great dreams. And that's just one reason why I love listening to Audible. Audible has an incredible collection of audiobooks, podcasts and original content and has become one of my favorite ways to stay curious and to keep learning. Whether I'm traveling walking or just going about my day or night. In fact, several of my own audiobooks, including the Blue Zones and the Blue Zones of Happiness, are available on Audible. And I love that people can listen to these ideas in a way that actually fits into their real life. Listening on Audible makes it easy to explore new perspectives, revisit ideas that matter, and build simple habits that support long term well being. Kickstart your well being journey with your first audiobook free. When you sign up for a free 30 day trial at audible.com livebetter membership is 14.95amonth. After 30 days, cancel anytime. That's audible.com livebetter because staying curious might just be one of the best longevity practices we have. You talk about emotional release and the toxicity of penting things up. This is tangential to your work, but I remember reading Sarno's work on back pain and he had a strategy that I actually tried and it works somewhat that if you're experiencing pain, the root is often some kind of emotional trauma. It's often anger that you're not letting go. And he has this strategy where you just write down whatever is pissing you off. You write it down, you write it, whatever spouse is being a dick and it's unfair and I lost my job, whatever it is, you write it all out and then let it all, you crumple it up and throw it away. You do that. Day two, same thing, you just purge. Day three, and he's got some real data that shows that pain all kind, especially back pain, but all kinds of pain mitigate when you let it out. You know, I'm from Minnesota originally and we Minnesotans, we keep things in, you know, we're, you know, the outgoing Minnesotan is the one who's looking down at your feet instead of his own. And so we tend to pen things up. But your work really talks about releasing it, right?
- [18:43]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, I literally just was on a another podcast where the host, he was a young kid suffering severe chronic back pain and he was gonna have to get a surgery. He was an athlete and he was just debilitated in later high school years. And surgery seemed to be his only option according to western medicine. And his mom had somehow, some way, the wherewithal to say, look, you're young, you're resilient, let's explore all options before you make the can't turn back surgery decision. And so he stumbled upon, with that intention, he stumbled upon Dr. John Sarno's work and thought it was silly as you might have first reading it. And he Started doing it and he had like severe herniated discs. Bulging, bulging discs. He said within two weeks he had no pain. And so then he kept doing the work and now he has this whole series. And upon hearing that, I was just talking to a dear friend of mine who had the same issues like debilitating back pain, herniated discs. And I'm just like, what a gift from spirit that I get this protocol that I can then forward to my friend.
- [19:51]
Dan Buettner
And by the way, why wouldn't you start with a modality like this as opposed to going to the doctor, which is going to cost you a lot of money and often results in either some pharmaceutical or why not start with this very easy, very non invasive, very free intervention? What, what are some of the other. I mean, if you're experiencing pain, what are some of the modalities that you've stumbled upon or that you found in heal that you think people should use first or should they turn to a book? What, what are your, what are your resources for people?
- [20:25]
Kelly Noonan Gores
There's so many. There's so many. And there's no one size fits all model for healing. So everybody's journey is going to be a little different. This is why I feel like conversations like these are important. So I would say start with knowing that the reason that we don't start with John Sarno's work and we're just listening to our doctor and Mike do the surgery is because we want quick relief. Sometimes this other work takes some discipline and commitment and lifestyle changes. So we want quick relief and convenience. And we have been conditioned as a society to give our power away or
- [20:58]
Dan Buettner
investing give our power away to a
- [21:00]
Kelly Noonan Gores
man in a white coat or a woman in a white coat that has more training than us and specialized training, which is, thank God they did that training and are one resource. But my place to start is really tune in to your body, how you feel. When that practitioner, doctor, expert tells you this information. If it's like stressing you out, you're contracting, you're like, it doesn't feel right to do that surgery, then say, okay, I'm going to. I have time to explore these other options, set the intention that you want these answers. And from my experience, all these synchronicities will start to line up. If you set the intention, if you really tune into your body and don't make the decision out of fear because a doctor tells you that there's no hope or whatever, I would attest that you will stumble upon the trail that you need for your healing. And it could come in the line in the grocery store where you hear someone talk about something and you. Or you hear a podcast or a book flies off the shelf at Barnes and Noble. Whatever it is, you will find your answers if you tune into your body and set the intention.
