How To Reconnect With Your Intuition & Learn To Trust Yourself Again with Dr Tara Swart #604

What is intuition? What happens when we die? And, how does trauma get stored in our bodies? These are just a few of the fascinating themes I explore in today’s episode with returning guest, Dr Tara Swart. Tara is a neuroscientist, a former medical doctor & psychiatrist, a lecturer at MIT, an executive coach and author of 2 books, including her very latest The Signs: The New Science of How to Trust Your Instincts. In this episode, Tara shares her own personal story about love, loss, and learning to trust herself again, after the death of her husband, Robin. This life changing experience left her questioning her deepest beliefs as a scientist, when in the midst of her grief, she started noticing unusual signs that she felt - she was unable to ignore. At first, she was sceptical, but these moments gradually helped her reconnect with her intuition in ways she never expected. In our conversation, we explore: What intuition really is and how to start accessing it again The gut-brain connection, and how emotions, trauma, and even grief can be stored (and released) in the body. The practical tools and techniques that helped Tara - and can help you - rediscover your own intuition, including journaling, creative practices and nature How to gently challenge your beliefs and open yourself to possibility (even if, like Tara, you’re sceptical at first). Reflections on what science can and can’t explain - and why sometimes, believing in something greater (be it love, the universe, or connection itself) can be a healing force. How to help your children (or yourself!) grow up with a stronger trust in their inner wisdom, without fear or ridicule. We also talk about the disconnection that many of us feel in the modern world, the transformative power of nature and the many different ways in which humans try to make sense of death. This is a raw, honest and thought-provoking conversation that I’m certain will leave you feeling inspired and eager to rediscover your own inner wisdom. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://join.whoop.com/livemore https://www.boncharge.com/livemore https://www.calm.com/livemore https://thriva.co/ Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/604 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Eighty-five percent of people in the world have a religious belief. As you were speaking, I was thinking, what's the thing that I believe in that's greater? It's love. And it's made me quite upset, but you've really just made it land for me that all of this, the thing that I believe in that's greater is love, and that's beautiful.

• 0:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, guys. How are you doing? I hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More.

• 0:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  What exactly is intuition? What happens when we die? And how does trauma get stored in our bodies? Well, these are just a few of the fascinating themes that I explore in today's episode with returning guest, Dr. Tara Swart. Tara is a neuroscientist, a former medical doctor and psychiatrist, a lecturer at MIT, an executive coach, and author of two books, including her very latest, The Signs: The New Science of How to Trust Your Instincts. In today's episode, Tara shares her own personal story about love, loss, and learning

• 1:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  to trust herself again after the death of her husband, Robin. This life-changing experience left her questioning her deepest beliefs as a scientist when, in the midst of her grief, she started noticing unusual signs that she felt she was unable to ignore. At first, she was skeptical, but these moments gradually helped her reconnect with her intuition in ways she never expected. In our conversation, we explore what intuition really is, why so many of us feel cut off from it, and crucially, what practical steps you can take to start accessing your own.

• 2:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  We also talk about the disconnection that many of us feel in the modern world, the transformative and healing power of nature, and the many different ways in which humans try to make sense of death. This is a raw, honest and thought provoking conversation that I'm certain will leave you feeling inspired and eager to rediscover your own inner wisdom.

• 2:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's pretty clear that modern life is disconnecting us from so many truly important things. One of the things that's disconnected us from is our intuition. So I wanted to start off by asking you, what is intuition? And what are some signs that we can look out for in our own life that might indicate we're disconnected from our own?

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Okay, so intuition, I've come to call it hidden wisdom, because you can't recall everything you've experienced in your life, but you pick up life lessons and you lay down patterns of behaviour and pattern recognition from those memories that you're not sort of conscious of. And I think I would have said to you before that through the process called Hebbian learning, these patterns get pushed deeper and deeper into the brain, into the limbic system, the brainstem, the spinal cord, and even into the gut neurons. And that's why it's often called gut instinct, right? But there's new evidence through the serotonin hypothesis that shows that trauma doesn't

• 3:49Speaker 00

  only exist in the PTSD circuits of the brain. Through the action of serotonin, your blood products, your plasma in your blood, the capillaries are constricted or dilated by the serotonin. And that changes the nature of nutrients and oxygen going into the tissues of your muscles, your fascia. And so the hypothesis says that that's one way that trauma is stored in the body. You know, Bessel van der Kolk's work, the body keeps a score. So the new hypothesis is that hidden wisdom or intuition is also stored in patterns that are held in the tissues of your body. So it's a bit like saying, you know, your mind isn't just in your brain, it's embodied, it's everywhere.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  And for example, if you practise yoga, you would understand that really well. So yeah, just like trauma can be stored in the body, intuition can be stored in the mind, the brain and the body.

• 4:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  And in terms of the things that we can look out for in our own life that might indicate we're not accessing our intuition as much as we might want to, are there any things that we can look out for to go, actually, you know, I struggle to make a decision, I'm constantly stressed, or whatever it might be, you know, what would you say are signs that people can use themselves to try and sort of figure that out?

• 5:08Speaker 00

  So I think there's a few ways I could approach this. One is if you keep repeating the same kind of, you know, patterns in your decision making and your behaviour, in your relationship dynamics, then you're probably not evolving your intuition and learning from potential mistakes. I think another thing, because I talked about yoga being the union of the mind and the body, is that we're very cut off at the neck and we, you know, very much separate our mind and our body. So if you're overthinking, if you're anxious, if you're very, you know, rigid in your thinking, if you rely way too much on logic and rationality when it, you know, feels wrong in your gut, kind of thing, I think those are really good signs. And you mentioned stress. So of course, because of

• 5:53Speaker 00

  the gut-brain connection, if our gut microbiome isn't in good condition, that can actually cloud access to our intuition and lead to what's called brain fog, and that's like a two-way thing.

• 6:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. When I think about stress and I think about intuition, I think about a relationship that perhaps goes both ways. So when you're chronically stressed, of course, it's very hard to look inwards and access that deep wisdom.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  And at the same time, if you're not accessing your inner wisdom enough, it's probably going to lead to more stress in your life.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  I think it leads to like a lack of direction and sense of purpose. So for example, I always kind of prided myself on my intuition and I would make my biggest life decisions based on my intuition. But up until a few years ago, that was still very much something that I thought was only in my head. It was only after my husband passed away that I really felt like I couldn't trust myself. I couldn't trust my decision making. I didn't have access to that voice anymore, that I had to find like a different way of operating. And, you know, the first thing that it wasn't a choice, it just happened is that, you know, I'm very lucky with the amount of support I have. So I got the psychological

• 7:11Speaker 00

  safety that I needed from my community. But I started spending a lot of time in nature and I believe that that's the way I reconnected with my intuition and realized that it's not just a mental thing, it's a physical thing too. So any kind of physical activity like walking, yoga, and you know how I love to go back to ancient wisdom about everything? I was literally Googling things like, how did, how did humans rely on their instincts in paleolithic times? And is art what makes us human? So I, you know, enjoyed that part of the research. And so our ancestors, they didn't have spare resources for doing things

• 7:50Speaker 00

  for fun. They had to use all of their resources for survival. So basically, food, shelter, and reproduction. So why did they drum, dance, hum, make cave paintings? There must be something about that that's crucial to, to our survival. And in some ancient cultures, like in ancient Greeks, when they bury their dead, they wail and beat their chests. So I'm assuming that's actually a good way of dealing with grief. Because one of the things I realized as well with grief is, I had amazing talking therapy, but it's only when I started having body realignment therapy and craniosacral therapy that it accelerated my healing.

