BRAIN SURGEON Reveals How To Heal Your Body & Mind w/Dr. Rahul Jandial EP 1249

Today's guest is Dr. Rahul Jandial, a dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles, California. Before finding his calling in the operating room, Dr. Jandial was a college dropout and worked as a security guard. As a surgeon, he now provides complex surgical treatment to patients with cancer. As a scientist, his laboratory investigates the biology of the human brain. Throughout his career, he has authored 10 books and over 100 academic articles. Be sure to check out his new book, Life on a Knife’s Edge: A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival. In this episode, you will learnHow to heal the memories of past trauma. How to better regulate your emotions. How to transform yourself using your mind. Why it is so important to play and keep your body active. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1249Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Rahul Jandial?

  Being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stressed. All of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer. That we agree on, that's measured. Now, let's go back to the brain.

• 0:16Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin.

• 0:40Lewis Howes?

  You've worked as a brain surgeon and neuroscientist for a while now. And so, you're an expert on all things the brain and also the mind.

• 0:47Rahul Jandial?

  Trying to be.

• 0:48Lewis Howes?

  Which I think is kind of fascinating. Or you're in a constant studying process of it. I'm curious, the first question I have is, what do you think is the biggest factor, since you've studied both the brain and the mind? What is the biggest factor that holds us back from thinking in terms of abundance and thinking in terms of positivity? Why do we stay stuck on negative thinking, negative thoughts, and limited mindset so much?

• 1:13Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, that's a big question. So, the simple answer is that the stories we've been told about what's going on in our skull, they're just wrong.

• 1:24Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:25Rahul Jandial?

  Okay, so the first thing is, there's no wires. We're not hardwired. There are no gears. So, let's go backwards. Way back when, like ancient Egypt, they thought it was just like flan or something. The soul was in the heart. And I can see that. I've opened chest before for cardiac surgery, and it's fierce. And what they would do is just stick a straw up the nose and slurp out the brain, just get rid of it. So, for a while, I could understand the complete misunderstanding. Then, when sort of like, you know, speakeasies and industrial revolution, all the pictures about the brain, you see them as gears. And, but, modern time, we're starting to think about it as wired. I'm wired for this, I'm wired for that. You're not wired for anything.

• 2:09Rahul Jandial?

  It's an ecosystem filled with throbbing 100 billion microscopic jellyfish sparking electricity at each other. Trying to approach each other, shaving down pruning, branching, arborizing. So when I use those words like arborization pruning, those are neuroscience words in rigorous neuroscience journals. But it hasn't sort of made it to pop culture. So I think part of what keeps us stuck is that we think, oh, I'm wired this way, or I have to rewire. And it's too on off rather than flows, right? It's not freeway from A to B. It's the way you see a school of birds flow. And they roll over each other, aurora borealis.

• 2:52Rahul Jandial?

  That's how thoughts and that's how feelings float through the ether of our minds. When you start to understand it like that, then you know every day, something new is possible. Is it easy? No, but it's possible. So that's the, that's the real way to think of your brain, mind, and behavior. That it's completely plastic in the sense that you're never the same person just from a moment ago since we've met.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  That's a good introduction to this. I'm curious because you, you do surgeries on a weekly basis where you open the skull, mostly the top of the skull?

• 3:33Rahul Jandial?

  Well, all different areas. It's like ice fishing. So we make spots different. Wherever we need to get, we make the hole underneath it so we can get there.

• 3:39Lewis Howes?

  So it may not be a full top of the skull.

• 3:42Rahul Jandial?

  No, that's in Hannibal Lecter's movie.

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  So you're taking little, little, little holes.

• 3:46Rahul Jandial?

  The slickest brain surgeons, meaning who can do it the best, make the smallest hole to get right where you need to, the smallest incision. And do the most, you know.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  The least amount of damage, I guess, to the whole skull. Have you ever had to take off the, the top, the whole top?

• 4:02Rahul Jandial?

  No, but in trauma, after boxing, sports, car accidents, sometimes we take off two big pancake sizes on the left and right. So when the brain is throbbing, yeah, you take the lid off.

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:14Rahul Jandial?

  But you don't take the whole thing off because you've got a giant vein coming down the middle. So that's, you can't do the mohawk part. So you take two strips.

• 4:22Lewis Howes?

  The sides.

• 4:22Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. So if you look at, when I travel through South America, you look at the trephinations, the holes in the skulls, they're always on the. aside, you can't make holes in the middle and still live.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:32Rahul Jandial?

  Giant vein splitting the two hemispheres.

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so that's just in the movies?

• 4:35Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:36Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, that's that's Silence of the Lambs.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 4:40Rahul Jandial?

  But that's a good question, though, that there's a it's a targeted approach.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 4:44Rahul Jandial?

  You want the patient to feel it the least.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, of course.

• 4:46Rahul Jandial?

  Wake up the best.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  Right, of course. What did you what's been one of the biggest realizations from studying neuroscience, but also studying the brain? And actually opening up pieces of the skull, looking in there, surgically doing things to optimize it? What was one of the big aha moment for you of studying both areas? Where you're like, wow, there's something that I didn't think was possible that is actually possible for human beings to do?

• 5:10Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything?

• 5:11Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, a really good question. It ties back to your first question about what holds us back. So the thing that shocked me was that we could actually remove parts of the brain and people would go home a week later. I'm not saying there isn't some subtle neuropsychiatric issue, but for example, I had a guy come in, he's a framer. And, you know, they have the the pneumatic, you know, it's not hammer and nails as many people conceive it to be, but and a lot of times when a recoil recoils back, they'll pop a nail through their orbit or nose into their frontal lobe.

• 5:43Lewis Howes?

  This happened.

• 5:44Rahul Jandial?

  And they drive in.

• 5:45Lewis Howes?

  With a nail in their?

• 5:46Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Lewis Howes?

  Brain?

• 5:47Rahul Jandial?

  Right, so that's the first thing I was like, wait, no, totally. I got pictures on my phone that we're not going to show anybody, but you can have a penetrating injury to certain parts.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  Of the brain?

• 5:57Rahul Jandial?

  Of the brain, and you drive in.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 6:00Rahul Jandial?

  So that's the first thing I realized was, so there isn't a a region in the brain for creativity, there isn't a region in the brain for this. So the first thing I had to realize was, no, this thing is working in in a as an environment, as an ocean filled with like a kelp forest and jellyfish. So if you drop something into the ocean, you're not going to disrupt it. There's no spot for something. And that ties back to what, you know, what I want people to walk away with is that you have to think of your thoughts and feelings and the working of your flesh inside your skull as a as a garden, as an ecosystem, just because you have one weed or one. Spike doesn't mean the harmony is disrupted. So for example,

• 6:43Rahul Jandial?

  one frontal lobe, we can surgically remove if needed after trauma or tumor. And patients function. They drive, they talk on the phone. Again, you don't want this. Uh, one occipital lobe doesn't leave you blind. It's the people think occipital lobe blindness. No. If I take out a tumor from the right occipital lobe, I just can't trust my left rear view mirror when I drive. It's a it's a field cut. Your world goes from this to this. So I when I when I first started seeing that, because I assumed you hit any part of the brain, it's your dust.

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  Cause that, cause that people will say like the left side of the brain is for this and the right side of the brain is for this and

• 7:20Rahul Jandial?

  No.

• 7:20Lewis Howes?

  I use more of the right side of my brain and that's why I'm creative or whatever it is, or I'm more analytical because I use this side of the brain or my, my fear based side of the brain is, is heightened. So

• 7:30Rahul Jandial?

  No.

• 7:30Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying if one part of the brain is under attack, tumor, trauma, out of a nail, whatever it is, something happens to that part of the brain. It may not hold you back from your creativity or your critical thinking potentially?

• 7:47Rahul Jandial?

  No, it because the rest of your brain can compensate. Now let me give you, now that's not true for the entire brain. So let me just go backwards a little bit, but those were the aha moments I had. I mean, I'd been, I'd seen bowels, I'd taken care of patients, AIDS was, you know, going crazy in the eighties. I'd seen a lot. The first time I saw somebody do brain surgery, I was like, is that possible? First, like, can you even remove the skull? And they're like, yeah. And then they were, you know, can you remove that tissue to get to the tumor? They're like, yeah. You just have to understand how the whole thing works globally in harmony. Now, the way I think of the brain is like a mushroom. And so you've got the canopy.

• 8:30Rahul Jandial?

  And all the magic and the thoughts spark from the top, the surface. And then they send things down to the stalk, which comes, you know, deep to your mouth and comes out of the bottom of your skull and then turns to your spinal cord. So if when I want to move my left hand, my right brain says, move your left hand. It sends down signals, they come into my armpit, they come into this nerve.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 8:51Rahul Jandial?

  Now, the lower parts, there is some, you hit that, you lose something.

• 8:55Lewis Howes?

  Something down here.

• 8:56Rahul Jandial?

  The reptilian brain, the spinal cord, every millimeter does something, because it's a lot of, think of it as cables, even though it's not wires, but there are a lot of, we call them tracts, T R A C T S. There are a lot of tracts that are communicating the things that the canopy thought of. And in that area, if there's a nail injury, you do get a certain deficit. But in your thinking, your feeling, your emotions, your love, your fear, it's not a fear spot or a love spot. It's, it's sort of, again, the aurora borealis in the worlds of, of a school of birds just flowing in different energy, right?

• 9:32Lewis Howes?

  Or fish, a school of fish or something, yeah, yeah.

• 9:35Rahul Jandial?

  Exactly.

• 9:36Lewis Howes?

  That's fascinating.

• 9:37Rahul Jandial?

  So that's, I want people to walk away with, okay, so what that leaves people with is, the fear I have is real, but it's not fixed, it's not wired, it's not permanent. And through effort, through exposure therapy, through whatever it is, whatever your process is, that, that, that school of fish can flow in a different way. That's, to me, that's, that's infinitely powerful, that we are new every day. That also gives us the responsibility to hold on to our positive attributes. That we can spiral away every day, we can spiral downward and we can spiral upward any day.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And so have you studied brains where someone came in at one point and then maybe a year or five years later, you saw them again and you were able to look inside their brain?

• 10:21Rahul Jandial?

  Another good question.

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  And what did you see different with the brain? I wonder, can we enhance our brain by the way we think and our behaviors and our actions and our, and the way we love ourselves and treat ourselves internally and emotionally?

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Or can we hurt our brain by doing the opposite?

• 10:45Rahul Jandial?

  That's a profound question. So again, let me start with a very sort of dramatic example to set the point to the larger takeaway. On occasion, for epilepsy that shuts down kids, we have to actually take away half of the brain. It's called a hemi, you know, hemisorectomy.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  You have to take out half the brain?

• 11:10Rahul Jandial?

  You got everybody can Google it. This is not, it's not like it's something we invented today. It's been going on for decades, yet because a lot of the people in this space are not actual brain surgeons, we're not getting a lot of those stories from there. But there's a tremendous story there that when there's a medical need and the parents ask for it and it helps the child, we can actually make a big incision and take away a frontal lobe, a parietal lobe, and occipital lobe that's sparking seizures. And when they wake up, that left side doesn't work.

• 11:44Rahul Jandial?

  Three years later, when you see them.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 11:47Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. This is not even sci-fi.

• 11:50Lewis Howes?

  They can move, they can function fully again.

• 11:52Rahul Jandial?

  So the remaining hemisphere can reorganize. The linebacker can also be the defensive end, can also be sometimes even on offense. There are different roles those neurons can play.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:06Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. So, and how do we know that?

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  Because you've removed half the brain and it's still functioning.

• 12:10Rahul Jandial?

  And we took a picture three years later and that half of the brain was still gone.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  Still gone?

• 12:14Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. It didn't sprout back. It's not like a liver where we cut half of it off and the mom grows some back, you take a chunk of it and you put in the kid. So that part is still missing.

• 12:23Lewis Howes?

  Gone.

• 12:24Rahul Jandial?

  Yet that function has returned.

• 12:25Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 12:27Rahul Jandial?

  So that's what I mean about different players on the team can cover for each other. So I want people to know that that's true plasticity and it's not rewiring, it's not regrowing, it's actually whatever you have is repurposed. And how do they do that? Well, through the electrical flows of the mind. There's.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:50Rahul Jandial?

  That's.

• 12:51Lewis Howes?

  So not the electrical flows of the brain?

• 12:53Rahul Jandial?

  Right.

• 12:54Lewis Howes?

