The #1 Thing Impacting Your Sleep More Than You Know & How To Overcome It

Summary

Podcast Summary:

The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes
Episode: The #1 Thing Impacting Your Sleep More Than You Know & How To Overcome It
Date: August 25, 2025
Guest: Dr. Baland Jalal, neuroscientist and leading sleep paralysis researcher

---

Episode Overview

Lewis Howes hosts Dr. Baland Jalal, a prominent neuroscientist, Harvard researcher, and expert in sleep disorders, to explore the mysterious world of sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and the impact of sleep on our mental health, creativity, and overall potential. Dr. Jalal shares both groundbreaking science and practical techniques to transform frightening sleep experiences into opportunities for healing, creativity, and deeper self-understanding. The conversation delves into cultural, neurological, and psychological dimensions of sleep, dreams, trauma, and effective approaches to nurture both brain health and resilience.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

What is Sleep Paralysis?

[04:53 – 10:48]

• Definition and Experience:

  • Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon where your brain wakes up from REM sleep while your body remains immobilized.
  • People often experience a terrifying sensation of being awake but unable to move or speak, sometimes accompanied by vivid dreams or hallucinations (often of ghosts, demons, or a threatening presence).

  “Sleep paralysis is basically you lying flat on your bed, opening your eyes, you can scan the room, yet you're paralyzed from head to toe.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [05:31]

  • Dr. Jalal recounts his first encounter after high school, describing a real-feeling evil presence and sensation of being choked, which inspired his career in neuroscience.

• Biological Mechanisms:

  • The brain’s “CEO”—the prefrontal cortex—partially wakes up, creating a blend of dream and waking reality.
  • During normal REM sleep, the brainstem paralyzes the body to prevent acting out dreams.
  • Sleep paralysis happens when wakefulness and REM “clash,” leading to conscious awareness while the body remains locked.

Cultural Perceptions and Their Impact

[14:24 – 24:18]

• Cultural Interpretations:

  • Beliefs about sleep paralysis dramatically shape the experience (examples from Egypt vs. Denmark).
  • In Egypt, cultural beliefs in evil entities (e.g., genies) make the event more fearful, prolonged, and frequent compared to the more clinical Danish view.

  “We found that this cultural idea for what sleep paralysis means trickled into... amplifying the whole experience.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [16:07]

• Psychological Effects and Trauma:

  • Fear and anxiety before sleep (“nocturnal arousal”) increase risk, and recurrent cultural narratives can make episodes chronic, leading to sleep avoidance, PTSD-like symptoms, and anxiety.

• The “Little Lisa” Story:

  • Illustrates how stories and cultural conditioning predispose individuals to particular forms of sleep paralysis, shaping even the hallucinated content of the episode.

Turning Sleep Paralysis Into Transformation

[32:29 – 39:46]

• Meditation-Based Therapy:

  • Dr. Jalal shares a four-step approach for handling sleep paralysis:
    1. Cognitive Reappraisal: Mentally shift the narrative: “This is just sleep paralysis. It’s not dangerous.”
    2. Emotional & Psychological Distancing: Create space from fear; don’t get absorbed in the experience.
    3. Focused Meditation on Positive Memories: Channel attention toward a joyful image (e.g., a loved one).
    4. Muscle Relaxation & Acceptance: Do not struggle or attempt to move; relax and allow the episode to pass.

  “Not only are you redirecting your attention away from monsters... you are shifting the emotional core of the brain to something positive.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [35:34]

  • Pilot studies showed a 50% reduction in sleep paralysis using this method.

• Personal Practice:

  • Lewis shares his own success by consciously relaxing and “riding the wave” of paralysis, which helped end his recurring episodes.

  “Instead of living in fear around it... I just said, okay, this is happening. Let me relax.”
  — Lewis Howes [39:00]

Neuroscience of Self-Image, Trauma, and Healing

[45:49 – 65:42]

• Epigenetics & Generational Trauma:

  • Trauma endured by parents/grandparents can be passed on via epigenetics, affecting stress responses in future generations.
  • Importance of “breaking the cycle” by cultivating self-awareness and resilience.

  “It's not our fault, but it is our responsibility to start to notice it and create awareness and say, how can I be the one to break the generational trauma?”
  — Lewis Howes [56:42]

• Neuroplasticity & Brain Change:

  • The brain remains malleable throughout life; new experiences and focused attention are vital for fostering neuroplasticity.
  • Novelty, healthy routines, and focused engagement stimulate brain growth.

• Advice for Parents:

  • Top three neuroscience-informed parenting tips:
    1. Give affection, physical touch, and loving attention.
    2. Stimulate curiosity and social, intellectual, and emotional development—away from screens.
    3. Encourage physical activity, play, and intellectual passion.

  “Affection, stimulation, and physical activity. The more you use it, the better you become.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [60:37–65:42]

---

Lucid Dreaming, Premonitions & the Spiritual Dimension

[67:56 – 78:13]

• Lucid Dreaming Explained:

  • Occurs when the self-aware prefrontal cortex “wakes up” during REM, allowing awareness and sometimes control within a dream.
  • Lucid dreams are more vivid, can be trained, and may involve scenarios like flying or creative problem-solving.

• Premonitory Dreams:

  • Both guest and host discuss the phenomenon of predictive or prophetic dreams and their prevalence across cultures.
  • Science cannot prove such experiences, but they are meaningful and real to those who experience them.

  “You can’t deny them their subjective truth. There’s nothing in science that can negate the fact that you can have these kinds of dreams.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [77:51]

• Dreams’ Meaning and Environmental Influence:

  • Current life events, emotions, and even external stimuli (like cold air or noises) can shape dream content and narrative.
  • Daytime focus or intention (e.g., “I want to dream about flying”) can be “incubated” into dreams.

• Why Some Remember, Others Don’t:

  • More creative individuals often recall dreams better.
  • Fragmented sleep or waking up during REM (e.g., after drinking water before bed) increases recall.

---

Essential Brain Health Habits

[84:58 – 88:01]

• Reduce chronic stress and avoid excess cortisol.

• Prioritize sleep, especially deep sleep, for memory, immunity, and physical restoration.

• Exercise regularly (cardio and strength).

• Maintain meaningful social connections.

• Practice gratitude and avoid isolation.

  “We weren't, we didn't come about to be alone... Go out and meet people, connect with your family.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [87:31]

---

Social Media and Dopamine Addiction

[88:03 – 93:12]

• Social media often leads to unhealthy social comparison, anxiety, and depression.
• Platforms are intentionally designed for addiction—the “addicted brain” craves dopamine from one source, increasing emotional volatility.
• Some individuals are genetically predisposed to addictive behavior; self-awareness & moderation are key.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cultural Beliefs Shaping Brain Experience:
  “The cultural story can trickle into the actual fabric of the experience—you see and feel exactly what you were taught to expect.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [18:41]

• On Breaking Cycles of Trauma:
  “It's not our fault, but it is our responsibility... to break the generational trauma if we choose to live a better life.”
  — Lewis Howes [56:42]

• On Practical Therapy:
  “Redirect your attention to something positive... bias the visual parts of the brain to see the world differently.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [35:34]

• On the Limits of Science and Subjective Experience:
  “Who can deny you of your subjective experience? People have had this all over the world.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [75:47]

• On Achieving Greatness:
  “It’s showing up week after week, putting your heart and brain into it, following your passion and being authentically yourself.”
  — Dr. Baland Jalal [98:59]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Topic | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |-----------------------------------------------------|-----------------------| | Defining Sleep Paralysis & Personal Experience | 04:53 – 10:48 | | Cultural Impact & Trauma | 14:24 – 24:18 | | 4-Step Therapy for Sleep Paralysis | 32:29 – 39:46 | | Epigenetics, Trauma, and Self-Identity | 45:49 – 56:42 | | Neuroplasticity & Parenting Advice | 56:43 – 65:42 | | Lucid Dreaming & Premonitions | 67:56 – 78:13 | | Sleep, Dream Meaning, and Brain Health | 84:58 – 88:01 | | Social Media & Dopamine Addiction | 88:03 – 93:12 | | Dr. Jalal’s Personal Story & Motives | 95:54 – 97:16 | | Definition of Greatness | 98:59 |

---

Conclusion

This deeply insightful episode blends hard neuroscience with heartfelt wisdom about trauma, culture, and personal growth. Dr. Jalal’s blend of scientific expertise and lived experience brings new clarity to sleep paralysis and the brain’s potential for healing and transformation. The discussion underscores the power of changing our perception, building healthy routines, and seeking connection—both in sleep and in waking life—to unlock greater harmony and greatness.

Transcript

[Lewis Howes]

There is one main thing that is blocking you from reaching your full potential.

And it's all because you're trying to do everything alone. And that's a big problem because real.

Growth happens when you build a community.

When you're in a room full of people who want to see you thrive, who support you becoming your best self. And if that's something you're looking for, then make sure to join me at.

The Summit of Greatness live at the iconic Dolby Theatre in in Los Angeles.

Down in Hollywood, September 12th and 13th. Because this year is a powerful lineup.

Of incredible speakers and performers like gabby Bernstein, like Dr. Tara Swart, like Brenda.

Bouchard, Amy Purdy, and so many more inspiring surprise guests.

You'll experience a couple days of transformation.

And inspiration and deep connection with a community that actually gets you and wants to see you thrive. Tickets are selling fast, so go to.

Lewishouse.Com tickets right now to get your.

Seats, bring your friends and family and I can't wait to see you there at the summit of Greatness very soon.

If you have ever experienced some crazy dreams or sleep paralysis or you just struggle at night with really finding the peace and harmony that you're looking for, this episode is going to be extremely powerful because we have Dr. Balan Jalal on this episode who is a neuroscientist and Harvard researcher and one of the leading experts on sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming. He shares the cutting edge science behind sleep paralysis, dream states and consciousness, and how these unusual experiences can actually become a gateway for healing, creativity and deeper self awareness. We talk about what sleep paralysis is and why it happens to more people than you think. How the brain wakes up while the body stays frozen during REM sleep, and why terrifying nightmare visions during sleep paralysis are actually biological. Talk about how to turn sleep paralysis into a tool for lucid dreaming and transformation.

That and so much more. The connection between high performers, creativity and deep quality sleep.

