Pod Insights Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD 103. Maya Raichoora: Train Your Brain Like Your Body + The 5 Types of Visualization About this episode What if your brain's biggest limitation isn't its capacity, but your failure to train it? In this episode of Extend, Maya Raichoora joins me to share how visualization techniques helped her reverse debilitating ulcerative colitis.
We explore the neuroscience behind visualization, from rewiring neural pathways to regulating the immune system through thought. We dive into five distinct types of visualization and why mental fitness deserves the same daily dedication as physical fitness.
Maya Raichoora is the UK's leading mental fitness and visualization expert, bestselling author of "Visualize," and a former international badminton player. After being told she'd need lifelong immunosuppressive medication or colon removal surgery for ulcerative colitis at age 17, Maya used visualization and mental training to achieve complete symptom remission. She now coaches elite athletes, C-suite executives, and teaches the science of training the brain.
We Also Discuss:
01:45 - How Visualization Reversed Severe Ulcerative Colitis Without Surgery
03:45 - The "Piranha Technique": Making Pain Playful Through Creative Imagery
11:48 - The Brain-Gut Connection: Why Your Colon Has as Many Neurons as Your Brain
18:06 - How Your Brain Directly Controls Immune Cell Production
21:15 - The Five Types of Visualization
26:07 - Why Your Brain's Stories Become Your Ceiling
29:55 - The Neuroscience of Mental Rehearsal: Why Imagined Reps Equal Real Ones
38:00 - The 90-Second Rule for Releasing Trapped Emotions
55:32 - The Language of Medicine: How "Incurable" Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
1:04:15 - Mirror Neurons: Why You Become What You Watch
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Website: https://www.drshah.com/
Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ https://www.instagram.com/nexthealth/https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd
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Learn more about Maya Raichoora:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maya-raichoora/
Website: https://mayaraichoora.com/
Transcript 14,266 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Dr. Darshan Shah? Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and, most importantly, extend your health span.
0:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? A professional athlete trains their body for hours each day, but what about their mind? We live in a culture obsessed with physical fitness, yet mental fitness is often ignored. And what's the irony? Your brain controls your performance, resilience, and even your physical recovery. Welcome back to Extend. In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Maya Raitjura, the UK's leading mental fitness and visualization expert, who made history as Nike's first-ever mental fitness trainer. We're going to be exploring the biggest myths holding people back from strengthening their mindset. The visualization cues that top performers use to stay focused under pressure, and a daily mental fitness protocol that you can begin to use today to improve your performance in every
1:35 Dr. Darshan Shah? aspect of your life. Maya Raitjura has transformed thousands of lives worldwide through her pioneering approach in mental fitness. She's actually worked with elite athletes, executives, and global brands to help them think, feel, and perform like the top 1%. She's a renowned speaker and author of the book, Visualize, where she is known for creating powerful immersive experiences that unlock human potential through the power of the mind. Join me in welcoming one of my favorite guests of all time, Maya, to the show.
2:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? Maya, thank you for coming all the way from London. It was so fun meeting you there.
2:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you. I'm very excited. I know, even to make it happen here. It's, um, yeah, meant to be.
2:18 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. And so I, um, for the listeners of the podcast, I met Maya at a dinner that I hosted in London when I was there to do Dr. Chatterjee's podcast. And you're one of the people I wanted to meet because I was following your social media and I loved the message that you put out there about visualization. And visualization for me came into my life just recently, maybe the last five to six years through some coaching I did from a CEO coach, basically a business coach that was helping me kind of figure out how to run a business like Nextel, a large business. And we talked a lot about visualization and I did get the sense that kind of the talk and the training it was giving me was really in its infancy, right?
3:02 Dr. Darshan Shah? And you've really put together, I think, now a book, right? And a program and a format around visualization that can be very useful to many people. So I'm excited to dive into it with you.
3:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, same. I'm also really excited.
3:17 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. So Maya, I would love to hear first a little bit about you and how you got to this place in this podcast chair today.
3:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. So today I am the UK's leading mental fitness and visualization expert. It's a very fancy title and everything, but yeah, my journey coming here was pretty long, very rocky, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. So my mission really is to make mental fitness as common as physical fitness. And I think we can all agree that, you know, when we were at school, PE or physical education was on our curriculum, right? We, we knew how to train the body. In fact, we were kind of forced into it. Whether we went, different matter, but it was on the curriculum. When it comes to training the mind, now more than ever, you ask people what's going on in their life and there'll be some element of their mind that they feel consumed by
4:07 Speaker 01 or they lack confidence, they feel like an imposter, they don't know how to quiet those negative thoughts and it dominates your life from the moment you wake up. But then if you ask them, do you have The tools to manage it. That's where we get a bit of, oh, no, I'm just gonna talk about it.
4:22 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
4:22 Speaker 01 But I don't know what to do about it. Now, it's not always our fault. Like, again, we grew up not really having that education. And visualization for me, but also scientifically, is a great, I'd say holistic tool when it comes to that all-round method to train the brain.
4:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
4:39 Speaker 01 And I first started using it, so when I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Um, when I was about fifteen. And for me, I have always been a very high achieving, high performing individual, but also athlete. So I played badminton for my, for my country. But colitis, which is an inflammatory bowel disease. Gosh, it's crippling on every level, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, everything. It takes out all the light, all the light that you can have in life, all the joy, all the confidence, all the hope you have for your future.
5:20 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
5:21 Speaker 01 Because my days were just, I was going to the toilet like forty times a day. I'm on sixty-five tablets every single day. But I'm also going to India, America, France, England to try and find the best treatments I can. But unfortunately, I guess just there was no medication that was keeping the disease at bay for me. And so it was in hospital where I basically first started using it. And it wasn't because I knew I was doing it, it was kind of by mistake. But I was mentally rehearsing me walking again, just on, in the hospital hallway.
5:56 Dr. Darshan Shah? Okay.
5:57 Speaker 01 Because I hadn't done it in a while. So I needed to like understand what it felt like.
6:01 Dr. Darshan Shah? So you were in bed for a long time.
6:03 Speaker 01 A long time, kind of like in and out, but this, at this point, it was about, I'd been there about for nine days. Thirty-five kilograms at the age of about eighteen, so weak, right, very, very weak. And mentally as well, everyone's telling you that, Maya, you will be like this for a while. And, you know, you're weak and you can't do this, you can't do that. You're just hearing that all the time.
6:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right, right.
6:25 Speaker 01 And so in my mind, I like saw this, just for like a minute. And when I opened my eyes, I was like, oh. What if, what if I could actually just walk again? And like feel it and feel human again. And the brain is interesting because naturally it will push you a little bit to then be like, well, what if you can run? What if you can now see yourself at uni or back home again? And so I kept doing it every chance I had.
6:51 Dr. Darshan Shah? So you never heard about it? You just kind of just started doing it, right?
6:54 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly.
6:55 Dr. Darshan Shah? Interesting.
6:56 Speaker 01 And then it was only after hospital that I was like, something clearly worked in that way, like something I was doing with my mind. And that's when I started researching everything from meditation to, yes, breath work, but visualization was this tool that the more and more I got into, the more techniques I learned, the more I was practicing it. And then I had my own teacher who showed it to me in a very different way. She would actually say to me, Maya, I want you to draw your colon healthy or pink. I was like, that's really weird.
7:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
7:24 Speaker 01 But I did it and I stuck it on my wall. So every morning I would see this. Then she said, close your eyes and go inside your colon, like visualize yourself in there and start healing all the cells, all the things. And, you know, again, at the time, I'm like, this is so crazy.
7:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
7:40 Speaker 01 But now you see research from people like David Hamilton and even Dr. Bruce Lipton, who show that actually because of the placebo effect, essentially, you can teach your brain and body that, hey, this is happening in my cells or in my organs. But even if it's not, you're at least accelerating that healing process. So I really leant on these tools and I continued to build the belief that I could get better. I continued to do like work on my inner body, my inner cells, as well as things like walking or like speaking or, and it's funny because, you know, I sit on this chair and I'm doing this podcast, but there was a time where if you asked me to sit in one place for more than like three, four minutes,
8:23 Speaker 01 I would be sweating, I'd be panicking because what if I needed to run to the loo, I'd have an accident, I'd be wearing a nappy.
8:29 Dr. Darshan Shah? Wow.
8:30 Speaker 01 But people never saw that part of it.
8:32 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
8:32 Speaker 01 You know, partly I hid it, but partly when you have this invisible illness and it's chronic, you just, no one can really see it.