• 8:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. So interesting. You mentioned ancient wisdom. And earlier on, right at the start of this conversation, you said, the new hypothesis is, but I thought, okay, I'm going to come back to that. Because is it truly a new hypothesis? Or is science just trying its very best to explain what all of our ancestors have known for tens of thousands of years?

• 9:03Speaker 00

  I mean, I can just give a one word answer to that.

• 9:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, but do you know what I mean? I mean, what's your take on how I frame that? Because there's some beautiful things in the start of the book. This point really deeply, deeply resonates with me and how I see the world. You put here, "It also made me question whether only things that can be proven scientifically are important as part of the human experience."

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, that's given me goosebumps because I'll tell you where that came from. So, within the first couple of weeks of Robin dying, I had a neighbour who had lost his partner five years previously. And we didn't really talk about it much, but obviously I was searching. So I said, "Is it okay to ask you something about, you know, death and grief?" And he said, "Sure." And I said, "Do you think it's possible to get communication with them after they've passed?" And he got quite agitated and said, "Absolutely not." And then said, "If it were, everyone would be talking about it." And I think even though I was in acute grief at the time, I remember thinking, "Well, I can't accept that it's not possible just because everyone's not talking about it.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  That doesn't make sense to me." And so then I mentioned it to a few people. And everyone that I spoke to had some kind of experience of sensing a presence or, you know, receiving a sign from a lost loved one. So I just thought that was interesting at first.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And then, as I went on my journey of receiving signs, I was able to step back as a neuroscientist and kind of watch what was happening to me and thinking, "This is quite interesting. I wonder if I'll find something that will actually, could actually help other people." Because I had no intention of ever sharing my private story. It was only if I felt like I learnt something with the benefit of hindsight that could help. And then, of course, what has happened is, because I'm known for being a scientist and a doctor, and it's such a...

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Human and primal experience and, you know, questioning the nature of life, death and birth, that it's had this phenomenal reaction.

• 11:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Just for people who've perhaps not heard some of those other conversations. When you say signs, what can you elaborate what you mean when you say you've been asking for signs?

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so my husband's name was Robin, but for many people, seeing a robin is often a sign from a lost loved one. White feathers, repeating numbers, different things for different people. But I basically, out of desperation, consulted a couple of mediums after my husband died. And I was very skeptical. And anything that I thought could have been researched on the internet or social media, I was sort of, I wouldn't give them the credit for. But then it just occurred to me that if it's possible to have, you know, open this channel of communication with someone that's passed away, that I should be able to do it myself because this was my person.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  And because I had a few friends who said that they'd received signs from lost loved ones, I obviously wanted to receive signs. And at first, you know, I think I was overthinking it and I was, you know, just hoping for things and looking and, but, you know, not really getting them. I did see a lot of robins. And then there was just a point where I realized that it would make sense for him to communicate with me through numbers because he wrote a, like a mathematical report and he was very, very obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence. So then the sorts of, you know, number signs that I would get became more frequent, more timely, more exact. And now I don't

• 12:52Speaker 00

  ask for specific things anymore. I just, I notice things and I think, oh, that was from him.

• 13:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  If I just zoom out for a moment, Tara.

• 13:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  We're talking about you being able to communicate or receive communication from your husband, Robin, who has died.

• 13:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  So

• 13:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  there's going to be some people, I imagine, listening going, wait a minute, hold on. Like, you've got a medical degree, you've got a neuroscience degree, you know how the brain works. And you're also trying to tell me that you're getting signs from your husband.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  For the skeptic who's listening, what would you say to them?

• 13:48Speaker 00

  That even though I'm a neuroscientist and a medical doctor, I'm a human being that's been through a life-changing experience that I obviously needed to make sense of. And I wanted to fully heal and not be feel bitter and, you know, sort of let grief rule the rest of my life.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  And like I said, I did step back as a neuroscientist and watch the journey that I went on. But the number of stories I have, many of which are in the book, it's, it's, it's too much for me to explain away by coincidence. And there's a lot of stuff that we don't know. You know, again, the ancient civilizations believed in souls or the afterlife or reincarnation.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  And ancestor worship and communication with their, from their ancestors and things. So I think I was just like, why not try this and see what happens and see if it makes sense for you?

• 14:52Speaker 00

  And at first it brought me comfort, you know, in the early days. Later it, it brought me guidance, but you could say that was me accessing my own intuition and that's okay too. And now it actually like brings me happiness. So, and you know, it's not harming me or anyone else. And in fact, I've been overwhelmed by how much it's helped so many people.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  That, yeah, of course there'll be skeptics and that's fine. You know, it was a huge risk for me to write this book and go out on podcasts and say that I received signs from my dead husband. But, and you know, I am a risk taker. That's one of the things he said he liked about me. But I'm, I was so like, so not worried about putting this book out there because I'm so connected to myself and I trust myself and my instincts and my intuition so much that I just, I just did it. And I thought, you know, it could have had a really bad response, but it's been like more than I could have dreamed.

• 15:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  In a good way.

• 15:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's a key point there for me, which it even goes beyond the message in this book. You said that because you're so connected to yourself and your desires and who you are and how you want to live, the response to the book actually doesn't matter.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 16:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  I, I, I get that more than you could possibly believe, right? It's a realization I've come to over the last years. It's okay if people think differently to me.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's eight billion people on the planet. How arrogant would it be of me to believe that everyone else on the planet is going to see the world in the same way as me? It's like, okay, cool, you see it differently. No problem.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Totally. I mean, I actually got a message, an open comment on my Instagram the other day from someone saying, I used to really respect her because she's a doctor, but I think this road that she's gone down is, I think they use the word quack or something like that and said, I'm now nervously watching her career. And I mean, I literally laughed out loud. I'm like, I'm not nervous about my career at all. Um, yeah, and it's, I'm quite interested to, to demonstrate that going forward.

• 17:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hmm. If I think about the message in this book, and then I try and compare it or draw parallels with the message in the source, which came out pre-COVID, what, 2018?

• 17:26Speaker 00

  2019.

• 17:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  2019.

• 17:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  I guess one of the key message you've been talking about for years, which you also write about in the science is this idea that

• 17:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  the brain, that there's so many inputs around us all the time, right? So our brain has to filter out. It's like, we couldn't possibly be aware of everything that's going on around us, or we'd just be overwhelmed, right? So if we practise what we want our brain to focus on, we're going to start seeing that more. You've come on the show many times before and spoken about why you're a big fan of journaling and a practice of gratitude, you know, focus on the good that's there. You're going to start to see more good. Focus on the negatives, you're going to see negatives everywhere, right? But that, of course, as you've also acknowledged when you say confirmation bias, could be what people are also, not skeptically saying, but saying, yeah, okay, Tara.

• 18:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  But if you now are putting your attention on looking for Robins, just as when you, you know, just as when you look for the red car in the garage and you pump quiet bozz, suddenly you're seeing red cars everywhere because you've primed that part of the brain to start looking for that. If, of course, your husband's called Robin and Robins are the symbol that many people say, oh, you know, when someone's not here, that they come and see you as Robins.

• 18:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  I guess some people will think that, won't they? They will think that, yeah, but if now you're putting your attention and looking for Robins, you weren't doing that before Robin died. So perhaps now you're just, you're naturally going to see more Robins because that's where you're putting your attention?