This is a powerful one. And for me, you know that I'm always looking for the latest research, neuroscience tools to support myself and to support you into living a more harmonious, healthier, holistic life. So where we can feel like we're living our best lives, that we can feel like we're not missing out on something. Like we can feel like we're getting the most out of of our potential, that we're connected to the world in deeper, more meaningful way, that we're connected to people in our lives in a better and a healthier way and that we're doing the best we can to.

Set our future selves up for success. So I'm very excited about this episode. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please share it with a few friends. Just text a couple friends and post.

About it on social media. Make sure to tag me as well and leave a review over on Apple.

Or Spotify while while you're listening to.

Let me know what you enjoy most about this episode.

And without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Introducing the new Dell AI PC. Powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor, it helps do your busy work for you so you can fast forward through editing images, designing presentations, generating code, debugging code, summarizing meeting notes, finding files, managing your schedule, responding to Nicole's long emails, leaving all the time in the world for the things you actually want to do. No offense Nicole. Get a New Dell AI [e-mail] AI PC how those Ahead Stay Ahead Cash.

[OnDeck/Capella University Advertiser]

Flow Crunch OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $100,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. [e-mail] funds could be available as soon as tomorrow, depending on certain loan attributes. Your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amounts subject to lender approval at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn [e-mail] one of the things that.

[Lewis Howes]

You talk about is understanding dreams, lucid dreaming, and sleep paralysis. And I have experienced sleep paralysis maybe a handful of times in my life, and I think I understand what it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the part where you wake up and you can't speak, you can't move, and you feel like you're screaming. At least for me. It's like I feel like I'm screaming, but I can't move my body, but my eyes are open. Sometimes my eyes are not open, but I know I'm awake trying to move, and it's like you're paralyzed Would that describe sleep paralysis?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yes, it would. I mean, sleep paralysis is basically you lying flat on your bed, you know, opening your eyes so your eyelids are, you know, working.

[Lewis Howes]

You're awake.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

You're awake, right? Or you're partially awake, so to speak. And you can scan the room, yet you're paralyzed from head to toe. So you have the paralysis.

[Lewis Howes]

It's terrifying.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's terrifying.

[Lewis Howes]

Is it? How many times have you had experienced it?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I've had. Many times. Many times I've had it over, yeah. Maybe 50, 60 times.

[Lewis Howes]

50, 60 times?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I would say so, yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

What was the first time you experienced sleep paralysis?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Well, the first time, I would say the most crazy time that I had. It was kind of. I was. I was straight out of high school. I grew up in Copenhagen, in, like, a ghetto area in Copenhagen. And I was. I was sleeping on bed one morning, and I suddenly had this feeling that some monstrous creature was in the bed. So I was. I was kind of sleeping, but I felt awake. And then at this point, I realized, actually paralyzed from head to toe, I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't. And this feeling got stronger and stronger with each second. So I just felt like, what's going on? What's happening? There's this ominous presence in the room. And the creature got sort of closer and closer until it was on my chest, you know, strangling me, pressing on my chest. And I saw my legs flying up and down. And it was this crazy experience. And I didn't actually see the ghost at this point. I could just feel its presence.

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So it's very common to actually feel like there's a ghost. So it's like a sense presence, but no actually visible ghost being in the room. So that's one sort of manifestation of sleep paralysis. So I felt the ghost there. The next day I woke up, I said, what do I do? Do I tell my parents about this? Do I go tell them, like, that ghost was in my room that's trying to choke me and kill me, you know?

[Lewis Howes]

So you were dreaming still you weren't awake?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I was. You could say that I was partially awake.

[Lewis Howes]

Were your eyes open or.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

No, My eyes were open. My eyes were open. So during sleep paralysis, this is important to sort of add is the brain is sort of partially, partially awake. You can say that in the brain you have a structure called the prefrontal cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, the prefrontal. So the outer layer has six layers. It's sort of six layers deep. And in this part is the CEO of the brain. It's the part of the brain that's active when you're awake.

[Lewis Howes]

The captain of the ship.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's the CEO, the head office, the captain. So this part of the brain turns on partially during sleep paralysis. So when you are in REM sleep, dreaming. Right. So you are in rem, which is the stage of sleep where you have vivid, lifelike, crisp dreams. This part of the brain, the CEO turns off, it sort of goes into hibernation. When you are in sleep paralysis, it partially turns on. So it's sort of wakefulness clashing with the dream world. And we could go deeper into that, how it actually emerges out of REM sleep. Because that's really interesting, how sleep paralysis actually comes out of the dreaming world and sort of hits you like that. That's, I think, quite fascinating. But so this happened to me, and I was. So I woke up and I was like, do I go to my parents? It was crazy because that was sort of the black sheep in the family. And I felt like if I go tell them about the monsters and all that, it wouldn't. It wouldn't look good. So do I Google this? This was like, you know, 20 years ago. So what do I, you know, do I go tell my parents? How do I. How do I deal with this? So the way I, you know, I was trying to figure out what it is, and. And eventually it got me to the library, reading about, you know, REM sleep dreams and all that. And actually this experience was the. The catalyst for me to go and study sleep paralysis around the world. Yeah. So this really triggered it.

[Lewis Howes]

So what did you find? I mean, what was your answer? I guess after Studying this for 20 years and researching it from this sleep paralysis, demonic event that you experienced, what was the answer to it?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So the answer. That's a big question. So we go straight into the deep questions. I would say, for me, what was intriguing about this experience was the fact that I had a sense of a creature, an evil being that felt so real. It was as real as this conversation you and I are having right now has that realness to it. So this really got. This took me aback, the fact that it was so real.

[Lewis Howes]

Was it real?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It felt real. And a lot of people will say it's real. They will say it's ghosts, it's demons, it's space aliens. So there's all these cultural ideas around the world for what sleep paralysis is. And for me to answer you what sleep paralysis is, actually, I Cannot even give you a full answer today, even though I, I've studied this in about six, seven countries. I can't tell you for sure. Sleep paralysis is this and that. Well, we can say the fact that, well, sleep paralysis, the actual paralysis is in the lower part of the brain called. There's a region called the brain stem. It's composed of regions called the pons and the medulla. For the technical folks, the ponsa medulla. When you are in REM sleep, it sends signals down the spinal cord to paralyze you during REM sleep. And this is important because you don't want to act out your dream and hurt yourself, right?

[Lewis Howes]

So you're almost paralyzed when you sleep anyways.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So you are paralyzed during REM sleep.

[Lewis Howes]

Because you're not moving.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

You're not moving. So you are paralyzed during REM sleep.

[Lewis Howes]

But you're not awake aware of it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

You're not aware of it, right? And the reason for this paralysis is very, is very simple. The brain is clever. It says, look, I'm dreaming about, you know, these. I'm on the moon, having tea with the Queen of England and I'm jumping out of airplanes, jumping out of airplanes. And I'm, you know, doing all this crazy stuff. I don't want you to, I don't want baland. I don't want Louis to act out these dreams that hurt himself. So I'm going to paralyze his entire body. This is a clever trick for survival. You don't want to hurt your sleeping partner either, right? So you have this complete lockdown of the body. It's sort of a physiological straight jacket of sorts. So it's very clever. So you have that during REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. Now your eyes, of course, are moving side to side. And that has to do with the fact that there's a different circuit in the brain for eye movements, but that circuit for paralysis is different. That's the brain stem, that's the lower part of the brain. So the CEO is up here, which is involved in higher order thinking, rational thought, you know, captain of the ship. And then you have the lower part of the brain that, that is involving things like paralyzing your, wow, physical body. So you par. So you paralyzed from head to toe during sleep paralysis. Now what actually happens during sleep paralysis is the following, Louis. During wakefulness, when you actually wake up, you have a little structure in the brain called the Lucas coeruleus. Again, a technical name for the technical folks. It sends out a chemical that's called noradrenaline it's the chemical cousin of adrenaline. So you have adrenaline in the body. When you're doing a handball, then sports and all that, you have adrenaline. You feel agitated and, you know, you feel excited. But when you. In the brain, you have noradrenaline, you have some noradrenaline in the. In the body as well. But mainly noradrenaline keeps you sharp, keeps you focused, keeps you alert. So when I'm walking about in Hollywood here, and I. And I'm. A car is coming towards me and I feel stressed out, I have a lot of noradrenaline. Now when you wake up. So during REM sleep, during this stage of sleep, when you're dreaming, no adrenaline is shut off. You have no noradrenaline. And that's why the world is so spacey. That's why things are not really sharp and focused, but everything is sort of all over the place. That has to do with the fact that no adrenaline is shut off. It makes things open. It opens the gates of exploration. Right now, when sleep paralysis strikes, what happens is that you sort of wake up and then you have no adrenaline, you know, flooding the system prematurely. So you start waking up and tickling the CEO so it becomes partially awake, but you're still stuck in the paralysis phase of sleep.

[Lewis Howes]

The backside of the brain that's controlling the paralysis still is still holding on.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's holding on. It's almost like a clash of wakefulness and dream and the dream world. They're sort of clashing in this weird world where these two.

[Lewis Howes]

That's so interesting because it's only happened a handful of times for me, but every time it happens, it feels like. I don't know what the feeling is for me. Almost like you. It's almost like you're suffocating, and you feel like it's going to last forever. You're like, I can't move. And what if this is stuck forever like this?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right?

[Lewis Howes]

And I'm paralyzed forever.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And it probably only lasts like five to ten seconds, but it feels like five hours of, like, wake up. You know, you feel like you're screaming, exactly. Wake me up. But nothing's coming out.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Nothing coming out. Yeah. Well, the same thing for me. I mean, the times that I've had it. The first time I thought, I'm gonna die, I was sure. So I thought, I'm sure I'm gonna die. And it felt like an eternity. And that's when we interview people around the world, they will say, like, it feels like it lasts for hours, and.

[Lewis Howes]

It Might be seconds, right?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It might be seconds. And in fact, it turns out when you sort of compare cultures where there are certain cultural ideas for it. So I've done research in Egypt, for example, done it in Egypt. And people would say it's the evil genius, like of a Latin, you know, comes out of a lamb. And they can kill you. But it's not the good ones, like.