8:40 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
8:41 Speaker 01 And I love the, I love the quote that's like. Health is a crown worn on healthy people that only sick people can see.
8:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
8:50 Speaker 01 And that was literally my life.
8:51 Dr. Darshan Shah? Wow, that's amazing. And you know, you say you're sitting here now and does it look like you have irritable bowel disease? And I'm a surgeon, so I've done tons of surgery for people that had irritable bowel syndrome.
9:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:07 Dr. Darshan Shah? Specifically ulcerative colitis and Crohn's.
9:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:10 Dr. Darshan Shah? Horrible, horrible. You know, when you have to go for surgery for this, it's horrible, right? And so, did you have any surgery for this, by the way?
9:17 Speaker 01 No, so that was my last option.
9:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
9:20 Speaker 01 Um, and the first thing I will say is I appreciate all the doctors and surgeons. I think what they do is incredible.
9:28 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
9:29 Speaker 01 I think for me, I was seventeen when I was told I needed to do it. And it would be removing the whole colon and getting the stone back, because I had pancreatitis, so it was like everything. And I had that risk of rupturing my colon if I kept going, because I was on so many steroids. And like, I cannot explain this. There was just something in me that was like, Maya, don't do it. And I don't know why. I think if I was a bit older, I think I would have been more open to it. But for some reason, being seventeen, it's like my life hadn't really started yet. And I didn't, I don't know, I didn't really, I didn't feel like that was gonna be the outcome.
10:08 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
10:08 Speaker 01 And I had to fight it. I really had to fight my own doctors. And I think that wasn't easy, but I guess it was just part of the journey.
10:16 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
10:17 Speaker 01 But yeah, it is a very, it's a very, it's not life threatening because, you know, it could kill you. It's life threatening in the way that it changes your life completely.
10:27 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
10:27 Speaker 01 Completely.
10:28 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
10:28 Speaker 01 The way you go to the toilet, the way you eat, the way you interact with friends, your partners.
10:33 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
10:34 Speaker 01 Um.
10:34 Dr. Darshan Shah? Could be very lonely.
10:36 Speaker 01 Oh, it's so isolating and so shameful. You know, because for me, it's like, when you're that age, no one's talking about going to the toilet.
10:43 Dr. Darshan Shah? Wow.
10:44 Speaker 01 Um, and at this age, my friends are like finding their first boyfriends and there I am, you know, having accidents in class. It was just such a paradox of what my reality was. But no, today I can genuinely say I am the healthiest I've ever been. And it's not just because of the mind. I'm also very clean with my diet. I also remove a lot of stress or toxic people, things from my life. Your emotions play a huge role.
11:10 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yep.
11:10 Speaker 01 But more than anything, I spent a lot of time learning about my body.
11:15 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
11:16 Speaker 01 Learning about what it was saying to me and perhaps why there was pain or what I was doing that maybe led to pain. And that language of the mind and body is fascinating, hard, but it's really, really worth it when you can figure it out. So, no, I haven't had symptoms for, you know, at least five and a half years now.
11:35 Dr. Darshan Shah? That's incredible.
11:36 Speaker 01 And I genuinely, genuinely believe that this is not a disease that I have. And some people may say to me, even the other day on Instagram, someone was like, Mai, I think you're a bit naive for saying that, you know, you don't have this disease anymore. And maybe, but you know, like, language plays a massive role.
11:53 Dr. Darshan Shah? It does.
11:53 Speaker 01 The more I say I've got a disease, then I'm gonna believe it, right?
11:57 Dr. Darshan Shah? Exactly, exactly.
11:58 Speaker 01 So I'm okay with telling myself that I am the healthiest I've been and I do not associate with the disease anymore. I'm happy to say that because I genuinely believe it.
12:08 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm-hmm.
12:08 Speaker 01 But that was a massive process to get here, for sure.
12:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, you know, I think, first of all, there's quite a few things about the gut in, in particular that, you know, I, I, I did surgical residency, we learned everything about ulcerative colitis. We were told it was an uncurable problem, right? And the only way to treat it is either with surgery or with ve- very, very harsh immune suppressive medications. You were on steroids, but there's even harsh.
12:33 Speaker 01 And immunosuppressives, yeah.
12:34 Dr. Darshan Shah? And immunosuppressives.
12:35 Speaker 01 As a PR, I was on everything. I was on all of them, all the infusions.
12:38 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
12:39 Speaker 01 All of it.
12:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh, my gosh. And I think we're just now learning there's such an incredible connection between the brain and the gut that we had no idea existed.
12:50 Speaker 01 Hmm.
12:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? Um, there's, number one, the vagus nerve is the nerve that connects your brain to your gut in multiple points, hundreds of thousands of points. And this is a two-way communication nerve between your gut and your brain. And secondly, your microbiome is constantly sending signals and so is your gut. Your gut is actually an endocrine organ, it's sending signals all the time. One of them is GLP-1 that we know about as well. And so there's more than any other organ in your body, your brain and your gut are so interrelated. Related. So to me, it's almost not surprising, knowing what I know now, that you were able to control your symptoms of your, of your ulcerative colitis with your brain. It's, it's less surprising than it used to be, you know?
13:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I'm pretty sure like the gut is filled with neurons as well, right? And so you can just, you know, your brain is full of neurons, your gut has so many neurons and immune cells. And so it's so connected in, in ways that I don't think humans will ever realize. And, you know, something that it's only in hindsight, I realized that, um, one of the things I was told when I was really ill was have probiotics.
13:56 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
13:57 Speaker 01 Obviously it makes sense. But you know what was fascinating? The probiotics did nothing for me because it was too, it just couldn't absorb anything.
14:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? No.
14:06 Speaker 01 And that's when you realize that your gut has to also be in a very calm and good condition for you to actually benefit from some of these things. Now I love my probiotics and they're great, but at the time, that is not what my gut needed. And so even just understanding that there's no point giving it all these different things if actually it doesn't know yet if it can absorb it. And you know, one of the, I'd say it was the scariest treatment was like a fecal transplant. And at the time, it wasn't like legal as such in the UK, but there was one lab that was doing it. And that really was fascinating to me because to think that you could have a donor where your body would then replicate that bacteria. I mean, the science is pretty amazing.
14:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? Pretty amazing, yeah.
14:50 Speaker 01 And I remember asking my surgeon, why can't we just do a colon transplant?
14:54 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
14:55 Speaker 01 He was like, Maya, I don't think you understand how many neurons and cells and, you know, links there are. You just can't, it would be very hard to do that. And I think it was, um, you know, we're still researching so much in the space and with the gut especially, which I'm so thankful for. Because I think more and more people are realizing that putting that plaster on, which is just medication, isn't always the best thing because you actually, you dampen that connection between the two. So it's much more harder to heal, maybe.
15:25 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right, right, right. So you, you're in the hospital, you visualize, you get out of the hospital. And you did different, I think it sounds like you did different aspects of visualization. Your teacher taught you visualize your gut healing.
15:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:37 Dr. Darshan Shah? You visualized yourself healed and walking and out there doing normal things. And do you think that, obviously you think that this had a direct effect on your, on your journey and your health journey. But um, how long did it take for you to get better? And like, was that the only thing that you were doing at that time before you got better?
15:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think so. Anything with the mind, I think we've got to think of it just like the body where, you know, you don't get abs overnight, nothing, just you don't lose weight overnight. So in the same way, with the mind, it was all about reps. But I had, and I dedicated so much of my time every day, maybe like four hours a day. I was doing visualization and meditation and all of it.
16:15 Dr. Darshan Shah? Amazing.
16:16 Speaker 01 Um, partly because when you're ill, you don't have anything else to do. But also because I was in pain, I was trying to find anything. One of my most creative, I guess, visualizations was when I was in a lot of pain. It's like, I always used to describe it as piranhas like eating my colon. And so I actually did that in a visualization. I would close my eyes and I'd see these piranhas eating. But I would shoot them in my mind. Now again, because the brain really struggles to know if this is happening or not. I was able to, one, make my pain a little bit more playful, but two, have a little bit more control over it. It's not that it went the next day, but was I scared of it anymore? No, because I had so much fear about that pain.