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, someone did make a comment like that. And it's actually not true because I was always fond of Robins because of his name. So it's,

• 19:27Speaker 00

  You know, if they're there, you'll see them. But I've literally got my friend Massimiliano said to me the other day, I distinctly remember that last time we were together, sitting at, you know, outdoors at a restaurant, and a robin flew right under our table whilst we were speaking. I mean, that robin's not meant to be there, but I'm not, I'm not saying, well, for a while, at the time that he died, I did see a lot of robins, both in London and the countryside. But I've noticed them before, and now I think I see them a normal amount. But I think probably an important point to make here is that this journey took me to a

• 20:04Speaker 00

  point where I had a choice at one point to really go down a rabbit hole and become kind of obsessed with this. But I made the decision to think, this is enough. I've had the comfort and the guidance and the joy that I needed to get through these few years. The real gift that my husband has given me is to reengage with life, to start working again, to write this book, to spend time with the people that I love, to start travelling again. Because, you know, for a while, I was like, well, I'm on my own, so I can't travel, you know, getting over things like that. So that's where, that's where I'm really at, which is

• 20:46Speaker 00

  that it's given me, and in a similar way to how near death experiences often do, it's given me such an appreciation for life. I'm so grateful that I'm alive, that I'm healthy. That's not to be taken for granted. And that, you know, whether it's as a scientist, or an author, or whatever it is, that I have something to offer, and I want to try and help people. So.

• 21:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned near death experiences there, and you reference, I think, is it Bruce Grayson in the book, the doctor who's spent years actually researching them and documenting them. Yeah, it's incredible. And I think you shared some of his research in the book, where he basically was saying that.

• 21:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  And this is where, whether you believe in near death experiences or not, it doesn't really matter because he's saying that people who've had near death experiences, they live their life with a sense of freedom and calm and they're happy to take risks. They're not as scared to fail anymore because they see the world differently. Their perception has changed.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  And would you say that that's what these signs have done for you? It's changed the way you relate to life?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  It absolutely has. And I think what's really interesting about near death experiences is that simply by learning about them, you can get some of the same benefits that people get from having had that experience themselves. And that's, you know, a big part of the reason I wanted to write the book, that if it's just the stories of other people that I've shared in the book or my own story, that people read or listen to, and that helps them to see the world maybe from a slightly different perspective, maybe, you know, notice and appreciate beauty and nature more, connect more with people, then absolutely, yeah, that's how I feel and how I'd love people to feel.

• 22:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  I really liked the chapter on community and tribes towards the end of the book. And I'd love to talk a little bit about that. There's so many elements you cover in that. One thing you write about is the collective unconscious. What is the collective unconscious and how does it relate to what we're talking about?

• 23:05Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 24:30Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 26:11Speaker 00

  So this is Carl Jung, the psychologist's sort of theory about the fact that since the beginning of humanity, there are some shared constructs that we will all experience, namely birth, life and death. And because of that, that there are inherited brain structures and genes that we all have the same type of, and that that potentially means that there's a sort of cosmic soup or force, you know, where things that we're all aware of exist, and that, you know, we all have, we're all tapped into that in

• 26:52Speaker 00

  a way. And he created archetypes to try to explain that. So, I mean, I think he was completely visionary, you know, he talked about synchronicities as meaningful coincidences. And these are just some of the conversations that I'm sort of trying to start up again and revisit. And maybe now that science has progressed so much, there's, there might be, you know, other ways of looking at that. And at the moment, the research on near death experiences, terminal lucidity and dark retreats are the closest that we can get to that. So I think as a doctor, terminal lucidity is like super interesting. That's basically when somebody whose brain is irreversibly damaged, as far as we understand it in modern

• 27:37Speaker 00

  science, so like dementia is a classic example, suddenly becomes completely lucid towards the end of their life. So it goes from not recognizing their own children to having a completely, like they used to before, conversation with their children. It usually means the person's about to pass away. There are theories that say, you know, is this a surge of neurotransmitters? But the circuitry in the brain isn't supposed to be working at that time. So we don't know.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  But things like that and near death experiences show that when the brain is under duress, like at the border of life and death, that the mind or psyche or soul potentially can operate independently of physical matter. And that's also connected to the collective unconscious.

• 28:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, it's amazing when you hear about something like terminal lucidity and, you know, we know those cases and we put it through the lens of many things we've been talking about today. This idea that, you know, the brain's not working anymore. You know, we can give you all these mechanisms. You know, there's a beta amyloid is accumulating, there's tau protein there. You know, we can tell you why someone's brain, or we can give a version of why we think someone's brain is not working, and then suddenly it seems to spark on. I would hope that that engenders a feeling of awe in most people. Right? For me, I hear that go, wow, what's actually going on there?

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, if it's not provoking your curiosity, then I guess the alternative is that all that you see materially is what life is and you just go through that life. I don't want to live like that.

• 29:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, and I think that's one of the reasons why people struggle with death so much, I think at least, is if your life is just what you think it is, right? And you're here, you're this body, and all you're concerned about is how do you get ahead in life? How do you make enough money? And then you suddenly die. It is hard to make sense of.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Do you know what I mean? It's kind of interesting. I'm drawn back to-

• 29:55Speaker 00

  And it's sad.

• 29:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's sad.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm drawn back to a conversation I had with Bronnie Ware a few years ago, the palliative care nurse who wrote The Buttfire: Regrets to the Dying. And in that conversation, I asked her, because she goes through the five regrets, and we go through what they can all signify, and how we can use those regrets to help us change the way that we live today. I said, hey Bronnie, does everyone on their deathbed have those regrets? And she said, no, not at all. I said, oh, did you see any similarities? In the people who you cared for, who did not have those regrets on their deathbed. She said, yeah, I did. One of the things, there were three things that she noted, but one of the things was a belief in something greater than themselves.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 30:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because what is it we want out of life, right? Whether we can explain it or not, I think most of us want a sort of happy, meaningful life where at the end, we're not sitting there like wishing things were different, wishing we'd done something different. So tying that back to what you're talking about.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  If someone has a near death experience and whether you believe it or not, and they use that to live feeling that they're connected to something greater, why does it matter? If you believe, and I'm, just to be clear, I'm not at all being skeptical here, right?

• 31:17Speaker 00

  No.

• 31:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just saying for the listener, if you believe that actually you're able to get signs from your husband, and it's helping you believe in something greater and helps you make sense of his death and your existence, why does it matter?

• 31:36Speaker 00

  That, and also, as you said that, I was thinking for a lot of people, that belief in something greater is God, right?

• 31:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Eighty-five percent of people in the world have a religious belief. As you were speaking, I was thinking, what's the thing that I believe in that's greater? It's not actually signs, is it? It's love. And it's making me quite upset, but you know, if, if that means that I believe that the love that my husband had for me never dies, and I love the people who are in my life, and I, you know, I've always said that I want to live a life that's guided by love, and, but you've really just made it land for me that all of this, the thing that I believe in that's greater is love, and that's beautiful.

• 32:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yes.

• 32:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  This collective unconscious.