[Lewis Howes]

The good robins not granting you wishes.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's not Robin Williams, right? It's the evil big, you know, terrifying ones, right, that want to control you, want to control you and kill you and all that. So in Egypt, they will say it's the genies of Aladdin. They will kill you, potentially terrorize you, do all kinds of horrible things to you. And it turns out when you have this cultural idea, it can change the way it sort of unfolds. So one study, we did, we did one study in Egypt and compared that to sleep paralysis in Denmark, my home country. In my home country in Denmark, people will say it's just the brain, it's distress, it's just physiology. There's no spirituality there at all. And so in our study, we had deep in depth interview asking people, what do you think sleep paralysis does to you? How do you think it can affect you? Can it kill you? Can you die from this? Is there a monster? What's the name of the monster? And invariably we found that in Egypt, people will say it's the genies, they can kill you. They could do all these horrible things.

[Lewis Howes]

To you, cast spells on you or something like that.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Spells on you. And so just the whole idea was crazy. But then more than that, we found that this cultural idea for what sleep paralysis means trickled into sort of a, what you'd call a salience of an experience becoming amplified, the whole experience becoming much more real, in a sense. So they would say it lasts much longer. So the experience was amplified in this way in Egypt. In Egypt, exactly. In Egypt versus in Denmark, it's just like a few seconds. It's nothing. It's just like. It's just over like this, right?

[Lewis Howes]

So it's almost their perception of what it is.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Their perception shifts completely. Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Based on the meaning they give it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Based on the meaning, based on that.

[Lewis Howes]

It's a religious, spiritual, demonic undertone.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

And through thousands of years of cultural imprints, then it's like, oh, we believe this to be true based on our history, based on religion. Religion or spiritual beliefs. Whereas in Denmark or other cultures like Denmark without that history, it's just, oh, it's Just a defect in the brain that happens every once in a while and you just move on or something.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Absolutely. That is. That is exactly correct.

[Lewis Howes]

There's less emphasis of the power it has. Right, Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

This is very true. And then they would say, not only that, we fear it much more to the extent that this is the Egyptian speaking, we can die from this. It's potentially fatal. Right. And then they would say the paralysis is. So we say it's much more. Oh, it's much more frequent as well. So this is it. So it's. First of all, it's much more fearful to the point it can be fatal. The paralysis lasts much longer, but also it's much more frequent in them. In other words, if you are an experiencer in Egypt who has sleep paralysis, it occurs three times more than a Danish experience. And I'll tell you why we think this is the case. I'll give you this anecdote here. Actually, it's sort of a fictitious story about a girl I call Little Lisa. She lives on this fictitious island. And on this fictitious island, her grandmother will tell her about these monsters that come at night. They will kill you potentially. They can do all kind of sexual molestation to you, by the way, sexual molestation is. It's common, the idea of feeling like you're being raped during the experience as well. And the grandmother will tell little Lisa the monster looks like this and that it has these features. Be careful when you go to sleep. And mind you, little Lisa has never had sleep paralysis before.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, man.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Now little Lisa, completely unexperienced, no sleep paralysis ever goes to bed. And lo and behold, she has sleep paralysis the first time in her life. Not only that, the monster looks exactly like the grandmother was telling her. So it has all the features, all the characteristics, you know, the long fangs, everything, all the. All the traits, right? Freddy Krueger, like monster is appearing.

[Lewis Howes]

The boogeyman.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

The boogeyman. Next day, she wakes up, she's anxious, terrified. She has it again three days later, she has it again. A week later, she has it again a month, it becomes chronic all of a sudden. And, you know, and she. And she start developing PTSD and anxiety trauma from, you know, trauma as well, and tells her friends about it who start having this too. Now, Luis might be asking, what's going on? What's happening? Why would this have this effect? And it turns out when you have sleep, when you are fearful, first of all, so Little Lisa, she had anxiety and fear when she went to bed. And that will cause her to have what's called nocturnal arousal, meaning it's a fancy name for in the brain, you have a structure called the limbic structure, limbic center tucked behind your ears. That's the emotional part of the brain when you go to bed and you have a lot of emotion and emotionality tickling and, you know, titillating other parts of the brain, especially the CEO, the cortex, that can lead it to become prematurely aroused and wake you up during REM stage of sleep. So it's almost like a priming effect. So little Lisa was primed. Next she will have what's called a self conformatory behavior, Meaning she's lying there and she goes, is there any monster holding me down? Is anything holding me and squeezing me like my grandmother was telling me?

[Lewis Howes]

And she's sort of living in fear.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

She's living in fear and kind of self monitoring, right? In this way. And then obviously, if she does this in REM sleep and tries to move, what will she encounter? Paralysis, right? And it would feel like something's actually holding her down and. And she start to wake herself up. So that's step number two. Now she's paralyzed and she's waking herself up. Here comes the third part now, because sleep paralysis emerges out of REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, it's obviously a REM dream phenomenon, meaning the REM part of the brain can trickle into the experience. It can spill over almost like augmented reality, like goggles. And the dream world is coming alive before your eyes. And this is kind of think of the. During the dream, when you're dreaming, certain parts of the brain are more active than when you're awake. So for example, the hippocampus, meaning the memory part of the brain, is more active. It kind of becomes, it blossoms with activity, dances with activity. And this memory part of the brain, if it's active during this sleep paralysis stage and during this kind of half, half, half dream stage, all the stuff the grandmother was telling her about, the mantra, looking this and that, can then start to go into the experience. So she starts seeing what the grandmother was telling her. The mantra will spill over in a dreamlike fantasy, an imagination of sorts. So she'll have that. The emotional part of the brain, the fear centers of the brain, are hyperactive when we're dreaming, about 30% more active in the dream state. So she'll have that, by the way, when we're dreaming. The parts of the brain that has to do with a sense of a body image, the feeling like I occupy this body and I feel anchored in this body, balance, body this is, I feel anchored here. That part of the brain also becomes dysfunctional. So you feel like your sense of body image is kind of all over the place. And so that can trickle into the experience. So you feel like your sense of self is shut. It's weird. You may have an out of body experience while the ghost is there too. So she might have that too. And everything, all you can imagine from the brain is kind of, it's going into the experience and she's seeing the monster that her grandmother was telling her in perfect detail. Now she wakes up, she's anxious and terrified, extremely terrified to go to sleep. And we actually see a lot of people with sleep paralysis, they feel like that they have fear of going to sleep. Sleep itself is something that's terrifying. And so because of that fear and anxiety, now she'll even be even more predisposed to having sleep paralysis. So she goes to bed, has it again. Three or four days later, as we said, she had it again. And the reason why it becomes so chronic now is because the whole meaning point that you, that you brought up and the fact that the monster is not only attacking me once, it's a personal thing. Oh man, I'm being, I'm possessed now. It's, it's completely like it's being chased, it's haunted, it wants me for some reason, it's after me. And so this is the whole, this is the whole sort of thing that, the conclusion you mentioned, right? What's, what's sleep paralysis? This is the whole idea. And then you can potentially become highly anxious and even traumatized from this a hundred percent.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

It's an interesting time for business. Tariff and trade policies are dynamic, supply chains are squeezed and cash flow tighter than ever. If your business can't adapt in real time, it'll be hard to set yourself up for success. You need total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real time cash flow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI powered business management suite. Trusted by over 41,000 businesses, NetSuite is the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one suite. You have one source of truth giving you the control you need to make quick decisions. With real time forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And with AI embedded throughout, you can automate everyday tasks, letting your teams stay strategic. NetSuite helps you know what's stuck, what it's costing you and how to pivot fast. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook and navigating Global Trade 3 Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com greatness that's netsuite.com greatness.

[Lewis Howes]

Too many people finish their workday feeling frustrated, drained and unfulfilled. The good news is that's not how it's supposed to be and it's a problem that can be solved. Patrick Lencioni, author of the classic book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, has created a new assessment of that more than a million people have already used to identify what he calls your working geniuses. It helps you identify the kind of work that gives you joy and energy, and just as importantly, it also allows you to pinpoint the work that often drains you of joy and energy. The whole greatness team over here took the assessment and it's super quick and easy. We are so eager to look through all of our results. So go to working genius.com right now and take the assessment, which takes just 12 minutes. You'll immediately receive a report that gives you a new and profound insights that will transform the way you work. Whether you're a CEO, a newly hired employee, a podcast host like me, a volunteer in your church, or even a stay at home parent. Again, take the [e-mail] you ever walk.

Out of the grocery store or fill.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

Up your tank and just think, how is everything this expensive? Feels like prices are going up everywhere.

[Lewis Howes]

And how great would it be if.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

Just once something actually just went down in price? Well at Metro that's exactly what's happening. They've lowered their prices and are giving you a five year price guarantee on talk, text and data. One line now 20% lower. Family plans also lowered. Oh, and you also get a free 5G phone, all with no ID required and no activation fees. Stop by your neighborhood Metro store, visit metrobyt-mobile.com or call to find out about their amazing offers. Bring your number not available if currently at T Mobile or with Metro in.

[Lewis Howes]

The past 180 days.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

Guarantee covers monthly price of on network, Talk, text and 5G data for customers activating on an eligible plan. Exclusions apply. Details at metro by t-mobile.com.

[Lewis Howes]

Here'S something I'm curious about. We talked about monsters. Demons, Ghosts. Aliens are monsters. Aliens, ghosts, the boogeyman. Are these things potentially real in life? Or is everything in imagination that a demon is chasing me in my room? That something is a spiritual ghost is trying to harm me? Or is this cultural, religious, societal visualizations, imaginations? Stories that have been imprinted in our mind and our hearts, in our being? Where Our brain fantasizes about these things so much that it believes these things are true. Or is it just the imagination that makes it feel like it's true?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

How? It's a big one.

[Lewis Howes]

As a neuroscientist researcher, what have you discovered?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

What have I discovered? So there's me, there's the person, Balaam, the scientist, and then there's the science. Personally, I'm a spiritual person, I'm a Muslim, and I believe that there's a spiritual world. There's a world that we cannot see, an unseen world. And many of my scientists, colleagues, I've worked with some of the. I've been fortunate. I was, I wasn't even of my doing. I was just blessed to work with some of the greatest scientists. And behind closed doors, they'll believe in things like prayer and God and things like that.

[Lewis Howes]

So even though it's not science based.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Even though it's not science, they still.