  The electrical flows of the mind.

• 12:55Rahul Jandial?

  Of the mind. So what is, people are like, okay, now he's gone. Now he's, he's, he's got, he's selling crystals in Malibu. No, no, no, no, stay with me.

• 13:05Rahul Jandial?

  When you walk, you played, right? And we talked about that briefly. I didn't know that about you. It's fascinating. I think there are a lot of parallels with surgeons and athletes. I think surgeons want to be athletes when they became surgeons.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:16Rahul Jandial?

  The, um, when you walk up to a stadium, there's every single, you know, so I was at SoFi.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  It's incredible. No, I've been there. It's unbelievable.

• 13:24Rahul Jandial?

  I don't think people understand. It's the world's largest pit. You come in near the top because of the LAX flight path. And I, you come in and, and you look down.

• 13:33Lewis Howes?

  They dug deep.

• 13:35Rahul Jandial?

  I know.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 13:36Rahul Jandial?

  It's good to be in my hometown.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Rahul Jandial?

  When you walk up and you hear, you, you see, well, you see the pieces, 70,000 fans. Think of those as neurons. We have 100 billion. Those little magical sparks from the jellyfish that I described, because they look like that. They're not squares. So you can talk, you could, people are talking and moving. That's how people conceive or conceptualize the brain. Um, but what happens when they, they roar together? That's what I mean about the electricity.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  There's an energy.

• 14:08Rahul Jandial?

  Right, there's an energy.

• 14:09Lewis Howes?

  You feel it.

• 14:10Rahul Jandial?

  It's an epiphenomenon. Okay, now you, now let's build an engine. The parts are there. You fire it up, and there's a hum, right? That's more than just the engine and the pistons. Uh, a symphony, you've got the musicians. I'm, I'm less familiar with this, but they create something bigger.

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:29Rahul Jandial?

  That's what I mean about the mind, that it's not a, it's not a forward, backward electricity zinging around on wires. It's that thing that happens when you have 100 billion, um, throbbing, growing, branching neurons. And it's electricity based. You can put a sticker on and light a small light bulb.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:49Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. And so that's how we measure for.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  Have you done this before?

• 14:53Rahul Jandial?

  Oh, yeah. But this is, but this is decades old. This isn't like, so what I want people to say is like, understand is when we remove the right hemisphere and the patient comes back three years later, kids, and they can function again. No new wire sprouted. Nothing was spliced. What remained created a new roar, created a new hum, created, you know, recovered the function. So it's not always easy for people to understand, but that's the truth. And that's our current understanding of how the brain leads to the mind.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:23Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Lewis Howes?

  Can the brain function without the mind?

• 15:27Rahul Jandial?

  If you get knocked down a ring. You're not thinking.

• 15:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:31Rahul Jandial?

  And if we put electrodes, there's dampened electricity. But that stock, remember I mentioned the mushroom? That can still keep you breathing and protect your airway and keep your heart still going. So the reptilian areas of the brain, the ones that we share with many animals.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  Will function.

• 15:48Rahul Jandial?

  Will function without a mind, without that. If you were conscious. Mind with consciousness, thought, love, emotion.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:54Rahul Jandial?

  So it's like the babushka dolls where you have.

• 15:57Lewis Howes?

  So it can function, but it's not, it's not, uh, it's baseline function. It's keeping you breathing.

• 16:05Rahul Jandial?

  High level cognitive function that we.

• 16:07Lewis Howes?

  So the mind is really what's keeping everything activated.

• 16:12Rahul Jandial?

  That's what, yeah, that's in concert.

• 16:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:14Rahul Jandial?

  Right. The mind can think down the heart rate that the reptilian brain.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:20Rahul Jandial?

  Keeps going if you get knocked out. So they're, they're integrated, uh, and so you put it nicely, the mind can keep things going. Um, but if you have brain death, then there's no mind, there's no electricity.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  The brain.

• 16:33Rahul Jandial?

  Brain deaths, unfortunately.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  What's that mean?

• 16:36Rahul Jandial?

  Meaning sometimes the heart, the body's alive, but the brain has died.

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  How, how's that happen?

• 16:42Rahul Jandial?

  Well, we'll, we'll get into some, some, I think it's important for people to understand, so car accidents.

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 16:48Rahul Jandial?

  Brain swelling, those hundred billion neurons, they burst from smashing into each other. We, we put a catheter in the thigh and we, we squirt dye and we see there's no blood going into the skull.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 17:04Rahul Jandial?

  It's a dark vault.

• 17:06Lewis Howes?

  So if it's so much swelling, the blood can't flow, there's so much inflammation that it's hard for blood to flow.

• 17:12Rahul Jandial?

  Instead of a heart attack, you've had a complete brain attack.

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  Can you.

• 17:16Rahul Jandial?

  And for a day, no, no, no.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  You can't recover from this.

• 17:18Rahul Jandial?

  Not even miracles.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  We've never seen.

• 17:21Rahul Jandial?

  One hundred point zero zero out. There's never anything left. But for a day, the, since the heart nerves have their own pulse.

• 17:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes, they're pumping.

• 17:30Rahul Jandial?

  We can put machines and things and to keep people going for a day or so. That's where the world of organ transplantation comes in. So a lot of guys, a lot of people who ride motorcycles. They have that kind of injury and their bodily organs are healthy. And they often are, you know, the ones that provide transplants for other people.

• 17:52Lewis Howes?

  Their brain is not functioning.

• 17:55Rahul Jandial?

  Body is alive.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:57Rahul Jandial?

  In that setting, there's no mind, there's no electricity coming out. So when you're asking about mind and brain. And so that's a fascinating area for people to know those examples, to understand themselves better, right? And it comes back to that we are electrical currents. We're not wires, we're not switches, we're not spots, we're not gears.

• 18:20Lewis Howes?

  Electrical currents.

• 18:21Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, they're flows. What is that? So like you go to a lake and you drop a big, you jump in there, whatever, right?

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:29Rahul Jandial?

  There's a wave that moves through the lake.

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 18:32Rahul Jandial?

  But the water molecules didn't ride with it.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:36Rahul Jandial?

  Right?

• 18:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:37Rahul Jandial?

  So that's the hum, the symphony, the roar, the electrical global waves that are pulsating through our brains. And when people say they're in the zone, or they're in a flow state, or they're in a meditative state. That global energy flow, those waves, they're different. They can be measured and categorized.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 18:58Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  So what does that mean when someone's in a flow state? In terms of the mind-brain connection? What is happening?

• 19:05Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  Are these hundred billion jellyfish like in symphony and they're humming at a high level? They're working in concert?

• 19:12Rahul Jandial?

  Let me jump in right there. Actually, that's perfect. Actually, you would think that if somebody's about to hit a game-winning shot. Their best performance is when they're at a high level, meaning wild, frenetic. Actually, no.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  When they're super calm.

• 19:25Rahul Jandial?

  Somewhere in between.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 19:26Rahul Jandial?

  So not asleep.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:28Rahul Jandial?

  But not, hey, I'm on my third espresso, just taking in stuff in the morning.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  Focused.

• 19:33Rahul Jandial?

  Focused, but relaxed. And there is a measured state for that. And it usually has to do with sort of medium brain waves. That's something I'm writing about right now. And whether you meditate.

• 19:46Rahul Jandial?

  Or you're under that, the two-minute drill in football, or you're a ballerina and you have that, that perfect, you know, dance routine coming up or maneuver. You are actually disengaging some of the things that would get in the way of you releasing a performance. You're not thinking the performance, you're getting out of the way.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  You're being, you're just.

• 20:08Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. And, and that has a different measurable electrical flow state, you know, and it's not revved up.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  It's not hyperactive, it's.

• 20:18Rahul Jandial?

  Somewhere in between.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  Above calm, but calm.

• 20:22Rahul Jandial?

  It's not fifth gear, it's not idle.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Rahul Jandial?

  They're at their best, and they've seen that in athletes and different things.

• 20:28Lewis Howes?

  What's the fastest way for a human being to get into a flow state?

• 20:31Rahul Jandial?

  Uh, for that, in my opinion, there are no shortcuts, because what, what it takes is a lot of practice.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:37Rahul Jandial?

  And it takes is a lot of learning, and then when you are performing.

• 20:40Lewis Howes?

  And being confident in your abilities and, yeah.

• 20:42Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, but it's executing, you know, I, I don't think you can get into, I might be wrong, but when I see my kids, I don't think you can get into a flow state just rolling through Instagram.

• 20:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:52Rahul Jandial?

  It's actually delivering a skill you've trained for. So you have a craft that you've trained for, and you're performing it at a high level. So you see race car drivers talking about stuff like that. So it is sort of, uh, your craft performed just at the edge of your comfort level. Like video games, if they're too hard, kids will check out. If they're too easy, they'll check out. So something about, it tends to be a physical maneuver. I always find that fascinating where, um, you know, you could think, I guess you could think yourself into one of those states, but you see it a lot with people who do a, a physical task that's challenging, rewarding, something they're engaged in, and at the level of their performance.

• 21:35Rahul Jandial?

  Um, you know, it's a two-minute drill at the end of a football game.

• 21:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah. It's go time, man.

• 21:41Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Lewis Howes?

  Did you play football?

• 21:43Rahul Jandial?

  No, I love sports though, because I think there are a lot of parallels.

• 21:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. Uh, the challenging thing is, I don't know if I'd, I don't have kids, but I don't know if I'd let my kids play football after all the head trauma that I took. I mean, every day we were just taught back in the late nineties to just lead with the head, hit with the head. Now it's illegal, you can't hit the head at all.

• 22:02Rahul Jandial?

  Monday Night Football used to open up with the two helmets.

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Crashing, yeah.

• 22:06Rahul Jandial?

  I remember that.

• 22:07Lewis Howes?

  And the trauma that, you know, I feel like I've had to heal for the last fifteen, eighteen years now. I don't know if it's worth it. I think, I guess if you're not hitting the head anymore, it's different, but they're still gonna be clashing.

• 22:19Rahul Jandial?

  I mean, I got a couple of thoughts about that. I mean, one thing that I didn't like about it was I think they knew this was bad for us. And they kept trying to hide it from us.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 22:27Rahul Jandial?

  Hey, just tell us this is bad. Just tell us smoking's bad. We know boxing's bad. Nobody goes into boxing and says, I didn't know.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Rahul Jandial?

  But you, you held information that, you know, traumatic

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Rahul Jandial?

  head injury in football was sort of messing people up. That's, that's one of my things with it. On the other side is if it, if it's something you love and it's an opportunity for you to advance in your life. Who am I to say no? As long as the risks are made aware, like, hey, uh, if you banged your knee against the wall thirty times a day for ten years, your knee's gonna be jacked up.

• 22:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Rahul Jandial?

  It's no different for your brain. Got it. I still wanna play. That's, you know what I mean? It's more about that to me, like, we all live in different

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:07Rahul Jandial?

  worlds and safety and

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Rahul Jandial?

  risk and

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's, um,

• 23:11Rahul Jandial?

  My sons didn't play though. They could have, but they didn't.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  They didn't.

• 23:14Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, they played flag and they all played baseball.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's probably safer. So the, the brain has the ability to heal from traumatic, from trauma then. Physical and emotional trauma, because I feel like the emotional hidden trauma can be more painful and harder to recover for some, the psychological, emotional trauma than the physical trauma. You can, you can see it and you can treat the physical trauma in a sense, but depending on how intense it is, but the emotional, psychological hidden traumas, I feel like are invisible and people don't think they need to treat it because they don't see a broken arm and say, I need to go to the doctor because my, my bone is sticking out. Let me put a splint on it and, and heal it up. We're not trained that way.

• 24:01Rahul Jandial?

  There is no easy answer.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Rahul Jandial?

  But what, what I will say is that, um, trauma, this, it's just, these are my concepts. They're not, I'm not

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:11Rahul Jandial?

  There's therapeutic trauma and, and what I mean by that is resetting a bone after it's broken. The pain of a cancer surgery, but then you know that your cancer's been cut out, like, that, that's good pain.

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:24Rahul Jandial?

  Uh, and we're just talking about physical trauma.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:27Rahul Jandial?

  Then there's emotional trauma if, when, if people are attacked, that's also intimately connected to emotional trauma, right? So the, the People who don't have memory after certain injuries or operations, they never have PTSD because they don't remember it.

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 24:46Rahul Jandial?

