"I Can Handle This!" The Neuroscience Behind The Mantra (A Live From The Breaker Community on Substack)

Today we’re sharing something special that was previously only available over on our Substack page, our exclusive live post-episode chat Mayim and Jonathan did with our special Substack community about the recent episode we did with Michael Singer, the renowned spiritual teacher and author of The Untethered Soul. While many enter 2026 with a "best year ever" mentality that can feel arbitrary or even off-putting, this discussion offers something more grounded: a simple and powerful mantra for when things go wrong—"I can handle this." How do we do that? We start by deconstructing the internal narratives that keep us in a reactive state. Mayim and Jonathan dive into the "most valuable sell" for anyone seeking peace: the realization that we don’t need to "wake up" to a new reality, but rather stop putting ourselves back to sleep with our own "emotional garbage". But "I can handle this" is more than just a phrase; it’s a way to influence our biology. Mayim explains that when we use our intellect to imagine something different, we are actually changing our physiology—altering our body’s ability to heal, connect, and thrive. By leaning into this mantra, we stop the "animal part" of our brain from merely reacting to past programming and instead use our consciousness to navigate the world with choice. The live also explores: - The Myth of the Permanent High: Spiritual awakening is not a constant state of euphoria. It’s about the "residue" you bring back from the mountaintop to handle the messy reality of traffic, technology fails, and human conflict. - The Sky Metaphor for Awareness: Peace and beauty are always available—like the sky—but we are often "unavailable" to notice them because we are fighting reality rather than acknowledging it. - Navigating the "Grit vs. Flow" Balance: A deep dive into the tension between the tenacity required to achieve goals and the spiritual wisdom required to read the "writing on the wall" when it’s time to change course. - Micro-Deconstruction of Fear: Jonathan explains how to slow down a reactive moment to distinguish between a genuine lack of safety and a familiar "story" generated by past programming. - Acceptance as an Active Choice: How to move beyond "ignoring" or "suppressing" difficult feelings and instead learning to take the "signs of resistance" as vital information. This is a conversation about the intersection of neurobiology and ancient wisdom, providing a toolkit for anyone ready to stop fighting the universe and start handling whatever 2026 brings. We hope you enjoy it, and we hope to see you over on Substack! Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 0:05Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 0:06Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. Today, we're going to be sharing something very special with you all. The conversation that we're sharing with you today was one that focused around, initially, our conversation with Michael Singer, author of Untethered Soul, Living Untethered, who has a very, very special connection for me and Jonathan and the formation of this podcast. But the conversation gets expanded out into so much more. We talk about what does it mean to stay high spiritually? How do we maintain that? How do we maintain a notion of awareness? How do we deconstruct fear? Where is the intersection of ancient wisdom with our current biology?

• 0:52Jonathan Cohen?

  This is a very special conversation that was previously only available to our Breaker community on Substack. Mayim and I go live there. There is so much in each of the interviews that we do that we need time to actually unpack these ideas, helping expand them, make them practical and tangible, and also answering questions from the community to help them better interact and experience the episodes.

• 1:17Mayim Bialik?

  We also know that there are those of you out there who love to hear me and Jonathan go meta-on-meta conversations. And that's why we're choosing to share this conversation with you. If you want in on any of this, make sure to join us over on Substack. And we're so excited to share this very special conversation surrounding what it's like to rid yourself of emotional garbage and what that means practically. We really hope you enjoy this conversation, Mayim and Jonathan, live, following our conversation with Michael Singer.

• 1:54Jonathan Cohen?

  First of all, welcome to 2026. We're here, we've made it.

• 1:58Mayim Bialik?

  Speak for yourself.

• 2:00Jonathan Cohen?

  There's a lot of conversation on the internet about 2026. Let's make it the best year ever. How do you feel about those conversations?

• 2:07Mayim Bialik?

  My general response would be like, they make me want to throw up in my mouth. But when I think about how I used to feel about like vision boards, and I used to think they're really silly and they don't make sense. And it's like, why am I doing this? And then I got to understand the purpose behind what it means to imagine something different and how that, as we've talked to a lot of experts, that can change your physiology. It can change your ability to heal, to connect, to thrive, as it were. I would say that I could have somewhat of a positive attitude about this. But I also should say, I find a lot of it very arbitrary because it's sort of like, this is January, but you know, the Jewish New Year's in the fall.