[Lewis Howes]

Do it because they know the benefits of it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

They know the benefits. But also, who says it's not real? Right, Right. And I think that when you think about it, right, a hundred years ago, 150 years ago, if I was telling you, Louis, on your body right now, there's all these small animals crawling, trillions of them on your, on your skin.

[Lewis Howes]

And they're said you're crazy.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

They said you're crazy.

[Lewis Howes]

But we know there's.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

There's a microscope, right?

[Lewis Howes]

There's a microbiome and. Yeah, yeah, yes.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

And we developed, and we invented the microscope and. And now we know that they're all this, right? So before the advent, like before we invented the microscope, it was insane to say this. So same goes with a metaphysical reality around us. Spirituality, God, whatever, the unseen world of sorts. And who says it doesn't exist? So science cannot answer whether there's actually spirituality. Now my work has been, ironically, even though I believe in spirituality, the fact that has been to understand why do we see ghosts and what's going on in the brain, I have to be truthful to the science and say, well, look, when I zap this part of the brain called the tpj, if I zap it with an electrical current, you will feel like there's a ghost behind you, mimicking your postures and movements. So we can create a ghost.

[Lewis Howes]

This part of your brain.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

This part of the brain, a little.

[Lewis Howes]

Structure in the brain, electrical shock there.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It could even be a magnet just stimulating it. And you will feel like disrupted. When it's disrupted, you will feel like there's a ghost behind you. It's mimicking you. So if you move, like, your hand like this, it will also move its hand. So if it kind of feels like you is, in fact, we scientists say it is you. We just created a double of you. It's a copy of you.

[Lewis Howes]

That's interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

And that has to do with the fact that a sense of self is created in the brain. Your brain uses sensory modalities like touch, vision, hearing, and then weaves together a sense of a self comes about in those regions in the brain, the tpj and the parietal. It's kind of a multimedia media studio, kind of like your studio. We have it up here. And that creates a sense of a self. It weaves it together. You can disrupt that, and then you will feel like there's a ghost in the room. Some of the same structures are disrupted during sleep paralysis as well. So that can explain why there are ghosts there. I have a whole theory. I spent 10 years writing about how these structures can affect, you know, make you see ghosts in the room. But that doesn't change the fact that that could be energies from other dimensions and galaxies and worlds that we cannot see. Spiritual dimensions that I cannot negate. In fact, I may even believe it personally that, you know, that there are things like that. So we just. When I go do it, when I go and do my science, I obviously don't think in those ways because I have to be truthful to the knowledge that is currently present. I don't have a microscope to, you know, peer into the spiritual world. Spiritual world. But I can tell you this is the brain. This is the area of the TPJ that's disrupted. This is the prefrontal that's shut down. This is the lower part of the brain that's paralyzing you. So that I can say. And that's my job to say. And some, you know, often you'll feel like when people learn about the scientific basis of sleep paralysis, the fear vanishes as well. So that's very helpful.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

But you asked about meditation and meditation therapy, maybe. So maybe I can go into that, because that's a very practical way to deal with it. The way I came, you know, invented this therapy, and this was during my grad school years when I was in Cambridge, England. And, you know, over there, we spent a lot of time, time thinking about new ways of doing therapies and all that. And I was thinking about, like, how can I help people with sleep paralysis? What's the way to help them? And I noticed that a lot of people with sleep paralysis will say, when I'm. When I have the experience, I pray to God, and it actually helps. The monster seems to dissipate myself too, when I was there. And to be honest with you, you know, I started to pray too, because I thought I was going to die. So I was like. A few times I was like, God, help me, what's going on? You know, I tried to do that. And it kind of seems to help to pray to a deity or having some kind of belief and hope in something greater coming and rescuing you. So I wanted to bring that element into the experience. So the therapy is four steps. The first step is the following. It's called cognitive reappraisal. That's the fancy name for it. And it's basically a mental shifting of the experience. So you say, I know I'm having sleep paralysis right now. I know I'm being attacked by something. But because it's just sleep paralysis, I should. There's no reason for me to be scared. You know, there's no reason for me. People all around the world are having sleep paralysis now. Nobody's dying from this. So I'm doing a cognitive restructuring of the whole experience. It's sort of a mental interpretation shifting. That's the first element. Next, the next step that you do is. It's called emotional and psychological distancing meaning. Given that it's the brain, given that it's the mind playing tricks on you, there's no reason for me to be scared. So I psychologically distance myself from it. I just gonna think of it as something that's far away, and I won't actually let myself get absorbed into it. That's the second step. Now here comes your meditation step. We know that the brain has very limited attentional capacities. At any given time, I can only attend to so many things in the room. I don't have infinite attention. It's the frontal and parietal regions of the brain, the front and this part that's evolved in attention capacities. Have you seen that YouTube clip of the. You know, there's like. You're. There's somebody playing with a ball, and then there's a clown going moonwalking. And then you can't. You don't notice it because you're. So. You're focused on counting the ball. So attention is very limited. Right.

[Lewis Howes]

It's what magicians do very well. You know, it's slight of hand. It's perception. It's grabbing attention here and something else happening there.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Absolutely. So I wanted to incorporate that by hijacking your attention to something positive. So it goes something like this. You focus all your attention on something extremely positive, like God, your mom's face, you know, your niece's face. Whatever brings you a joyful memory, you bring it to light, you bring it to mind, and you think about it in an intensely focused manner. So it's a kind of a focused attention meditation. Now, the powerful thing about this is that not only are you redirecting your attention away from thinking about monsters and all the memory parts of the brain, all the grandmothers talk about monsters, hijacking the experience, you are sort of shifting the focus of the emotional core of the brain to something positive. And we actually know that there are circuits in the brain from the emotional part that goes to the visual part and they can tell you what to see in the world. Literally meaning that if I have a fearful mindset, if I have fear centers in my brain bubbling away, it can affect what I see in the world versus having a very, if you're very calm, soothed in a very relaxed, positive mindset, it can also affect your world and worldview. And so in that way, I'm trying to also bias the visual parts of the brain. So you have that as well. So you focused on something extremely positive. And then a fourth step will be to then what's called a muscle relaxation. You don't try to move or try to act out the paralysis sensations. You kind of stay in a mindful, non judgmental thought, you know, mindset about that. You don't really do anything. You don't try to move or try to become agitated and oh, I'm going to scream and I'm trying to try to do that. You know, I'm just going to stay mindful and just let it slide kind of. You do these four steps during the sleep paralysis experience. And as you say, we were very fortunate to see a 50% reduction in sleep paralysis. Now, this was a small pilot study. We always have to start small and then build up. But it was very promising.

[Lewis Howes]

That's great. So the four different things. Is mental shifting or mental restructuring just kind of like rewriting the story? What I'm hearing you say, if you've experienced this in the past a few times, how can you rewrite the story, Reshift, restructure mentally what has happened to create more meaning from it and less fear from it. The second one, creating emotional and psychological distancing, which I think is really powerful. It's almost like compartmentalizing in a way, but allowing yourself to not Be attached mentally or emotionally to the experiences.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right, Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Third thing, focusing your attention on joyful memory, positive moments. So instead of focusing on the fear of it happening again, what if this happens again? Put your attention on your mother's face. Yeah. A joyful moment with your family, a loved one.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

And the fourth one is like not being clenched in your body, but saying, how can I fully relax and rest and be peaceful? Body muscle relaxation.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

And it's something that happened to me when I had sleep paralysis maybe for the fourth or fifth time. Instead of living in fear around it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I decided to fully relax when it happens.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Supposed to like screaming with nothing coming out.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I just said, okay, this is happening. It's scary. Let me relax. And I was almost able to come out of it quicker and not live in the fear of it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And I haven't had that experience since I did that the last time, maybe a few years ago.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I haven't felt sleep paralysis since then.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

How many times have you had it?

[Lewis Howes]

Maybe five or six, Maybe that I can remember. Maybe a handful. Not like 40 or 50 times. Like handful of times.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Maybe it was a little more, a little less, but probably five or six times. And the last time I remember not trying to scream or move to wake up, I was just like, I'm going to relax and almost enjoy the moment.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Like, ride the wave.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And by riding the wave, like, I started to be able to, like, move my hands and I, like, kind of just gently woke up eventually.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Knowing that I've always woken up, it's. I'm not going to stay stuck like this. So it's almost like I trained my prefrontal cortex captain to say, let things come back on slowly. Then you can take back control when it does, as opposed to overriding something that is, you know, creating paralysis in you.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's a great point and it kind of makes me think of. So the reason why I came up with the fourth step of not trying to move, it's kind of. It's. It's has to do with the fact that when you are in a sleep paralysis and experiencing this, your motor parts of the brain, there's a strip of. Of tissue here in the brain that it's involved in movement. Normally when I'm awake, I move my hand from A to B in space. I send commands from the movement parts of the brain and motor cortex down to the brain stem, spinal cord, and I move. Now, during sleep paralysis, this is. You send many commands to move bala and move. Not working but it's not working because you're paralyzed. You're standing. You have a simultaneous signal saying don't move. And that's overriding that movement signal. Right?