  So the emotional context and memories related to trauma, be it emotional, physical, or a combination, requires memory. That's cool, right? I like to think about like, as a concept, I don't have a solution for, I don't, hey, don't do these three things, you'll be better. Sort of not my approach because when people did that with me, I was like, how do you know what I'm going through, man? You look at me, you think everything's good. Are you sure? Are you sure I wasn't attacked last night? Are you sure I didn't find out that my patient didn't do well last night? Are you sure I didn't find out a loved one was diagnosed with something? You know, like, I just don't want to put people in the, in, in boxes. In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day.

• 25:26Rahul Jandial?

  I'm, I'm not even the same version of myself I was before the last few years. How can I be understood as a, a group of people, a man or a surgeon? You know, I just want people to think as, of each other as individuals and dynamic. That said, I never judge people's trauma to be better or worse. People are looking or stronger or justified. They're looking at, everybody's going to have a traumatic event in their life, whether it's a car crash or hearing this, it's unavoidable. It's partly because we put ourselves out there. It's partly because the way we approach the world is to be completely adaptive.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 26:07Rahul Jandial?

  Right? If we're rigid, then there's less chances for trauma. But, but that's a life less well lived. So when you put yourself out there, traumatic experiences are unavoidable. That said, okay? So that said, yeah, you get a bruise.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  What I'm hearing you say, what I'm hearing you say is that if we don't have the memory of the traumatic event, we don't have PTSD. We don't have trauma, we don't have a trauma tale.

• 26:33Rahul Jandial?

  Right, so that, that's the. That's the concept that people that I want people to walk away and say, memory is important. But memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic in your heart.

• 26:46Lewis Howes?

  Whether it's painful still for you.

• 26:48Rahul Jandial?

  So let's get into that.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  So we just need to heal the memory of the trauma.

• 26:51Rahul Jandial?

  This is exactly where I'm taking it. Um, very good. The, so memories are not, uh, files in a cabinet.

• 27:00Lewis Howes?

  In the brain. Well, how is memory categorized?

• 27:02Rahul Jandial?

  Again, it's, there are some regions that we, if we remove them, you would lose memory. But memory's not only there, it relies on pulling from memories of smell to new. Like, for example, smell is very interesting. It's one of the five senses that we can't tamp down with our thinking. So the perfume or cologne, smell and memory are intimately intertwined. And so you're pulling from all different parts of the brain. Again, memory is a certain electrical flow in the brain. Um, but it's not, it's malleable, it's moldable. Just because you have a certain memory today, doesn't mean that that experience, good or bad,

• 27:45Rahul Jandial?

  will remain good or bad. Our pop, our positive vibe right now can be made negative. Our negative vibe right now can be made positive as we look back at our day to day. So when you see memory that way, then you, then you say, okay, wait a second. Uh, I was attacked, or I was hurt, or something really traumatized me. And I think of it when I smell that smell, when I see that color, I'm, I'm re-traumatized again.

• 28:11Lewis Howes?

  I clench up, I have like stress, a fear, anxiety, yeah.

• 28:15Rahul Jandial?

  So the emotional, the emotional context to a memory is what you can change. You don't wanna, you don't want dementia, you don't wanna delete the memory, because that's a different problem.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you don't wanna block it.

• 28:27Rahul Jandial?

  You don't want, yeah, but you, what you wanna do is change the emotional context attached to that memory.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  What happens if we, you hear this from people a lot who might have been traumatized as, as kids, where they forget, they kind of block the memory and then they remember it.

• 28:41Rahul Jandial?

  When it resurfaces, it's still raw.

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  It's very raw, but they've stuffed it, they've blocked it, they've numbed it, addicted, addicted it, whatever you wanna call it.

• 28:50Rahul Jandial?

  Driven it to addiction, but.

• 28:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. So, so what happens when?

• 28:54Rahul Jandial?

  I don't know. I, I don't know about the kid stuff as much, because that, that's a different space and I don't wanna. You know, I wanna stay where I feel real comfortable with what I've been reading and learning. So emotional context and memory for adults. Um, in the right setting with the right person through, you know, they have their techniques. You can actually work through the trauma of the memory and the experience. By going to certain therapists who help you get better with that.

• 29:24Lewis Howes?

  To process the memory.

• 29:26Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, just to take, take the emotional pain, right, the emotional trauma and dampen that. So you can say, for example, yeah, I was. You know, I'm just bringing examples from my world. Yeah, I mean, when I was, I was diagnosed with cancer. That's a traumatic event. And then you see my, my patients, you see them over time through different ways. When they say, they say, I was, you know, I was diagnosed with cancer and I did this. It, you, their face is different describing it later than it was immediately after receiving the diagnosis. So through, that, that, that, that's a real life example, right? I'm not, it doesn't have to be all the stuff, uh, you know, related to violence and all that.

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:11Rahul Jandial?

  The traumatic experience of a cancer diagnosis. And how patients cope with that immediately. And then you see them months later, years later, cause I'd be a mess, right? I'd be like, okay, this is, I wouldn't be able to cope. But they, surprisingly, not some of them, most of them cope. They get dressed, they come in for their three month scans, which to me would be a traumatic experience every time. Is this guy gonna tell me it's back or it's bigger? I mean, think about like, getting that, did nothing in your mail or email, I gotta go in for this. Muse again, but somehow they cope. And that's where i- in, in Life on a Knife's Edge, I learned so much from them. That it's possible to cope with traumatic experiences.

• 30:55Rahul Jandial?

  I'm not saying you as an individual can, I'm not saying I can. But when you look at a group of cancer patients and most of them.

• 31:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:03Rahul Jandial?

  Cop, live, move on from very traumatic, uh, emotional experiences as well as physical experience. Of cancer pain and cancer surgery, right? That's the lesson I want everybody to go through, um, in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenges.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What's the biggest lessons you've learned from the cancer patients you've treated? On the way they.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  Process and handle their journey from first hearing about they have cancer in the brain or tumor or something to recovery. What's the biggest lessons you've learned there?

• 31:41Rahul Jandial?

  It doesn't all end well.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:43Rahul Jandial?

  Some suffer. Many suffer, you know, in their own ways. So it's not this, you know, nobody wishes cancer upon somebody else or on, you know. So it's not like, you know, it's not like this thing, like, it's not an opportunity. And I don't want to ever present it that way. But those that have coped well, they invariably say, I wish I would have lived my life the way I am now after a cancer diagnosis.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 32:13Rahul Jandial?

  Like, I wish I would have lived my life having seen the finish line relatively, because it changes how they live. And they're not sad. It's a generalization. Like I said, some have suffered. Many have suffered. But they wish that they would have made quality of life a priority throughout life, not after the cancer diagnosis. Something about seeing the finish line on the horizon makes people go, I don't like that guy. I'm not gonna see him much. This is something I enjoy. I want to, you know, they get, they get, they get after it. They get to, they get to the business of living in the way they want to deep down inside, but often have been encumbered by the weirdness of interpersonal relationships and career and society.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Pressure and everything else. How do you show up in your personal life after seeing all this for the last couple decades, or I guess?

• 33:03Rahul Jandial?

  That's a heavy question. I can't, I can't say that I've always dealt well with it. The human stories were important, but I was just, I was going for perfection of the craft.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  You were trying to be

• 33:12Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  A precise surgeon, just trying to remove it and heal it, fix it.

• 33:16Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. And, and then, and then

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  You weren't as connected to the human stories. You were just like, let me

• 33:21Rahul Jandial?

  I wouldn't say I was disconnected, but the, the, the second, from the fifth to the 10th year approximately, when the craft became Uh occupied less of my uh my mind.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm, cuz you was more automatic. Obviously, everyone's specific, but it's more automatic.

• 33:38Rahul Jandial?

  I was in a rhythm.

• 33:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Rahul Jandial?

  And um I actually enjoyed the challenge. Uh and that's what you want as a cancer surgeon who's trying to be the best for you. And be the best for them at this craft. That's an interesting intersection. They want me to be the best.

• 33:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Rahul Jandial?

  They want me to have ambition at being the best surgeon.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:56Rahul Jandial?

  Which means tackling the biggest cancer and my, the people who chose me to perform their surgery have the fewest complications.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:05Rahul Jandial?

  Biggest mountain, fewest complications. That that's a personal ambition that aligns with what the cancer patients wanted. So that that was an interesting thing. Um you know, it was. It drove me and at the same time, I could see that since I take care mostly of stage four cancer and there's no stage five.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:25Rahul Jandial?

  That.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Stage five means what?

• 34:28Rahul Jandial?

  There is no stage five. That means death.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 34:30Rahul Jandial?

  So stage four is, the word terminal is not fair, but stage four is the most advanced cancer. So all my patients live a few years. Let's just say that. But that means, you know, after a while, you know, I was like, I this, I've cared for like. Over a thousand people and they're no longer alive.

• 34:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:48Rahul Jandial?

  And it started to mess with my head, man, and um.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  Because stage four, there's no way to cure it, is what you're saying.

• 34:54Rahul Jandial?

  Stage four by definition, other than in blood cancers, is not curable. So the question is, can we? Can we get out a few years?

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  Extend life, yes.

• 35:02Rahul Jandial?

  And and quality life during that time.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, man.

• 35:05Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, so after a while, I was like, man, I got a, I got a, I got a drawer full of um invitations to funerals.

• 35:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 35:13Rahul Jandial?

  And I just stood back a little bit and I was having some struggles with my own, in my own life. And uh so so the answer to your question is. For those.

• 35:25Rahul Jandial?

  For those who are involved in cancer care, to um to make yourself vulnerable to actually

• 35:36Rahul Jandial?

  sort of in piecemeal, go on their difficult journey with them. It can be hurtful. It was raw. The last five years, the last three years, I've been able to take that and write about it and see that like I have been fortified by by letting them teach me and the privilege of them saying, come along with me in my difficult times. This airplane must crash and you will ride with us. We choose you to ride with us, but you have the parachute at the end. And after, I was to tell my kids that, man, I just feel like I'm doing, I'm crashing a lot of planes. And so it went from not noticing it to noticing it and having it mess with me to

• 36:22Rahul Jandial?

  wait a second, that might have been the biggest gift of my craft is to learn from the people in their most difficult times and how they remain optimistic in the face of calamity. So I'm in a different space about the last couple of years. But that that's probably the best question anybody's asked me in the last couple of years. I appreciate that.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  Of course, man. Wow. So how do you personally manage your mind and your brain health, knowing that? I mean, is there, is there any, I guess, survival rates after a few years of any patient that you work on?

• 36:55Rahul Jandial?

  Few, yeah.

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  So maybe it's a, it's more of a stage three cancer, I guess, or it's?

• 37:00Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, yeah. The earlier stages have have cure cure potential. When they come to see me, it's usually that it's spread to the brain from a cancer in the body that's that's broken out.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. And is there no way to see, to do a surgery on a brain that has less cancer on stage one or two and and and remove it fully? Is that possible?

• 37:20Rahul Jandial?

  Some.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Or is it hard to see that?

• 37:22Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. Well, there's two types of brain cancers. One that grow from the flesh of the brain and they come in different stages and more commonly are those that spread to the brain. Jimmy Carson or

• 37:35Rahul Jandial?

  Uh, excuse me, Jimmy Carter, president, uh, is ninety something. And he's got melanoma that's in the brain, but it was, you know, so it's not always. But for breast cancer or lung cancer that spreads to the brain. It's sort of the, uh, the, the, the final manifestation of the cancer spread. Now, but those are heroic stories to me, right? That, oh, man, that, that look you gave me? That was me five, six, seven, eight years ago, like, man, this is, you know? But the last couple of years, it's, man, they made it to the graduation. They made it to, you know, moms are always like, I just wanna get to where my kid is out of high school. And there's some.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  These are kids with it?

• 38:14Rahul Jandial?

  No, moms who have breast cancer in their forties. They got a kid in fifteen, fifteen year olds in ninth grade and they're. But so when you see them, it's, uh, like I said, it's, I don't, it's not sad at all for me anymore.

• 38:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:27Rahul Jandial?

  It's actually how rare of a gift that I can see people at their most valiant.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 38:33Rahul Jandial?

  And it, so now, now it informs me. But back to your original question, there, there was about five years where it was just messing with my mind, you know?

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  How does someone, this is more of a educational question, I guess, for people. How does someone prevent cancer? You know, and where does most of these cancers come from? Is it random that people just get it? If they're whatever genetics, is it their environment, their levels of stress, their food intake? Is it, you know, anxiety that they're dealt with, trauma that they're not processing? What is the, the cause of most cancer?