- [22:05]
Dan Buettner
Well, I'm a terrier on a pant leg. I'm going to ask you in a minute for some specific resources because I really like to do that for my audience. But first, I'll quickly tell you this story. I work for National Geographic, and the fact checkers occupy the corner offices, so I generally haven't written about things that aren't completely underpinned by evidence or some citation. And you're tapping into a deeper well, a well that's sometimes a little bit of amorphous. But I'm here to tell you that I believe in what you're doing. I've had something called a Morton's neuroma, which is essentially a callus on a nerve in my foot. And every time I took a step, it felt like I was stepping on a nail. And I lived in utter misery. And I went to all the podiatrists and they couldn't figure it out. I went to six podiatrists. Finally, I went to a surgeon. And the surgeon said, okay, the answer is we're just gonna go into your foot and cut out the nerve so you'll feel nothing. And all right, it sounds kind of extreme, but the pain's gonna go away fine. So I was all set to do that, and a friend told me, to your point about open your ears to the universe told me about an acupuncturist. And I do not believe that much in acupuncture. It's probably my Minnesota or my training as a journalist, but I figured, well, what the heck? There's no downside to it. And I went three times to this acupuncturist, and this pain that had made my life misery for the better part of a decade has gone away. Gone away. And all I did was lay on a table. Little needles were stuck in me. I sort of drifted off to sleep and got a little massage on my foot in the end, and it's gone.
- [23:44]
Kelly Noonan Gores
How do you not believe in acupuncture after that?
- [23:46]
Dan Buettner
Well, I believe in it now. I believe in it now. But where I'm going with this. So if somebody told me they were in some sort of foot pain, I would say, go to an acupuncture. Very. Yeah. You don't have to listen to the universe. I'm Kind of add. And if you ask me to, you know, check in with my body, it's never going to happen. So besides like John Sarno or an acupuncturist, what are some of the sources that you, you could sort of direct people to start their search for pain
- [24:13]
Kelly Noonan Gores
relief or healing pain relief, chronic conditions. I would start with inflammation. I mean, I would see like a functional or integrative medicine doctor, who knows what labs beyond the conventional system to check for inflammation in the body. They could, you know, then check for food sensitivities. So you can get like your foundational stuff. Right. The, the more inflammation you have in your body, the more pain you're going to have. And it could show up in absolutely a nerve. It could show up as feel like chronic fatigue syndrome. So I would go to a functional or an integrative or a naturopathic doctor. Cause they can see things from a more holistic lens. And then, you know, there's all sorts of. I love for something like chronic pain, you know, yoga, stretching. Big believer in that, getting that flow. You know, starting gently, walking is like so amazing. Bilateral stimulation, again, start simple. You know, acupuncture, you've already mentioned is great. I would say there's all these like, you know, red light therapies now that have, are more accessible. There's so much to do and explore now.
- [25:25]
Dan Buettner
Watch the Heal podcast.
- [25:26]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:27]
Dan Buettner
Well, you, you, there's some really great stories there. I guess just watching that documentary gives people kind of the strength to know you make a little bit of effort, do your own search. You're likely to find. You're not going to, you're not going to find it unless you go out and look for it essentially.
- [25:43]
Kelly Noonan Gores
And Heal was, you know, it served up kind of a platter. And then I just encourage people to follow the rabbit hole of what resonates with them. I mean, Joe Dispenza, he doesn't like to talk about his own personal healing story anymore, but he's now leading these advanced meditation retreats where people are getting their hearts and brains into coherent states. It's like boot camp. The meditation retreat is not relaxing by any sense of the imagination. It's sitting in a chair and like getting beyond yourself and practice. And they've partnered with UCSD and are doing research and they just published another study. Your IGA goes through the roof. You're immune to things like Covid after that intense amount of meditation. And really it's just getting your nervous system and your entire system and your heart and brain in coherence and it releases all this vitality and your chemistry changes. And they have the data to prove it.