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's very interesting. So you're saying movement, but land move, but. There's no but, you can't move. Now, at the same time, when I'm normally when I'm awake and I move and I move my hands around, I want to make sure I get this right. You have what's called a proprioceptive feedback, meaning simply there's feedback coming back from the skinned joint muscles telling your brain how to build a sense of a baland, how to build a sense of a lewis that comes about from, believe it or not, in the skin and muscles, sending feedback back to the brain and to that parietal, that multimedia studio I told you about before telling you, oh, create a sense of baland based on the information coming back. Right. Now, that part of the brain obviously is not. It's not getting feedback because you are not moving, you aren't moving, you can't move, so you're paralyzed. So there's no way to create a sense of a self. In other words, you're sending commands to move, but there's no feedback coming back from a moving body because you're paralyzed. In other words, there's a gap there. And that gap the brain is trying to fill in with hallucinatory movement. And I always want to make sure this is clear because when I tell this during lectures, people sometimes, you know, can, what are you talking about, Baland? I want to make sure the brain hates any incongruencies, any gaps in information. And whenever there is a gap, whenever there any incongruency there, it will fill in the blank. Sort of like Google auto correction. It will sort of you when you put the first words of like, so it will finish soccer, for example. The brain does the same thing. If it has a gap, a lack of information, there's a lack of information, it will fill in the blank. And so that's why we believe that you might see your legs fly up and down and you see your limbs shifted in space. And I want to avoid all that. And that's why I tell the people, don't try to move because you don't want to have all these mismatching signals and your brain trying to create the story for you.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

You know, the feeling of that first crisp fall morning when the air feels fresh and the leaves start turning? That's exactly the vibe of Native's new limited Edition Fall Getaway Collection five incredible scents that smell so good even Mother Nature would give it a thumbs up. The scents are unreal. Native captures the coziness of fall with both their Toasted Vanilla and Honey and Vanilla Cream and Pumpkin fragrances. They've also got fresh nature inspired options like Fall Citrus and Suede Crisp Pear and and Cashmere or my favorite Sandalwood and Coastal Breeze. And all of these limited edition fall scents are available as deodorant, body wash, hair care lotion and hand soap so you can embrace fall throughout your whole routine. And what I like most about Native is how they keep it simple with clean ingredients. I love that the deodorant only has nine ingredients and none are aluminum and Native's hair care is free of silicone sulfates and parabens. I also have been loving the Fall Citrus and Suede deodorant. There's just something about this scent that takes me right back to my childhood. A cool fall afternoon in Ohio on my way to football practice. I just love it. Shop the Fall getaway [e-mail] and use code greatness-fall for 20% off. That's native c o s.com and use code G R E A T N E S s dash F A L.

[Lewis Howes]

L. You just realized your business needs to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast?

Easy.

Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites because with Indeed's sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can stand out and reach the people that you want faster. There are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a 75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com greatness, just go to Indeed.com greatness right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com greatness terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

It's so fascinating because as a as someone who loves to study these ideas more so not as a researcher or scientist, but as a human being who's trying to live my best life and trying to lead my life as an example for the people around me to live better, hopefully and live more harmonious and fulfill their dreams and have beautiful relationships and have A healthy lifestyle. That's what I'm coming from. And as an athlete who's always looking for the edge and thinking of, how can I train my mind and body to perform in the hardest of conditions, in the highest pressure moments, how can I make sure that my mind and my emotions don't get the best of me and I'm more calm instead of chaotic. All these different things I'm always looking for the edge of. And by no means am I perfect at it, but I'm always trying to improve. Something you shared just now really is interesting for me. Where you said the brain hates incongruencies and there is this. There's a world that so many people live in where they build a self image of self. You've been talking about self image, a Milan A. Lewis. An identity where the image and identity that people build, most people is so limiting around what, how they think, what they believe and how they feel and the stories that they tell themselves or the stories they believe that others tell themselves about themselves. And when we are. When the. You said the brain hates incongruencies. I believe we're all created to do something beautiful. We're all meant to live in alignment of self. But when we as human beings say, create a limiting self image and say, I am stupid, I am ugly, I am not smart, I'm not good enough, I'm not talented. When we build a self identity and self image, mentally implanting these ideas in our being.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yep.

[Lewis Howes]

It limits us.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Oh yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And the brain is incongruent with that.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Oh yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Somehow we're believing, we're trying to believe it. But I believe we're all built to be more beautiful and more empowering and reach a higher self identity rather than a limited identity. So I'm curious, as a neuroscientist, how can we start to train our self image and self identity to be more empowering and reach a higher version of ourselves versus a limited identity and limited self that is out of congruency with ourselves, which keeps us small. How can we start to build this? This is a big question, but I'm fascinated. Based on your research, what you've come up with or what you've seen, it's, it's.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's a great question. And I want to answer this. I'm trying to answer this in a. In a fashion where I so talk a little bit about myself. So I came. I'm Kurdish, I told you. I'm originally Kurdish, from Iraq. Grew up in Copenhagen. And my parents were actually refugees. They escaped the War in Iraq. And my mom, terrible traumas, you know, she would, her grand, her father would. Died in front of her, had a heart attack. And it was horrible, the body. So the way it happened was one day my granddad just came out. They had like small rooms, they didn't have a lot of rooms. So it's just like one big room.

[Lewis Howes]

In Iraq.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

In Iraq. He just came one day. He just came out and said, look, called my mom, said, look, go call your mommy, go call mommy. And mommy would come in and he said, forgive me for any thing I might have done in my life. I think I'm checking out, you know. And so right on the spot, he died from a heart attack.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

And my mom, 11 years old, loved her, loved her dad like her dad was the best. Okay. My, her, her brother, her older brother rushed into the room, saw her, saw his dad lying dead. They had a tumultuous relationship. So he was shocked and traumatized by that. So he took a glass and smashed it into his head in utter shock. Now blood was gushing from his, from his head. My 11 year old mother was watching that, looking at my mom that was shocked too. And my grandfather was just lying there, dead, dead. Now at this point in Iraq, it was like, you know, during COVID there was like quarantine. They couldn't go out because of all the wars there. Often they would tell him, the people don't go out until 4 or 5am next day. So the body was just there.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh man.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So they couldn't take him anywhere. So my mom was witness to this.

[Lewis Howes]

As an 11 year old.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

As an 11 year old growing up without, and then grow up without a father in Iraq, seeing her father die like this. This. My father had a similar story. His, his dad also died when he was very, very young. He had to do hard labor. Very, very, very hard. Traumatizing background. Now both of them came to, escaped to Copenhagen, first went to Bulgaria. I was born in Bulgaria, but did.

[Lewis Howes]

They meet in Bulgaria or meet in Iraq? They met in Iraq and then they escaped together.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

They escaped together. My, actually my dad was called into Dura Saddam Hussein and all the wars and all that. He was. Saddam's army was calling my dad to go fight for him. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He said, I'm not going to do that. And so he escaped actually that it was good he didn't do that because that group of people that, you know, that were supposed to go, they all died from a, from a attack, from an air attack. And they all Died on a bridge. So he was supposed to be in that. Among those that group came to Bulgaria. I was born, came to Copenhagen. Obviously we had to start all over in a ghetto like area. That's when I, where I grew up in a very tough, hard neighborhood, refugee camp. Initially. Then in the. Seeing the worst things. My best friend was shot at, stabbed 13 times, my neighbor was shot in the head. All these kind of things. Now I do research at Harvard and lecture, but I came from the, the worst of worst. Like, I literally came from the worst. Now I think that. So you can, obviously you can overcome that. And a lot of people do. So I'm not the only one. It's not like I'm special. But we do have some what's. And now I'm going to sort of weave into science here. We do have something called epigenetics. And that's, that's if you had trauma or your parents even had trauma, that can affect you down the line in your genetics. In your genetics. So let me give you an example.

[Lewis Howes]

In your nervous system.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Your nervous system. So I give. So. So, for example, there was these ladies who witnessed. They were pregnant and they witnessed 9, 11, obviously they, some of them developed PTSD trauma from witnessing and seeing the attack. Horrible.

[Lewis Howes]

You pass that down to your children.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

You pass that down to your children. So the children that was, that were born and obviously didn't witness the 9, 9, 11, they had cortisol changes similar to their mother, signaling trauma from the experience. Right? You had cortisol systems damaged and out of balance. One example, another example, you may know this experiment too. Rats that are exposed to a certain smell, for example, and then you give them an electric shock. Their kids, their babies will fear that smell. Even though they haven't had that electric shock.

[Lewis Howes]

We know that they smell it. They're just going to be.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

They're going to be agitated and reactive and it turns out even their children.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow. Isn't that interesting because you pass that through your epigenetics.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Epigenetics. So inside the gene, there are certain methyl groups and atoms that sits on genes and turns genes on and off. And so depending on our trauma or our parents and our grandparents, trauma that can be passed on. And so you have all this, right? Beyond this, the brain of a child, right, is the synapses. In a baby's brain, there's about 50% more synapses. Synapses are simply the connections between neurons. You want to have a lot of these synapses and then you want to be able to Shape your brain as well as possible. So a baby's brain is extremely plastic. It can change in various ways. And if you have a lot of trauma in your childhood, if you are raised in a. In a poor neighborhood and you have, like, you know, that can affect how the brain of a child then develops, limiting your potential, you know, as a. Having a less, you know, less effective brain. Growing up now, I was lucky. My mom and dad were very warm. They took good care of me. So even though it's like kind of a buffer. So even though I was in that refugee camp, my mom was always hugging me, playing with me.

[Lewis Howes]

Affectionate. Yeah.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Very loving parents. So it kind of.

[Lewis Howes]

But you still have the. The trauma in your epigenetics.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, it was kind of a mix, right. From the whole trauma, from their experiences.

[Lewis Howes]

Kind of like sleep paralysis. You know, the. The captain trying to, like, control, but. Yeah. The other guy, proud. The trauma.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Paralysis. You're like, ah, I feel love, but I'm scared.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It was a mix of that. Right. So.

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, So I had that. So. But there was the epigenetics, but because of the love. And you know this from rats, by the way, Rats who lick their babies more, they will be more. They will be more resilient towards stress later in life.

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So by having those who.

[Lewis Howes]

Having more love and affection.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Love and affection. Caring for the child and all that. So I was like. In that way, the brain is extremely malleable and plastic. It can change shape from. Based on these epigenetic commands.

[Lewis Howes]

And so it's almost like everyone has experienced some type of epigenetic trauma through their parents.

Oh, yeah.

You know, we all have been passed down. Some type of genetic trauma.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Through generational.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right, right.

[Lewis Howes]

Like, no one had three generations of perfect parents that were, like, healed and calm and relaxed, loving.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

There was trauma somewhere that's been passed down through generations, through generations. And it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility to start to notice it and create awareness and say, how can I be the one to break the generational trauma if we choose to live a better life.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

If we want that.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yep.