• 39:12Rahul Jandial?

  Their cancers, we potentially give ourselves from our bad choices.

• 39:17Lewis Howes?

  Really? Give me, give me an example. Okay, yeah.

• 39:20Rahul Jandial?

  Okay. Um, but not everybody that smoke gets it. And twenty percent of lung cancer people never smoke.

• 39:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:26Rahul Jandial?

  Right.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  Then where do they get lung cancer from if they're not smoking?

• 39:29Rahul Jandial?

  So, uh, do you remember I was talking about the brain being this garden and stuff like that? Well, our bodies, they're not an interesting garden, in my opinion, you know? But they're, they're garden too. Their skin is shedding off, liver cells grow. So when things grow, they can sprout weeds. So Eric, parts of the body that don't ever change, like strangely, heart never gets cancer. You know, so things that don't change, don't sprout cancers. It's a byproduct of constantly having cells in our bodies die and regrow. And when you do that regrowth process, you're gonna spin off something that doesn't behave.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  So when, how do you spin off things that are healthy and, uh, you know, flourishing as opposed to little weeds here and there? How do you, how do you?

• 40:18Rahul Jandial?

  Well, you're doing both.

• 40:19Lewis Howes?

  How do you do?

• 40:20Rahul Jandial?

  Well, physically, I'm talking about physiologically before we get to the mind. This thought, this is an interesting point. Thoughts can be thought of that way, too. Uh, the body, when it, um, is 99% of the time is doing the right thing, we're both here. But when you do it with the sheer volume of a lifespan, and you do it over 7 billion people, you're gonna sprout some cancers. So you get cancers in the body, cancers in the brain. Can our thoughts become cancers? That's a provocative, uh...

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  And can our thoughts heal cancer?

• 40:47Rahul Jandial?

  That's a very provocative thought. I have not seen, um, positive thinking, there's no, I'm not saying it's not possible, and I encourage people to do it. But I think positive thinking, um, meditating, um, optimistic, cultivating optimism, all of these things, they do change the global physiology of your body. Okay, I think we were...

• 41:16Lewis Howes?

  Not just the brain, but the body.

• 41:17Rahul Jandial?

  Right. And that in turn can affect what's going on in the brain. But I don't know if a thought can send an electrical zap to a tumor and hurt the tumor. But a certain way of thinking can make you have a certain physiologic response, which there in turn could, you know, get in the way of cancer's progression.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  That's why, I mean, I feel like if we're, for breaking this down from what I'm hearing you say, there's a garden in our brain. There's a garden, right? And how...

• 41:44Rahul Jandial?

  Think of it as a garden.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  Think of it as a garden or a school of fish, you know, working in harmony.

• 41:49Rahul Jandial?

  Dynamic, thriving.

• 41:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, all these different things, right?

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  So if our, if we have a level of thinking that is, let's call it positive. Let's call it beautiful thinking as opposed to suffering-based thinking. Beautiful thoughts, joy, gratitude, happiness, peace, appreciation, acknowledgement, self-love and love for others. Let's say those types of thoughts versus the opposite, suffering-type thoughts. If we have those thoughts on a consistent basis in the mind, would those then in fact penetrate the brain to flourish more healthy?

• 42:32Rahul Jandial?

  To nurture that part of the garden?

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  The hundred billion jellyfish floating in harmony, would they be in more harmony and healthier as opposed to penetrating it with these suffering-based thoughts? And then in return, with the brain activated and flowing and not having these brakes and blocks, then it's signaling down to the body to send a more healthy ecosystem throughout the body? And then returning the body back to the brain and back to the mind and having a more...

• 43:05Rahul Jandial?

  Let me unpack that for you, because I've got, that's an enormous question that I think I have a very specific answer. Because I think when we were talking about this earlier, language can be confusing if it's, if it's used too casually. But let's, let's take the cancer part out for now.

• 43:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:23Rahul Jandial?

  But, but yeah, being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stressed. All of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer. That we, we agree on, that's measured. Now, let's go back to the brain as a garden.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:44Rahul Jandial?

  So can we cultivate that part of the garden? Or can we cultivate a garden that lean towards a positive mind frame?

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:55Rahul Jandial?

  Because if, if bombs are falling, even the most optimistic garden will go into a threat response.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:01Rahul Jandial?

  You don't, you don't only want to be chill. You don't only want to be positive.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  You want to be aware, you want to be, yeah, you want to be flexible, you want to be all these things.

• 44:08Rahul Jandial?

  So let's say there isn't external stress around, yet you're too jacked up. You're too stressed. That's a common ailment of city life, at least here where we have safety. This is really fascinating. It's one of my favorite things that I, that I love talking about. You remember we talked about the reptilian brain? You get knocked out and you stay awake. And then we talked about the mushroom canopy. Well, there's another one in the middle called the limbic system, but I call it the emotional brain. Categories are not that simple, but it's got its own little anatomy. Like if there was a slice down the side of my head, you would actually see the mushroom canopy. You'd see some unique Star Wars looking structures in the middle. And then you'd see the reptilian brain.

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  The stem.

• 44:50Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, the stem.

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  The stem is the reptilian brain. And in the middle is the limbic system. And on top is the mushroom.

• 44:57Rahul Jandial?

  Right, that's the cortical, we call it the cortical canopy. We used, we use like ecological terms to describe it in journals. So the cortical canopy and that emotional brain limbic system, they have branches towards each other. Measurable. And so when somebody goes from age sixteen to being wild, to being eighteen and more composed, let's say adolescents, the structure of the brain hasn't changed. It weighs the same, it looks the same on MRIs. But the person's totally different, right? Well, because of the cultivation of thought from the cortical canopy, the mushroom cap, to the emotional brain, as they integrate more, you're able to say,

• 45:41Rahul Jandial?

  hey, maybe don't run across that freeway.

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 45:44Rahul Jandial?

  Or maybe wear that seatbelt. So it, it.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  It's learning.

• 45:47Rahul Jandial?

  It's, but it's interacting with emotions. At the same time, you don't want to be emotionless. So emotion is making a push back to thought. Like, no, love is an emotion. This pain I'm feeling because mom is sick is an emotion. I don't want to be Spock about it or tap it down. So that cultivation of thought and emotion is what is, is the, the most lush way to live. Because then you're adaptive to stress. Like, hey, this is actually something dangerous going on, thought is coming in.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Be aware, yeah.

• 46:19Rahul Jandial?

  Emotion's going on. But at the same time, you have this internal, what they call emotional regulation. Like, nothing's wrong and you're just freaked out. And that's where those branches, thought, meditation, therapy, counseling, hugging your puppy, it, it creates a better balance between thought and emotion. And that, that tone, not on off. Thanks for asking this question, I love this. The tone is what life is about. You know, you you you become a new parent, let that let that emotion run rampant. Cry. You're about to go see your boss, you know, it's not gonna go well. And you're starting to do things that you know is emotion running rampant.

• 47:05Rahul Jandial?

  Then use thought and breathing exercises.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  Turn the volume down.

• 47:09Rahul Jandial?

  Just just set the tone a little different on that and then go and see your boss or your lover or some conflict situation you're in. That is what we're doing throughout life. And the example of it is adolescence, where it happens most for most of us automatically, but then we stop like we're grown up. That that that tone is something you cultivate through the experiences of life. And then when you get older or when the next trauma comes, you're you're better braced and positioned for how to cope with this. A little more thought, because I'm running hot on emotion. Or like, man, I'm too cold about this right now. It is a raw situation. I need a safe place to let my emotions run wild.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  Right, a safe environment, yeah.

• 47:52Rahul Jandial?

  That's that's the way I approach the intersection of thought and emotion.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think you said it, emotional regulation, I feel like is, for me, one of the most powerful skills that someone can learn in relationships and career and driving, you know, on the street with other people around.

• 48:10Rahul Jandial?

  Emotions are dominant, by the way, which is great, but so excuse the emotional regulation, not thought regulation.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, but learning how to have emotional regulation is such a powerful skill for each individual.

• 48:21Rahul Jandial?

  And we're never done, because you don't know what's coming.

• 48:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:25Rahul Jandial?

  But it's it's the it's the it's the tending to the garden.

• 48:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:29Rahul Jandial?

  It's the lifelong cultivation.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Because what's happening if we allow our emotions, the limbic part of the brain is the emotion-based part of the brain. Thought is the.

• 48:40Rahul Jandial?

  No exact regions, but there is some anatomy relative.

• 48:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's the more of the main focus of the brain. Obviously, if it was taken out, it would regulate, but.

• 48:49Rahul Jandial?

  Emotion.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  The emotion is, if you're always in reaction mode. You see something, ah, you're in freak out mode, you're in scream mode, you're in a defensive attack mode, you're I'm in someone's hurting me mode. If you're always in that space, what happens to the brain? Uh, physiology, what it, what happens to the actual physical aspect of the brain? And how does that affect the body? And the mind, if your emotions are always running high?

• 49:16Rahul Jandial?

  Oh, I love this question, happy. Cause this, when I was reading about.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  Let's go.

• 49:21Rahul Jandial?

  And I'm all.

• 49:23Rahul Jandial?

  No, because this is, this is what, this is what, this is what can empower people is an understanding of, of how things lean.

• 49:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Rahul Jandial?

  And how things that can be modified.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 49:33Rahul Jandial?

  Otherwise, it's just.

• 49:36Rahul Jandial?

  I can't tell my cancer patients, just try not to stress out.

• 49:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:40Rahul Jandial?

  It's just, it's hollow. It's shallow, it's rude, actually.

• 49:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Rahul Jandial?

  So I think there's too much of that advice going on. What I wanna show people is how we're sort of designed, our natural inclinations, and then you come up with your approach. I'm telling you, hugging my, my, my son got a puppy in the pandemic. That, man, that's my therapy dog. I didn't even understand the con, I hugged that animal.

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  And you brought so much peace and love.

• 50:03Rahul Jandial?

  Just what, I'm telling you, my physiology changed.

• 50:05Lewis Howes?

  Calm, just haha.

• 50:06Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, it just, so everybody's gotta have an individual approach to that. So here's the two things about emotions. There's, uh, we could cut out the thinking, just to put it coarsely.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:19Rahul Jandial?

  Cut out the thinking brain and you'll still be alive. If you somehow were able to take out that middle part of the brain, there is no life left. There's, the consciousness relies on emotions.

• 50:30Lewis Howes?

  On emotions. Consciousness relies on emotions.

• 50:32Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, cause what, they spark through, right? Remember the branches?

• 50:36Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 50:36Rahul Jandial?

  Frontal lobe, deeper branching, intersecting the global waves of electricity. That's why there's something called deep brain stimulation. Just let me riff on this for a little bit. So, well, we want people to not wash their hands 150 times a day. Or have Tourette's, or sometimes depression, or sometimes a drive for obesity, or certain tremors. We take a little catheter and just the tip isn't covered in, in, in, in plastic. And we put it into the emotional.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  Come on, the limbic brain.

• 51:09Rahul Jandial?

  The limbic brain.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  You stick it down through the top of the mushroom. What do you call it, the cortical?

• 51:12Rahul Jandial?

  Cortical canopy, yeah.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  Cortical canopy.

• 51:15Rahul Jandial?

  You can punch through that.

• 51:15Lewis Howes?

  You punch through that and it doesn't affect.

• 51:17Rahul Jandial?

  You guys can look it up, deep brain stimulation, DBA. It's around for forty years.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. So you put it through.

• 51:22Rahul Jandial?

  So those drives that like Tourette's, uh, OCD. We, we don't tickle the cortical, the thought.

• 51:29Lewis Howes?

  You're not just tapping the top.

• 51:30Rahul Jandial?

  It's an emotional drive.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. So you're sticking it in through the middle of the brain and what happens?

• 51:34Rahul Jandial?

  And then the tip, with just a little pulse, like the brain's pacemaker, and it changes the electric, it's, it's not, it's not brand new.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  I understand.

• 51:43Rahul Jandial?

  But it, so why would it work?

• 51:44Lewis Howes?

  You can pulse the, the limbic brain?

• 51:46Rahul Jandial?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:46Lewis Howes?

  How long you do this for? Five minutes, an hour? What is this process?

• 51:49Rahul Jandial?

  They wear it under their, they wear it under their clavicle like you would a pa- like grandma with a pacemaker, grandpa.

• 51:54Lewis Howes?