• 2:49Mayim Bialik?

  Other, you know, other traditions and other cultures have New Year's at different times. So I happen to like a fall feeling for my New Year because that's kind of what I'm used to. But like the whole like, oh, winter, Christmas tree, New Year's. It just, it's not, it doesn't have the same vibe for me, but it's very important. And I've been learning a lot about secular Eastern European celebration of New Year's. So that also has been something new that I'm bringing into the new year.

• 3:17Jonathan Cohen?

  This went in a direction I never expected, which was deconstructing the fact of when the new year is. But that is why asking you a question will never result in exactly the answer that I'm expecting, which makes things interesting. It's true that especially if you live in a snowy place, nothing seems new. It seems totally dead.

• 3:37Mayim Bialik?

  If you live on the other side of the equator, it's not even winter. It's summer. Imagine a summer Christmas. That's how the whole bottom of the world does it.

• 3:45Jonathan Cohen?

  Feliz Navidad. In all seriousness, we got to speak to Michael Singer for a second time. We never thought we would speak to him the first time. There are many things that he talked to us about.

• 3:58Mayim Bialik?

  Spiritual awakening is not a permanent high.

• 4:02Jonathan Cohen?

  It is not a permanent high.

• 4:04Mayim Bialik?

  One of the things that Michael Singer talked about is, or that we asked him to speak about, was spiritual awakenings. And there are different kinds of spiritual awakenings. Obviously, there can be like, oh, my gosh, moments where it's like fireworks go off and you're like, oh, God exists, or whatever your particular spiritual awakening looks or feels like. And that intensity is not supposed to last. It doesn't last. But the question is, what can we take from that that will sustain us as we have further challenges? The metaphor that Jonathan and I use a lot is like, you know, what do you bring down from the mountaintop? You know, it's really, you know, fine and good. And, you know, some might say easier to be isolated from people and be in a meditative

• 4:49Mayim Bialik?

  state and like, I've figured out meditation and then it's amazing. And I went up to the mountain and I became one with God. But what, when you come down off the mountain and you have to deal with like people, things, places, traffic, humans? That's when the challenge is, what does that spiritual awakening leave you with? What is, what's the residue of it? And also this kind of gradual notion of a spiritual awakening, which is sort of a, an unfolding and an information gathering and a sort of coming to, as it were, as opposed to like the spiritual awakening that a lot of people have, which honestly, Michael Singer had. He talked about that in his first episode, where just one day he was like, there's voices in my head. What's up? I get it.

• 5:29Jonathan Cohen?

  The myth of spiritual awakening is that we need to wake up versus we are already awake and we are constantly sleeping ourselves, putting ourselves back to sleep through our emotional garbage that he describes, that we are holding on so tightly to those things that have hurt us. And we are fighting the universe.

• 5:56Mayim Bialik?

  The religious notion is that God is always there. We're just sometimes turning away. And sometimes all it takes is that turning towards to see like, oh, was there all along? Which I think for a lot of people, and we've talked about this a lot, with spiritual experiences, with psychedelic experiences, with transcendental, you know, experiences, however you get to them, it's like, oh, it's a remembering, right? You're taking all the members that are you and you're remembering them. It's not necessarily that there's something new. It's that you have a new awareness of a thing that has always been there and available to you. And for many people, you know, I was thinking when you hear people talk about, you know, when people find, let's say, for people who like medication for things,

• 6:41Mayim Bialik?

  you know, like, oh, I didn't know that I could be this way. I didn't know I could have peace. I didn't know I didn't have to experience depression or anxiety or whatever it is. That was always there, right? It's kind of like the same things that annoy you when you're irritable and anxious and discontented. Those things won't affect you as much because you have changed. That's the change, but it was always kind of there. You know, like the beauty of the sky, right? There's different times when it's always beautiful. It's always there. It's always available.

• 7:14Jonathan Cohen?

  Sometimes the light just hits quite right, but there are many times where the light is hitting quite right, but I'm not available to notice.