[Lewis Howes]

It's not our fault, but it is our responsibility.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's our responsibility. It's horrible. Exactly. And it's hard work. And so. And it brings me really, to what my research in recent years has been focused on, which is neuroplasticity and the fact that the brain can change. The brain is extremely malleable. You know that we thought, like, 20 years ago, we thought, well, you're born with certain brain and that's it. It can change maybe in childhood. So we know that, you know, the baby's brain is more, is more, is more malleable, is more plastic, meaning it can change shape more, you can grow more synaptic connections. But we now know that until you die, the brain can change. If you had a stroke and your left's complete, so the brain everything on the left side commands the right and everything on the right commands the left side, for example. So if you have a stroke to the left hemisphere, your entire side can be paralyzed. But we know now with extreme X training and rehab, rehabilitation, you can actually do a lot of progress. Much more than we thought was even possible a few years ago. Point of all this, knowing the principles that can make you brain change is vital. Knowing what, what's involved, it's. It can help you reach your potential. So for example, there's a chemical in the brain called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine, it's sort of the attention part of attention neurochemical. It comes about in a part of the brain called the Lucas. What's it? I forgot the name escaped me. Right now it's in sort of in the middle part of the brain. It produces these neurons that create this acetylcholine. And it's attentional. So whenever you focus on anything, acetylcholine turns on. And you need that for neuroplasticity, by the way. If you just go around in Hollywood and greet people and just, you know, you won't have a lot of neuroplasticity. Why? Because you need acetylcholine. You need to be hyper focused in order to have neuroplasticity. So this is a key factor by the way. That's why whenever you break a routine, whenever you do something novel, whenever you sort of, for example, me coming to this area right here where you are, it's kind of. I haven't really been here before. It's novel. So I have actually a lot of neuroplasticity. My brain is changing a lot and it becoming more malleable because everything is novel. I'm paying attention to figure out where.

[Lewis Howes]

Am I going, I don't know the directions. And this, what do I get? Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

And it came about because the brain says, look, whenever I encounter novel thing, novel things, I better write it down because it's important for my survival. That's why you have a lot of neuroplasticity when you travel, because your brain needs to know the new routes and everything. So attentional attention is important for neuroplasticity. So if you want to have a more plastic brain, a more malleable brain, do new things, challenge yourself by doing novel things, and that will trigger the nucleus basalis. That's the part of the brain image, nucleus of basalis system. And then you will have a lot of plasticity. So that's a key factor.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay, this is a side note. You don't have kids, right?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

No.

[Lewis Howes]

From all the research you've done as a neuroscientist, studying the brain dreams, neuroplasticity. If you could give parents three pieces of advice when they have kids.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

From the moment they come out of the womb for the first few years. What are three things you would say, whether it be from a neuroscience standpoint or just a practical personal standpoint, that if parents did these three things, they would give their kids a much better chance at a better life later on?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Deep question. I would say first of all, give them affection. Hugging, caring, taking, sort of being physical with. With children. We know that when you touch, just by merely touching, you have a lot of things like oxytocin and a lot of. And a lot of these endorphins we call them, and neuropeptides are involved in neuroplasticity as well. So very, very good to have a lot of that. So being affectionate around your children, hugging them, kissing them, is very important. A baby's brain, we said, has about 50% more synapses. But what happens though, in a baby's brain is there's something I'll call a pruning process, meaning that the brain of a child is hyperconnected. So everything is almost connected. Everything's flirting with everything. There's connections everywhere. And so as time passes, there's a gene that says, look, we don't need all these connections. I'm only going to take what the brain's actually using. So it's kind of a use it or lose it brain. So whatever I'm not using, whatever skill I'm not using, it will just shave it away. So you want to definitely optimize for using the brain in various ways. So this. So you kind of don't just shave off all the good connections. So stimulate, stimulate, stimulate. This is what you want to do. So stimulating a baby's brain, hyperconnected in this way. So you want to stimulate them.

[Lewis Howes]

Affection, we said, I'm assuming, not stimulate through like screens and iPads and cell phones, but other ways. Right.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

In other words, that's a great.

[Lewis Howes]

You can stimulate with an iPad all the time.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

That's the wrong kind of stimulation. Exactly. That can lead to addiction and too much dopamine in the brain and too much of addictive circle cycles. You don't want that.

[Lewis Howes]

So what type of stimulation should babies be having?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Intellectual. It could be emotional stimulation. It could be teaching them how to interact with other people. So, for example, some. Nowadays people are becoming less good at human interaction. We're becoming like robots. You know, we don't know how to read facial expressions, emotional cues. What is. So we actually have neurons in the brain called mirror neurons, or some people call them perceptual action neurons. They're involved in, you know, what is Lewis thinking of right now? What is his agenda? What is he up to? I can sort of do mind reading. These are the medial part of the prefrontal lobe. And these neurons can be titillated and activated, and the circuits can become strengthened by us engaging with other people and learning. Like during the COVID era, I was. I'm pretty isolated. Generally as a scientist, I don't do enough. I don't do a lot of. Not social interactions, but especially during COVID When I came out of COVID I couldn't interact with people. I was just like, how do I do.

[Lewis Howes]

How do I.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Just. Completely handicapped, like a Sheldon from Big Bang Theory kind of. Kind of scenario. You can train these circuits, and the more you use them, the better you become.

[Lewis Howes]

Gotcha. Okay. Stimulate.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah. So you stimulate in that way.

[Lewis Howes]

What would be the third physical?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I would say physical exercise. So we know that when you do physical exercise, when you go out and do sports, when you. When especially cardiovascular type exercise, obviously you don't want to take your kid to the gym and start lifting weight. But we know generally cardiovascular exercise is the type of exercise that can lead to the growth of or certain proteins called neurotrophic factors like bdnf, gdnf, just fancy names for fertilizers in the brain that will cause the brain to create more synapses. So generally, not only for kids, but for all of us doing more of play and exercise, Running for kids. Take your kid to the. To the. To the playground and let them run around. They always. They obviously do this a lot if you just allow them to. Instead of sitting on the iPad.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, I would.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I would definitely encourage that. Teach them things, you know, take them to the zoo and let them show them different animals. What is this animal? Stimulate their brains intellectually. Make them curious and passionate too. It's not only the brain. It's also just, it is the brain, but it's also thinking about like, how can I make, how can I convey passion to my king? So for me, the way I became passionate about the brain was the fact that I had mentors that were extremely passionate about the brain and fascinated about the brain. And so that fascination and passion, you know, was passed down to me. So you do that with your kids. You know, you show them interesting things, take them to the museums and take them to the zoo and all these kind of things.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah. Convey passion. I like that.

If you're running a business, you know that every time you miss a call.

[Metro/NetSuite Advertiser]

You'Re leaving money on the table.

[Lewis Howes]

When every customer conversation matters, you need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected 24 7. That's why you need OpenPhone. OpenPhone is a business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications.

It works through an app on your.

Phone or computer, so no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With Open Phone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. OpenPhone is offering my listeners 20% off of your first six months at openphone.com greatness. That's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com greatness and if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone no missed calls, no missed customers. If you've been feeling a little bit off, not quite at 100%, then you need to check out Daily ultimate essentials from IM8. It's packed with 92 nutrient rich ingredients. Vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, Q code 10 MSM and pre pro and Postbiotics.

Lots of good stuff.

Give your body the support it needs without juggling a bunch of supplements and I've been drinking iM8's daily Ultimate Essentials for weeks now and I'm seriously impressed. I feel more clear headed throughout the day and I've noticed a real boost in my energy, especially during long shoots or travel days. It's easily become part of my morning ritual. Give your body what it deserves with I Am 8 go to I Am 8 health.com greatness and use code greatness for a free welcome kit five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's I Am Number 8 H E A L T H.com greatness code greatness for a free welcome kit Five free travel sachets, plus 10% off your order. These statements have not been evaluated by.

The Food and Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

A lot of people are curious about this idea of lucid dreaming. Mm. Can you explain what lucid dreaming is, what causes it, and is it something we can control?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Very interesting. So lucid dreaming is the state where. So you aren't. You have. And I may just want to maybe take you to this, because there's a whole. There's a whole line of. So when you start. When you initially sleep, you enter sleep. You are in stages one and two. And during this stage of sleep, when you are the. The. The brain waves are sort of slow and big, and your things are very. Just kind of coordinated. And you have these big waves. You enter REM sleep, you have these wakefulness waves. It's called beta waves. Go like this. You have this. These quick waves. And this is characterized. This is the same kind of waves you have when you're wakeful. So it's kind of the wakefulness waves as well. Right. So the brain. When you are in REM sleep and you are having dreams, the brain looks very much like a person who's wakeful. In fact, if I was to eavesdropped on the activity of neurons during somebody who's in REM sleep and somebody who's awake, the brain would look indistinguishable. Their brains look very much alike. Now, during REM sleep, you have vivid and lifelike dreams, as we said. But occasionally, what can happen during dreams is that the CEO, your captain of the ship, can become prematurely activated inside.

[Lewis Howes]

The dream in a lucid dream.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Inside the lucid. Inside the dream. And that makes it become lucid, you see? Now, if you're not fully awakened from that, this is. I want to. So the difference between sleep paralysis is that it's. It's become so much awake that it kind of wakes you up. That's when it becomes sleep paralysis, which is another borderland state between wakefulness and dream and wakefulness and rem. During lucid dreaming, you simply have this CEO becoming partially awake, but you're still asleep. But you're still asleep. So that's when you are.

[Lewis Howes]

It's like the opposite almost of paralysis. Almost. Right? Almost.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Almost opposite. Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Now, so when you have this, the CEO of the brain, because it's active during the REM and the dream world, that's when you start becoming aware of.

[Lewis Howes]

Yourself in the parts, but you're still asleep. But you're aware that you're asleep.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

This is important because, Louis, when you are dreaming in REM sleep, this is this part of the brain. It's called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A mouthful. These are the regions out here on the sides of the captain and the CEO. This part of the brain is involved in things like knowing that I'm aware of myself, a sense of a logic, a sense of a serial thinking of a sense of a me balan being in the studio. There's a wall, there's all these things.

[Lewis Howes]

Those are activated when you're awake, right?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Those are activated when I'm awake. They're turned down when you're asleep, when I'm dreaming. But then they become partially active for some reason. For some reason. And that's when you have lucid dreaming.