  So you're keeping it all the time?

• 51:56Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. It's, you were right here.

• 51:58Lewis Howes?

  And what, what do you do? I mean, do you just push a button when you're freaking out and it kind of relaxes you or?

• 52:02Rahul Jandial?

  So, the waves on that lake?

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Rahul Jandial?

  If I also jumped in on the other side, when those waves come towards each other, sometimes they negate each other, right? Similarly, the right electrical pulse can reset the electrical waves in your brain that we were talking about earlier. That's how deep brain stimulation has worked for forty years.

• 52:20Lewis Howes?

  So how do we create deep brain stimulation on our own?

• 52:25Rahul Jandial?

  Oh, that's a good question. Let me, let me answer the first one, I'll come back to that. Deep brain stimulation on our own is through paced breathing. Let's get back to that one.

• 52:33Lewis Howes?

  Breathing, meditation.

• 52:34Rahul Jandial?

  And I'll show, and I'll show you the anatomy for that, but, uh, cause you know, as we talked about, I need to, I need somebody to explain it to me. I can't just say, do this. Emotional regulation is tricky in two ways. Hot emotions lead to high heart rates, surging blood pressure, lots of things being released. We've already heard about them. So you're running your body in overdrive for no reason. You're wearing yourself out. That makes sense to people, okay? That's a good reason to be physiologically not stressed if you can and you come up with your coping maneuvers. What's more interesting is with the intersection of the, uh, the frontal lobes, the thinking brain and the emotional brain, is that emotions are, they're coming in favored. They're always hot. This, the thinking brain has to do more of the work.

• 53:20Rahul Jandial?

  And at some point, if you are not able to cultivate emotional regulation.

• 53:26Rahul Jandial?

  It becomes a feed forward thing because the connections start to sever. And then you start having this emotional brain that's no longer being tamped down or paced or controlled by the thinking brain. So emotional regulation is the life skill to deal with the trauma coming up, to rev your body down. But if you don't try to cultivate it, you'll actually lose control of it. And as you get older, you'll have more rampant, uncontrolled emotions and not be approaching life the way you want to. So that's the answer about emotional regulation.

• 54:01Lewis Howes?

  Do emotions have more power over thoughts? Or thoughts have more power over emotions?

• 54:06Rahul Jandial?

  We start off with the emotions are generally on overdrive compared to thought. So thinking through emotions, thinking which emotions have earned the right to be there is that lifelong process. And people are like, what does that mean? Well, take adolescence. Teenager goes from fifteen to nineteen, very different person.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Rahul Jandial?

  And that's all emotional regulation, right? Thought was losing. Teenagers, I miss it, actually, it was a wild time. But then thought comes into balance emotion.

• 54:40Lewis Howes?

  Your reflection and thinking and yeah.

• 54:42Rahul Jandial?

  So take that thing that you know happens, take my explanations if they're of value to you. And then say, let me, now let me take the wheel of that thing that happened without me actually choosing or driving, right? That maturity happens on its own. Now let me take the wheel of that process and try to do it for the rest of my life, every year, every moment. And not just say, hey, whatever I got at eighteen, nineteen is who I am. Going back to your first thing, you're new every day. So it's a responsibility to cultivate that emotional regulation through thought and through certain behaviors for our whole life. Because you never know what's gonna happen, pandemic, war. And you want, you know, you wanna be best braced for that

• 55:26Rahul Jandial?

  and not approach that as a fifteen year old.

• 55:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, you wanna have more awareness and I don't know if you wanna call it control, but I think you wanna have control over your emotions and not let your emotions control you to do something.

• 55:38Rahul Jandial?

  Control the roller coaster a little bit, trim the sails.

• 55:41Lewis Howes?

  So that, the emotions are mostly based in the limbic part of the brain, right? Obviously, it's all connected in certain areas, but if you're talking about an area. And so what's the best way to train the emotional part of the brain? So that we are in, we have a personal power over it. That we're in control, that we, that we have.

• 56:03Rahul Jandial?

  Or, or more, I mean, depends on the situ-

• 56:05Lewis Howes?

  We can turn it up or turn it down and we are-

• 56:07Rahul Jandial?

  Depending on the, depending on what's going on.

• 56:09Lewis Howes?

  Maybe we need to be more emotional in a moment and not be chill and relaxed when there's an attack.

• 56:13Rahul Jandial?

  Maybe the moment is so big, man, it's, of course, you're just emotionally over the top. And we know that's what's been going on the last couple of years and even today. So, but that, but that leaves you a flexibility. And it also leaves you without feeling bad, like, oh, I was emotional then, now, I'm not, I'm not a person that has emotional regulation. You don't have this brain the same forever. It's a constant trimming of the sails, modulating tone. To me, it's a little bit of work if you're in a good spot, like, hey, this ain't guaranteed. But it's also so much power and opportunity that if you're, if you're not in a good spot, like tomorrow can be better. And if not tomorrow, then the month or the year after, right?

• 56:55Rahul Jandial?

  So emotional regulation, um, the shortcut. So now we're getting to like, is there a tip, you know, cause I hope people feel like, wait a second, this, everything is possible. But it's gonna take a lot of work, okay? That's really what I was trying to get at for the first part. But are there shortcuts? Because I love shortcuts, LA freeways or whatever.

• 57:19Lewis Howes?

  Right, Waze is good, yeah.

• 57:21Rahul Jandial?

  But there are, there is one that has stood the test of time. And that I can now explain to you based on, on things that we do as surgeons. Uh, and that's, I refer to as meditative breathing in, in my first book. But really, it's, it's pacing your breath. And so what does that do?

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  This is something you study with actual scans or?

• 57:44Rahul Jandial?

  No, no, no, it's even, it's wild as that. If you have aberrant brain electricity. And we check a scan and there's some funky marble type tuft of brain tissue that doesn't look right. We know like that's the epicenter. That's where the, that's where the electricity is sprouting from. But some people that have it, some kids that have it, some adults that have it, there isn't a, there isn't anything wrong with the scan, right? The scan looks pretty, brain looks perfect, but the electricity's off, right? That's what epilepsy is. All right, that's yet another proof.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  Seizures.

• 58:15Rahul Jandial?

  Seizures. One seizure, uh, two seizures is epilepsy, then you get the diagnosis. But yes, seizures. Is aberrant electrical activity of the brain, the same things we've been talking about.

• 58:27Rahul Jandial?

  So when we don't know where it's sprouting, uh, because if it's from a small space, we can dissect it out and take away the, the epicenter, right?

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  You can take it, you mean you can cut it out?

• 58:38Rahul Jandial?

  We can cut it out.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 58:40Rahul Jandial?

  And the patients are seizure free.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 58:42Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. Now, but what if there isn't a spot that we find and their seizures are horrible? And it's well before thinking about removing half the brain. So what they would do is we make a reverse question mark incision. It's a scalp, it's not very tender, that's what they tell me. I mean, under the ribs are more tender is what they say, uh, patients. Then we make our little ice fishing hole.

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  Are they numb when they're taking this off?

• 59:07Rahul Jandial?

  This, for this one, they're asleep. There's others that are awake.

• 59:10Lewis Howes?

  Do you numb the skull, the skin? You just cut through the skin, no numbing?

• 59:14Rahul Jandial?

  They're, they're fully asleep.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, but when they're awake?

• 59:17Rahul Jandial?

  Then, at the very end, I inject the cut. So the numbing lasts the longest.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  With numbing, gotcha.

• 59:23Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  You're not just sitting there awake and they're just cutting it off?

• 59:27Rahul Jandial?

  That's, that is an operation we do, but that's a different story. The, so you take the skull off. Uh, the brain has a covering. You don't see the brain right away. There's like a sheath.

• 59:37Lewis Howes?

  Like a, like a skin?

• 59:38Rahul Jandial?

  No, it's like almost a nylon material. You can pick it up and stitch it. That's what keeps the water inside the skull. It's not the bone.

• 59:46Lewis Howes?

  It's a sack.

• 59:46Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. Brain sack, there you go.

• 59:49Lewis Howes?

  It's a brain sack, right? It's like a sack.

• 59:50Rahul Jandial?

  Nylon, it's pretty. And we cut it and then the clear water pours out. You can see the surface of the brain.

• 59:57Lewis Howes?

  And water's coming out?

• 59:58Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, because the brain is floating in an aquarium, right?

• 1:00:00Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 1:00:01Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, it's, it's buoyant. Your brain doesn't sit on bone, it's, it's floating. Again, jellyfish.

• 1:00:05Lewis Howes?

  In water. So when you're hitting, when you're having a lot of fast actions and you're hitting something, is it hitting?

• 1:00:11Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, your skull stops and then inside it sloshes into the inside.

• 1:00:16Lewis Howes?

  That can't be good for you, is it?

• 1:00:17Rahul Jandial?

  That's where all the CTE and football stuff is the issue is, it's a sudden stops, repeated sudden stops with the brain sloshing and hitting the inside surface of your skull.

• 1:00:27Lewis Howes?

  That can't be good, can it?

• 1:00:28Rahul Jandial?

  Well, people are pretty, people get by, but we're seeing that if you do it too much, as with kids and NFL people, but. So you got it open, then there's a little, it's the size of a deck of a card. It's got a little 96 or different electrodes on it. You put the deck of the card. On the naked brain. You take those wires, you pop them out with little needles through the back, almost like, like.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:00:49Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. And then you put the bone back on and you stitch up the scalp and then you put some numbing medicine and you you put on a head wrap and they hang out in the hospital. For weeks, because you're waiting for the seizure to happen.

• 1:01:00Lewis Howes?

  So you've got a pad on the brain.

• 1:01:02Rahul Jandial?

  A grid, so when the seizure sparks, we can see, uh, it was, it was like in Connect Four or Battles, Battle, was that, was that board game?

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  Battleship?

• 1:01:10Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, it's in, it's in two.

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  You know where it's at.

• 1:01:12Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, you know where it's at.

• 1:01:12Lewis Howes?

  Two, six.

• 1:01:13Rahul Jandial?

  Because that way you know where you're gonna.

• 1:01:15Lewis Howes?

  So there's a, there's a mesh, uh, pad.

• 1:01:18Rahul Jandial?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  Electromagnetic pad or something that can track with wires that are coming out of the back of this.

• 1:01:24Rahul Jandial?

  Connected to the monitor.

• 1:01:25Lewis Howes?

  That are connected to the monitor at all times.

• 1:01:28Rahul Jandial?

  And they're there for a couple of weeks.

• 1:01:29Lewis Howes?

  It's insanity.

• 1:01:30Rahul Jandial?

  Because they're, we're trying to figure.

• 1:01:32Lewis Howes?

  They're happy, they're fine.

• 1:01:33Rahul Jandial?

  Like us.

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  Hanging out, let's give them some ice cream, play some video games, watch some TV.

• 1:01:37Rahul Jandial?

  So what happened was a bunch of.

• 1:01:38Lewis Howes?

  The wires coming out of their necks.

• 1:01:40Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, but, uh, the scalp, yeah, but.

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:42Rahul Jandial?

  We have things, people, you know, you'd be surprised with, what we can.

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  You wrapped it up.

• 1:01:46Rahul Jandial?

  What kind of devices we put in and dangle from people.

• 1:01:49Lewis Howes?

  That's.

• 1:01:49Rahul Jandial?

  You know, from broken legs, they come up with those little metal grids and they move around.

• 1:01:53Lewis Howes?

  So, so then after a few weeks, you, you wait till a seizure happens.

• 1:01:58Rahul Jandial?

  And then we know where, under that grid where it's, where it sparked. We found the epicenter.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  And then from that, you track the data, you have the recording of the data and then you can go in and then.

• 1:02:07Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  Tweak it or you?

• 1:02:08Rahul Jandial?

  Remove that little part.

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  That's, and then they're done, they don't have seizures anymore.

• 1:02:12Rahul Jandial?

  Sometimes, or they're reduced. Now here's something that's more interesting for, for you and your audience. Well, that's a boring couple of weeks, so a bunch of cognitive science students and brain students and all, they come in and they started hanging out with them. And they said, hey, can we go through these lessons of paced breathing and meditative breathing?

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh. Can we do this without removing it? Yeah.

• 1:02:35Rahul Jandial?

  Well, completely unrelated to the clinical work, we're hanging. I've got a direct feed of the true electricity from the surface of your naked brain.

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  While they're breathing.

• 1:02:44Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, let's, while they're sitting there. So they do something new with them. They teach them meditative breathing.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  Come on. What is, what is, what are you seeing on the, the brain activity recordings?