• 7:20Mayim Bialik?

  Oh.

• 7:21Jonathan Cohen?

  So what does it mean to stop fighting the universe? That was very impactful for me.

• 7:27Mayim Bialik?

  Give us a little bit of context for people who may not have. Sometimes you talk about the episodes as if people just listened three minutes ago.

• 7:34Jonathan Cohen?

  And they haven't memorized.

• 7:36Mayim Bialik?

  That's right.

• 7:36Jonathan Cohen?

  I expect everyone to have taken notes.

• 7:39Mayim Bialik?

  Fighting the universe, can you talk a little bit about what your experience of that is, Jonathan?

• 7:44Jonathan Cohen?

  In relation to what do I think I can control? And how much of myself am I consuming with my inner thoughts and feelings, trying to protect against things that may hurt me? I believe people should use a mixture of intuition and intellect to navigate the world, to avoid the worst things that are possible and trying to maximize the good things that are possible within reason. But if I am constantly working towards not feeling pain, not feeling discomfort, not wanting anyone to bother me. Not acknowledging the fact that every person has had different experiences, therefore will see the world differently than I do.

• 8:26Jonathan Cohen?

  Therefore, I have to accept that and interact with them at that level. Then I am fighting against what is and I am not looking around saying, I see as much as possible reality for what it is. And then from there, I can respond. And I may not like it, but if I am constantly fighting against it, then I cannot actually be in a relationship and make any choices. I'm in a reactive state versus having the ability to navigate and make choices, not be basically, you know, it's similar to, I tie it back to what Bruce Lipton talked about in terms of the animal part of our brain. How much are we in control?

• 9:09Jonathan Cohen?

  And how much are we just reacting to past programming of things that don't even exist?

• 9:14Mayim Bialik?

  One of the things that Michael Singer talked about was this notion of signs of resistance, noticing signs of resistance in your life. And I was thinking, how many times, you know, are we getting messages that a relationship's not right? That a job's not right? That an interaction's not right? You know, how many times do we see signs of that? But we like push through it or we think we know better, right? And it's kind of like the kind of riddle or joke we always tell of like the guy who says, the town is flooding and he says, God will save me. And they come knocking on his door and like, you gotta get out. There's a flood coming and he's like, no, God's gonna save me. And then someone comes by on a boat and he's like standing on the roof. And he's like, no, I'm gonna wait.

• 9:59Mayim Bialik?

  God's gonna save me. And then the water's all the way up and the helicopter's like, come, we'll lift you. And oh, God's gonna save me. And he gets to heaven and God's like, you know, what happened? And he says, what happened with you? You were supposed to save me. And God says, I sent you someone knocking on your door. I sent you a boat and I sent you a helicopter, you know? How many times do we, do we ignore those signs, right? And kind of push through? And what I see with Michael Singer is there's like an ease, there's a flow, even in the way he speaks, even in the way, you know, he kind of interacts. Like there's just like a. It's so even, you know, there's a real evenness to his, to his flow that to me indicates that he's not, he's taking the signs from the universe, right? When there's resistance, he's, he's seeing that as information.

• 10:43Mayim Bialik?

  And a lot of times I don't, you know, take that as information. I take it as a challenge, you know?

• 10:49Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, this is something I was reminded of this week, and I wonder what your perspective is. I believe that a certain amount of tenacity and grit and perseverance are required in life to achieve anything. And also, if you don't read the writing on the wall and you're being shown that it's time to change course, give something up, the pain of ignoring that will ultimately be worse for you. And I was reminded about that this week, where someone is in a situation that they refuse to see the signs. And push through and push through and like, there's this very fine balance between if you listen to everyone, that something can happen, then you'll never see the potential.

• 11:32Jonathan Cohen?

  And yet, if you're so into something and it's clearly not working, when is that moment of giving up versus persevering, believing that the next mountaintop is right around the corner?

• 11:43Mayim Bialik?