- [26:36]
Dan Buettner
Well we have this in blue zones, we have this term called, we call it a downshift, which is a way of taking the focus off of the worry and the hurry of the human condition. I've actually tried this 10 day, I've done it several times, said 10 day silent meditation called Vipassana, that's intense where from 4:30 in the morning till 10 at night you sit cross legged and you focus first three days on the a piece of skin between your lip and your nose and then the next seven days you learn this technique of scanning your entire body. And I've done 10 fairly hardcore expeditions but there's never been an expedition where I learn more about myself, learn more about releasing the things that were wrong about my life. The Buddha's called Dukkha. Increase my own concentration. I think the more you're on social media and so forth, the more scattered you get. But also during this meditation you have these really clear epiphanies that help clarify your role. It gives you ballast for difficult times and it makes day to day decisions really easy when you get clear on what's important to you. And that comes from meditation. I could see where that would very quickly flip over to health. You're not worried about things.
- [27:53]
Kelly Noonan Gores
And 10 day Vipassana is not for the faint of heart. People have full breakdowns sitting and just sitting there, just sitting still for that amount of time, but then just being with yourself and that's like real work.
- [28:07]
Dan Buettner
They tell you the first day you're going to cry on day three and I'm like bullshit, I'm not going to cry. Day three really. And day nine you just, there's things that you don't really, you just push it down and you cover it up with noise and busyness and self importance and, and one thing that meditation does is it takes the cap off and all of a sudden what's been pushed down in your subconscious flows up into your conscious mind. When you're meditating right, you're not ruminating on it but you're observing it. You're watching these things that have been painful come back and you look at it, you say oh pain, pain. And you flip the pain around and you look at it and, and you say hello to it and you look at it some more and then you greet it goodbye. And then some other injustice in your life comes up and you look at it, you flip it around and you greet it and then you say goodbye. And after 10 days of that, you've just released so much of the existential source of pain and trauma in many cases. And I can believe, yeah, this, this sort of thing heals you.
- [29:21]
Kelly Noonan Gores
So that's how a spiritual practice and discipline and traditional culture can put the body in a state where it does what it's designed to do. And that's what I'm so fascinated. Our body knows how to heal itself. It knows how to move this energy and these injustices and these betrayals through the system. But we lock it down because we're uncomfortable. We don't want to feel this shit we don't want to revisit. So we just don't deal with it and it gets trapped in our system. And so we like busy scroll, drink, sex, food, whatever we do to like not feeling. Yeah, that was just last night. I just did a. It wasn't a 10 day Vipassana, but I did four nights and three days in pitch black.
- [30:01]
Dan Buettner
Yeah, tell me about it.
- [30:02]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Darkness. And it's the same experience of being with yourself. Without a to do list, there's nothing to do. You're removing your master sense of sight, which we rely on so much to interpret the world and feel safe or not safe. The first day it was just blissful because.
- [30:20]
Dan Buettner
Paint a picture. Are you going into a cave or. Yeah. What does it look like?
- [30:24]
Kelly Noonan Gores
It's called Sky Caves Retreat and it's in Oregon and it looks like they kind of dig it into the earth. So you're feeling held by the earth and then the darkness like pushes down and it looks like this little gnome, you know, dome, there's rocks and there's a sweet little wooden door. And then you enter in and it stares down to this like anteroom. You enter the door of the second room and that's your cave. But it's just like a room. It's like a modest hotel room. There's a bed in the corner. There's a little tiny little table with a poof that you sit on the floor. That's where your food comes in. There is on the other side, there's like a zero gravity chair you could sit in with a weighted blanket meditation, you know, a sound bowl, a yoga mat and like a foam roller. And then there's a bathtub which was divine because there's nothing else to do. So you take baths and then a toilet, like a bathroom. So you arrive and you have a day and a half to like acclimate and you know, orient to the space. You can have the lights on. First night, slept like a baby. Then the second night they, you know, they give you your food. You still can have the lights on, but once you go to sleep, the lights are off for the next however many 3 days and 4 nights is. Thank God, if I had just gone straight in and straight to the dark, I would have had a panic attack. And they prep you. They're like, your nervous system can react in very strange ways. We've got, you know, big Wall street guys that come here and they're just like, act like little boys, like they're terrified and they just shut down or they get really agitated and fight. Then we have these Buddhist monks that have been meditating for 30 years and they come in here because they're so in their heads and can't drop down into their bodies and feel through. They have a panic attack. So they kind of set you up to not have expectations. They bring you food once a day, which is in the evening. So you have a hot soup and a salad.