• 32:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think there's many ways that I think about it. So I love music. I've been a musician my entire life. I'm obsessed with music and songwriting and lyrics and all kinds of things. And

• 32:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  some of the best songwriters of all time will tell you that these are not my songs. The songs came through me. The songs were out of there. I was just playing and it came through me.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even I'm pretty sure, I mean, you know, we've just had the summer of Oasis in the UK and around the world, right? So Noel Gallagher is regarded by many people as one of Britain's greatest songwriters. Back in the late 90s, when Noel was writing hit after hit for Oasis, so much so that they would just shove out these amazing hits like Acquiesce and The Mass Man on B-sides because, well, we've released the album, they just, you know, he said in interviews that they were just falling out of the sky. I wasn't doing anything. The songs were just falling out of the sky. And look, I don't know Noel Gallagher. I don't know if he's spiritual or not. I guess a lot of people would perceive that perhaps he's not, but perhaps he is. Perhaps he never talks

• 33:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  about it in those terms, but if you believe that actually these are not my songs, I'm just here playing my guitar, I'm showing up every day, and there's stuff out there that's coming through me, it's pretty interesting, isn't it?

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, very, very. And, I mean, this is really going out there now, but I have had some times.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  I'll give you a concrete example of watching myself on a podcast that I was on,

• 34:21Speaker 00

  where I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. It was just, you know, I'm even cautious about using the word channeling, but that's what it felt like.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  So, yeah, and I just think that's because I've got an expanded openness to what, you know, what could be, how the mind can work. So I'm more able to use that word or think about it in that way. But I can tell you for sure, there have been times on podcasts when what I was saying was happening without me thinking about it.

• 35:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. This idea that there are ideas out there in the ether, which suddenly I'll start talking about, a podcaster in Canada will start talking about a podcaster. And it's like, we don't all read the same books. We don't all consume the same material. There's something going on.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't know. This podcast, literally, you've come in today talking about this stuff. Four days ago, Mo Gouda was here. Mo, I didn't plan to talk to Mo about this.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  No.

• 35:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Mo ends up saying that you can prove with physics and maths that death is not the end.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  I know.

• 35:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, I was like, well, I actually don't believe death is the end, but I don't know how to prove it with maths and physics.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  No.

• 35:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then literally a few weeks before that, I spoke to the Zen master, Henry Shookman, about non-duality for the very first time.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 35:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  On the show. I'm like, so literally in the last few weeks, I'm not saying this is the collective unconscious, but something's happening when people are rocking up in this studio and we're talking about similar themes.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  So I think there is a zeitgeist around this topic at the moment. And my publishers actually said that there are a few other books on similar themes that are coming out this autumn as well. And Laura Lynn Jackson, the medium who wrote the book Signs.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  I love her work and that book and have always felt it should have got much, you know, greater recognition than it did. Well, finally, after years, this summer it reached a New York Times bestseller list.

• 36:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I started off this conversation by asking you, or by stating that the modern world seems to have disconnected us in many ways from so many things that are truly important. One of those things, of course, being intuition.

• 36:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  What is it do you think about the modern world in particular that has started to disconnect us from ourselves?

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Let me start by saying what I think some of those forms of connection are. I think of them as connection to yourself, which is your intuition, connection to others, which is community, and connection to the planet or the universe, which is, you know, something to do with understanding that the environment is very important and that we are, you know, contributors to that both positively and negatively. And then probably, you know, a sort of newer thing for me to say is connection to something greater. And that could be God, it could be the universe, source, whatever, you know, lost loved ones, whatever, you know, people believe in.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  And so one of the things I believe is that nature is a really important way to connect back to all of those things. Because humans have existed in the palette of nature for all time. And we see in some marginalized communities, like in the first Americans, that when they were displaced from their land and their food sources, like the kinds of plants and animals that roamed there, that broke them as people. And in the modern world, I think we've massively broken our own connection to nature. So, like you said, the modern Western world, urbanized. Rise of technology, obviously, but you know, that's really second only to the rise of

• 38:23Speaker 00

  the importance of logic and rationality over everything else. When you spend a lot of time in nature and you experience wonder and awe, it gives you a connection to the environment, the planet, there's something greater. You know, when you spend time with people and you actually put your phone away and you actually look them in the eye and they care about you and you care about them. That connects you to something, you know, and and then I think this loss of sense of purpose to me is connected to trusting yourself and your intuition. So you know, having a purpose, feeling like you've got some kind of, you know, direction that you're aware of. And for that purpose to be something that transcends just yourself as well, there are always of reconnecting.

• 39:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, reading that chapter on nature in your latest book, you were describing how after Robin had died, you would go and walk in nature. Okay, and I think from recollection, you would build up the time that you spent initially, it was you didn't want to do anything, you didn't want to do much, but you started and then you built up.

• 39:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  And just to be clear, I'm absolutely not comparing a spouse dying to a parent dying. I think two completely different things.

• 39:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  But just as you were talking there and relating it to purpose.

• 39:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  I was drawn back to my own experience after my father died back in 2013. Because until then, I'd never really turned inwards. Everything was outwards in my life. And I remember in the months after dad had died, I would go walking.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Really?

• 40:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  A lot in nature. And I probably wasn't thinking about intuition or anything. I was just trying to deal with something I was finding incredibly difficult at the time. And what's really interesting is

• 40:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Dad dying for me was the very first time I asked myself the question, whose life are you actually living?

• 40:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I could give you a two hour sort of explanation, or the simplistic explanation, which is, I'm pretty sure that what I do today, in terms of this podcast, my books, what I try and advocate for in terms of health and happiness, I think you can directly relate, certainly with hindsight, back to those walks in nature I took after dad died, which gave me the clarity for me to start following my heart.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I got goosebumps whilst you were saying that. And isn't it, so it's interesting. Obviously, our instincts were working because they drew us both to nature.

• 41:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. What did it do for you, those walks in nature?

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Well, like you said, at first I would do a 30 minute walk. So I thought that's like, good enough for your physical health. And then because I sort of thought, well, I don't really have that much else to do. I could walk for longer. I very quickly noticed that it made an impact on my mental health.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  And interestingly for me, because I was then living somewhere very remote. So generally I would stick to paths that I knew because I've got a really, really bad sense of direction. And in that place, I could walk for an hour or more and not, and not pass anyone that could help me, you know, to point me in the right direction. But I started going down paths that I'd never been down before. And that felt like some kind of analogy for me in my brain of the neuroplasticity of navigating grief.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  And I remember thinking,

• 42:08Speaker 00

  I hope I don't get lost, but then, then just having this deep sense of knowing that either someone was guiding me or I had been in this place before, like in a spiritual sense, and that I would find my way. So I think, but I think that that was really about me finding my way in life, not, not getting lost in the woods kind of thing. And just on that point, I wanted to say that I started just looking at trees and leaves and fields and views and just being just gobsmacked by how stunning they were. So I think I started noticing more than, sometimes you just go for a walk and you don't really, you know, you're a bit head down. So that would have been stimulating

• 42:52Speaker 00

  my senses in many ways.

• 42:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. So there's a section in the book where you talk about the fact that humans have more than five senses.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  So obviously, because you and I have been to medical school, we knew that there were more than five senses. But I didn't know there were thirty four. When I started doing the research for the book, I first found a journal paper that said humans have twenty two to thirty three senses. And then I did a full literature review and, you know, there's a table in the book of the thirty four. So for example, taste is actually subdivided into five. So sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. But umami was only discovered in the nineteen eighties. So it's our knowledge of them that's growing and evolving. And the latest one that's actually been classified physiologically as a sense is the immune

• 43:47Speaker 00

  system. So, you know, and there's appetite and waste senses, there's balance, all sorts of others, I'm sure will absolutely make sense when people read them. But they're not things that we consciously go around, you know, thinking about and therefore probably not tapping into.