• 1:02:55Rahul Jandial?

  The same thing that we see when we give Valium, which is an anxiolytic. Their anxiety level goes down, their electricity goes from fast to medium. Remember we started this?

• 1:03:05Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:05Rahul Jandial?

  And we're talking about athletes not wanting to be in fast, we want to be in the flow state. Meditative breathing led to direct changes in the electricity of their brain. As measured, not with a sticker on the forehead, but with a grid on the surface of the naked brain.

• 1:03:22Lewis Howes?

  On the brain.

• 1:03:24Rahul Jandial?

  It's true measurable changes in the electricity there for the mind. So meditative breathing that for thousands of years, people have said can help you chill out, is an anxiolytic and break anxiety. Well, we have proof of that now. And I think that's important for people to know that it's not just some, you know, it's just not a concept that's being thrown around too casually. That through awake, um, direct electrophysiologic recording of seizure planning surgery at elite centers. Uh, while looking for the seizures, there's a lot of data coming out about let's play video games. Let's do meditative breathing. Let's read.

• 1:04:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:04:04Rahul Jandial?

  And then what changes? And so that's what I love in book one that I shared was, that's raw data, that's real data. And there's an explanation behind how that happens. And so what I would say to people is that's something you have that's free. Cause I'm not selling anything.

• 1:04:20Lewis Howes?

  Breathing.

• 1:04:21Rahul Jandial?

  And the pace of breathing and.

• 1:04:24Lewis Howes?

  What's the pace that works best? I mean, there's lots of different techniques of meditative breathing.

• 1:04:29Rahul Jandial?

  They found, you know, it, it doesn't, you know, people say through your nose or mouth, and that's kind of the confusing stuff that's out there. Well, the nose and the mouth connect before they get to the trachea and it goes to your lungs. So it doesn't matter how. But it's about slowing the cadence and making the cadence more methodical. A deep breath, you know, deep breath in and a deep breath out. It's no different than what we do in surgery when you feel the case getting a little out of your control.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  What do you do?

• 1:04:55Rahul Jandial?

  Well, I first, the first thing is. I just slow my breathing down and that doesn't mean the solution will arise, but I know that puts me in my most calm and focused state to find the solution for the problem in front of me. And likely that's what athletes that thrive do as well.

• 1:05:13Lewis Howes?

  You don't want your brain surgeon being like.

• 1:05:15Rahul Jandial?

  Well, exactly. But that's what stress does. It makes you hyperventilating, right? But if you do, that's, that's a great point. If you just hyperventilate just because you're just doing it as just whatever, for whatever reason, you'll get physically jittery. You will give yourself anxiety by just doing that.

• 1:05:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I thought that just for a second.

• 1:05:33Rahul Jandial?

  I'm, I'm showing you the proof on the other side. Do the opposite of hyperventilation and you'll make yourself less frenetic. Will that solve your relationship problems? I'm not sure. Will that make you not want to get in a fight with your boss? I'm not sure, but you should know that that puts you at your most in command of your emotions, your emotional regulation. That's a great, great question.

• 1:05:54Lewis Howes?

  The emotional regulation, it sounds like a big part of the, the, the health or the lack of health of our brain and our bodies is what I'm hearing you say. The emotional regulation is at the center of our potential, let's call it sprouting of healthy brain activity and connections and also healthy cells throughout the body and organs. Or a lack of emotional regulation could potentially damage the brain activity or it could have it so up and down as opposed to a calmer activity and the body as well to create potentially more, I don't want to call it cancerous cells, but.

• 1:06:37Rahul Jandial?

  You wear yourself out.

• 1:06:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Rahul Jandial?

  If you let the emotions run too hot.

• 1:06:39Lewis Howes?

  Stress, anxiety, depression, all these different things.

• 1:06:42Rahul Jandial?

  You wear yourself out.

• 1:06:43Lewis Howes?

  What I'm hearing you say is emotional regulation is at the core of these things.

• 1:06:47Rahul Jandial?

  I think so.

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  And.

• 1:06:48Rahul Jandial?

  And it's the rarest skill to cultivate and the most important one. And it's in your control.

• 1:06:53Lewis Howes?

  And

• 1:06:54Rahul Jandial?

  But it's not easy.

• 1:06:55Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy. It's taken me a long time to learn this process. So we've got thoughts. Do thoughts come from the brain or from the mind?

• 1:07:06Rahul Jandial?

  That question, that's a deep question.

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  And is the mind, but the mind is only activated when the brain is activated.

• 1:07:16Rahul Jandial?

  It's like saying, does the roar come from the person in the stadium? You know? Or is it's own thing? You need the neurons to roar, to connect with electricity to have the mind. The mind is that roar outside of the stadium. Interestingly, they tried to, they did this experiment again with direct like, I need some, I need hard science. I don't want fluffy language. Somebody says, in the next five minutes, decide, decide on your own, at your own, whatever you want, that you're gonna move, you're gonna grab this coffee cup. And then they're measuring me. The electricity pops before I report wanting to move this coffee cup.

• 1:08:00Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean?

• 1:08:01Rahul Jandial?

  Meaning that that the electricity happens before

• 1:08:06Lewis Howes?

  You make a move.

• 1:08:07Rahul Jandial?

  Before I think I'm ready to make a move. You know, the ambition comes from the electricity. It's not like, I'm gonna grab this coffee cup and then electricity. It's the electricity. I think I'm gonna grab this coffee cup.

• 1:08:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:08:21Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Lewis Howes?

  So this is something

• 1:08:22Rahul Jandial?

  That I can't, yeah, it comes first.

• 1:08:24Lewis Howes?

  You've scanned this, you've seen this?

• 1:08:25Rahul Jandial?

  More than scan, right? Because a lot of brain scans going on these days. Everybody in a car accident with a headache is getting a brain scan. I'm talking about direct electrical measurements.

• 1:08:35Lewis Howes?

  You mean with, on the brain? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:37Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, so the electricity is the thought.

• 1:08:40Lewis Howes?

  So before I move my hand to grab this coffee cup, there's an electrical

• 1:08:46Rahul Jandial?

  I can measure, I can measure a little flick like your light bulb. I can measure something before, without you telling me when.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  So so you can tell me when I'm gonna move for it? Based on

• 1:08:56Rahul Jandial?

  I can tell you when electricity changes. I can't tell you your intentions. I can't read your mind.

• 1:09:00Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:09:00Rahul Jandial?

  But the electricity pops before you actually think I'm having a thought. The electricity is you having the thought.

• 1:09:07Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:09:08Rahul Jandial?

  I don't know. But that's measurement that we can, we can, we can, you know, it's that's why it's fascinating, the inner, you know, let me tell you something about this, man. The electric, we are electrical beings. Yes. Like eels and, right, you can, the nerves to your legs, you can put electrode in there. You know, we're, we're electric. Um, we're flesh. We have chemistry, right, electrochemistry, there's a battery. Um, and you separate these little ions and what's, what's a battery? We are batteries, are those neurons are essentially batteries. They're things that are separated that currents can run through. And people say, man, that sounds so, I know, I said, I know. We're measuring it.

• 1:09:53Rahul Jandial?

  Seizures are aberrant electrical activity without any changes in brain anatomy. I'm trying to get people out of flesh, people out of being wired to electrical flows. And then think about this. In bipolar disorder, when you can be really manic or really depressed, the treatment is an ion, lithium. Really? It's. For bipolar? Mm-hmm. Wow. And for decades. It's on the periodic table next to all the other ones, like hydrogen and. It's an ion. It's, it's stardust. Stardust lithium is cheap. Right. It's a pill and it can bring down your mania and it can lift your depression.

• 1:10:38Rahul Jandial?

  Really? So there are, I'm seeing a lot of different things that point to, uh, that we are electrical flows, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions and behaviors. Cause that's what we're talking about today, right? Like the bigger stuff. Um, not how do I move an arm or how do I move a leg? Right, right. And again, um, if you see, if you see your thoughts as billowing through your skull, um, if you see them moving like aurora borealis, like a school of fish or birds, that, that leaves us with potential that, uh, we can think differently. We can feel differently. Yeah. Uh, that we can transform. That that takeaway is for you to make. But I'm trying to give you a lot of evidence.

• 1:11:21Rahul Jandial?

  That the world of neuroscience is starting to see things that way.

• 1:11:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Rahul Jandial?

  And not about gears or wires.

• 1:11:28Lewis Howes?

  So how do we train our brains and our minds? To live a more abundant life?

• 1:11:35Rahul Jandial?

  You know, everybody's got their own drive. I mean, I've got people who don't like to be on lithium because they think they're more creative when they're manic. You know, so I'm not, I can't, I don't judge. I inform.

• 1:11:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Rahul Jandial?

  It's up to people what they want to do.

• 1:11:48Lewis Howes?

  But if you. I guess abundant and peaceful, loving life, you know, it's like all that.

• 1:11:52Rahul Jandial?

  Well, I mean, I, if that's your ambition, I think you would, you know, because it isn't for some actually. They want a wildlife or they want to, you know, they're, you know, they take risks, they climb mountains. They're, they like the thrill, you know, I don't, that's up to you. But to optimize brain function, I think in whichever direction you want to steer it. Is to first look at the flesh because it is flesh. And so keeping the arteries open and irrigating that garden, that flesh is important. So things good for your heart, keep the arteries open in your brain, you know, you want blood flow going. You want water going in your garden. That's easy enough.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  And you get that through how?

• 1:12:31Rahul Jandial?

  The same things that keep your heart arteries open.

• 1:12:34Lewis Howes?

  Exercise.

• 1:12:35Rahul Jandial?

  Exercise has double benefit, but yeah, but you know, if you're my age, 49, cholesterol pills, you know, you got to keep the plumbing open. Exercise, eating right, keeping your cholesterol down, all those things they tell you so you don't get a heart attack. Well, keeping those arteries open on the surface of your heart also keep these arteries open to the, into the, into the garden of your brain. So that's easy for people to get like, okay, heart health is good for brain health. Well, heart health is good for brain flesh. But we are more than flesh, right? And so then you have to leave the world of, of heart behind. And come more into sort of the mind. Then there's

• 1:13:12Lewis Howes?

  Thinking, thoughts, not just brain health, but thinking health.

• 1:13:16Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, I like that, exactly, because it's not a pump, you know?

• 1:13:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, it's thought health, yeah.

• 1:13:22Rahul Jandial?

  I like that. And now, before we get to the electricity up here that we've touched on a lot, we've talked about now, heart health is good for brain, flesh health.

• 1:13:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:32Rahul Jandial?

  There's something in between that we haven't touched, and that's the chemical, that there are chemicals, neurotransmitters often used, I hate the word, you know, but dope, it's a dopamine hit, it's not that simple. So now there's chemicals there too. So in this garden, the piece that I didn't tell you about, is that those hundred billion neurons, when they are trying to branch with each other, when successful, they never actually touch. There's always gonna be a gap. And in that gap, they spray chemicals at each other. So you have electricity coming down this neuron, and to get across this cleft to the other neuron, it sprays dopamine, it sprays serotonin, it sprays other things, GABA.

• 1:14:13Rahul Jandial?

  And so you are electrochemical, and that's why things like Prozac as an antidepressant is out there. That's where lithium works. You can change the global electrical pattern and flows of your brain by modifying the chemistry in those little clefts. So we'll give you a specific example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. A lot of people are antidepressants. When serotonin is sprayed, the reuptake inhibitor is a little vacuum, and it doesn't clear the cleft of serotonin. You're messing with the vacuum, so there's more serotonin in the cleft that tends to work as an antidepressant. So chemicals have to be thought about also.

• 1:14:55Rahul Jandial?

  There's the flesh, there's the chemistry, and then there's the electricity. What seems to help everything, and people aren't gonna like this answer, but it is, is exercise.

• 1:15:07Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah, of course.

• 1:15:08Rahul Jandial?

  And exercise on, in a way where you're also thinking, there are these cool things, like they had people running on a treadmill and dodging Wild Game. It was like a video, like thought. You know, thought and movement together.

• 1:15:25Lewis Howes?

  So like a, I mean like a racket sport where you're like hand eye coordination, you have to move ping pong. Pickleball is amazing. I just started playing last year. I've only played like five times. I'm like, this is an incredible sport.

• 1:15:37Rahul Jandial?