16:58 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
16:59 Speaker 01 But now I was like, actually Maya, you know, you close your eyes, you see those piranhas, work on them, shoot them, keep going. But now this process was, there was a year where I was just like going in for it all the time. And then I actually did get the chance to go to uni. I'd gained enough strength. I was still on medication at the time. So I was on vedilizumab, which was a very new medication. And then. As I was getting a bit better, I continued to practise. I never stopped that ever. Before my lectures, I'd wake up an hour early and I'd keep doing my visualization. No one knew. And really, I'd say it was a period of maybe three, three and a half years, where I can genuinely say, not only was I going to the toilet normally, I wasn't in any pain.
17:44 Speaker 01 I wasn't on any medication, but also I had come out of the habits of like wearing nappies
17:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
17:50 Speaker 01 or panicking when I was on a bus.
17:52 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
17:53 Speaker 01 So, and this was all done through little different types of visualizations, as well as me, like I said, with my diet, with the people, with the right sort of lifestyle changes as well. But I can genuinely say that if it wasn't for me training my mind and being proactive about doing that, I would not be here today, for sure.
18:13 Dr. Darshan Shah? So incredible. There's another bit of science I just read about too that's kind of speaks to what you're talking about. Is that there's a connection between our brain and our immune system, where our brain can directly impact the number of cells and the types of cells that are made by our immune system, which is massive, you know? So the state of your emotions, the state of your thoughts can impact your immune system. We know ninety percent of our immune system is really in our gut all the time. And so I think there's also that aspect as well of the brain immune connection.
18:45 Speaker 01 I was in Amsterdam recently and I was with Marissa Peer, who obviously does a lot of hypnotherapy. And she was saying that there was those new study that showed that people who were doing IVF, when they visualized that embryo like, kind of like blossoming and it working, the results were sixty percent more successful.
19:06 Dr. Darshan Shah? Sixty percent.
19:07 Speaker 01 And I was like, no, no, that's not true. The study was done in Israel. It was really interesting. And I was just like, you know, why are we sleeping on this? Now, I'm not to say that like, you know, it's the absolute solution to everything. But what I can say is, what's the harm?
19:25 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right, there's zero harm.
19:26 Speaker 01 There's zero. You're not, we're not adding more medication, we're not doing anything. We're simply saying, why do? You try and help a process or help like healing and you know, they use this a lot with stroke victims when they let's say, you know, don't move their fingers or for going to walk. Again, you can start lighting up those areas of the brain that can then remember. And I know there's a lot of like VR training now, right? So you put the goggles on and you see yourself walking or you see yourself moving. And again, it can lighten up those areas that help you remember and help you start acting in that way. So I think it's amazing. And I think the fact that our brains can do this, why not see where it could take us?
20:04 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, exactly. And you know, I think that when people first hear the word visualize, they think maybe, oh, this is woo woo science, but the reality is we've been using this for decades and probably even a century or more, right? Humans have, like you said, they visualize after a stroke movement to gain their their motion back as part of therapy. We've been using that for a long time. Athletes for many years now have been using visualization to improve their game, you know, and athletes will attest all the time that when they basketball players, when they visualize making a basket, they make more baskets. We have studies like this that show visualization impacts embryos and
20:45 Dr. Darshan Shah? we also, I mean, there's so many examples, example after example. So visualization, even though it wasn't called that per se, has been used a lot. And I think it's great that, you know, you're bringing this more to people's forefront of their of their thoughts by giving it a term, giving it a definition and educating people on what is visualization. So I'd love to hear from you, like, what is your definition of visualization? And are there different types of visualization?
21:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's a great question. So visualization is the process of creating images, environments and feelings in your mind before they've happened. Now that can be as small as moving your fingers. It can also be as big as you on a tennis court playing a match, but it can also be your goal, something you want to achieve. Now, when you ask about the different types, most people associate visualization based on where they've heard about it, where they've used it, right? So medicine and Sport are two areas that it's very prominent in. These days, people only talk about it in terms of manifestation.
21:48 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
21:49 Speaker 01 Which I get a little bit frustrated by because I think that gives it a little bit of that woo woo label to it. So the best way to see it is it's a neurological mental training tool. One, we have outcome visualization, which is where you see a result in advance.
22:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
22:05 Speaker 01 And this is where it can really improve your belief, your motivation, your resilience. It's why athletes will, let's say, see themselves winning or holding a trophy. So that they are showing their brain, okay, this is possible. Then we've got process visualization. This is anything from seeing yourself walking again, and this is generally done in first person as well as third. But you're really taking your mind and body through that mental rehearsal. The way you move, the way you talk, you're hearing it. So I do this a lot for public speaking. And it's literally taken me from just an average public speaker to now the leading one in my space.
22:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
22:39 Speaker 01 Then we have creative visualization. This really does come from medicine. And this is where you use mental imagery to either regulate or release emotions. Or it can be to help you through injury and disease.
22:52 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
22:52 Speaker 01 Um, then we have negative visualization. This is actually from stoicism.
22:56 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh.
22:57 Speaker 01 So centuries ago. And it's where you see worst case scenarios, but see yourself overcoming them. So again, athletes will use it where like Michael Phelps very famously would see his goggles fill up with water.
23:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
23:09 Speaker 01 And let's say him falling behind. But in the visualization, he would see how he would deal with it. So then when it actually happened, he was ready.
23:17 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
23:17 Speaker 01 And in the military, they use this a lot.
23:20 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
23:20 Speaker 01 Cause so many things can go wrong. And they have this saying that, you know, don't get ready, be ready.
23:25 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
23:25 Speaker 01 And that's what this can do. But interestingly about negative visualization, there's also something called the deathbed visualization.
23:32 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
23:32 Speaker 01 Which is where you imagine that you are at the end of your life. And it gives you so much perspective. Whether it means you stop smoking, whether it means you make a decision a bit differently. So that's great. And then lastly, we've got explorative visualization, which is what the likes of Walt Disney, Einstein did. Walt Disney called it imagineering.
23:52 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh, that's right.
23:54 Speaker 01 This is where you engineer your imagination.
23:55 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
23:56 Speaker 01 Uh, and it can basically help you problem solve better, create new things. It taps into a part of your creativity. So as you can see, you know, yes, you can use it as an athlete. You can use it as a performer. You can use it as an entrepreneur.
24:08 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
24:08 Speaker 01 But you can also use it as a creator, an entrepreneur. You can use it as a business person. You can also use it as a child when you're trying to regulate emotions.
24:18 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
24:18 Speaker 01 But ultimately, it's a way to, I call it strength, train your brain.
24:23 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
24:23 Speaker 01 Because you are rewiring those neurons and making them stronger. Um, and sometimes you have to break down the roads to build better ones, new ones. And that's why I, I really see it as, you know, if you wanna stay ahead of your brain and keep getting it stronger, keep investing in it, it's a great tool for it.
24:44 Dr. Darshan Shah? Absolutely. Going back to outcome visualization, because I, I love, you know, talking about this a little bit with you and dissecting it. You're right, a lot of people consider outcome visualization the same as manifestation. I think manifestation gives it a woo woo kind of a aura because people assume manifesting means a genie popped out of a bottle and gave something to you, right?
25:04 Speaker 01 Exactly.
25:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? The way I look at manifestation is more of outcome visualization, removing my own mental blockings and fears to getting to an outcome that I want, right? And so if I imagine myself in an outcome that I want and I can see myself there in reality, my day to day choices won't be blocked by the fears of pushing forward towards that outcome. Is that kind of how you're looking at it or is that, does that help? Um, is that one way of looking at outcome visualization?
25:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. And I'm with you, right? I also believe in manifestation, which I think is this broad idea that if you can see something, then you can make it happen.
25:42 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
25:43 Speaker 01 Broadly. The outcome visualization is fascinating because right now in both our brains, we have this structure or like maybe even like a city. And we have these roads that have been built from when we're young or from our parents, from our teachers, whether they've said, oh, you shouldn't do this or you can't be. A business person or oh, maybe, maybe like you're not very good at this particular skill. And these then get stuck in our brain, which become these permanent roads.
26:10 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
26:11 Speaker 01 And they wire our brain to now think, feel and perform like that, which eventually becomes our identity. The same goes for comments like, oh, but I'm just not a very confident person. Oh, I could never come on a podcast. You know, those sort of things. Now those stories become your ceiling.
26:26 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh. That's exactly right.