[Lewis Howes]

Interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

That's when you have lucid dreaming. And we actually know the more it activates, the more this part of the brain wake up. Absolutely. If it's fully activated, you start waking up. But the more it activates, even without waking you up, the more lucid you become. So some lucid dreams, you merely are aware of yourself dreaming. This is the sort of. Not the highest level. But then you have certain lucid dreams where you can fully control the scenarios. Those are the crazy ones where you can.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm flying around and I can tell myself where to go.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly. These are the most extreme examples. But that's when the prefrontal cortex is very activated. And so that's what lucid. Lucid dreams are about. So about 50% of people will have had one of these experiences. You become aware of your surroundings. Typically, it can emerge if you see some crazy person that you think, oh, my God, Shakespeare is in my dream. What is Shakespeare doing? I'm not supposed to meet Shakespeare right now. And then that can tilt you to become lucid. Those are the triggers of lucid dreaming. They are very vivid in the sense that they are more vivid than a normal. Normal dream is already very vivid and lifelike and all that. But this is even more crisp. So you have that as well. People often engage in, as you can imagine, erotic fantasies and sexual fantasies, and flying is very common. So this is what lucid dreaming is about. Do you have. Do you have any lucid dreams?

[Lewis Howes]

Maybe a few where I'm, like, more aware of it, but not something that happens frequently.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

But something I am curious about also is my wife Martha has premonitory dreams. And I don't know if you've studied this at all or if You're. Have you ever had any? But she'll have dreams where she'll tell me, like she has a dream book where she writes down her dreams. And some of them are just, I guess, meaningless. Maybe there's some meaning to them, but they're just like, okay, this weird dream, I'm flying or this or whatever. But then she'll have a dream where she'll say, it doesn't happen often, but she goes, there was a different quality to the dream, and it's not lucid dreaming, and it's not just a normal dream, and it's not a nightmare. She calls it premonitory dreams. And whenever she has this, she wakes up, she writes it down. It is so vivid, but it's almost. May sound weird, but it's almost a signal to what's going to happen in the future. And for whatever reason, every dream she's showed me in the past that she's written down of this quality comes true. And who knows if it's her mind that's influencing her to go manifest these things, but some of them are predictions of what's happening in the world. And it's almost like she's. Like, there's a spiritual quality to it that's hard to express. There's a light being quality to it that she knows when it's happening. And it's almost like a premonitory, predictive dream. And I don't know if you've studied that or if that's a phenomenon or if there's science behind that, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Oh, yeah, Is that lucid dreaming? Is that premonitory dream? Is that some spiritual intuitive connection? What is this?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly. Exactly. So this is. This is like.

[Lewis Howes]

Have you heard of this 100?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I hear it all the time. I really hear it from students when I lecture. I hear it for myself. I have these dreams myself.

[Lewis Howes]

Like premonitory dreams.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Premonitions. Yeah. So they are common all around the world. They have been in cultures, have talked about this throughout history. So people in various places, I mean, prophecies and prophetic dreams. And Joseph in the Bible, you know the story, and he saw his moon star and the moon was bowing and all that. And so this have been. People have reported this throughout history. Now what are these? Are these. Is the brain? Is it. What's going on?

[Lewis Howes]

Spiritual connection.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Spiritual connection. Now, I tackled this because this gets into some of the craziness where I need to be careful between science and spirituality. But I'm answering this in this way. I'll say that I personally have these as well and I don't talk about it often.

[Lewis Howes]

Do they come true?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I feel like they come true. I feel like I have a dream of certain things that might happen and they sometimes come true.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Some scientists will say it's just, you know, you're just biased. It's just you selective, selectively remember certain things from the dream and you think like, you know, that then comes true and all that. But look, for me, subjectively, it feels very real. And who can deny you of your subjective experience? People have had this all over the world. People have this. How can you deny them their subjective truth? And this is what I always emphasize. The fact that you can't deny. You can't use science as a way of just, you know, denying people what seems subjectively real to them, a real thing.

[Lewis Howes]

I mean, there's medical miracles all the time. Like, I can't explain how this cancer went away. The science can't prove this. But it happens. Right.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So I will say, so I'll say this. We have no scientific evidence, obviously, of being able to predict the future the full stop. It goes beyond the realm of science. Anything supernatural goes. Or spiritual goes out, but it doesn't mean it's not true.

[Lewis Howes]

And in quantum physics, you know, an atom can be in two places at the same time, I think. Right. So how can it be in two different places at the same time?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

In two different moments at the same time.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Oh, yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Of time. That's. So it's like, how are we able to do this?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Look, I've. I've been fortunate to work with and know some of the greatest dream researchers of that we know. And they will tell you what's going on in the brain. I will tell you. This is my area of focus. And we know these parts of the brain turn on these, turn off these neurochemicals you know, are hyperactivated. These are not. But that doesn't mean that a spiritual world is not true and that you cannot have premonitions of the future. It's simply not. We just don't use it as we do science.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's not in the science books. It's not in my scientific articles or anything that I write or my books or anything. There is nothing about that kind of thing there.

[Lewis Howes]

But people still experience it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

And I experience it and I, and I believe it. So what? My scientific colleagues can believe whatever they want. You know, as long as you're truthful to the science, doesn't matter. But, but I'll tell You this. I do feel like, I do feel these. And I do believe in these things. And there's nothing, I'll tell you, there's nothing in science that can negate the fact that you can have these kinds of dreams.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

But just don't count on them for like winning the lottery or.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah. Now, do dreams have meaning? And can our environment and our external world influence the quality of our dreams?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Oh, yeah. So definitely. So dreams do tend to have, they seem to have some meaning. And let me answer the meaning question second. Are there influences from the outside world? This is the. Let's answer this first. So first of all, having a lucid dreaming, having a lucid dream, for example, or just having any dream with any person you want to meet in your dream, you can do dream incubation, meaning you think about it during the day. So I've had that before.

[Lewis Howes]

Influence the dream of a happy, that will influence so.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly. So you go to bed. I once I wanted to fly like Peter Pan. So I was like, I was a kid, you know, Balan fly. Balan be Peter Pan, fly, Balan fly. And I ended up flying at night. At night. So you can incubate or I want to meet this person or I want to become lucid. So, you know, we can do this.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. The more you put your attention on something during a day, the greater chances you're going to influence it at night.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

100%. You're biasing the circuitry. So this is one point. Second, when you are inside the dream, then, and you are, let's say you are in a cold room and you're dreaming first of all that you are, let's say you were dreaming that just a regular dream. First of all, it can be anything. You're walking about in Glendale, for example, you're walking about there and then in Glendale, suddenly you feel like it's cold. Well, that could just be that the room and the place you're sleeping, the window is open and you're feeling cold. So things can spill over into the dream. Or if there's like a smoke from the neighbors, barbecuing, for example, that can also come into the experience. And you feel like maybe there's a fire in Glen, one of the houses on fire. So we know this, this is well known phenomenon that things from the outside world can influence the actual dreaming state. So we know that. Then, then what's the meaning? How does the brain create meaning out of dreams? It's very deep. It's a very deep one. Because first of all, you have some of the creative networks in the brain that has to do with creativity becoming hyperactivated. It's called a default mode network and whatnot. But it's just a creativity part of the brain. They're also active. When I'm daydreaming during the day, it's kind of. Yeah, things are very spacey and all that we said. Nor adrenaline of the part of the brain that's involved in focus attention shuts down during dreams. So things are even more spacey and bizarre and exploratory. So you have that. Yep, we said that during the dream state. And I'm coming to the punchline. During the same dream state, you have parts of the brain involved in a sense of balance. It's called the vestibular sense system. It's sort of. You have it on the both sides of the brain. Next to the ears, it's involved in sense of balance. That part of the brain also becomes hyperactive. And that's why you feel like at one moment you're here, then you're on a spaceship and things are just floating and crazy that you have. Emotional part of the brain is 30% more active. You know that the CEO is down. So things are logical. So you have that hippocampus. Memory part of the brain is hyperactive. So you remember all the craziness. Now this biases your brain. This state of all these centers being active and this being deactivated. It just puts your brain in a state to think in a certain way. And that will influence the narrative. You cannot avoid having that influence. This is actual theory about how dreams are based on the state of the brain. And you'll have dreams in this way. So that's the meaning. The meaning is the brain is trying to make sense of all these centers being active at the same time. The memory part of the brain influencing things. The environment, your hormonal state from the few last few weeks. All this will bias what you're dreaming and make you dream about certain things. But at the same time, it could still be. And this is when we're going to do the spirituality again. It could still be some spiritual influences as well. So you don't want to close that gate completely. But I'm saying there's a brain baseline state that makes you dream in a certain way and be more inclined to have certain visions and see certain things. But at the same time, there's so many other things that could be going on as well. So that's sort of the meaning part of what dreaming is all about. You Know the. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow. And why do some people not remember their dreams where others remember everything?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It's a good question. So one of the ways you can make yourself remember dreams more is by having a big glass of water.

[Lewis Howes]

So before you go to bed, isn't that going to make you wake up in the middle of the night because you have to pee now?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Maybe not right before, but a little bit. Yeah.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, that's exactly the point. When you're having a big glass of water, you will have more fragmented sleep. So your sleep will be more choppy and then you just wake up and you're more likely to have you remember your dreams more because you wake up during the REM stage of sleep and you have more chance of remembering your dreams. Remember. So the way the dreams work is that during the entire night, during all the stages of sleep, you dream during the REM stage and you have like four cycles of complete of where you go through different stages and where REM is sort of about a 25% of this time. So the more you go in and out of rem, the better chances you have you remembering your dreams overall. Now, why certain people remember their dreams more? I think so creative people tend to remember their dreams more. Perhaps they are activating more of their creative networks during the day as well. So they're just more in sync and in tune with their creative minds. So those I would say are. And so some people just don't remember their dreams. They may not be, as I want to say, creative. They could be just be they're not.