- [32:19]
Dan Buettner
So not a lot of food.
- [32:21]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Well, and they give you enough food for the following day. So you put the two hard boiled eggs and chia yogurt in the little cooler. Then there's a peanut butter and jelly salt sandwich. We may have to get the blue zones diet going on in there.
- [32:35]
Dan Buettner
I can help.
- [32:36]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. Although you know, for my inner child, really appreciated the peanut butter and jelly. Anyway, so you just, you have no concept of time except for the two times they check in and they, you just go through this like somatic practice. They check in on how you're doing and then I'm like, oh, I've got this. Like.
- [32:53]
Dan Buettner
Do they tell you what to do with your brain during this time?
- [32:56]
Kelly Noonan Gores
No, they just say do what you're gonna do. Um, they, you know, you're not locked in, you have full agency if you need to leave or light a candle or something. But knowing that kind of helps us calm down. And I got through without needing to do any of that. But like you said in the Vipassana, stuff comes up to be digested. So that was interesting to witness that, to experience it. And then he helps kind of like process it with you. So I was like, oh, I have this kind of rage and anger come up from, you know, some past circumstances that I thought I had dealt with. But it was more of like an intellectual release. And so this is all coming up to be processed, felt and just be with. Like you said, like you're looking at it like this. It's. He guides you through it to like, just like feel with it, feel it and be okay with feeling it rather than judging the anger. And then he got me to discharge the anger through this kind of somatic release exercise. And then we got to what was underneath, which was this like kind of more tender part and to be okay with feeling that. And it was wild because I became.
- [33:59]
Dan Buettner
So this is all self guided or
- [34:01]
Kelly Noonan Gores
he helped me through in the little 20 minute sessions and then once I got that awareness then I could take those practices with me and then new stuff would be revealed. So it was amazing. And I felt like I got a full nervous system reset.
- [34:15]
Dan Buettner
Do you recommend this for? Can we do this at home or in the basement or something?
- [34:20]
Kelly Noonan Gores
You could. I think it's helpful if someone's there to facilitate. But I thought it was extremely helpful. And you know, just the detox of screens to do lists and it's really just reconnecting you with yourself and welcoming all parts and being okay with what you feel and those parts of you. That healing is wholeness. And we like, we reject parts of ourselves and memories and experiences and we feel shame and that's like resistance. And so this is a process and vipassana is the same. It's welcoming all parts of yourselves and in that wholeness and reclamation of yourself, the healing just naturally happens.
- [34:57]
Dan Buettner
The Dan Buettner podcast. We give extra points for vulnerability here. You just went through a big life change and there was some pain attached to it. You feel okay about talking about that?
- [35:09]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Oh yeah, I'm an open book.
- [35:10]
Dan Buettner
Okay. All right. I'm open the book.
- [35:13]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Okay.
- [35:14]
Dan Buettner
So what is it? What's the big life change you're going through right now?
- [35:18]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Well, which one? All of them?
- [35:20]
Dan Buettner
Yeah, the top three.
- [35:21]
Kelly Noonan Gores
The top three. So a year and a half ago we made the decision to end my marriage. A relationship of 14 years. I had never been married before. It was very important relationship in my life. Father of my beautiful daughter. And I truly, truly loved this man. Still love him today. But the marriage was not working and the environment was not working. And so I made the decision to leave and grieved. That was just out of the grief of that. And then my house burned down in the Palisades fire. I giggled just as a defense, you know, I still don't think any of us had fully processed it. It was such a wild thing. Very quickly after it happened, it felt like it was a liberation of just energy. And I had really nice things and I loved my things and I had, you know, heirlooms from my grandma and very Meaningful things. But it's not even a test or challenge. It's like an expansion of capacity. Can you be with something like this and let go and not be attached? I mean, we suffer when we're grasping or pushing and efforting, you know?