  I played with my sons. We were dropping them off in San Francisco for Berkeley and they got it. I hadn't played. And my, my sons were like, this is why dad, you don't play board games with us or sports with us. Cause you're insanely competitive.

• 1:15:51Rahul Jandial?

  I always just, they're like, okay dad, it's.

• 1:15:53Lewis Howes?

  It's a fun game. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:55Rahul Jandial?

  But so, but, but that's powerful, right? Because people sitting at home don't wanna hear, man, get on your treadmill. Get active, get engaged, go on, do stuff. Board games, moving thought. So the, the thought cultivation is really important. So. Uh, brain, you know, the, keeping the flesh going. But once you get out of thinking just about the flesh. It's about engagement. It's about stimulation. It's about. You know, the results don't happen the next day. It's a life pattern, right? It's not knowing how to play the violin, but trying to learn how to play the violin. It's not, you don't have to learn the second, next language. You just gotta try. You just gotta try to pull from all the corners of that garden as a habit. I'm not saying a hundred, I'm not saying all day, every day.

• 1:16:41Rahul Jandial?

  But that, nobody told us those habits should also be introduced. Nobody told us to cultivate our thought is something kids should learn, something we should have dedicated time to. We already learned a lot about heart health, you know? And now it's time to get onto brain and mind health, especially with the pandemic, especially with, with other things that are going on. Is that, so I think, um, when I was in medical school, it was just heart, heart, heart all the time, right? In fact, heart surgery, uh, was one of the most, the second most competitive along with brain surgery. In the last. Three decades as they've gotten better with catheters and stents and the pills have been better. Heart surgeons have significantly been reduced because there isn't the need for it.

• 1:17:26Rahul Jandial?

  And I think when you look at the dent that has been made in cardiac health through a couple of decades of messaging and. I mean, you go in there, they check your blood pressure, they check all this stuff for your heart, but nobody asks you how you're doing.

• 1:17:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, the emotional.

• 1:17:41Rahul Jandial?

  Right.

• 1:17:41Lewis Howes?

  Therapeutic side of things.

• 1:17:42Rahul Jandial?

  Mind health.

• 1:17:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:17:44Rahul Jandial?

  And so.

• 1:17:44Lewis Howes?

  So emotions is mind health.

• 1:17:47Rahul Jandial?

  Well, I think it depends. So some people, let's stay with that for a second because for some people, the lack of emotional regulation is leading them to suffer. Or not have the mind health they want.

• 1:17:58Lewis Howes?

  But they're feeling it in their body, the emotion. When you think of emotions, you feel like.

• 1:18:01Rahul Jandial?

  And that book has continued to do well, The Body Keeps Score. It's a clever title.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 1:18:05Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, it's, it's especially in these times. It's number two on the bestseller list in New York, I mean, New York Times Bestseller List, but.

• 1:18:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18:12Rahul Jandial?

  But that, that space is true, but there's also other people whose mind health is a lack of focus or attention. Like, they feel good. They just can't get the words out. And so my cancer patients that have chemo. Uh, they can sometimes develop chemo fog. And there's things like, you know, COVID brain fog.

• 1:18:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:18:28Rahul Jandial?

  So, so yes, mind health and emotional regulation, likely the, the most important thing. But also other things like concentration and attention is, is all under the umbrella of mind health. So like, if I had a, a tension coach when I was younger, I could have done better in school. I see my boys, my, one of them, I'm just like. You're the sharpest, you're the sharpest tool in the shed. You just can't, you know, look at a problem for longer than 20 seconds.

• 1:18:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, and then you're distracted.

• 1:18:55Rahul Jandial?

  So stay in the, stay in the striking distance when that naturally comes to you in your twenties. You're gonna be the boss, man. And so realizing attention and focus is one part of mind health. Realizing emotional regulation is one part of mind health. Uh, realizing that if they eat a certain way, uh, and you teach them to eat a certain way, there is a, there is a proven mind diet. It's Mediterranean, mostly plants, fish. If you put these habits in them now.

• 1:19:24Rahul Jandial?

  Think about where they will be at age forty nine. Having the tools, some of the tricks. Uh, having had the diet that has preserved their flesh the best. Likely to have staved off dementia a little bit. Like those things we do now. As a less, in my opinion, as a lesson for the pande- let's not wait to see how this pandemic is just rocked. Uh, kids minds.

• 1:19:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:19:49Rahul Jandial?

  Let's put this stuff in now, let's front load this. And get and and then let them develop and see how this. How this generation happens um after this, you know, cataclysmic event.

• 1:20:00Lewis Howes?

  As a parent of three boys.

• 1:20:02Rahul Jandial?

  Big boys.

• 1:20:03Lewis Howes?

  And and after all the information you've learned. Personally from life experience, but also as a surgeon. Neuro uh, brain surgeon and neuroscientist. If you could only share three pieces of wisdom for parents today. To raise their kids to have opt- an optimal life.

• 1:20:21Rahul Jandial?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  What would you say was the three things you, three things they should do?

• 1:20:25Rahul Jandial?

  The the answers I give, I wanna back it with.

• 1:20:28Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:20:28Rahul Jandial?

  The the, even now saying the sciences. Um, doesn't mean as much as it used to.

• 1:20:34Lewis Howes?

  Science is fluid. It's like always evolving and changing.

• 1:20:37Rahul Jandial?

  Right, I wanna back it with an explanation.

• 1:20:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:20:39Rahul Jandial?

  That you can understand and take home and and grasp. Um, the third thing is just what we talked about. I'd love to equip them with mind health tools.

• 1:20:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:51Rahul Jandial?

  Um, so that would be a certain type of diet. Good food, I'm not talking about being skinny or fat or heavy or obese or or or underweight, I'm not talking about any of those things. The things you eat regardless of your weight. Um, can help preserve the flesh of your brain. And that's the Mediterranean diet, so I would have added salmon a couple of times. And if you're vegan, um, you you could, there are vegetables that add that that sort of omega threes in there.

• 1:21:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Rahul Jandial?

  I would have said, look, this has to be a part of what you eat. Even if you're eating french fries every day. I'm not telling you what not to eat.

• 1:21:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Rahul Jandial?

  Right?

• 1:21:27Lewis Howes?

  It makes you have this at least.

• 1:21:28Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, this vitamin. This nature's true vitamins, right, for your brain. I would have taught them that and that and and sort of the emotional coping skills. Um, and then we've gone over why that's important. But for these things to work, they're a multi-decade. They're a glacial process. It's not, what can we take tomorrow? Can I take this pill and it'll fix everything? If there was one, I'd be taking it, I'd share it with you. I'm not against it, actually, I just, there isn't one. And when you think of the brain and the ways we've tried to conceptualize them today, you can imagine one pill ain't gonna fix all of that. The other thing that I find interesting is, when they're born,

• 1:22:08Rahul Jandial?

  they actually have more neurons than they hold on to. And that was one, you know, when you said in surgery, like, there was an aha moment, I was like, can you do that? Well, in neuroscience, there was this one aha moment for me, it's like, they have more of those neurons, those jellyfish, when they're young? Than when they're older? So, you're born with the biggest block of marble. Wow. And you shave, you shave off what you don't use. Because the brain is an energy hog, right? So it wants to be efficient. So if you see that there will be a pruning of the diversity of neurons. And then certain things will be, have better connections. And, and, and stay in there.

• 1:22:52Rahul Jandial?

  If you know there's a, a culling coming for, for the diversity of neurons, the, the most broad types of neurons.

• 1:23:01Rahul Jandial?

  I think it's important to let them have the most broad types of life experiences. So they hold on to those as they get older, and then they can choose what they wanna do and shave off a few they ain't using anymore, right? Right. So that, it's called pruning. Okay. The human brain in kids will go through pruning. And people are like, what does that mean? Well, you know, we're born and we can't walk, and then we learn to walk, so some changes are going on. The changes are also going on up here. You're born with a lot and you're shaving certain things down. Diversity of experiences, I think, are, are very important. So I took them traveling with me all around the world, like, each of them, eight trips to, eight trips around the world, each.

• 1:23:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:23:42Rahul Jandial?

  Um, and that's when we did all our vibing, bonding, talking, hanging. Of course, took them to all the practices and games and stuff like that, you know, but the diversity of experiences is important to me. That could be with grandma, cookies, different cookies. I'm not, it doesn't have to be all.

• 1:23:57Lewis Howes?

  That helps prune the brain and optimize the brain.

• 1:23:59Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, so that helps. Um, but diversity of experiences will keep, will let them have the widest repertoire of neurons.

• 1:24:09Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to what, limiting their experiences?

• 1:24:11Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, because then the brain will shave off the stuff it doesn't do. If you, if you tie one hand behind the back, certain neurons will, will, will fall away.

• 1:24:22Lewis Howes?

  So we want to keep those neurons as long as we can.

• 1:24:23Rahul Jandial?

  And that's my second point. I got a buddy who's an Olympian in, uh, in, um, uh, in England. He's a decathlon athlete, Greg White, and he, he made a great point. He's.

• 1:24:33Lewis Howes?

  I was a decathlete in college.

• 1:24:34Rahul Jandial?

  Oh, were you?

• 1:24:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:35Rahul Jandial?

  Just fascinating to see.

• 1:24:37Lewis Howes?

  It was amazing, man. It's great experience.

• 1:24:39Rahul Jandial?

  I've always tried to be sort of a, a decathlete in life.

• 1:24:42Lewis Howes?

  In life, me too.

• 1:24:43Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, I want to be, I want to enjoy. It's not that I want to be good at a lot of different things. I want to, I want to see what it looks like when you get to be good at certain things. Cause you get into different worlds like this one, right? But, uh, the other thing is that, um, proprioception, which should be cultivated in my mind, which is the knowing your arm is up or down. And so Greg and I, we talked about it. It would be fun for, everybody should play as much as their capacity, because I know people have children with intellectual, physical disabilities, but similarly, getting them physically is teaching them how to do somersaults, putting them in a, not that they're gonna be gymnasts, but.

• 1:25:20Lewis Howes?

  Handstands and backflips and.

• 1:25:22Rahul Jandial?

  But some sort of sporting, they call it sporting over there, like, you know, exposure, so they're fully coordinated with their bodies. I think that's an important, whether that translates to Les Falls as grandma, when they become grandparents, I don't know, but the, the full integration of, of brain to physical coordination, I think would be an interesting one.

• 1:25:46Rahul Jandial?

  You know, using the mouse with their left hand, using the fork with their left hand, forcing, forcing those, those neurons to stay relevant.

• 1:25:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:25:55Rahul Jandial?

  So that's in experiences and that's that was number two, I would say in movement. And then number three is, you know, what we talked about is teaching them what should be eaten. I, I think it's easy to say, I had this conversation with one of my sons the other day. I was like, um, try to eat this regardless of what else you eat.

• 1:26:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:26:14Rahul Jandial?

  Um, because there are things in, in fatty fish, certain vegetables and plants. Um, that's separate from the junk foods, separate from all the other bad stuff you might eat or goods. I mean, it's delicious, man. Happiness is important. I, I eat some, I eat some junk food, but I have tried hard since I learned about this to.

• 1:26:33Lewis Howes?

  To be on the Mediterranean diet.

• 1:26:35Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, or to add, to add plants and omega threes and however you want to do that.

• 1:26:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:26:40Rahul Jandial?

  Um, as, uh, not to lose weight, not, not for all of that, but to preserve the flesh in my brain. So I think, you know, um, diversity experiences to keep your, your neurons around. Um, lots of movement and coordination training to keep, uh, to keep those neurons engaged and then, um, um, eat plants.

• 1:27:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Rahul Jandial?

  To keep the flesh going.

• 1:27:08Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like is, uh, I, I've heard from one, I've heard from different neuroscientists that, tell me if this is accurate, that the bigger your body gets, or more obese it gets, the smaller your brain becomes, it shrinks the brain, or there's a correlation there with obesity and brain size. Is that?

• 1:27:29Rahul Jandial?

  I haven't heard of that.

• 1:27:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:27:31Rahul Jandial?

  And just on a regular level, I operate on patients who are obese and when I open their skull, they're fine. There's, there's not, oh, I haven't seen that.

• 1:27:39Lewis Howes?

  You haven't seen smaller or bigger?

• 1:27:40Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. And actually that's, that can be, you know. I have seen withered brains work perfectly.

• 1:27:47Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:27:47Rahul Jandial?

  And I have seen juicy brains have issues with epilepsy or autism. So the flesh is the starting point. But it's it's the mind and the function that's.