• 44:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  This idea that we have thirty four senses, I guess, when I hear that, and I'm sure you would agree with this, it's like, what we're saying is that so far, we have words to describe thirty four. It may be that in a hundred years, we've got words to describe a hundred senses. So it's fascinating, isn't it?

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And you're just, the way that you put that made me think, taking umami, for example, in the nineteen eighties, before that was discovered, does that mean it didn't exist?

• 44:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  I mean, there's so much stuff like that. You were saying about being in LA with our mutual friend Drew. Well, I went in a driverless car with him. I mean, that was science fiction when we were growing up.

• 44:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  So, you know, there's all sorts of things that we didn't know before that we know now. So why can't we accept that things that we don't know yet might be true?

• 44:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, why do you think that is? Why do humans struggle to accept that?

• 45:03Speaker 00

  I've sort of started saying to a few people, have you ever thought about a day in the life of Homo erectus or what he like, you know, thought or cared about or believed about how the world worked? I feel like we're so arrogant to think that we are the most evolved and the last type of human that's ever going to exist. We too are just going to be a blip in in history at some point. I don't know if it's a survival mechanism. I'd love to hear your your theory on it. I just think there's a level of just thinking that we're the latest and greatest and we know more than all other humans that have existed before.

• 45:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this too, right? I'm currently just writing a new section for my, not my last, but the book before, Happy Mind, Happy Life, which is coming out in a new format in January. So I'm just writing a new section for updating my views on it. And one thing I've been writing about is, you know, in that book, there are these three ingredients to happiness, alignment, contentment and control. And I, I think what you're talking about and what we're talking about at the moment is to do with our need for a sense of control. So I think fundamentally, the world is uncontrollable. Okay, so the world is going to do what the world is going to do despite what you might want it to do.

• 46:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I think humans tend to feel better when they have a sense of control. And it's interesting talking to a fellow doctor about this stuff, right? I know you don't practice anymore and you've moved to neuroscientists and coaching and writing and all that kind of stuff, but you practiced for many years, right?

• 46:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I feel within our profession and frankly, within the public, you could say there's open minded people and closed minded people. I would say much, not all, but much of our profession can come across as being closed minded.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree.

• 47:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which is why so many patients get frustrated that they know something, that they're feeling a certain way, they come in and the doctor will often try and put them into a box that they learn to medical, which, which pigeonhole does this patient's symptoms fall into?

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  And if they don't, if you can't quite put that collection of symptoms into this diagnosis or that diagnosis, I think a lot of doctors, particularly if you're people are junior, they don't know what to do with that. So they try and force it in.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  And the patient's thinking, that's what makes sense to me. I don't have depression. So I think some of it comes down to a human's need for certainty and a sense of control.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  I agree. And I think there's sort of an additional danger, particularly in the medical profession of having to be right all the time.

• 47:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Again, when I was doing research for the book, I was reading a little bit about the bio psycho social model for healthcare. And interestingly, in the last 10 years or so, there has been some research talking about the bio psycho social spiritual model, particularly for care of the elderly and end of life. And that obviously shows a more holistic view of someone's beliefs and, you know, life. So I'm glad to see that's theoretically happening, but I don't feel like it's actually happening in the healthcare system, that spiritual element.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, like I said, I think it's quite dangerous when you feel like you have to be right all the time and that's, that's actually what's driving your decisions.

• 48:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, that, that, that need to be right, whether it's in your profession or in your relationships, it doesn't do you any good. It's a very fragile place to be in. You have written about near death experiences quite a lot in the signs, which is super fascinating. I'm really interested, what has the feedback been, yes, from the public, but also from healthcare professionals?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really interesting. So I really, I had no idea of how much this would help people. And interestingly, I have received DMs from doctors and clinical psychologists and psychotherapists as well, saying that they have similar beliefs to me, but they don't talk about it because it's not accepted, you know, in those sorts of communities.

• 49:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Let's just give us intuition a minute, right? Because we've sort of, we started there, we've gone down a few different paths, which is great. How much do you think intuition plays a role in a doctor's ability to help their patients heal?

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Oh, I think it's massive. And like I said, I've been intuitive for a long time, but quite early on in my career, I would have gut feelings that something wasn't what it looked like. I'll give you one example. I was in my second job, so I'd done my surgery six months. I was in medicine in London. And a guy came in overnight and the A and E registrar said that he was having a heart attack.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  And he should get treated for that. I had struggled so much to read ECGs that show that someone's having a pulmonary embolism. But I looked at this ECG and I was like, I don't think he's having a heart attack. I think he's having a PE. And so we should send him for a scan. And they said, if you ask for a scan at this time of night, you're going to wake up the consultant. So I thought, I think I have to. So I called my consultant and said, I want to send this guy for a chest CT. But the A and E registrar is saying that unless you give permission, they're not going to wake up the radiologist. So he said, yeah, go and send him for the scan. So I then went to bed.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  And when I woke up for ward round in the morning, I was like, what happened about that guy that, you know, I had to call you up about for the scan? And my consultant went, let me tell you the story of the junior doctor who correctly diagnosed a man that the A and E registrar had misdiagnosed.

• 51:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, well done.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And actually, after that, I knew I wanted to do psychiatry. But my registrar sort of said, please, please consider staying in medicine because, you know, well, he said something like, because you're so good at it, or something like that. And I was like, look, I want to go and do psychiatry, but I also want to know why you're saying this to me. And he said, your judgment is really, really good. And for me, that's intuition. Of course, it's everything that we learn and it's experience. But I feel like I've always had that radar for like something that might not make sense on paper.

• 52:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. When you were relaying that story, you said, I think you said something like, I'm really intuitive. Which got me thinking, are we not all really intuitive?

• 52:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  If we don't allow other things to get in the way.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Yes. So I think the correct way to have said what I meant was I rely on my intuition very strongly and I trust it. And so I've had, you know, that comment from my registrar, but also my first husband, my first husband really trusted my intuition too. And we were the same age, both doctors. So, you know, I don't know why particularly, if I said that's our destiny, he was fine with it. But that obviously gave me confidence as well. You know, a lot of my friends will say things like, follow your heart, follow your gut, you know. So I think I've had a good experience of trusting that. And taking the chance when logic and intuition didn't match up and saying, I'm going to go with my intuition and see what happens. And but for me also, you know, another part of that

• 53:18Speaker 00

  is saying, whatever happens, I will roll my sleeves up and I will make it work. So that also helps you to trust your intuition because the what if it goes wrong question is the reason that will hold a lot of people back from that.

• 53:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. It's kind of interesting hearing that. We're talking about intuition, but there's also a inner confidence that's there. You had the inner confidence to back yourself, right? When things around you were telling you not to. So we've covered a lot of areas so far, you know, what intuition is, why we're disconnected from it, how it can be so helpful for us. But it's all under this wider umbrella of the hidden wisdom that exists that we're not accessing.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if someone was to phone you or come to see you as a coach, Tara, and say, Dr. Swart, listen, I'm really struggling to trust myself. I don't know how to, I don't know how to act as my intuition. Will you teach me how I can start? What do you say to them?

• 54:31Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 55:14Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 55:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends. Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports-

• 56:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order.