  It's very difficult. And I think we, we hear it with creativity a lot when we talk about creative things or trying new things. For those of us who are parents, we also see it because you get to like, you get to see it in real time, like what it's like when you have a child learning something and you're kind of like in charge and like, do you push them to learn it? And what if they say no? And it's like, but you know, it's good for them. Or, you know, even with sports, like, oh, you want to drop out of soccer? And it's like, do you want to honor their need for autonomy? Or do you want to teach them perseverance? Like, it's kind of, you know, it's sort of similar. I think that gets echoed in our life as well. There are certain things I wish I was like an expert at. You know, like, I wish, like, I wasn't just a piano player at the level I'm at.

• 12:25Mayim Bialik?

  Like, why can't I play, you know, Pathétique exactly the way, like, concert pianists play? You know, and it's like, how much is it? Do we put in more time? Do we put in more effort? And how much is it, like, I should enjoy the level of piano that I play? And it makes people very happy. Thank you. But, you know, how much is that? I mean, this is, it's very interesting that you bring this up in the context of Michael Singer, because, um, yeah, it is a really good example of kind of like, what's resistance? What's a sign? And it really is about perspective. Like, talk about it's all relative. It's completely relative. Because I would say to you, this Substack thing's never gonna work. And you were like, yes, it is. And if it were up to me, we wouldn't even be here, because I would have been like, this is never gonna work.

• 13:09Mayim Bialik?

  And you have a brain, and everybody's got a different brain. You have a brain that, as I famously say, imagines things that don't exist. It's very useless to me.

• 13:18Jonathan Cohen?

  I imagined you, and then you just appeared.

• 13:22Mayim Bialik?

  No, but, but that is what creativity is born from. You know, like, I'm terrible at improv, because, like, the answer's always no. Right? And improv in life.

• 13:32Jonathan Cohen?

  You don't have to know what it is. Okay, here's, here's a tie-in.

• 13:35Mayim Bialik?

  I don't like that at all. Why would you do anything where you don't know what it is? It's not fun at all. That's like, let's open the fridge and close our eyes and just grab things and put them in a pot and boil them and see what happens. It's like, well, it's not like, you wouldn't cook that way. Why would you live that way?

• 13:54Jonathan Cohen?

  In my version, you just have to, or, you know, you're just like randomly grabbing, and then the things in front of you, you may not have expected, because if you were scanning, you wouldn't have, like, chosen that particular ingredient. You wouldn't have gone with the nutritional yeast first and based the recipe around that. Or the olives.

• 14:14Mayim Bialik?

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• 14:58Mayim Bialik?

  I can wear them year-round because I live in Southern California. They feel like PJs, but it looks like I put a ton of effort in, whether I'm dressing for casual workdays, lazy weekends, or vacation vibes. I'm also obsessed with their sheets, so soft. Everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work with ethical factories and cut out the middle people, so you pay for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just apparel. Quince brings that same approach to everything they make, from hotel-quality bedding to kitchen essentials and thoughtfully-designed furniture. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was My and the Alex Breakdown.

• 15:42Mayim Bialik?

  It's the best way to support our show. That was something I never realized until I saw, I think, you doing it. Like, I don't use the internet the way most humans do. And I didn't realize you could, like, put in, like, what ingredients you have, and it'll tell you what to make. Like, what?

• 15:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Ellen brings up a really good point, which I want to actually address here. Distinguishing between avoiding feelings versus practicing getting beyond the junk is really something that I struggled with a lot.

• 16:14Jonathan Cohen?

  Because it's like, is this fear or is this safety? Do I have an initial aversion to something because I'm clearly not supposed to do it? My background as a writer and thinking about narrative an enormous amount. This is an interesting spot to marry narrative. And the stories that we hold on to with our somatic experience. So I remember we were gonna take a trip somewhere and it was like a last minute trip. Yeah, this was years ago. You were like, let's take a trip and my first reaction was like, absolutely not. Like, no, I don't want to do this. And in that tiny micro second of a reaction. When I slowed down, and this is where time becomes totally nonlinear.

• 16:58Jonathan Cohen?