- [36:33]
Dan Buettner
Yeah, it's very Buddhist.
- [36:34]
Kelly Noonan Gores
It is very Buddhist. And I take from a lot of different spiritual disciplines, but that's like a huge one, is how can I be okay with not knowing where you're gonna end up? You know what I mean? And many people had a more traumatic experience than me. But for me, it's all relative. Right. It was a real deep, deep exercise in, like, living in the present moment and not needing a house full of shit to feel safe. Isn't that interesting?
- [37:00]
Dan Buettner
You know, one of the most important lessons we learn from the Blue Zone is how to eat to 100. We know exactly what people there have been eating most of their lives. And it's whole food and mostly plant based. But it's not just what they eat, it's how they eat. They cook at home and they cook together. Cooking is never rushed. Someone is chopping vegetables, someone else is stirring a pot, and someone's telling a story you've already heard and nobody seems to mind. That's simple ritual that turns food into connection, and connection is into longevity. At my lake house in Wisconsin, the kitchen is always the center of the house. Friends gather, we cook simple meals. We linger at the table, maybe play a few rounds of cards after dinner. Those evenings do more for my health than any supplement ever could. When I'm traveling, I like knowing my home can still host those moments and give the gift of connection to other families. Hosting my home on Airbnb means other people get a space where cooking isn't an afterthought. It's a reason you come together. Hosting fits naturally into my life. It keeps the heart of the home alive, even when I'm away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host I've written several New York Times bestselling cookbooks on the Blue zones. And the number one question I get is this. What about when I don't have time to cook? That's why I launched Blue Zones Kitchen Ready to Eat Meals. We've now served over 3 million meals made with the same whole food principles I found in the world's longest lived communities. They're maniacally delicious. Find us in your local freezer aisle or@bluezoneskitchen.com Blue Zones eating even on your Busiest days. Nathaniel Hawthorne has this great line about possessions are the saddle that ride mankind. And once you're bucked off that saddle, you don't miss it as much. Yeah, but you know, there's lots of people, there's people listening here right now who are going through divorce or they're going through loss. And I'm just wondering if you're now, I guess, seven year journey, if there's any tools that you've learned along the way that could help others deal with these very human, these very common sources of trauma.
- [39:33]
Kelly Noonan Gores
I just think readings find what resonates. Find the teachings, the spiritual teachings that resonate with you. Things that help you see that there's an intelligence and a loving intelligence that is moving life forward. And I mean, to me, it's just my spiritual philosophy has been affirmed over and over and over. And I was raised Catholic and I love the teachings of Jesus, but I understand the historical power control, you know, situation of organized religion.
- [40:03]
Dan Buettner
You talk about being Catholic. I actually grew up Catholic. I still go to church once in a while. Not enough for my, to make my mother happy. I actually like it. For me, it's a downshift. It's sort of, you know, I'm not terribly Catholic, but I love going once in a while and just turning my brain off and focusing on perhaps a higher power, no matter what it is. And there's some nostalgia involved with it. And I also know from my blue zones research that people who belong to a faith and show up at least four times per month live about four years longer than people who don't. So there's something to it. But I just wonder if when you go on this journey for healing, if you see faith coming up with any regularity when it comes to healing, or is that just for the last generation?
- [40:55]
Kelly Noonan Gores
No, I mean, there's research on prayer, there's research on, you know, again, it's like the faith community. It's all about community. And then I believe it's these subconscious beliefs. So if you believe that you're going to go to heaven again, it dissipates that fear of, of death. There's these underlying principles in religion and faith communities that are really conducive to allowing a little more ease in your life and a little simplicity and this downshift and also service like the selflessness we're here to serve and faith communities really, like my daughter goes to the Catholic school and it's this beautiful engaged community. And we, we teach the kids how important it is to serve others. And one of the most interesting things I stumbled upon in my research. When I was doing heal, I was talking to this woman, Lynn McTaggart, and she studies this like group meditations and group healings. And when you know, eight or more are gathered to put intention and love and send prayer to a person, they can measure it. And Joe Dispenza does this in his work and they're measuring like real healing happening in the person, but not only in the person, it's happening in other people sending and in the prayer.
