3 KEYS to Reprogram Your SUBCONSCIOUS MIND to Heal Your BODY

The mind and body are not separate entities, but rather a unified system that can be harnessed for healing and well-being, so today we focus on healing the body with our mind. Dr. Mariel Buqué, an Afro-Dominican psychologist and intergenerational trauma expert, offers profound insights into breaking the cycle of trauma through a holistic clinical approach that combines ancient healing practices with modern therapy. Dr. Ellen Langer, the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard University and known as the "mother of mindfulness," challenges conventional thinking about mind-body unity and shares her bold theory in her new book "The Mindful Body." Lastly, Dr. Joe Dispenza discusses the transformative power of thoughts and meditation in healing oneself, sharing inspiring stories of individuals who defied the odds and healed from severe illnesses. Together, these experts illuminate the path to healing and personal evolution through the power of the mind. In this episode you will learnHow to heal trauma without medication and recognize trauma within your body. Practical techniques to calm your nervous system and break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. The transformative effects of belief, gratitude, and personal evolution on healing. How our thoughts can influence our physical well-being and the concept of mind-body unity. The impact of unaddressed trauma on relationships and how to navigate healing when one partner is ready, but the other isn't. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1601For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mariel Buqué – https://link.chtbl.com/1555-podDr. Ellen Langer – https://link.chtbl.com/1578-podDr. Joe Dispenza – https://link.chtbl.com/1564-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. I love the work that you do because you really break down these different types of strategies on healing trauma without medicine or medication. Can you share a few of these key ways to do this? If people are just getting started and they feel a sense of overwhelmed stress and trauma in their body?

• 0:32Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, whenever we're talking about trauma, it's going to be critical for us to first start with the body. So the very first place where we need to go to is our nervous system, because that's where trauma is primarily situated. So when we do any of the practices that are going to help settle our nervous system and help us feel more grounded, that's already going to be the best start that we have toward healing trauma. Then we can actually get into the digging work. What happened to you? What happened before you? What happened around you? What happened that actually left an imprint in your soul that made it so that you experienced this tenderness that we call trauma?

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  So we should be thinking about body and the nervous system first, not what happened to you at seven years old?

• 1:20Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  No.

• 1:20Lewis Howes?

  You know, what did your parents say to you that hurt you? We shouldn't be asking those questions first.

• 1:25Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's correct. You know, whenever we're actually approaching a therapy session, typically you sit down and the therapist asks you, "Well, what happened? Tell me why you're here."

• 1:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:35Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And so you start spewing like your entire story. But very often, people actually feel traumatized or re-traumatized or triggered by their own stories and their own trauma narrative.

• 1:47Lewis Howes?

  It causes a heightened nervous system response when you tell the story.

• 1:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yes, because it feels like you're going back there again, because you're telling all the little details of everything that happened. And trying to get this person, this therapist, or a friend, whomever you're recounting to, trying to get them to understand what happened. But your body's also remembering in that moment. And very often, what tends to happen is that people then engage in avoidance strategies. Like, they no longer want to touch the trauma narrative or their own story, or they drop out of therapy because they no longer want to actually engage in the conversation that felt so incredibly dysregulating.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:25Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  They're re-traumatizing themselves when they talk about the experience in the first time, I guess, right?

• 2:31Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, because most people don't know that when they approach their own trauma narrative, that it can actually spur up those emotions in them and cause their nervous system to go into that fight, flight, freezer funk.

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:45Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Most people are not aware of the fact that, just by telling my story, this can happen to me. But if we're actually training folks to engage in their body in a way that helps them to feel more safe, then it allows them to then be able to tell their trauma narrative in a way that actually, in a way where they don't actually need to run away from themselves.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  So when we're thinking about a way to heal initially, and we know that we've had some stress, or maybe we're reactive in certain situations, or maybe we feel tightness, or just not our fullest, highest self. And we know that there's been some trauma, but we're not sure how to talk about it or how to heal it. What is something we should be thinking about with our bodies to start this process?

• 3:32Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, the first thing is that we have to befriend our bodies. We have to actually engage in a relationship with our bodies and really tune in. Most of us don't actually take the moments throughout the day to say, "How's my body feeling right now? Where do I feel the tension? Where am I experiencing in my body this external situation?" Right? And if we can actually train ourselves to just do body scans, for starters, right? There's so many things that we can do. But for starters, just scanning how we feel in our bodies from head to toe, and just getting a sense of how our body is taking in our environment, that's already a really good setup for understanding ourselves better and understanding ourselves.

• 4:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  When we're juxtaposing ourselves with what's happening outside of ourselves.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  So if someone has experienced a level of trauma, but they have no clue if they've actually got a lot of trauma, a little trauma, or somewhere in between, how can they do a trauma assessment within their body scan to know, oh, this is actually a big thing that I need to address right away, or this is more minor, but I still need to address it. How can they scan?