• 57:18Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 57:36Speaker 00

  Well, what I do say to people, because they do ask me this, is to start keeping a journal, particularly where you have a decision or a dilemma where your logic says one thing but your intuition says another. And, you know, let's keep it safe and low risk at first. But let's say actually you ignore your gut and you go with your logic. Well, journal about how that panned out and try to demonstrate to yourself that you could have trusted your gut. And then in the next low risk sort of situation, go with your intuition, even if your logic tells you not to, and see what happens and journal about that and let that pan out. Keep doing that for at least six months, I would say probably a year ideally, and read

• 58:18Speaker 00

  over your entries to see where your repeating patterns aren't serving you and to show yourself that sometimes when you take a risk, it really works out for you. There's also an exercise in the book that I really love to help people try to align that sort of head, heart and gut. It's called the unfurling exercise and it's basically you sort of, you know, you have a question in your mind or a decision to make and you take five deep breaths, put your hands on your head and ask your logic to give you the answer. Then you take five deep breaths, put your hands on your heart and ask your emotions to give you your answer. And then you take five deep breaths, put your hand on your belly and ask your gut or your intuition to give you the answer.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Now, if they're all aligned, that's great, isn't it? But if they're not, again, you know, journaling and learning from that. And then I think one of the reasons that people struggle with this is because when you're in your own situation emotionally, it's very hard to get perspective. So sometimes I say, you know, what would you say to your brother or your best friend? Because it's, we're all great at giving advice to our friends, but you know, I can't give it to ourselves. But one exercise I do that can, you know, feel very emotional, I've often cried when I've done it and I've shared it with a few friends who've said they cried as well, is myself in seven years' time. So, you know, I'd be sitting here and I'd say, I'm Tara, this is how old I am, this

• 59:45Speaker 00

  is what I'm wearing, this is the thing I'm struggling with, give me some advice. And then I would stand up, walk seven steps forward and turn around and say, I'm now Tara, seven years older than I am, describe what I'm wearing and then ask that Tara the question and then just like go with the first thing that comes to your mind. And the reason that that's quite an emotional thing is because that's actually come from you. But, you know, if, if you didn't step outside of yourself in that way, you wouldn't trust that you actually know the answer.

• 1:00:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Just a simple way of getting out of your head or putting you in a different, well, quite literally a different physical space. You're actually moving away from where you are.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's quite powerful, isn't it?

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's another exercise that's similar that also works, which is, I think it's in the source and I called it creative mentoring, which is that you think of three people that you admire and trust. They could be people that you know, they could be historical characters or people that, you know, have passed on. And you ask them each to answer your dilemma. And you know, you go into a great deal of depth and say like, you know, you describe the person and their name and their age and what they're like. And then you say, okay, I'm asking you like Winston Churchill or whatever. And then, then you, you know, you go through that process of describing the other person. So that you're kind of, you're more like in there.

• 1:01:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you've been a fan of journaling for years. And it's quite interesting when you're describing, one of the ways in which we can start to figure out how to trust ourselves more is to basically, I guess, build up that evidence for ourselves.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Just write down what you're doing in life. Write down how it pans out and then, you know, look back and go, oh, when I did it that way, this is what I did it that way. And over time, build up some sort of evidence that, oh, wow, when I trust my gut, things go well, or it might be the other way. When I trust my guts, maybe they don't go well, right? But at least you're starting to tune into that and take it out of your mind.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  And getting it out onto paper.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  At the same time, you did touch on this in the book, actually, which was the potential limitations of journaling. In the sense that journaling is from the mind.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's quite interesting that this is what I've realized in my own practice over the last year is that currently what I do is I will meditate first. And then I'll journal. I sort of feel the meditation and sometimes some movement first.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Brings things up that I can, and those insights I can then crystallize in the journal.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  But just trying to help people start to tap into this inner wisdom.

• 1:02:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  If, for example, they've been traumatized, right? Or they've had, I guess, you know, lots of adversity in their life that they haven't done anything with and their fascia is loaded with all these emotions and trauma and their posture might have changed or they're stuck a certain way. Do you think doing it with the mind at that point can help? Or do you think this is where, you know, somatic practices, yoga, hands-on therapy from osteopaths or whatever it might be? Like, speak to that a little bit as well, if you will.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  Thanks. I wanted to go there because people are also so disembodied in the modern world and the Western world. And so.

• 1:03:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  And what does that mean? Because a lot of people, we hear that term. I don't think everyone understands that term. What does disembodied mean?

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Like not connected to your body, not receiving messages from your body, not listening to your body.

• 1:03:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because what, we're on screens, we're sat down, we're sedentary, we sit on the sofa and we're not, I don't know, moving our bodies. And you mentioned dancing rituals before from our ancestors, you know, different ways in which they would move.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so, well, because, I mean, they were, obviously, they lived in a very, physicality was a big part of the way that they lived. Because they were like hunting and gathering and.

• 1:03:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  So they had to be in tune with their bodies.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Yes, they were very in tune with their bodies. And but creative things like art and dance, you know, was very, and drumming and, you know, sort of creating that vibration in the body was part of that. So what I say to people in the modern day, when they kind of say, I don't know what you mean by listening to my body, I don't know how to listen to my body, is I say, have you ever had a visceral reaction to something? So have you heard a piece of news, good or bad, and had a chill go down your spine or your hair stand up on end? And so that's, that's the kind, most people will have had that. So that makes it, I think, understandable for people. And then you want to just notice that more.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Like, it's a very common phrase in my friendship group to say that gave me goosebumps or that gave me chills. And it's, I think that's us affirming each other that we trust each other's intuition or we had a strong, you know, emotional agreement with whatever they've said.

• 1:04:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  But that, can I, sorry, on the goosebumps thing, right?

• 1:05:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like, all of us can really tune into that. You know, we've all been in situations before where someone has said something or something has happened and we felt goosebumps, right? You can't really explain that easily with a rational mind, right? There's something happened and on a deep level, your body reacted, right? That's, I mean, I don't know, that's quite awe inspiring as well to think about that.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Exactly. And you know, why are there even phrases like a chill ran down my spine? Or, you know, I mean, because they're analogies to remind us that actually everything that we're experiencing is happening to us physically, not just mentally. I mean, as part of the research, I actually asked the question, is art what makes us human? And what I found out that I thought was so interesting is that generally we think that cave paintings were made about 40,000 years ago and that was the beginning of art for humans. But actually, 20,000 years before that, in Southern Africa, people were making carvings into ostrich eggshells.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  50,000 years before that, they were making necklaces out of shells and wearing them and crumbling ochre and, you know, rubbing it on their face and their body to adorn themselves. And 500,000 years ago, we were making tools that were more beautiful and symmetrical than they had to be to do the job they were necessary for.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  So this awe, this appreciation of beauty, this like, you know, really like inhabiting your body and understanding that it's a two-way thing, what you feel and what you think, is, as well as the connection with nature, which I talked about much earlier, those are really important things for us to reconnect, to truly be human, to be connected to ourselves as well as, you know, others and the whole thing.

• 1:06:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's thought that one of the reasons why exercise is so good for us as humans is because it helps enhance our interseptive abilities. It helps us tune into our sensations. So we know suddenly, you know, if you run regularly, you know what an elevated heart rate feels like. Because if you don't, sometimes an elevated heart rate can make you feel like you're anxious. Right? But you, so it's the same signal, but you know how to interpret it because you have that physicality. It's kind of interesting. I was, actually this morning, I was, I saw this wonderful osteopath who I've been seeing for years.