- [42:17]
Dan Buettner
Wow.
- [42:18]
Kelly Noonan Gores
So, you know, maybe that's the four years of extra life. It's like that real service, community, love, foundational communities that are really conducive to healing.
- [42:29]
Dan Buettner
You know, I thought about it and I don't know for sure, but you think of a committed churchgoer or temple goer or Moscow or. I don't think it matters what your faith is. It's number one, you have a community. Number two, you're less likely to get involved in risky behaviors that'll foreshorten your life. You know, whether it's ten commandments or the Quran, they all don't steal, don't lie, don't kill. A downshifting. When you participate, if you're doing what you're supposed to, you're focusing on a God, whatever definition that is, or you're not supposed to be thinking about working. And then, and we don't know this, there may be a God and if you pray to the God and ask for help, that maybe it works. We don't know for sure. It sounds antiquated, but nobody knows. And it's about stacking the deck in favor.
- [43:21]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yes.
- [43:21]
Dan Buettner
You're just more likely to get healthy. Very simple idea that's in every neighborhood. Show up to church or show up to temple or show up to mosque. It's been around for 6,000 years for a reason.
- [43:35]
Kelly Noonan Gores
And, and they're miracle minded communities.
- [43:37]
Dan Buettner
That's true too.
- [43:38]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yes. You're opening yourself up to more possibilities and, and there's countless stories throughout time of miracles happening. So like, I don't know, I like to play in that world.
- [43:49]
Dan Buettner
It's a good world to play in.
- [43:51]
Kelly Noonan Gores
And do we, can we prove it in science right here, right now, that, that when we exit our body, we go to this beautiful, we go towards the light and we feel this like love that passes human understanding. No, we can't prove it right now in this moment. But what's the alternative? You think you're just like it ends or we have that experience that so many people have had and came back.
- [44:11]
Dan Buettner
I'm very rational about this and I have a very clear cut answer. There's a 50, 50 chance because nobody knows for sure if we go on to something else or that we stop existing and become worm food.
- [44:24]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. So which camp do you want to explore and dwell on?
- [44:27]
Dan Buettner
You know, optimism is always better than pessimism. I'm going for the light.
- [44:31]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah, me too.
- [44:32]
Dan Buettner
Ye. You found nine key factors present with all radical remission survivors. So I think you talked to a lot of people who suffered from cancer and pulled out of it or at least temporarily. What were some of the common denominators?
- [44:49]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. So this is actually, I'm gonna give credit to Dr. Kelly Turner, who she was doing her dissertation for PhD and she was studying cancer specifically. And she started stumbling upon these spontaneous healings and radical remissions. And she's like, why is nobody studying these? So she made it her work to study. And she studied like 1500 cases of people that had terminal cancer that were sent home to die because conventional medicine failed, had failed, or they exhausted all options. They didn't know what to do. So they said gather your things in order and go live the rest of the life that you have. Which is probably not that long. And she just kept finding these stories. And so in her research at the time I made the documentary, there was nine key factors of healing. Since then, she went back through her research and added movement. So let's call it 10. Only three of those were physical and the rest were mental and emotional and spiritual. And all of the people that healed cancer when they told, they were told it was not possible. Did these aversion of these things. So to me, her research was for cancer. But I would apply that to all chronic conditions.
- [45:59]
Dan Buettner
Radically changing your diet. Eliminating sugar, meat, dairy and refined foods. That's very blue zones. Using herbs and supplements. Maybe you know what those are taking control of your health. Which is exactly what you're saying. That don't give all the power to the guy in the white coat. Becoming an active participant in your decision, following your intuition. Exactly what you said at the beginning of this interview. Releasing suppressed emotion. I have another question about that. So placeholder there. Increasing positive emotions. I imagine laughing and smiling in gratitude. Embracing social support. So relying on your friends, deepening your spiritual connection and having a strong reason for living. So sense of purpose. So those are very powerful. They overlap a lot with blue zones.