  There were a dozen or more stories about that, the travel, what I made up about. The bedding and what I made up about how we were gonna spend our time. And like I had built in a microsecond, an entire worldview that made me have a visceral reaction. And the visceral reaction was nothing that I could have understood. Being influenced by all those stories until I like. It was like almost, I imagine it like this web of stuff that was floating around mentally. That I had to like go in and dissect and unpack and say, is that true? And it's like the Byron Katie work is like micro dissections to say. Oh, once I peel back all of that reactive explosion that happened.

• 17:43Jonathan Cohen?

  How do I actually feel? And then there's a space of, well, I actually don't know what it might be. And then we, you know, and then we end up going on a trip and having a pretty good time. Well, that trip had its own problems. And maybe I was picking up psychically on those problems and I knew that that would be an issue. But all the things that I.

• 18:00Mayim Bialik?

  Why, just because my back went out and I could barely walk the night before? My, my somatic experience could be telling me I should not be around humans. I should not go places and I shouldn't talk to anyone. It's no laughing matter.

• 18:19Jonathan Cohen?

  You just took a trip that you really liked. You were around a lot of people.

• 18:22Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah, I did a good job. What I was thinking, like the first thing I thought and like, I again, didn't know that we'd go here. You know, when you interact with someone. And especially if there is tension around it, if you don't feel good.

• 18:38Mayim Bialik?

  How much of it is you in your present self, at the chronological age that you are reacting? How much of it? Because I'm gonna go ahead and say, like, if I had to divide me up into percentages, I'd say when, when I'm rejected, when I feel scolded, when someone doesn't like something that I even am around. Like, if we, if I pick a restaurant and people don't like it, it's like, I, I want to jump off a cliff. I can't handle it. How much of that is my adult, like, self? Very, very little. Like, I'd say a good, Jonathan, what percentage do you think?

• 19:20Mayim Bialik?

  I'd say a good 80% of the time I am not operating, meaning cognitively, like, I'm reacting from a place that is of a different chronological age, which is why, you know, like, this notion of time not being linear, internally, I can transport myself to a completely different emotional timeline, right? Especially when there is resistance. Oh, you're nodding a little too vigorously. Especially when there's resistance, when there's conflict.

• 19:47Jonathan Cohen?

  What's, what's your solution to not having a restaurant that everyone likes? Fine, everyone will eat by themselves.

• 19:53Mayim Bialik?

  Totally. Let's go to a food court. You can pick what they want, and we all sit in the middle.

• 19:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Everyone go to their respective houses. Let's never talk again.

• 20:01Mayim Bialik?

  But you know what? This is something that I will tell my children. You know, one is 17, one is 20, because this is an important, important thing that no one ever told me, that when you are an adult, you don't always act like one.

• 20:19Jonathan Cohen?

  There are very few adults in the world. There are just small children in large meat suits.

• 20:24Mayim Bialik?

  That's right. But, but I definitely think that, and this is one of the things, you know, a lot of people say a lot of negative thing, or people can say negative things about, you know, child-centered parenting, or this kind of like psychological revolution we've had in how we parent, i.e., speak to them, look at them, love them, don't be afraid, you'll over-love them, which is how, you know, my parents' generation, in many cases, was raised. I thought my parents knew everything. I thought they had figured everything out. Not because they said, "I've figured everything out." It's just that's what it seemed like, you know? And I make sure to tell my kids, like, "I don't know what to do today. I've never made dinner tonight. We'll see what happens."

• 21:02Jonathan Cohen?

  Some lines from the, uh, from the episode. Your eyes aren't actually seeing me. Your brain is rendering me.

• 21:09Mayim Bialik?

  That's so romantic.

• 21:12Mayim Bialik?

  Put that in a Hallmark card.

• 21:14Jonathan Cohen?

  While the world is devolving, I can handle this. We should talk about the most powerful mantra for modern life. It was the OG, let them, was the surrender experiment, which-

• 21:26Mayim Bialik?

  Hmm, that was a really cool realization.

• 21:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Right? Like, he was let them before let them.

• 21:34Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, look, you know, for people who have not, um, read Untethered Soul, you know, that's the place to start. Like, if you're gonna start anywhere, you start with Untethered Soul. I mean, I think.

• 21:45Jonathan Cohen?