• 1:07:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I told him you were coming in today. And we were just talking about this idea of trauma being stored in the body. And what he has found, you know, he's in his 60s now, he's been doing this for decades. Yeah. You know, and what he can actually feel in people's bodies. And we were also talking about this idea that a lot of ancestral cultures, like you say, have all of these kind of, either they're physical anyway in terms of how they live, but they have all these practices, like drum beating or, you know, dancing in particular ways. But uninhibited dancing. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:08:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if there was trauma sort of locked in somewhere, it's almost going to be released through those three dimensional movements. Yeah. And we were just hypothesizing this idea that perhaps one of the costs of civilization is that we have suppressed our emotions and trauma into our fascia.

• 1:08:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because there are certain things that are acceptable to do in the world, aren't there? We're allowed to do this, we're not allowed to do that.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Oh, you know, I don't like that, I'm not going to say anything. But it's not the right thing to do to say anything or whatever. So by not saying anything, you suppress that, you lock it in within you.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I don't know, it was quite an interesting thought. Maybe the cost of civilization is by not doing certain things in public, it means that we've kind of suppressed those things down into our being. Does that make sense?

• 1:09:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'm just remembering that in March 2020, when we did the podcast remotely, because it was during the pandemic, I said to you, I'm really concerned there's going to be a mental health crisis. And I also said, but it could be an opportunity for a spiritual revolution. And the fact that we're having this kind of conversation now is, it's been a really interesting journey with you doing these podcasts and seeing like how different the conversations have become.

• 1:10:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And actually, that theme, because I can see what a risk you have taken in writing this book, or a perceived risk at least. Because what you've written about in this book is not the sort of thing that neuroscientists and psychiatrists write about, okay? But if we just all have a bit more humility and go, we are living in an age that is literally unbelievable to people who were born 100 years ago. Literally, I mean, yeah, planes existed, but even the fact, you know, I still, I'm amazed that want to get in a plane. I still don't understand how the hell this works.

• 1:10:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't, I'm like, we've got all these people, there's a bunch of people in here, we've all got bags, suitcases. How has this thing got off, right? And I know you can explain it with physics, but part of me is in awe every time I want a plane, I'm like, this is nuts.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. But even if you think about smartphones, right? I imagine if, when my mom was a kid, if someone said to her, look, later on in your life, there's going to be these things, right? It's going to be a tiny thing you can have in your pocket. And you're going to be able to communicate with anyone in the world, not just on text, which you probably wouldn't know what text is back then, but on video.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or you're gonna carry something in your pocket where you can literally stream any film that's ever been made in the last 50 years. People would think you're mad 80 years ago. I think, do you know what I mean?

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:11:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  What does that teach us? It teaches us that there are things that we are living through right now that would have been deemed ridiculous for the vast majority of our evolution. But now we accept them as normal.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's kind of nuts, isn't it?

• 1:11:49Speaker 00

  It's nuts and it makes me, makes me feel like, you know, when you said writing this book was a perceived risk, it makes me really realise, and again, thank you, because some things have really landed for me in this conversation, that the biggest risk of my life would have been not coming out with this story. For, for my life, for my soul, for my, you know, belief in love. If I'd thought, oh, I'd better not do that because, you know, companies might not want to hire me, that would have been like such a, such a shame.

• 1:12:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. It's so powerful that you would have been playing it safe rather than, you know, rather than being authentic, right? Which is what so many of us do.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:12:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, I want your take on something which I was getting to before, mind and body. Okay. And I'm really fascinated by your take on this because you've written about fashion in the book. Um, and, you know, this idea that our emotions and a lot of our experiences are stored in our fashion, which I also believe. But I have this thing I always think about, like, how is it that we change and evolve? So if we think about intuition and this ability to access our inner wisdom, let's say.

• 1:13:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  But if we're stuck in certain patterns because of trauma, so our fascist tights, our postures change, you know, you were a psychiatrist for years, you can, there's a certain posture sometimes you will see in people who are struggling with their mental health, right? It's not open-hearted, open chests, standing up tall, right? It's a lot more enclosed and sort of maybe bent over, hunched over at the shoulders, whatever it might be, right?

• 1:13:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  So whilst I think a lot of my improvements personally have come from cognitive reframing,

• 1:13:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  I've also worked on my body for 12, 13 years, you know, improving my movement patterns, seeing therapists to regularly sort of work on my body as well.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I guess, I guess, I just wanted your take on that, you know, can you do it all from the mind? Can you do it all from the body? Or do you need a bit of both?

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  I think the both is like takes it to the next level.

• 1:14:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  I'm just trying to think of the two options, like, can you do it just with your body? No, I think there's, it's got to be like cognitively placed as well. And we know from all of Bessel van der Kolk's research that just talking therapy is no way as effective as yoga or art therapy, I think for PTSD, because actually the part of the brain that's to do with speaking, the Broca's area, actually gets shut down by PTSD. And that's why people say things like, I'm dumbfounded, or I don't have words for this. And that's where the body work comes in. But the combination is that's where the magic is.

• 1:14:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think you referenced a trial, is it firefighters who use creativity as a way of helping them with trauma?

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's actually a charity called Ashes to Art, where firefighters that go into a really traumatic scene, as soon as they exit it, they immediately have to paint what they saw. And it shows a massive reduction in a number of people getting PTSD from these things.

• 1:15:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow. I'm a parent, Tara, okay? You've met my children on multiple occasions.

• 1:15:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  If I would like them to grow up with as much access to this hidden wisdom as possible, what are the kinds of things that you would recommend I do with them?

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna actually start answering this with a bit of a counter. So I think often the reason that people are not able to trust their intuition is because they were ridiculed as children. So, you know, if they had like a feeling about something that they wanted and people like exactly what you're saying, like, don't say that, no, we don't do that, you know, that kind of thing. It all gets schooled out of you and parented out of you. And so I would say using, making sure you're saying like, how do you feel about that? As much as you say, what do you think of that?

• 1:16:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Maybe using phrases like, you know, what does your heart say? Or what does your gut say? You know, just to like introduce that language, but also obviously to do like physical stuff, exercise with them. Yeah, just really demonstrating when you use your gut, you know, to do something, but just really getting them to tap into that, like, what do you feel is the right thing to do? What do you feel is the best thing to do? What does your heart want to do?

• 1:16:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  And then also teaching them to, you know, run that by logic. You know, I think you can then say, does that make sense to do that sort of thing? And, you know, encouraging them to have those conversations with their friends as well and just see different perspectives.

• 1:16:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. This idea of hidden wisdom, you can even look at it really simply where if you go into a room where there has just been an argument, right? But you didn't witness the argument, but there's tension between the two people in there, you can feel it.

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  That we all know that.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's kind of interesting, is it? Because sometimes it's easy to go, hidden wisdom, what are you talking about? You know, there's, you know, there's, there's the way things are and there's the way things aren't, right? But it's like, hold on a minute. If you, if you really start to ask yourself those questions, you go, yeah, we've all been in situations where something felt off, or we could feel that, oh, something's just gone down in here. There's clearly, we, we do have an ability to pick up on something.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're a very private person, yet over the past few months, you've been doing a lot of interviews talking about Robin. How has that been for you?