• 1:28:00Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, that's so fascinating.

• 1:28:01Rahul Jandial?

  So trying to go, you know, if you're heavy and your brain is smaller, brain's smaller, bigger, this spot, that spot, hardwired, not hardwired, I'm geared for this, I just.

• 1:28:11Lewis Howes?

  But if you have a perfect looking juicy brain, let's say, right? That you're like, wow, that's a beautiful looking, it looks healthy.

• 1:28:16Rahul Jandial?

  And that's what epilepsy is. Most people, it's just beautiful looking brain, but the electricity that it's sparking is off. And sometimes they pass out, sometimes they smell certain things, sometimes they have visions. It's all from the electricity, right? Like, that's a real life.

• 1:28:31Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:28:32Rahul Jandial?

  I mean, there's stuff about they're like authors and writers that in their, before having the seizures, when they felt most connected to God. So that's an electrical thing. Their brain MRI looks the same as his brain MRI.

• 1:28:44Lewis Howes?

  I love those three pieces of advice you'd give to parents, which is physical, optimizing the physical body with coordination type activities and doing that. The second one, diversity of experiences in life, just providing a range of opportunities to experience life at its fullest. And then nutrition, therefore, mind health. Mind health tools, including nutrition and emotional coping skills, emotional regulation skills. I feel like I could go for a few more hours with you. This stuff's fascinating to me. What do you feel like you're gonna be shocked to learn over the next five years as a surgeon

• 1:29:25Lewis Howes?

  and a neuroscientist with the capabilities of where you see the brain, mind, emotional connection heading?

• 1:29:34Rahul Jandial?

  The thing that has fascinated me recently.

• 1:29:38Rahul Jandial?

  A bit out of my wheelhouse because it doesn't require a surgeon, which is good. I'd love for my career to be obsolete. You know, if we can help people without having to cut them open, that's. Prevention. Yeah, yeah. Or non-invasive treatments, like I'm, I'm trying to invent those. I'm trying to make myself obsolete. But right now, the stuff that some of the stuff, you know, the patients are, they come looking for, for surgeons. I don't do the type of surgery where I try to offer you improved something. People come to me with a scan or a feeling that say, can you help me? And I have to decide if I can, and I guide them through that.

• 1:30:20Rahul Jandial?

  So I, I, I enjoy my craft, but I also want there be a time when opening a skull is no longer needed. That said, NPR did, so out of Stanford or Carol Linsky, I'm not sure. But I, I love the way science communicates. You can see the, you can see the work, but the transcranial, and again, these words can be easily manipulated. So I'm trying to give you the explanation. Yes. So when you read it when, some other time, you could say, I remember he was talking about the electricity of the brain. They figured out, the thing looks like the size of a camera. And they put it, you know, it's on a frame on the outside of your skull.

• 1:31:06Rahul Jandial?

  And they pulse mild electrical currents. Not the sky high ones from shock therapy like Jack Nicholas in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But the fact that if you understand that we are electric, the same deep brain stimulation, the little pulse, the heavy pulse of many electrodes of shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, the, that they can do it at more, they could turn the, the, you know, the voltage down and they can direct it more. And recently, in a rigorous journal, they were able to get it down to five.

• 1:31:45Rahul Jandial?

  Most of the day sessions and they had an 80% reduction in refractory depression. So you're depressed, you've taken all the pills, things are difficult. You've considered.

• 1:31:58Lewis Howes?

  Suicidal thoughts, or yeah.

• 1:31:59Rahul Jandial?

  Well, that's an interesting one. Let me get on that one for just for a second. Because when people have suicidal thoughts and they go into a hospital, they can't wait six weeks for the pills to work. If they were.

• 1:32:09Lewis Howes?

  They need relief now.

• 1:32:11Rahul Jandial?

  Or in five days, like with this kind of little, just the softest shock therapy, the patient's report feels like a wood picker.

• 1:32:18Lewis Howes?

  On the brain.

• 1:32:19Rahul Jandial?

  On the brain. That's not something a neurosurgeon will do, but to me, that is where things are headed.

• 1:32:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:32:26Rahul Jandial?

  I would caution, don't buy the stuff from Amazon with the gizmo. There's always a, there's always a dark side to being manipulated by some of these.

• 1:32:32Lewis Howes?

  So what you're saying is.

• 1:32:33Rahul Jandial?

  Sci-fi technologies.

• 1:32:34Lewis Howes?

  They've already been doing studies on this where 80% reduction on depression.

• 1:32:38Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, powerful.

• 1:32:40Lewis Howes?

  From just the electronic shock, a gentle.

• 1:32:45Rahul Jandial?

  Well, shock therapy is for severe depression.

• 1:32:47Lewis Howes?

  For what, 30 minutes or five minutes? Is this an hour?

• 1:32:49Rahul Jandial?

  It's 10 minute episodes spaced by time over most of the day, but you know, you gotta spend some time, but five days. Powerful.

• 1:32:57Lewis Howes?

  And then, and then it stays or it's for a period of time.

• 1:32:59Rahul Jandial?

  It was a very good question. They've, some of the patients found it to be durable. Maybe in that time the pills come in, maybe that time the therapy comes in.

• 1:33:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:33:07Rahul Jandial?

  But the point is, and they can do it with magnets too. So be careful on YouTube with magnets can do, but it's electromagnetic, so.

• 1:33:19Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, it's fascinating.

• 1:33:20Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, and it's not completely in my space. That's why I'm also more fast. I'm a surgeon. I stimulate the brain. I use electric wands. I put electric pulses. But the whole space of doing it from outside the skull is a non-surgical space, but to me it's very fascinating. It reinforces a concept that our highest levels of thinking, feeling and emotions are all sort of electrical flows.

• 1:33:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, this is, this is my jam. I love this stuff, man. I'm so excited.

• 1:33:47Rahul Jandial?

  But there's a lot of room for, you know, there's a lot of room for exploitation when you use language like that. Cause it's easier to say gears and wired, but it's not.

• 1:33:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:56Rahul Jandial?

  Otherwise, otherwise, you know, Dostoevsky wouldn't report writing his best work.

• 1:34:02Rahul Jandial?

  The moments preceding his epilepsy. Right, that's, you're talking about art and literature. Otherwise, you wouldn't put a little battery in the controlled medical environment and break depression. And otherwise, you wouldn't, you know, be in shock therapy at still some of these centers, and it can be useful, where you literally, you shock the skull and people wake up non-suicidal. Even if it happens once.

• 1:34:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:34:31Rahul Jandial?

  All three of these things, from ancient literature and the world of epilepsy, to a new study.

• 1:34:38Lewis Howes?

  To modern science.

• 1:34:39Rahul Jandial?

  To modern, but it's a lot, the theme that connects it all is all juicy brains, but all different people because of the electricity that sprouts from those juicy brains.

• 1:34:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:34:49Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah. So it's a bit to wrap your head around, but that's our current understanding. It'd be easier for me to come in there and say, you're wired this way, you're wired that way. Change your wiring by eating a blueberry. Look, it's just not, it's just not where our understanding is.

• 1:35:05Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating, man. We're gonna have to have you come back on for part two sometime, but I wanna ask you a couple of final questions.

• 1:35:11Rahul Jandial?

  Yep.

• 1:35:13Lewis Howes?

  Uh, this is a question, well, actually, before I do ask you a couple of final questions, I want people to check out your work. You've got a new book called Life on a Knife's Edge: A Brain Surgeon's Reflections on Life, Loss, and Survival. Um, you've got a number of books, but people can check out that one, it's the recent one. If they go to, your website is, what's your website where they can learn more about it all?

• 1:35:36Rahul Jandial?

  Um, obviously, just, I would just, you know, just Google, because you see a lot of different things like that. You know, my website isn't really the conduit, but I'm a cancer surgeon at City of Hope. And there's different stuff I've been doing and.

• 1:35:49Lewis Howes?

  Are you on social media at all?

• 1:35:50Rahul Jandial?

  I am on Instagram, actually, that's where I put my, my good stuff.

• 1:35:53Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool, so we'll follow that, that's Dr.

• 1:35:55Rahul Jandial?

  At Dr. John Deal, yeah.

• 1:35:57Lewis Howes?

  John Deal, yes, J A N D I A L, so go check you out over there. Um, and the book's on Amazon and everywhere else, but again, check out the book, Life on a Knife's Edge. This stuff's fascinating, man. I'm so intrigued by this. I feel like in another life, I would have been a neuroscientist. Probably not a surgeon, but a neuroscientist. Because I just think, yeah, surgery for me, that might be a little too much. But I don't know how you do it, man.

• 1:36:24Rahul Jandial?

  Yeah, I appreciate it.

• 1:36:24Lewis Howes?

  Every week, that's gotta be intense. But really fascinating stuff that you've been studying and practicing. And I want people to get the book and learn more about you.

• 1:36:36Lewis Howes?

  How else can we best be supportive of you and what you're up to right now?

• 1:36:41Rahul Jandial?

  I mean, this is, I never take it lightly to have a voice and to share my opinions. So that, right away, you've, you know, you've already done me a tremendous favor to invite me on your show. So we're all good. And I think, you know, I don't, you know, I don't ask for, there's nothing I'm selling. I don't have anything like that. But I'm turning 50 this year. And, you know, my pops and other people have seen, you know, this run ain't forever.

• 1:37:16Rahul Jandial?

  And I think, I think I'm just super happy that I'm still, I'm exploring and investigating and tearing myself apart, you know, putting my soul work in this book. And, and just to have the opportunity to, to have that as a component of my life is, I never expected that. And so by, by being given that opportunity, that's support enough, brother.

• 1:37:47Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, man. I'm excited. I'm excited for people to get the book. This question is called the three truths. It's a question I ask everyone at the end of the interviews. Hypothetical scenario, imagine you live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on earth. You've accomplished everything, you've done the stuff you wanna do, you have happy, healthy life, family, all that stuff. But for whatever reason, you've gotta take all of your message with you to the next place. It's your last day, you gotta turn the lights off, there's no more electricity in the brain, and you move on to the next place. You take all of your work with you, all the message, the content, anything you've shared, your lessons, no one has access to anymore. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons you would leave with the world.

• 1:38:30Lewis Howes?

  And that's all that we would have to remember you by are these three lessons. What would you say are yours?

• 1:38:35Rahul Jandial?

  I think the first one would be that life is short, but art is long. I never fully understood that, but through the last few years where I've become an author, I've realized I can impact a lot of, a lot of people and that the words in this book and the soul work in this book can actually last onward.

• 1:38:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:39:00Rahul Jandial?

  So, life is short, but art is long and having an opportunity to leave a bit of art has been a tremendous opportunity. And that would be a message I would leave the world. The second thing I would say is, it really touched me, I think people think he was being facetious, but Kafka said, I think, and I learned about these, you know, these authors and stuff later, I never read, I didn't read much at all when I was young, I was just rocking out and then, but in the last four or five years of trying to put this, trying to talk about the human brain and mind, you have to bring in artists and literature, but he said, the meaning of life is that it ends.

• 1:39:42Rahul Jandial?

  And my cancer patients have shown me that is, when you get that feeling of mortality, that it can be fuel for you to live.

• 1:39:56Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:39:57Rahul Jandial?

  So, and the third thing is, if you can, this was more mine, if you're fortunate enough to find true love, take care of it so you don't lose it. That's on an interpersonal level between,

• 1:40:16Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:40:17Rahul Jandial?

  between friends and lovers and parents even, you know, the children. That's what I got, baby.

• 1:40:23Lewis Howes?

  Man, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment for

• 1:40:28Lewis Howes?

  Putting your message out there in a way that we can understand it because I think it's confusing to understand the brain and the mind, the emotions, and how it all is connected. And I think people are communicating in a way of rewiring. I've said these things. And it's understanding how do we start to change the language around this and understand the brain and the mind and the emotions and the body and the flesh and the electricity of it all. And so you can, you doing the practical work as a surgeon and a neuroscientist and bringing both fields together to then educate in more simplified ways of something that's extremely complex that will probably never fully understand how it all works is really helpful. And for me, this has just been really inspiring. So I appreciate and

• 1:41:13Lewis Howes?

  acknowledge your work and your ability to want to continue to grow as a human and serve people with your message. It's really inspiring, man. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness? That elusive goal that no one achieves but keeps us striving for more. My man. Thanks, sir. Thank you so much for listening. 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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I

• 1:41:56Lewis Howes?

  want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.