26:27 Speaker 01 And that's not just the words you say, it's also the images that you're having. And most people are visualizing worst case scenarios, things going wrong, things failing. And so you are training your brain to now not believe in yourself, to be more anxious, fearful. And so when it comes to, yes, whether you're seeing yourself finishing a marathon, creating a business, whether it's even your character, so becoming more confident. You wanna just go a few steps further to see that end result. So you show your brain, hey, this is where I wanna go, this is who I wanna be. And that starts to create these new roads in your brain to be like, oh, okay, this is important. And then the more you do it, the more you keep repeating, repeating. That's when you can wire new roads.
27:10 Speaker 01 If you do visualization once and then never do it again, nothing's gonna change.
27:14 Dr. Darshan Shah? No.
27:14 Speaker 01 It has to be a frequent activity you do in your, in your life. Because two minutes of visualization is way more effective than an hour every month.
27:25 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, two minutes daily is more effective than an hour once, right?
27:28 Speaker 01 Exactly.
27:28 Dr. Darshan Shah? I see a lot of people making vision boards.
27:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:31 Dr. Darshan Shah? And they do it once and then they put it away and they don't even know where it is anymore.
27:33 Speaker 01 Exactly. It's such a trend in like the new year. And I'm like, guys, come on, like, this needs to be uh, just like how you go for walks, you go to the gym, just add it on to that. Very simple. I'm not asking you to do hours and hours, but simply think, okay, if I'm training my body, what's one thing I can do for my mind?
27:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right, right. And I think our brains are just wired to avoid a negative outcome, right? And so if we even have an inkling that there's a negative outcome, we won't take actions towards an outcome that we want, because there might be a negative outcome, right? And the visualization done on a daily basis trains your brain to look more at the positive outcome versus the Negative outcome and to your analogy formed the road a different direction, different way.
28:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. And you're so right. I think so many of us think our brains are there to think, but it's just to keep us safe.
28:22 Dr. Darshan Shah? Exactly.
28:23 Speaker 01 And so if anything ever feels unfamiliar or too far away or not very possible, then your brain will immediately tell you, don't do it, or you don't deserve to be there, or you're an imposter. And so then you're right, that story we keep telling ourselves remains. And I think it's also really important to just see that your brain is the physical structure of those, of the neurons and the connections. But your mind is the things like your thoughts or how you think. And actually, we have way more control over our mind than we assume. It's quite hard to just go straight to the brain because that's where those connections are. But if you can start training your mind, training those thoughts, being able to maybe catch something and think, actually, is this true?
29:08 Speaker 01 Then you can start to actually change the structure of your brain, which is amazing.
29:12 Dr. Darshan Shah? Amazing.
29:13 Speaker 01 So amazing.
29:14 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
29:14 Speaker 01 And we've all known now in the last, what, ten, twenty years? Neuroplasticity is happening all the time.
29:20 Dr. Darshan Shah? All the time.
29:21 Speaker 01 All the time.
29:21 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
29:22 Speaker 01 Right? You take one different road or you eat something new. It's always changing. So why not give it the direction you want it to change in?
29:31 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
29:32 Speaker 01 And that's really cool. Your brain is always changing. You'd be the one to show it where to go.
29:36 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, exactly. One of the things on neuroplasticity that I find fascinating is that an event doesn't have to happen in reality for neurons to get wired towards that reality.
29:48 Speaker 01 Exactly.
29:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? You can just think of an event, imagine an event, and this goes to your process visualization too. Imagining you making that basket and every motion your hand is going to take towards a basket will wire your neurons to making that happen. It's almost like you've done a thousand reps, but you've never, you've only maybe done a hundred in the gym and nine hundred in your mind. It has the same benefit as far as actual connections between the neurons go.
30:13 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And they've shown this, right, with piano experiments, when you know, you being able to learn how to play it. In fact, let's do something really small. So if you just want to close your eyes for me. Okay, and just imagine that you are in your kitchen. And you walk over to the fridge and you open the fridge and you feel that cold waft of air. And now on the shelf, there's half a lemon. And you just hold it in your hand, it's quite cold, it's got that tough skin. And now start smelling it, smell the fragrance of this lemon. Okay, now take the lemon and I want you to start squeezing it. Drop by drop into your mouth. As it touches your tongue, it's so sour, so tangy, so citrusy. Really taste it, keep squeezing it.
30:56 Speaker 01 Maybe your cheeks are starting to tingle, your saliva is getting a bit active. Maybe a pip is in there and it's a bit bitter. Go really squeeze it, all of it. Okay, and gently open the eyes. Okay, so did you find that maybe your cheeks were a bit weird or you could like taste it quite a bit?
31:12 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, yeah, my mouth got drier.
31:14 Speaker 01 Exactly, so I always do this, just those thirty seconds to show you that. You're obviously not holding a lemon. But yet your brain and your body react like you're doing it.
31:23 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
31:23 Speaker 01 And I think what a lot of people don't realise is. Whilst when you are visualising, yes, it activates nearly identical neural pathways, which is amazing. Your mirror neurons are also really fascinating. Because mirror neurons are, when you are watching someone else do something. Your brain can also mimic it. And that's why I'll also tell a lot of athletes to either re-watch their performances. Or watch people who are better than them. So that they can also start to light up areas where they see themselves playing better.
31:55 Dr. Darshan Shah? So interesting.
31:56 Speaker 01 But now look at social media. We are literally mirroring ideas, philosophies, people's behaviours, whether it's reality TV. And then we ask ourselves, oh, why am I a bit more aggressive? Or why am I acting up in my relationship? Because you are constantly mirroring the people around you, the TVs you watch. And that's why it's so important to know what you're feeding your brain. So one of it, one part of it is, yes, the neurons you are, you know, wiring. But another part is just recognising that you are mirroring a lot of what you see around you. And that's why I think it's interesting when, you know, if you grow up in a household. You may find that you. React similar to, let's say, how your parents reacted to stress or in arguments. We kind of embody the same traits.
32:40 Speaker 01 And it's a similar sort of thing because they are learning how to do that.
32:44 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, wow. You know, I find that the stoicism.
32:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? Or the negative.
32:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:51 Dr. Darshan Shah? Visualization is super powerful too, you know, it's it's kind of like the opposite of this. Which is imagining the negative aspect of what you something you want to avoid. But then you think through your brain and you wire the pathways about how of how to avoid that outcome so that you are stoic towards it. You it is not scary to you anymore. And that's really interesting as a kind of a flip side of the coin to this, right?
33:15 Speaker 01 Exactly, and that is like a manifest as worst nightmare, right? To see the worst case scenario, but.
33:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
33:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I really learned this from Bob Bowman, who was um Michael Phelps's coach.
33:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
33:25 Speaker 01 And, you know, he would really instill in Michael to see every possibility that could go wrong or right. And Ronaldo's very similar, he will do a similar thing where he'll see, let's say, you know, him losing the ball and how he'd then recover, things like that. And you really do go into the detail of it, you feel the stress of it, you feel the anxiety of it. But then, because you've shown your brain, this is how I'm going to react and this is how I'll respond. When you are there in the situation, it's muscle memory, so you don't have to panic. Now, I wouldn't suggest doing this that frequently. I would do it enough times where you feel ready and prepared, but not where it's a daily thing. The other place I've seen it really work quite well is um.
34:06 Speaker 01 So I used to work with this, uh, he was a VP at a tech firm.
34:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? Wow.
34:11 Speaker 01 And very high performing, but he had this one habit which was smoking.
34:15 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
34:16 Speaker 01 Especially when he was stressed. And so initially in our sessions, I tried to use positive visualization, so outcome and process. Where we were seeing him healthy and really inspiring him to be this this version. It didn't work.
34:31 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
34:31 Speaker 01 So I was like, okay, let's bring bring some other guns out here. So we did negative visualization. And this time I asked him to imagine five years from now. If you were smoking a pack a day, I want you to imagine what your health would be like. You going to hospital quite a bit, maybe your kids not talking to you. And in that visualization, he was like sweating. He was like so scared of it. And since then, two and a half years, that fear has resulted in him not smoking for two and a half years.
35:03 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, yeah.
35:04 Speaker 01 So it can give you that perspective as well.
35:06 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right, right, absolutely.
35:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30-year-old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60-year-olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells, you see, are like phones, and they have limited cellphone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IMA. IMA powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92-ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.
35:56 Dr. Darshan Shah? I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IMA actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IMA had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health. Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately.
36:42 Dr. Darshan Shah? You don't have to be one of them. Try IMA. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/ima or go to imathhealth.com/discount/drsah and you can get 20% off with my discount code, DrShah. You can also find the link below.
37:03 Dr. Darshan Shah? You mentioned emotional visualization.
37:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? Can we dive into that a little bit more? Because that's something new to me.
37:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, so this really comes from the idea that a lot of us get our emotions a bit wrong. So so many of us think emotions are the language of the mind.
37:17 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
37:18 Speaker 01 And we try and intellectualize them.
37:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
37:20 Speaker 01 You know, we try and think, well, why am I feeling this? Or why am I feeling anxious? And how can I get rid of it? Emotions are the language of the body because it's energy in motion.
37:29 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
37:30 Speaker 01 It's literally just energy here. And really, so studies from doctors like Dr. Caroline Leaf has shown that you only really need 90 seconds to feel and release an emotion. But as soon as our stories come or our judgments come or stress comes in, it can stay in your body for years, for years. And so creative visualization is a way to basically see your anxiety or stress or sadness, anger as an image or a character or a shape. So I don't know if you've seen the film Inside Out.
38:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? I have kids, I've seen it like 30 times.
38:07 Speaker 01 Right?
38:07 Dr. Darshan Shah? And Inside Out 2 as well.
38:08 Speaker 01 Exactly.
38:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? Very good movies.
38:10 Speaker 01 Exactly, and that's kind of the inspiration.
38:12 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
38:13 Speaker 01 So you would, let's say, see anxiety as this like red fire in your belly.
38:18 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
38:18 Speaker 01 And it's like super hot. Now, instead of just trying to suppress it or run away from it or even question why is it here? What we would do is with your mind, you start pouring some water on it. You let it cool down. Because again, it's just energy in motion and you are telling your brain now, hey, I'm acknowledging it, but we're now releasing it, we're regulating it. And this has been amazing to watch the impact of this one because whether it's like a five year old, a 10 year old, it's super fun for them.
38:46 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
38:47 Speaker 01 Whether it's pain or injury for athletes I use it with, but also in my events, you see people who are like, you know, they're holding so much anger from something that happened years ago or even just today. But by then, maybe seeing it as this lion or this devil or like a sad blue ball, they're able to not be scared of it and actually feel it and then release it.
39:08 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
39:09 Speaker 01 And that is everything because it actually does regulate your body and your nervous system. And so I use emotional visualization all the time because all you need is literally 90 seconds or 120 seconds just at the beginning. And the more you do it, the more you gain a really strong relationship with the mind and body.
39:26 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
39:27 Speaker 01 So yeah, that one is brilliant and anyone can do that immediately.
39:31 Dr. Darshan Shah? What are some examples of using that?
39:33 Speaker 01 So a lot of the time if people are like nervous.
39:36 Dr. Darshan Shah? Nervous, let's talk about nervousness, yeah. How would you do that practically?
39:39 Speaker 01 So nerves are really interesting because so often people will label it as nerves. But it's just energy, right? So if I said, we can do like a quick, so if you close your eyes. Now, we may not be nervous right now, but just think of a time where you were really nervous. Or maybe something coming up. And you just notice where in your body do you feel those nerves? Maybe it's in the gut, the head, the chest. Just notice where do those nerves come up? Now, instead of trying to run away from this or escape it. I want you to now give these nerves a color or a shape. Maybe it's a character, it could be an animal, anything. Like ropes, it could be mini lions and pelumpas, whatever you need to do. Be creative here.
40:23 Speaker 01 And just sit with the nerves, feel them, let them get bigger if they need to, colder, hotter. Really make it real for the mind and body. Okay, now slowly with the mind, we're gonna start to dissolve them. And again, be creative. Do you need to put them in a box and just throw them away? Do you need to pour something on it? Do you need to play with them? Get them in order, just start to work with them. And let them slowly, slowly dissolve. Okay, and take one deep breath now, breathing in.
40:59 Speaker 01 As you exhale, let it fully, fully dissolve. Okay, and just feel the space. The calmness in the body now. Okay, and you can open the eyes.
41:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, beautiful.
41:13 Speaker 01 So something like that is very simple to do. And what I love is everyone's imagination is so different.
41:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
41:20 Speaker 01 And even like a really simple one is, um, one of my friends, actually, she really struggled with bloating. I'm not a doctor. I think you all need to do other things as well. But in that moment, I was like, okay, just close your eyes. And I was like, what does it look like? And she was like, my eyes, this huge balloon. And it's like, it's just, you know, it's gonna pop. And I was like, okay, you see the balloon. Create a little bit of a hole at that bottom and just slowly release air, really slowly, but see it as a balloon, not your stomach.
41:46 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
41:47 Speaker 01 And we we literally took a few minutes doing it, but by the end, her stomach genuinely was not tight anymore.
41:54 Dr. Darshan Shah? Wow.
41:54 Speaker 01 And again, because the brain can be so influenced by the images.
41:59 Dr. Darshan Shah? For sure.
41:59 Speaker 01 And by what you are telling it to do. And so it's, yeah, it's amazing how it can really assist and be such a catalyst.
42:07 Dr. Darshan Shah? So powerful, so powerful. It's harnessing the power of the brain to a level that, you know, most people never even access, you know?
42:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:15 Dr. Darshan Shah? And we're dealing with all these things that we don't need to be, because there's this tool of visualization that could be a potential huge help. I think the key, like you had mentioned a few times, is the practice of it. It can't be a one time thing. And so there needs to be a daily practice to make this super effective, correct?
42:34 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And I think before even going to practice, I've got one question for the listeners, for you. Is is your mind and your brain important to you? Because for so many of us, we don't even think about it. Therefore, it's not important to us. And so I don't even begin with routine stuff if people are like, oh, I don't know. Because, you know, imagine if you had to pay for your brain.
42:58 Speaker 01 Like, we would invest so much more in it to make it sharper, better. But because we take for granted this incredible, like, trillion dollar computer that we have here. We're like, no, we've just got it. But like, imagine if you had to pay for it. And you know what's funny? More people know how to train ChatGPT than their own minds.
43:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, absolutely.
43:20 Speaker 01 And that's not okay. It's not okay. So that's my first question. Is it important to you? Then my big thing is start tiny. Start so small that it's hard not to do. And I think one of the best things, because mental fitness is so linked to performance and physical fitness. Try and add it to something physical you do. If you go for a walk in the morning, just before you go, try it or just after. The best time to do it is the morning because the brain is most suggestive. But then, interestingly, neuroplasticity is really at its most active when you're sleeping.
43:52 Dr. Darshan Shah? Oh.
43:53 Speaker 01 So I don't mind if people wanna do it at night, but I think when you're going for like goals or performance, you can feel a bit hyped up instead of ready to go to bed. So things like visualization for gratitude or emotions are really good at night. But I think in the morning, for the ones that are a bit more for your performance and your, your thinking, your feeling, then I would do it just as you wake up, you're in this very suggestive mode.
44:14 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
44:15 Speaker 01 And the images and the, the affirmations and the kind of things you are telling your brain are gonna stick a little bit more. And I would just start with, if you can, between five and six minutes, if you can, that's optimum. But if you really can't do that, go down to two.
44:30 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
44:30 Speaker 01 And just become the type of person that can do one thing for their brain every day. Become that person first.
44:37 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
44:37 Speaker 01 Then build it up because I get so many people saying, oh, no, no, I just, I don't have the time for that, or tried a bit of meditation, didn't work for me. That's all gonna get in the way then. So get into a routine of just putting aside those two minutes and then build it up from there. The other thing I'd say is when it comes to routines and habits, there's a lot out there about it. And I think for me, it just comes down to having compassionate discipline. There are gonna be days you can't do it, or you won't be able to do it. Okay. If you miss one or two days, don't panic. It's when you start to miss five, six, seven days, that's when I think just take a step back and be like, whoa. I need to be a bit more disciplined here. And you won't be motivated all the time to do it, you just won't.
45:18 Speaker 01 But actually, if you can rely more on this is my system, this is my discipline, that's gonna be more important. And I think the last thing I'd say about this is that with anything mental. What I've heard most is that when you're doing it, it's not like your life suddenly changes tomorrow.
45:33 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
45:34 Speaker 01 But when you stop doing it, you really do notice the changes. And I think that's interesting. It's like when you stop doing the practice, you'll realize, oh, my impulse syndrome comes back, or I'm just feeling brain fog.
45:46 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
45:46 Speaker 01 And so a lot of the time, it's a maintenance thing as well.
45:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
45:50 Speaker 01 And specifically with, let's say, these visualizations in the book, I would suggest having a non-negotiable, which is outcome and process visualization. And then you can add things like creative or negative a bit more sporadically, but you want one solid one. Just like you do a bit of cardio and strength training, same thing. You stick to one that you repeatedly do. And then you can add the other ones as like toppings.
46:12 Dr. Darshan Shah? I love the fact that you have to decide to make your brain a priority, right? You're right. We go through our life thinking our brain is us and we are our brain and it is just there, right? And we
46:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? forget that um the brain is just like any other organ in the body. If you take care of it, it'll function great. If you don't, it won't function so great.
46:32 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think it's a bit like the gut, right? Nowadays, you hear so many people
46:36 Dr. Darshan Shah? No.
46:36 Speaker 01 understanding it. And I think mental fitness is probably where physical fitness was in the sixties.
46:42 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
46:43 Speaker 01 We're really far behind.
46:44 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
46:45 Speaker 01 And interestingly, we've jumped straight to brain health. We've jumped, we've jumped straight to take this pill.
46:51 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
46:51 Speaker 01 To have a stronger brain, which is fine. But I'm quite curious as to see like, well, why don't we want to put in the work to train a little bit? But I think it also shows what society, I guess, what's easier, right? We'd rather take a pill than say, no, I'm going to invest five minutes of my day into this. And it's no fault of anyone's. I think it's, we do live in a world where it's like we want results yesterday. But I think if you want sustainable change, then ultimately you have to be the one who can take ownership and control over your thoughts on your mind.
47:25 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. I think people always want a shortcut, right? If there was a pill to avoid going to the gym, people would take it. The gym, I think there's more people going to the gym, training their muscles than their brain, because you can see the results of going to The gym, right?
47:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? It's it's a little bit more, I would say, you can see it in the mirror. So you it's more visual, you can you can see the process. But to your point, you know, I think brain training, of which I've done gratitude practices.
47:53 Speaker 01 Love it.
47:54 Dr. Darshan Shah? Just like, you know, you mentioned, you don't feel it at all until you stop doing it. And then you're like, why am I so grouchy today?
48:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
48:01 Dr. Darshan Shah? You know, why why was today so stressful, you know? And so I feel gratitude is probably another form of visualization.
48:07 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, it's it's like the best one. I love this one because I think a lot of people say like, oh, let me just write down my gratitude list. But when you really feel it and you go in your body to feel it, it's a whole other state. And when you are grateful, your brain literally can't think of anything else. It's amazing. It's such a it's such a powerful state. So all I'd say is if you're already doing a bit of a gratitude practice, just take one moment to then close your eyes and feel the gratitude in you. And create that image, create like a light or a color or a shape, but feel it, let it get huge and then bring it back.
48:41 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
48:42 Speaker 01 And it really shows you how actually you again are the one who has power over your emotions. And you know what's funny about the gym? I was speaking to someone the other day who was like, um, yeah, my I go to the gym for my mental fitness. I was like, oh, okay, like, what do you mean? So, you know, when I go on a run, that sorts it out. I was like, okay. And then what happens after? Do you get the same thoughts coming up again? Do you get the same, you know, stories that sabotage you? She's like, yeah, why? I was like, because this is the problem, right? We going to the gym is so brilliant for the mind. It's so brilliant, right? Exercise has shown time and time again that it is great for neuroplasticity, but also brain health. However, it is not enough on its own.
49:26 Speaker 01 You have to spend that time doing the cardio, the strength training, the rest, the reps for the brain as well. And that's when you're gonna really have the strongest version of yourself. And that's why I bring it back to athletes.
49:39 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
49:40 Speaker 01 The champions of the world know this. They know that the physical training is one aspect, sure, then nutrition. Then rest recovery, but the mind, when you are on that core or that pitch or, you know, we were talking about the the Mamba mentality, the mind is everything. That is the differentiation between good and great and sustained greatness.
50:02 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
50:02 Speaker 01 And all of us can achieve that, all of us. That champion mindset is within all of us. But you've got to go out your way to build it. You can't just wait for life to make you do it. You can take action literally today.
50:13 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, and it takes it takes the reps, but it takes also the decision that you're gonna make that happen for sure.
50:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
50:20 Dr. Darshan Shah? Is for every different type of visualization that we talked about today, is there a different technique to get there? Or is it pretty much the same technique that can be applied to all of the different types of visualization?
50:32 Speaker 01 To be fair, they are all quite different because, you know, with creative visualization, I'm really asking you to be quite imaginative. And it's funny when you get, you know, sixty, seventy year olds coming up with these like little characters in their body. But it's playful, it's it's pretty amazing. So that one, you're really using your imagination. Something like process, you are, it's way more in your first person. So you are imagining yourself actually there, you're feeling the sweat in your body. And so that's a little bit more different because of the perspective you're going in with. Outcome, again, it's, what I find interesting about outcome is some people get more stressed if they're thinking five years in advance. So again, you've got to know your brain to be like, actually, two years is good enough for me.
51:17 Dr. Darshan Shah? Sure.
51:17 Speaker 01 Explorative, I'd say is one of the hardest because it's the most undocumented and unknown. And because you're not really going with an outcome, your mind is like a whiteboard. So it's really about being okay with the fact that it's not about finding an answer. It's actually about getting more lost in loads of different ideas.
51:35 Dr. Darshan Shah? That sounds tough.
51:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. But that's where like, you know, so obviously I create a lot of content online.
51:41 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
51:42 Speaker 01 I do it all through explorative visualization.
51:43 Dr. Darshan Shah? Really?
51:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I will close my eyes and just see the type of video or the type of post I want to create. After that, I open my eyes, jot it down. And it just, it makes like an hour's worth of work, maybe into twenty minutes, which is great. Negative visualization, I would not recommend if you already think very, very fearfully or very anxious.
52:06 Dr. Darshan Shah? Got it.
52:06 Speaker 01 Because it will basically feed that more. And you really need to be careful of how you guide it because so many people, once they start visualizing worst case scenarios, their brain loves it and carries on with it, right? So then after it, they're like, Maya, that made me feel so much worse.
52:20 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
52:21 Speaker 01 That's why you have to have the absolute right guidance to then
52:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
52:24 Speaker 01 bring you back to, right, how you're gonna overcome it.
52:27 Dr. Darshan Shah? How you're gonna get through this.
52:28 Speaker 01 Exactly, yeah.
52:29 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, absolutely.
52:30 Speaker 01 Otherwise, you just stay stuck there and you're like, what am I doing here, you know? So, which is what most of us are already doing now. We see worst case scenarios, so yeah.
52:38 Dr. Darshan Shah? I'm curious for the listeners out there, you know, we talked about you can't just do this once and have something happen. How long does it take before someone starts feeling like they're investing their time wisely into this?
52:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's really, so I actually compare this to physical fitness. Because when it comes to visualization, just like when you, let's say, enter a gym, you might be feeling a bit tired, a bit like, ah, but then when you come out, you feel a bit better. You are gonna have a similar sensation when you immediately finish a visualization. You might feel calmer, you might feel more relaxed, maybe you feel really inspired, motivated. Great. That will wear off.
53:15 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
53:16 Speaker 01 Then, the more you start doing it, scientifically, you know, and I know the days and numbers of this vary slightly, but I'd say minimum, minimum, you need at least ninety days to even start rewiring the brain properly. Because again, you're gonna be fighting a type of resistance in the brain.
53:35 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
53:36 Speaker 01 If it's used to a certain way of thinking or feeling, then it's absolutely gonna be like, hey, no, I wanna think like this again. And so it's gonna be about, no, no, no, keep showing it the right road. But after like ninety days, you will start to see things like, oh, hey, maybe I responded a bit more calmly in this situation. Or you know what, I did this presentation and I felt totally in flow and I performed the best I can. So, give it minimum ninety days, but then the other thing I'd say is, the good thing about visualization is you can also add day-to-day performance cues, things like maybe
54:08 Speaker 01 What would Maya two point O do here?
54:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
54:10 Speaker 01 Or if you need to in that moment, do like a ninety second creative visualization, let's say you're at work and your boss made you angry, cool, you know, you can take that time and you've got that toolbox, you can go and do it.
54:21 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
54:21 Speaker 01 So for really long term success and change, you wanna, yeah, you wanna see this as a lifelong journey. And I would switch the question into not how long does it take? But think however long it takes, because if your brain is important to you and you understand the cost of being controlled by your mind, then you will fall in love with the journey of every little subtle win that you see. It's amazing.
54:48 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
54:49 Speaker 01 It's amazing.