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  It's actually been such a relief. You know, I waited till I was ready to speak about it, and that's been almost four years, so it was a long time. So I kept things private whilst I needed to grieve.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  But as you, as you mentioned, you know, I really like to be authentic, even like when I present on social media and podcasts. And so I think I didn't feel inauthentic because I, I've, you know, chose to protect my privacy and that's my right, obviously. But I just, yeah, I feel relieved that that,

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  you know, that part of my life is now out there. It probably explains like some of the decisions that I've made professionally in the last few years. And yeah, it just like feels like a massive weight off my shoulder. And also, you know, a big part of grieving, as I'm sure you'll agree, is that you want that person to be remembered.

• 1:18:52Speaker 00

  And so, you know, I just, I feel like yesterday was his birthday because that date is written in the book. People messaged me and, you know, it's just so lovely.

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's interesting how our relationship with grief

• 1:19:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  can change over time.

• 1:19:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's, you know, 12, 13 years since my dad died. And it's kind of really interesting to,

• 1:19:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  for me on a personal level, it's kind of reflects on how my relationship with dad dying has changed.

• 1:19:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because now, when I think back to dads, I just smile. You know, I, you know, everyone's experience of grief is individual and they're entitled to it. And they're entitled to frame it however they want.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  I now frame my dad's death as a gift to me.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:20:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like, I really do.

• 1:20:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I ask myself, you know, it's easy to go, yeah, I wish dad was still here. Of course, on many levels, I do, but do I? Because it's really interesting. Again, I'll be thinking about this whilst screening your book in the lead up to you coming into the studio today. I was thinking,

• 1:20:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  yeah, but dad's gift to me was his death. It was the lessons that I learnt through his death. If my dad was still alive, I wouldn't be the person who I am today. I wouldn't be doing what I am today. I wouldn't know the things. I wouldn't have that experience to draw upon.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  So

• 1:20:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  how we relate to death changes over time, doesn't it?

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so beautiful that you could say that. And I feel, you know, I understand it and maybe like not there yet.

• 1:20:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  I couldn't four years then.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  No. But that's what he would have wanted. He wouldn't have wanted you to be,

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  you know, bitter and feel like life treated you unfairly and not be the best version of yourself that you could be. So

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  that's a really beautiful choice. And I think you're right. It does take quite a lot of time.

• 1:21:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  But also,

• 1:21:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  I,

• 1:21:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  so I believe that the soul lives on. Okay.

• 1:21:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's how I was brought up. But as I get older, more and more and more as I tune into me and what I think, I think, yeah, it doesn't make sense to me that that's it. So the funny thing is,

• 1:21:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I don't think, or maybe I've not been looking, right?

• 1:21:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  I can't say honestly, oh, I've had signs from my dads, right? I can't. That would not be true because I would, or certainly that's not the language I would have used or would use now. Like, I don't think I've been looking for them. I don't think I've been asking for them. But I still feel my dads around.

• 1:22:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  And even if it's just simplistically this idea that, well, I spent all those years with dads, like, his ethos and who he is as a person is ingrained and infused within me. You know, people see so many similarities with me and my dad, you know, our manner, how we make jokes, right? Of course, you know, I would have learnt a lot of that from dad, just growing up and being around him, right? So you absorb that when you're a little kid.

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? So whether I can go round and see my dad now and touch his skin or not, which I can't, the kind of weird thing is, over the last few years, I feel more and more that dad is around, that he is a part of me in everything that I do.

• 1:22:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I guess that's, I've, I haven't looked at my dad's death through the lens of signs, yet I still feel my dad is around me.

• 1:23:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  But you've, you are, your relationship with Robin has evolved, I guess, in a different way, right?

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, well, I wanted to ask you, do you have conversations with him in your head?

• 1:23:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, I don't think I do.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  Because that's part of my, my journey as well. And a lot of other people say they sense a presence. I have had that, but it's not a big part of my journey. A lot of people say that their loved ones visit them in their dreams. I've had a couple, but that's not a major thing for me and Robin, although he often goes into my, a few of my close friends often say that they had a dream about him and tell me like what the message was and stuff. So I think it's a bit of a spectrum or kaleidoscope, I don't know how to describe it, of, you know, various ways in which you can experience.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  That that person hasn't disappeared altogether.

• 1:24:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I guess we've all got the right to experience grief in the way that we want to. And anything that we can individually do to make sense of that in our own lives has value.

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Oh, Tara, we've covered so many different areas. We haven't scratched the surface, I don't think, of what's in your book, The Signs, which is a riveting read.

• 1:24:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is there something we haven't spoken about yet that is a key message that you would love to share with my audience?

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's a bit of a challenge to you, but also to the audience, which is, could you just try this little exercise? So think of a really fond memory of your dad, or like you said about jokes, a joke that you two had that only like you two knew about or would get. And then choose a symbol that represents that memory or that joke and ask for a sign and then tell me what happens.

• 1:25:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, all right, challenge accepted. Okay, so let's, let's see what happens, if anything. I mean, I have an open mind, so yeah, okay, I like that. Tara, right at the end of this conversation, I'm sure that at various times throughout this, people may have got lightbulb moments in their own life. I certainly think that many people experience what you have experienced. And I've seen the comments, I've spoken to you, I can see how validating it is for so many people to hear someone like you with your prominence talk about this. So I think you're doing a lot of people a huge service, simply by talking about your

• 1:25:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  experience, and they can really resonate with you through that. For someone who's been listening, and...

• 1:26:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's kind of leaning in going, yeah, I'm totally disconnected from this inner wisdom. Right? I don't know what I think. I've had a difficult life. Fear is what was behind all my decision making. I don't know if something's coming from my heart or from my trauma. But I want to move forward in my life. I want to start trusting myself again. I want to start tuning in again. But I don't know where to start. What would you say to them?

• 1:26:32Speaker 00

  I'm going to go right back to pretty much where we started this conversation and talk about that time in nature that we were both drawn to at difficult times.

• 1:26:41Speaker 00

  You've made me realise even more today how, not just crucial, but

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  sort of how much of a boost it gives people. And, and I really, you know, want to sort of, obviously I love people to listen to podcasts, but not doing anything else when you're, you're doing that walking in nature. That's, that will give you the key to your inner wisdom.

• 1:27:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Spending time with yourself in nature.

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you'll start to realise stuff about yourself you didn't know before.

• 1:27:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Tara, thank you for coming back on the show. Thank you for writing the signs. I'm delighted to see what a positive reception it's getting. And I look forward to the next time you come back.

• 1:27:26Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:27:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do take a moment to think about one thing you can put into practice in your own life. And one thing you could share or teach to someone else. Remember, when you teach somebody else, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. And of course, if you think this episode would be helpful for somebody in your life, please do consider sharing it with them. Now, before you go, just a quick reminder from me. As you may recall me chatting about with Tara, my fifth book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, is being re-released on January 1st,

• 1:28:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  2026, in a brand-new format. It has been reimagined with a brand-new cover, a foreword by Oliver Berkman, and a new reflective chapter from me. It's smaller and lighter than the original version of the book, but it contains the same powerful message: that happiness is a skill we can all get better at when we know what to work on. You can preorder the book right now in all the usual places, see the episode notes in your podcast app, and for those of you who prefer audiobooks, all the new sections will of course be available in the audiobook, which also includes an exclusive Q&A with myself. Now, before you

• 1:28:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatage.com/friday5. Now, if you

• 1:29:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics: happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always

• 1:30:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Appreciate it if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week and please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.