  I hope anyone who is listening to this podcast, who's like, oh, my gosh, how did your podcast start and all these downloads happen and all these conversations? Go back to the first Michael Singer episode and you will hear how Michael Singer was the catalyst.

• 22:02Mayim Bialik?

  He gave birth to us.

• 22:03Jonathan Cohen?

  He, he may have.

• 22:05Mayim Bialik?

  That first Michael Singer episode was very, very powerful. I think I cried. I cried several times.

• 22:09Jonathan Cohen?

  No, you did. He was expecting you to cry more in this one.

• 22:14Mayim Bialik?

  I shed all my tears in the first one. That's it.

• 22:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Tell us, for the people who want consciousness and the intersection of neuroscience, what happens when you frame something as I can handle this?

• 22:26Mayim Bialik?

  It's something that I was just researching for an episode that we're gonna be recording this week. So I'm trying not to confuse things. I'll use the sort of out of the box term and then I'll bring it back to science. So there is something to vibe. Some people would say there's something to a frequency. And you hear people talk about this, like, ooh, Jonathan, how do people say it? Like, I'm vibrating at a higher frequency or let's, let's vibrate at a higher frequency, right? You hear this in yoga classes and like Kundalini rising and all this stuff. And many of us are like, what, what is that? Like, what, how do you ground that? And what science, as Michael Singer talked about, is catching up to spirituality, is that there is something to that vibe.

• 23:11Mayim Bialik?

  And we, we've started being able to actually image it. Um, usually functional magnetic resonance imaging, that's FMRI. Usually FMRI studies can be very, very delicately kind of tweaked to try and calibrate. Where and how we resonate when we're in a zone? And this notion of I can handle this, that is placing yourself in a zone of ease. It's not just about relaxation. You are elevating, right? The frequency that you are vibrating at. And there's a lot of interesting research with theta waves and things like that. You know, where is the place that you get into?

• 23:55Mayim Bialik?

  For example, when you meditate, right? If you've ever been deep in meditation, and I don't just mean, you know, I listen to guided meditations. But I don't just mean like putting on a guided meditation and listening to the nice lady talk. I'm talking about like if you've tried a kind of meditation, for example, like TM, like transcendental meditation, where you're just like repeating a mantra over and over, you know, things like that. You get into a sort of zone, right? And that zone is the place where people like Bruce Lipton, people like Joe Dispenza, like you can actually quantify this. And what it looks like is immune function improves. What it looks like is, you know, positivity has a positive impact on other systems.

• 24:40Mayim Bialik?

  But there's a really interesting way to try and calibrate. What is physiologically happening when we say, I can handle this? And the notion that life is easy and perfect is not what Michael Singer was brought here. Because when I first heard about Michael Singer, I'm like, this guy's got it easy. Like, he probably just like sits in his house and meditates all day and like does consults with people. No, he worked in business. He had stressful things. He had a huge lawsuit that he had to deal with. He has dealt with real life things. And that gave me hope to say like, I have to be able to get into a place where I can handle it. And you've survived 100% of what you've been through, like all of us. You've survived 100% of it. Was it the way that you would program it yourself? No.

• 25:25Mayim Bialik?

  Like, is this a simulation you have to enjoy all the time? Uh-uh. Can you be angry at whatever god you've constructed? Absolutely. But the notion that you can handle this is actually sort of proof that you have the ability to elevate your own, right? Frequency, as it were, and start utilizing better immune function, better physiological and metabolic functioning, for sure.

• 25:51Jonathan Cohen?

  The opposite, which we don't want to encourage, is when we say we cannot handle this and you fight the universe, what it does is it puts you in a panicked, high-stress state that slowly erodes your ability to fight viruses, immunity.

• 26:05Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also then you spiral. You spiral and your sleep gets wonky and you start eating, you know, foods that make you kind of feel good and give you that rush, like, you know, french fries and chocolate, just speaking from experience. And yeah, we're more likely than to drink, we're more likely to not hold boundaries in unhealthy relationships. Like, that really is like, kind of where that can... I got a thing on my ankle. Like, if that's not an episode, remember you looked at it and you were like, "That doesn't look good." I literally said to my acupuncture woman, I was like, "Is there a worm inside of me that's trying to get out on my ankle?" I don't think so, no. It's not what happens, but that's what I thought.