[Lewis Howes]

Activating as much or something.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Those centers. Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

That's interesting.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

What is one thing you wish everyone knew about their brain, their brain health, to live a better life, based on your neuroscience research.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Okay. That's I would say avoiding stress. Stress and cortisol. Obviously you need cortisol. Cortisol is important. But too much cortisol can inhibit some of these growth fertilizing factors we call BDNF and gdnf, these things that the brain uses to grow new synapses and connections. Stress directly dampens that. So having a lot of cortisol, too much cortisol to the point that you can't sleep well, that will directly make your brain less plastic.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Improving sleep. Understanding that sleep obviously is a phenomenon where you have all this, these crazy dreams, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, but you also have deep sleep. Deep sleep is the stage before REM that's involved in things like memory storage, generate sort of replenishing of the cardiovascular system. The immune system, the blood pressure regulation, glucose. All this happened during deep sleep, the stage before rem, skin rejuvenation, hair. You want to, you know, be pretty for a photo shoot or something. You know you want to. This is all in deep sleep. So you don't want to neglect deep sleep and you don't want to neglect sleep overall. So having that is crucial. Meaning taking care of your sleep, having good sleep routines, good sleep habits. Sleeping at the same time each day and waking up at the same time is a good way to keep your circadian clock. So in the brain and the hypothalamus part of the brain, a little region that's involved in. You have a biological clock there, involved in setting when you feel awake and when you feel asleep. So having good sleep, routine and habits, reducing stress, exercising regularly is crucial. Cardiovascular especially, but also strength. It's good for your brain, social connections, getting out, away from those laptops and those iPads, going out and meeting people, connecting with your family, your parents, gratitude to your parents, what they've done for you, all their sacrifices, loving them deeply. That kind of gets all the endorphins and the oxytocin and vasopressin, all the love hormones to make your brain and nervous system more healthier, optimized. Avoid loneliness. I mean, it kind of goes with the social interaction, but just loneliness is horrible, man. We weren't, we didn't come about to be alone. And a lot of us think our AIs and all that is our humans. They're not humans. And God and connect with people.

[Lewis Howes]

Here's a question for you.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

How bad is social media use for people's brains? Obviously, there's some benefit for social media to get a message out and there's entertainment, but when it's overused, what is it doing to our brains and our brain health? As a neuroscientist.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

It does a lot. I mean, first of all, all these Ferraris and all these mansions you're seeing, I mean, 90% are not real. I mean, you shouldn't feel bad about yourself wherever, wherever you are in life. If you don't like life, people will portray a life for you that's not real.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So a lot of anxiety and depression. People feel they're not enough. They don't feel complete. They feel like the sense of gratitude, which is important for just brain health and nervous system health and mental health, kind of goes out the window when you just kind of completely engage in this completely irrational social comparison with people, that you just feel like everybody owns A Ferrari. And you don't. And so therefore, you are not good enough. Forget all that. There's so much more to life. Go out and touch the grass, get some fresh air, you know, and so that's a huge part of it. Second, I would say these social media platforms were intentionally designed to be very addictive. Creating behavioral addictions, making you just crave likes and crave social attention. Nothing wrong with that, you know, having, you know, using that for social connection. But you can become addicted and just feel like that's the only thing you want to do. And the addicted brain, it's a. It's a brain that it gets dopamine addiction, basically, in a nutshell, is when you get dopamine from one source only. And when you're not having that source, the amygdala, the fear part of the brain, and the emotional part of the brain are screaming for more of that drug. And then the more of that drug you have, the more you need in order to. To get fulfillment and get the addictive cravings off. And so I would say addiction is another part of it. So those are the main two things, the social comparison and the addictive aspects. It's not real. I mean, so much of it is not real. People are forgetting what life is all about. And I think that's the problem with social media. It can be dangerous. And some people are, you know, there's actually the genetic component to addiction too. So some people are just more likely to become addicted to drugs. So you have. Actually knowing where you fall on that scale is great.

[Lewis Howes]

Is there a test you can take to see how addictive you are?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

No, but I'll tell you this. So a study that was done by mentors when I was at Cambridge, they did early studies when they would have people look at their genetics and then they would see who would become. And then measure their genetics and look at their lives 20, 30 years later or something. It's a very long, long study. They found that certain people were just more likely, based on the genes, genes to become drug addicts and addicted to stuff. So there's a genetic predisposition. It has to do with part of the brain calls. I don't want to all these names, but it's sort of nucleus accumbens and the dopamine parts of the brain. If you have certain receptors, certain receptors more than other receptors, you. You are genetically predisposed to become more addictive. Now, I can tell you this personally, I have that addictive personality. So if I use social media a little bit, I Suddenly find myself clicking.

[Lewis Howes]

And you're all of it. Yeah. You're all in.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

I can't, like. So I know for my own self that I have to be careful. So I think it's. Although there might, you know, you can do certain personality tests or see a shrink. You kind of know if you have that. Are you the guy that just takes, you know, a cookie and then you can't stop?

[Lewis Howes]

I'm all in. Or I'm all out. That's why I try to be all out of the bad stuff and all in on the good stuff.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

That's me. Right? That's me, too.

[Lewis Howes]

So it's like my. My. My crutch is sugar, Right?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

And, yeah. I can't just do once in a while.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

It's like once in a while becomes, all right, this is all day today. Now this is like a weekend. Now. This is like a month.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

All right.

[Lewis Howes]

And then I either need to be all out or I'm all in.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

And it's. That's just kind of how I learned to manage my life.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right, Right.

[Lewis Howes]

And maybe once in a while I can do it to, like, kind of manage it. But it's really. I have to put my attention on the healthy habit of eliminating certain things or it's just hard to manage balance with certain things that are more addictive for me.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And I'm glad that I've never gotten into alcohol or drugs or smoking, because I'm sure I would have more of an addictive personality with that. So I've just been zero for all of that. Never been drunk or high.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And so for me, it's like, you know, just trying to know where I'm at.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And live in accordance to that.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

But it seems like you fall in that genetic predisposition.

[Lewis Howes]

Probably. Probably. I mean, I've been doing this show for every week for 12 years. I have an addictive behavior to doing something good.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Towards this. So I try to put my energy into the good things as opposed to the negative things.

If you're trying to stay on top of your routine, whether that's workouts, skincare, sleep, or just making it through a busy day, hydration is where it all starts. The right electrolyte powder can help make all the difference. Like Drip Drop. Drip Drop is a doctor developed proven fast hydration that uses a precise ratio of sodium electrolytes and glucose for rapid fluid absorption. Drip Drop delivers three times the electrolytes and half the sugar versus the leading sports drink. It's a breakthrough hydration formula that's backed by science, which is why it's trusted by firefighters, medical professionals and over 90% of top pro and college sports teams. Plus there are so many fun flavors to choose from. 16 original formula flavors plus 8.0sugar options as well. Personally, I'm a big fan of the lemon flavor and the orange.

It's so good.

And right now Drip Drop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code greatness. That's dripdrop.com promo code greatness for 20% off. Stock up now before the heat hits hard. Dripdrop.com and use promo code Greatness now. Why drop a fortune on basics when you don't have to? Quince has the good stuff. High quality fabrics, classic fits and lightweight layers for warm weather. All at prices that make sense. Closet staples like cozy cashmere and cotton sweaters from just $50 and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. The best part? Everything with Quint is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint gives you luxury pieces without the markup. And it goes beyond their clothes. Quint also has incredible home and bedding options. Martha and I have the European linen duvet cover set from Quince and let.

Me tell you, this duvet set is.

So soft and high quality we highly recommend it. Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples from quince. Go to quince.com Lewis for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com L E W I S to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Lewis I've got a couple final questions for you.

This has been fascinating. I appreciate it.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Of course.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm curious, why did you decide to pursue the field of neuroscience? Was it because you were having sleep paralysis? Was it for some other reason?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

So I think for me it was my sleep paralysis experience definitely triggered my quest for wanting to understand the brain and how we can certainly see ghosts in our bedrooms. What's going on. And that really took me on the journey to wanting to understand things and get out of my little bedroom there in the ghetto and the poverty strict neighborhood and go out there and study the brain and traveling to various countries. Went to Egypt initially and then came to the US and went to England and all that and so my own sleep paralysis definitely affected me but also wanting to give back. My parents were so Good to me. They sacrificed so much for wanting for me to have a good life. I saw my dad work in a pizza shop entire life and have no college education, just kind of working away in the pizza shop. And I wanted to give back. I saw them and so I needed to work hard. And so that was what really pushed me, a sense of purpose, wanting to give my parents a good life, but at the same time being utterly fascinated about the brain. Yeah, so those were the. The two. Two.

[Lewis Howes]

That's cool. That's cool, man. Yeah, you're doing good work, man. I want to acknowledge you, blonde, for doing the research, sharing the research and trying to educate so many people on a complicated thing, which is the brain dreams, neuroscience, like it's hard to understand these things, let alone understand day to day life. So I acknowledge you for going through the challenges and the pain you've gone through to want to say, how do I find solutions to this pain to serve others? And you've been doing a great job with it. You also have a great course out on Peterson Academy, Jordan Peterson's online academy. And people can go to petersonacademy.com and check out Intro to Neuroscience. You've got a course there that teaches more about neuroscience dreams, understanding this deeper.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

So if people want to go there, we'll have that linked up as well. PetersonAcademy.com, go to the courses section. You can see Balan's course there. You're also on social media, Baland jalal, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all these different places where you're sharing more content, where people can follow you there. How else can we support or follow you? Do you have a website as well?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, I have a website, bellangela.com. it's not very high, very active on it, but there's some.

[Lewis Howes]

Social media is your spot.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay, cool. Awesome, man. Well, there's a lot of great content online that you're sharing. Thank you. I've got one final question before we got to wrap things up. You've shared a lot of great kind of truths already and insights and I'm going to be a dad here in the next few months. So that's why I was asking you about like what should we be teaching our kids as a neuroscientist? But I'm curious, final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Yeah, that's, that's a deep, that's a deep one. I'd say definition of greatness is it's kind of what, what you're doing, right? It's. It's showing up week after week. Right. And that's why I have to acknowledge you as well. Right. You come up, you know, week after week doing these great shows and I've enjoyed watching your show over the years and very insightful. And that's what greatness is about. It's excellence. It's putting in your heart and brain into all that you're doing and following your heart and passion, not being afraid of being who you are authentically, which you're a master at, and not closing yourself up to the world and having an open heart. And so I think that's, that's what greatness is about, you know, being truly yourself. So I think that that's greatness.

[Lewis Howes]

Hold on. Thanks so much for being here.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Thank you, brother.

[Lewis Howes]

Appreciate it, man. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy.

And if you're looking to create more.

Financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your.

Life, but you want to make it.

Easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to make moneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment. Moving forward.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening. Then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

You are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

[Lewis Howes]

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

[OnDeck/Capella University Advertiser]

At Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn [e-mail].

[Lewis Howes]

Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers, and sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their.

[Dr. Baland Jalal]

Connection while sending bank details.

[Lewis Howes]

I need a coffee.

And you need Lifelock. Because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] specialoffer terms apply.