54:50 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
54:50 Speaker 01 Um, and like, you know, I used to be someone who got consumed by my emotions.
54:55 Dr. Darshan Shah? Sure.
54:56 Speaker 01 But now I genuinely am so grateful of how like emotionally fearless I can be. I can feel so fully, yet it doesn't direct my behavior. And that's so key in the world we live in.
55:08 Dr. Darshan Shah? Absolutely. I mean, the, just the amount of power that you've experienced in your own life, reversing your colitis, having control over your emotions, going for someone that was fearful, but sitting in a bus and now sitting in podcast chairs and it's just amazing.
55:26 Speaker 01 I mean, what do you think about it though? Because like, you know, I remember going back to my doctors, talking to them about this. And I do get laughed at a lot, like a lot. And I don't know, I'm sure you hear many stories that, you know, we can, whether it's reversing, whether, whatever language we use, but there are so many ways to do that. But I find chronic health specifically interesting, right? Because the root causes are fascinating, whether it's emotional, whether it's lifestyle. But do you find that more and more, like, obviously with this background of being a surgeon, as well as maybe seeing the potential and power in the mind in other ways, like,
56:03 Dr. Darshan Shah? Mm hmm.
56:03 Speaker 01 What's your opinion on it?
56:05 Dr. Darshan Shah? My opinion is this, I think there's so much that we don't know about the brain body connection.
56:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? And it's unfortunately beaten into us in medical school.
56:16 Dr. Darshan Shah? Traditional Western medicine, that there is no brain-body connection that's gonna help the individual fight a particular disease process. And it's done that way for a reason, because you need to find the solution for the problem. And if you rely on a mind-body connection, then you're gonna, the problem will almost always get worse, right? Because most people do not have any mastery of their mind, never mind their mind-body connection, right? And so I think there's a natural hesitance built into the system. And I also think that there's, it's there for a reason. It's because you are trying to save lives and you're trying to treat emergencies and problems, right? And the Western medical system was never built
57:00 Dr. Darshan Shah? to reverse chronic diseases.
57:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:03 Dr. Darshan Shah? Okay? So the way I look at it is that we can use it as a tool to reverse chronic disease, but use it responsibly.
57:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:10 Dr. Darshan Shah? And a big problem I see out there is there are charlatans out there that convince people that they can cure their cancer with visualization.
57:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:19 Dr. Darshan Shah? There are charlatans out there that convince people that they can cure, you know, diseases without getting treatments. And people end up dying because they followed, they followed the advice of someone that was trying to sell them on visualization being the cure. And people get desperate. You know, when people have cancer, when people have an uncurable disease, they get desperate and they seek out, you know, people to guide them in an alternative direction because the Western medical system tells them a fate that they don't want to hear.
57:52 Speaker 01 So true. It's so true. I did everything. I remember that. Yeah, you do get so desperate.
57:56 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, you get desperate. And, you know, I think that as long as you look at it as one of the tools that you can use concurrently with some of the traditional tools as well, so that you're not missing out on the traditional benefits while you're using this tool. Unfortunately, the mindset in Western medicine is that when you're on a pill, when you have a disease, when you get diagnosed with something, that you will have it forever, right? And I think as long as people listening to this podcast understand that that Is definitely not the case, right? I think I try to convince a lot of people to look at their medications as temporary, as long as they're willing to invest time and energy into their lifestyle and now also into their mind.
58:38 Speaker 01 But like, I wish, I wish someone would have told me that. Like, even to hear you speak like that gives me so much hope for the future of medicine. Because you're right, it's that word incurable.
58:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
58:50 Speaker 01 Or like, you're always gonna have to have 24/7 care or be on these infusions. We don't realize how damaging it can be because you do, you take it as fact. And I just love that you said that. I totally agree. That's why I don't use the word cured, because it's like, it was a huge catalyst for healing and for getting better. But there were so many other things at play. And it's not like, okay, as soon as I did it, I just came off all my medication. No. It was a slow process and a slow understanding of what is it, what is it like to be in my body right now?
59:21 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
59:22 Speaker 01 So I love that you said that and I think, um, yeah, just like thank you for the work you do and the, the approach you have to it. Cause I think it's, um, it's so important to be treated like a person, not a patient.
59:33 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
59:33 Speaker 01 And that was like the biggest thing for me.
59:35 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. I think about myself 25 years ago, if I would have seen you, you know, in the hospital and I was your surgeon.
59:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:41 Dr. Darshan Shah? I would have said 25 years ago, you know what? You're either gonna be in a lifetime of prednisone and biologics, or you need to have a colectomy.
59:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? And a stoma for the rest of your life. Those are your two options.
59:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:52 Dr. Darshan Shah? Choose one, and if you don't wanna choose either one, good luck. And now I would say, I'm so glad I went through my own journey with this, you know? Cause now I would say, you know, to 18-year-old Maya, I would say, look, we're gonna put you on this temporarily. We're gonna work really, really hard. You're gonna see a nutritionist, you're gonna see therapists, you're gonna see someone to help you with your exercise, and we're gonna get your lifestyle really dialed in. It's so important right now. And then I'm gonna introduce you to the Maya of the future that's gonna talk to you about visualization.
1:00:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:21 Dr. Darshan Shah? And how you're gonna use your brain as, you're gonna respect your brain, number one, and you're gonna respect that your brain has powers that you don't even know about. And you can take these powers and use them to your advantage. And that's what I would say.
1:00:33 Speaker 01 I mean, like, that makes me emotional, like, hearing it, because it's like, no, but it is. Like, you know, the, the words you said first were exactly what I heard, exactly. And I think. It's like I remember that moment so well and like to then hear like, you know, if I had heard something else.
1:00:49 Dr. Darshan Shah? Uh huh.
1:00:49 Speaker 01 What could life have been like? And I think that's why it is, you know, I don't take a day in my life where I'm not grateful, like even coming on the plane to L A. You know, I always celebrate landing because I'm like, Maya, there was a time where you were sitting outside the loo on a plane. Like begging the air hostess to let you go inside.
1:01:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? Hmm.
1:01:10 Speaker 01 Because your, your brain is, you know, as soon as the doors lock and everyone has to be in their seat, your brain is like, Maya. You now need to go to the loo.
1:01:17 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
1:01:17 Speaker 01 It's so clever. And so I think just like, yeah, even hearing that, it's like, you know, it reminds me that even the, the doctors in our life, the people in our life have a huge role on how we view something and our journeys in it. So.
1:01:31 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
1:01:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it's a. Yeah, I have so much hope for the world coming forward. And I remember I read this book called, it's called cured and it's by a German, I think it's a German doctor and he went around the world. And he was saying that in, in medicine, we have these stats, which is like, you know, we've tested it on X many patients, right? And he was like, I wanna find the like N equals one. The patients that for some reason recovered. And he goes around the world, he goes to Brazil, he goes to India, Germany, and he finds them and he's like, what did you do? And what he found is so much of it came down to lifestyle, came down to maybe alternative therapies.
1:02:12 Speaker 01 And it was interesting because he's not saying like, this is a cure. He's saying, look how many different people have dealt with all these different things. Like there's not one answer, but there's possibility. And I just remember thinking, well, why can't I be N equals one?
1:02:26 Dr. Darshan Shah? No.
1:02:26 Speaker 01 Why can't I also do that?
1:02:27 Dr. Darshan Shah? Exactly, exactly. You know, I think the way the medical profession has come up to where it is right now, which is, it is the most incredible thing advances in science have happened in medicine, right? I mean, you look at the medications, the surgeries, if you get hit by a bus, if you, you know, get diagnosed with cancer, God forbid. You know, we, we have incredible technology to help you, but all of that was developed through these studies. Point, right? And what you did is you tested one chemical on one problem and you and you saw what worked for most of the people. And then that became kind of like, you know, the dogma that this is the only thing that's going to work for this. But that's all based on this curve, this bell shaped curve of people that,
1:03:11 Dr. Darshan Shah? you know, it worked for the average in the middle. And the N of ones were like, one or two, we call them standard deviations away from the bell shape, right? And so, what do those people do is what you're talking about. And what if we applied those interventions to every one in the middle? Maybe they wouldn't have needed that medication. And so, so just a different mindset in the way of thinking about, about health and wellness in 2025 that I think everyone needs to have this N of one mindset. In fact, I'm writing a book right now called N of One.