• 26:47Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm 100% using that as the start of a social media clip.

• 26:52Mayim Bialik?

  Is there a worm in my body that's trying to escape through the top of my right ankle? And then I went to the Louise Hay. I'm like, "What does Louise Hay say about this part of my body?" But that's a different story.

• 27:03Jonathan Cohen?

  You're like, "Louise Hay, why am I a reptile from my knees down?"

• 27:07Mayim Bialik?

  That's me. That feels below the belt. That's below the...

• 27:11Jonathan Cohen?

  It is below the belt. It's below the knees. I was getting sick this morning.

• 27:15Mayim Bialik?

  What do you mean?

• 27:17Jonathan Cohen?

  I woke up, my throat was sore, I had post nasal drip, and I very rarely get sick. You had just been up here, you were working through a cold, whatever, but it's like, a while ago. What was really happening is, two days ago, I got super stressed. I was on this great new year, new me moments. I had two great days back at work.

• 27:38Mayim Bialik?

  You got sick from all that positivity?

• 27:41Jonathan Cohen?

  No, but I had an interaction. Someone brought some news to me that was very stressful. And I could feel...

• 27:47Mayim Bialik?

  Work news, like, you're fine.

• 27:49Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm fine. Something was going on and it just, I started spiraling. It was like, "This happened, I feel really bad for them." And this is the, what's in my mind is going 1,000 miles an hour and has some fear, some...

• 28:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Boom. Didn't sleep well last night.

• 28:07Mayim Bialik?

  Hmm.

• 28:08Jonathan Cohen?

  Getting sick. And we're doing an episode that you're researching that you were talking about. And not to give too much away, I was like, I acknowledge it. I'm like, this is stress. This is my body responding to an amount of stress. I can handle this. I am fine. I got a decent amount of sleep. I have a good amount of reserves.

• 28:28Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 28:28Jonathan Cohen?

  I just came off holiday. I feel great.

• 28:31Mayim Bialik?

  That's really amazing. Yeah, when we think we're getting sick or, you know, even with like jet lag, because I just came back from across the world. My friend, Daniel and I, we actually, we were friends from college and we actually traveled together. And we both decided about 20 years ago that we don't believe in jet lag. We just.

• 28:48Jonathan Cohen?

  Why shouldn't?

• 28:49Mayim Bialik?

  Decided it. We just, we told, we just went, we, we don't believe in it. So, I mean, it's not like I don't believe in it. Like, of course, I understand, but I, it's, it doesn't even take that much effort. Like, I feel like if everyone would just listen to me about when to sleep, what to do and when to eat, they too, meaning in my family, I'm not saying like the universe, they also wouldn't have jet lag. But I was thinking about that, like, how much of it is like, oh, I'm gonna have jet lag, you know? And then, I, I mean, it's been a minute since I've flown at this age. Like, the last time I went this far was like three or four years ago. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna be like comatose. Couple mornings I've woken up at four, five. I get a lot done before my kid gets up. I'm like, feeling good. Everything's fine.

• 29:32Jonathan Cohen?

  I save a lot of videos and articles that you never see. And every now and again, I try and like show them all to you. But one of them that I saved that is probably not credible, but it is interesting nonetheless, is that the athletes speak to their bodies, gain more muscle mass and perform better than the athletes who do not.

• 29:56Mayim Bialik?

  That's why you talk to your body all the time?

• 29:58Jonathan Cohen?

  I was like, I'm lifting weights. I should be telling my body how great it's doing and how much muscle it's building and how strong it is.

• 30:04Mayim Bialik?

  That's why you always want me to watch you work out so that I can be like, you're doing great. This is all I've got for today. We know that the year is already complicated. There's a ton in the news. There's a ton in politics. You can very easily get that anywhere. For us here, we really hope to provide a little bit of a break from that and a way for you to exercise your brain, exercise your heart, your mind, and all of those things that integrate. So, yes, we are the best ADHD group ever, says Canadian Kim. Happy New Year, everyone, and really look forward to what we're all going to create together and manifest in 2026.