- [46:49]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. There's research so much data to show that like social cancer support groups and social support groups and human connection increases Outcomes by At minimum, 50%. Your intuition. I have countless stories of. Just listen to my podcast of people who. Doctors, they said, something is wrong with me. I know something is wrong with me. And. And they would go to the doctor over and over and they said, all your tests and labs are fine and normal. And were it not for these people listening to their intuition and just demanding, taking control of their health and saying, I'm not leaving until you give me the scan. It saved my friend Stacy's life. They found out she had stage three ovarian cancer. She is now like seven years later, totally cancer free. And she's like a poster child. But she demanded. She did not leave the ER until they gave her the scan. And then, oh, shoot, we missed it, you know, and then they found it. So listen to your intuition and just like take control of your health, I think are the two most important. And it's on you. They don't have the time to support you in all of your nuances of your history. So you, like, go to the specialist, but do your research.
- [47:58]
Dan Buettner
I love it. And these other eight things, first of all, they're free, they're time honored. They give you a place to go with each of these nine, you can do a deep dive and it costs you nothing.
- [48:12]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Yeah. And pay attention to and increasing positive emotions. Like so many of us, we forget what lit us up as a child, what we love to do, and we, like, maybe took the path. I interviewed this brilliant, brilliant man in Heal named Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, and he figured out he could find your exact tone or musical note or that would drop your specific nervous system into parasympathetic response so that you could actually heal. It's brilliant. So he's a neuroacoustic wizard. But I asked him one question in the interview and he spoke for two hours and ended the interview with Schrodinger's cat. Quantum physics, like theory. And I was like, what? What is happening? My mind just exploded. But he said something very profound. He said, there comes a fork in the road in your life where you make a decision to go left, to do what parents and society will have you do to get security. Maybe you become a doctor or whatever that is, or you go right and you follow your dreams, desires and passions. If you take the left, if you take the should avenue, that's when dis ease begins. So what I find is a lot of times people get cancer and they have to pull out of their lives and have this opportunity to reevaluate, and they don't have the luxury of maintaining a job or relationship that is not healthy for them anymore. They literally have to face it and go, I can't afford that stress or I can't afford that toxicity anymore. 100% of the people that have gone through cancer successfully and healed, none of them would wish it on their worst enemy or want to do it again, but they all look at it as a massive gift and a wake up call to get them back on that right road of alignment with their dreams and desires.
- [50:01]
Dan Buettner
Yeah.
- [50:03]
Kelly Noonan Gores
So follow your intuition. And also that's like follow what lights you up and makes you feel expansive. That is life force energy, that's vitality. And to do those things generates that in your system. And it's really hard to get sick when you're in that state a lot.
- [50:19]
Dan Buettner
I love it. And of course the challenge is to keep that front of mind on a day to day basis.
- [50:25]
Kelly Noonan Gores
It's very challenging. I preached to stuff and then like you talked to me last Wednesday and I was like, you know, and I
- [50:31]
Dan Buettner
know you spent an hour muscling through LA traffic to get here, but all
- [50:36]
Kelly Noonan Gores
you had to say was, don't allow the stress hormones. I was like, okay, if he's not stressing, I don't need.
- [50:41]
Dan Buettner
That's right, we're all fine here. So you point out that emotional toxicity is one of the big problems in everyday life. If we don't pay attention to that, it's gonna make you sick. What's one emotional release technique that you recommend?
- [50:56]
Hassan Minhaj
Oof.
- [50:57]
Kelly Noonan Gores
For me it's just screaming in my car.
- [51:00]
Dan Buettner
I love it.