1:03:37 Speaker 01 Oh, I love, oh my gosh, that gets me. No, but I think it's, um, when people say to me, Maya, like, you know, you visualize yourself walking, etc. You know, were you able to just do it? You know what it really just came down to is that one image and one visualization I was doing simply gave me hope.
1:03:57 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
1:03:57 Speaker 01 And I think people underestimate the power of hope because I think there's such a science to it, but it's also an art.
1:04:02 Dr. Darshan Shah? Absolutely.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 And as humans, for us to have hope in even the most dire situations, never underestimate it. And just even being able to see myself walk. And obviously today, it's not so much about my health. It's more, can I see myself building the company I want to? Can I see myself being a Nike trainer? None of these things were even possible. They didn't exist. But I had to show my mind that, no, you know what? See it. First believe it, yes, but now do the hard work to get there. And so, again, I just want to stress that whilst obviously my journey coming into this was through health, you do not have to be unwell or broken or ill to train the mind. And so many of us, we wait till we're in those situations. That's when we take, uh, action.
1:04:48 Speaker 01 But actually, imagine if you were just a few steps ahead and you were thinking, how can I prevent this? How can I get stronger before that even has to happen? Um, and I think that's really where the power lies because all this information is out there and you can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts. But if you do not do anything about it. It doesn't matter.
1:05:07 Dr. Darshan Shah? Absolutely, absolutely. I think it's, you know, I have so many thoughts on this. I think that visualization, in my mind, it was always reserved for, you know, getting better at something. Like you wanna hit a golf ball, you know, and get it a hole in one. Visualize it, right? If you wanna make a basket, visualize it.
1:05:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? You wanna, you know, make a hundred million dollar business, visualize it.
1:05:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:28 Dr. Darshan Shah? And I think, I think those are all potential uses of it, for sure. We talked about all the different ways these tools can help. But it's so much, I would say, so much more powerful when you're using it to get out of a situation that is very dire, right?
1:05:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
1:05:44 Dr. Darshan Shah? And it works, it works just as well, if not better, right?
1:05:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:05:48 Dr. Darshan Shah? So like, there's so many different use cases.
1:05:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, even as teams, you know, if you've got a, like, I remember I was on a panel with the head coach of England Rugby, and he was saying they were working towards this tournament at the moment, and he literally makes them visualize themselves winning.
1:06:02 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
1:06:03 Speaker 01 And it's not about if they win or not, it doesn't matter. It's about what are the type of players you are building along the way. And there's also this baseball coach, can't remember his name, I think it's Andy something, and he, so he used to train this team, and they had never been to the Worlds before, like the world competition. So what he did is, in their changing room, he just put this TV up, and he would have videos playing again and again of teams at the Worlds playing. And just subtly, these players would come in, and obviously you'd just be watching it. But what they didn't realize is, he's literally the mirror neurons, right? He's priming their brain to think, hey, I see myself playing here, I wanna do this.
1:06:44 Dr. Darshan Shah? Right.
1:06:44 Speaker 01 And that's why things like representation, it's why getting women into sports, it all matters, because if you can see it, then you're like, okay, I could also do this.
1:06:54 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah.
1:06:54 Speaker 01 And I just love that coach, how he did it, cuz he was like, instead of watching some crappy thing, why don't you actually start immersing yourself in what the world is gonna be like, the environment, the feeling, the size? Virat Kohli, a great example of someone who, when he is playing cricket in another country. He spends time, a lot of time, visualizing the environment. He will literally feel the humidity. He will feel like, is the sun on me? Is it quite cold? Is it windy? And he makes it so real for the brain that, you know, when he's there, all these other athletes are trying to, you know, manage the terrain. And he's just like, cool, my brain knows I'm here.
1:07:34 Dr. Darshan Shah? I already here, right?
1:07:35 Speaker 01 And it's just so brilliant because these are those little one percent edges we can do. So take it not now sport, public speaking. If you are in a boardroom, maybe you're on a podcast, you're on a stage somewhere, you can literally see those environments first. So then you don't have to get nervous. You don't have to feel like, oh no, what if this goes wrong? That bit is all taken care of. And so little things like that, we can just be a little bit ahead of.
1:08:00 Dr. Darshan Shah? I remember my first major podcast that I was on. I watched so many episodes of it on YouTube first, just so I could like, make sure I knew what the environment was, how they were going to ask me the questions. You know, which respondents looked the best and the most confident. And I'm sure my mirror neurons are mirroring it. And it was a great app. It all went great, you know? Because I just mentally prepared by visualizing constantly by watching. And it's a technique everyone can use. If there's something they want to achieve, they can do this.
1:08:29 Speaker 01 They can. I think what's interesting though, is you'll get people who, let's say they've made a mistake before or something went wrong on a podcast. What the brain is really good at is rehearsing that again and again. You know, so it's like, I remember there's this athlete who she basically unfortunately tripped at the beginning of her race. And she has since then never been able to do the best start she's ever done because she's always thinking, whatever happens again, whatever happens again. It's okay. The brain is there to be like, we don't want it to happen again, so I'm going to protect you. But it's moments like that where you can rewire those patterns. They don't have to be there forever. But because the brain is good at attaching to them, you get better at expecting that's going to happen. So we have to be the ones to change that.
1:09:13 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah, yeah, so powerful. First of all, I'm so happy that we made this happen today. Because I think this is such incredibly useful information for everyone. Everybody. And I do think if you're a person listening to this podcast and you have the ability to influence someone else's journey, this is an incredible book for you to read, to give people these tools. Like, I think every doctor should read this book. So when they have a patient that might be going through cancer or going through something like you did, osteocortitis, they can empower their patients with these tools. And so people get the hope, they can see themselves healing.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Also, I talk about dentists in here because I was training dentists, but with visualization. So when it came to accuracy, when it came to concentration on certain procedures, so even surgeons, right? Technically, I know many surgeons that will visualize their operation before doing that. I'm sure maybe you did as well.
1:10:09 Dr. Darshan Shah? I did.
1:10:10 Speaker 01 But actually, again, doing it really intentionally and getting better at it, seeing going smoother, it's, it's a great performance tool. And I think medics and dentists are athletes in their own right. You know, we don't appreciate, they are in these rooms for hours and days sometimes, that really, not only for your patients, but also for yourself, you know, for your own mental state, for your own performance. So yeah, it's a, it's an all-rounder, which is good.
1:10:34 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. Yeah. And I think the key is to, I think the word visual implies seeing.
1:10:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:40 Dr. Darshan Shah? But it's more than just the seeing of it, right? It's the feeling, is kind of the mental process of running through it.
1:10:45 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:10:45 Dr. Darshan Shah? Like you said, feeling even the humidity, imagining the humidity of being somewhere that you're performing later. All of those are.
1:10:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:53 Dr. Darshan Shah? The visualization is really all senses.
1:10:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I'm glad you said that because it's about, what, three percent of the population has something called aphantasia.
1:11:01 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
1:11:01 Speaker 01 They can't see, right? If you say, think of a beach ball, they physically cannot see one. But the good thing is, you can still lean on the emotional aspect of it, or the narration of what you're doing, and visualization can still be very beneficial, which is good.
1:11:16 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yeah. So powerful. I cannot wait to read your book cover to cover.
1:11:21 Speaker 01 Good.
1:11:22 Dr. Darshan Shah? It is some definitely something that is very needed. And I just want to thank you so much for coming on this podcast and telling my audience about this.
1:11:30 Speaker 01 No, thank you. And thank you for having me. And yeah, I, I hope you enjoy it. And there's one thing I'd say is that your mind is like a puppy. And if you don't train it, it's gonna shit everywhere. So we gotta, we gotta train it bit by bit, get it on the lead, you know?
1:11:43 Dr. Darshan Shah? Yes.
1:11:44 Speaker 01 But yeah, no, it's been such a pleasure and thank you.
1:11:47 Dr. Darshan Shah? You, you are so welcome. Where can people see more of you and find your book?
1:11:51 Speaker 01 So the book is available in the UK now, but in the US, it comes out on the 26th of August. Any Amazon or bookstore, Instagram, my adult mental fitness, same with TikTok, LinkedIn is myraichura. And yeah, I obviously coach a lot of athletes, C suites. But even if you just wanna have a chat about mental fitness, then I'm very happy to. So yeah.
1:12:12 Dr. Darshan Shah? Fantastic. So the book is called Visualize and available August 26th in the United States. And we look forward to talking again to you sometime.
1:12:20 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:12:24 Dr. Darshan Shah? Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.
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