- [51:01]
Kelly Noonan Gores
I'll come home. And it doesn't happen very often. Maybe like once quarterly, where just the everything bubbles up and I'm just like, but I have to get it, I have to discharge it. Like, I used to run a lot and when I run, I felt like I could burn through some emotion. And then you release endorphins and then you feel better. But that's kind of surface level discharge. Yeah. So I recommend. Or what I've been exposed to and been playing with is this somatic healing and somatic release. So you kind of, whether it's looking on YouTube or finding a practitioner, really helpful to learn how to somatically, like experience your body. So I'm not a trained practitioner.
- [51:41]
Dan Buettner
What does somatic mean?
- [51:42]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Somatic means like of the body, soma, to feel in the body. So for real healing to happen, it's like it's kind of the same ratio of the subconscious mind versus the conscious mind. Like the conscious mind is like 5% of the power, like 95% of our decisions and our processes is all going on subconsciously. So we need to drop into the subconscious to have any real. And that was part of, like in the cave. This is just an example of a somatic experiencing and an emotional release. So I was feeling rage. He said, think back to this circumstance. And there was a group of people. I will not name names, but you know who you are, and I would think of it. And he said, where is it showing up in your body? And I said. He said, what happens in your body when you think of these people in the circumstance? And I said, my jaw kind of juts forward, like. And so my jaw gets tight, juts forward, and then I feel this kind of burning fireball in my solar plexus. And he said, okay, so think like, put your attention on those parts and then push your hands together at your chest as hard as you can and pull all the energy from your jaw and your solar plexus through your arms and through your hands and just push it out. So it's like bringing the energy through. And then put voice, put words to what you're feeling. So you're moving the energy through your arms like muscle. And then I. You put words like give. Give your anger a voice. And so, you know, I said the words that I needed to say. Maybe some expletives in there, but it was amazing. I mean, the, the, the. The. It felt like a voice from the underworld, what came out of me. So to put that vibration through your language and the, the energy through your palms that just discharged a ton of energy. So I did that a few more times, even when he wasn't there. And it was just so therapeutic. That's one of the thousand examples.
- [53:37]
Dan Buettner
But they'll scream in your car or go in a dark room and give voice to your anger. I like those two.
- [53:43]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Some people dance, some people like, you know, it's saying there's so many things, but it's about moving your body. It's about cultivating awareness and to know where these things are trapped in your body and then putting usually voice and movement to them. Sound and movement.
- [54:02]
Dan Buettner
Well, Kelly, you have a. A great podcast, which I also think is a great source of looking for modalities to heal. You want to tell us a little bit about your podcast?
- [54:14]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's called Heal with Kelly. Not any guarantees that you're going to Heal With Kelly, but my whole shtick is that I am a seeker. I will try anything. I've jumped out Of a plane over the Swiss Alps. I've sat in a cave again. Just the more we can cultivate what feels right in our system and our intuition, that's usually never gonna let us lead us astray. So really tune in to your body. We'll never lie. The kind of formula for heal that worked really well was bring in experts from all different backgrounds, Whether they're spiritual teachers, scientists, doctors. They were all saying the same thing in different ways. And so that kind of became kind of my truth and my belief system. And then I would show people real examples of people defying the odds and healing or going through something, and, you know, people would watch it and have that felt experience and like, okay, if it's possible for them, it's possible for me. So I'm trying to, like, open the aperture on things like cancer, where we've kind of associated it and collapsed it with a death sentence. That's why there's so much fear when we get a diagnosis. But the more on this side, we can show examples of healing, that kind of dissolves that, like, really solid fear thing, because it's like, okay, put a number on it.
- [55:32]
Dan Buettner
Yeah, three years to live.
- [55:34]
Kelly Noonan Gores
No, it's terrible. So I like to give people examples of hope and possibility, because what's possible for one is possible for all, I believe. And there's always things to learn and explore. And I feel like people that are searching, they set that intention, and then maybe someone has a podcast to share with them.
- [55:51]
Dan Buettner
That's great. You feel like you're not alone. So many people go through these same fears and these same diagnoses, and they can tune in with you. They get the latest information, feel like they're not alone, and sort of join you on your journey of seeking. Yeah, you're doing a great service.
- [56:11]
Kelly Noonan Gores
Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for having me on.