• 4:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, you know, it's actually much simpler than what one might imagine because people can actually just remember, right? Remember what they actually do remember and then simultaneously try and gauge what's happening in their bodies as they're remembering.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  As they're thinking of the story and the scenario.

• 5:00Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly.

• 5:01Lewis Howes?

  Are you feeling tightness in your chest or your throat? Or are you clenching up? Or are you sweating?

• 5:06Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 5:06Lewis Howes?

  It's like, what are these symptoms?

• 5:08Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah. And typically, some of those symptoms correlate with how the nervous system is actually internalizing the story.

• 5:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 5:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  We typically get a knot in our stomach, for example, right? But that's really our nervous system actually shutting down specific functions of the gastrointestinal tract.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:24Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Because we actually don't need that for survival in a moment where we're in survival mode. And so our-

• 5:30Lewis Howes?

  So if we feel a knot in our stomach, it's almost like we're in fight or flight mode.

• 5:34Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly.

• 5:34Lewis Howes?

  Just thinking about a re- you know, thinking about a story for 30 seconds or a couple of minutes from something that happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's fascinating. So something that happened that long ago can continue to harm and hurt you decades in the future until we learn to heal it.

• 5:53Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly. It continues to live in the body. It can metabolize in the body then as chronic illness when it goes on unaddressed. And of course, one of the biggest risks and repercussions of it going on unaddressed, many times because we just don't know that it's there or that it's something that needs to be addressed. But what can happen is also the possibility of transmission into the next generation. So there's a lot of consequence.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes. And that transmission is really you leaving a legacy. You know, do you want to leave a legacy of peaceful, harmonious, emotional well-being?

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  You know, humans as children or kids that carry your stress responses.

• 6:33Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Right.

• 6:34Lewis Howes?

  And kind of your nervous system responses, right?

• 6:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah. I always ask parents, like, look at your little one and look into their eyes. And think for a moment, do I want them to hurt the way that I have hurt? And that usually is enough for a parent to say, you know what? Actually, I want to break this cycle because I don't want their little heart to then absorb the kinds of traumas that I've absorbed. And for them to then be the adult that has to then be in search of their emotions or in search of healing because they now have an inner child wound as an adult.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  What's the greatest gift a parent can give their child?

• 7:13Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  The gift of understanding their emotions and understanding how to self-affirm. Because when we can actually know how, what our emotions even are, and what I mean by that is that we have emotions and that they're body-centered, right? Like that we have a really concrete understanding of the full spectrum of our emotions and how they can manifest in our bodies. And then how we can actually do something to validate ourselves through the emotional process. I think that's a beautiful gift that parents can give their children. And when parents do that for themselves and their children, it's a beautiful generational gift.

• 7:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. So the first thing I'm hearing you say is kind of the ways to start healing is to first do an assessment of the stories and the memories that hurt you and see how the body reacts or responds.

• 8:03Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Right.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  What would be the next step after that? We notice a tightness in our stomach, a clenching in our throat, a pain in our chest. What would be the next step to starting that healing process?

• 8:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Step two is relaxation. Step two is actually going into any kind of practice you choose, right? But it can be breath work, it can be meditation, it could be Tai Chi, it can be yoga, it can be so many. That can actually help your body to release some of that tension.

• 8:32Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 8:33Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And so what we're doing in that very moment is that we're, of course, recognizing that there's a pain that has been there, that has been emotional, that has now a physical manifestation, and that we're also integrating a relaxation, a body relaxation practice to help release that tension, help absolve that tension from the body.

• 8:54Lewis Howes?

  If we never release it, what happens?

• 8:56Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It becomes disease.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So emotional memories turn into physical pain and eventually disease in some way.

• 9:05Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Many of the metabolic conditions that we know about, diabetes, for example, cardiac conditions, a lot of those can be mapped back to stressors in life. And there's a lot of studies that have been done around even autoimmune conditions being very deeply connected to stressors and to trauma. And more recently, there's some studies that also have some correlates to certain cancers. So when we start thinking about what the body is telling us, the body, when it's in that state of disease, is telling us, I don't feel well because I'm not being taken care of emotionally.

• 9:45Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And that, you know, it is usually like the clue for us to say, oh, I need to slow down, when we needed to slow down probably fifteen, twenty years ago.

• 9:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right. So once we, you know, recall the memories and I guess really reflect on where we're feeling this pain or reaction in our bodies, the third thing I'm hearing you say is to relax through some type of therapeutic process. Breath work, meditation, yoga, some type of relaxation process to release it, right? What would be the next thing? Because a lot of times, most people just numb or disassociate the pain, right? We don't truly feel the pain because it's too painful. And so we'll find ways to numb, distract, disassociate, block the memories.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  To not feel that pain and that can be just as harmful, right? Just to numb, block or disassociate?

• 10:40Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Can, you know, they're protective factors. They're ways that we protect ourselves from the pain that we truly feel. And, and especially the depths of our pain. Some of us just don't want to understand how deeply hurt we have been.

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  How wrong we've been.

• 10:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  How wrong we've been.

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  How unfair, unjust, you know, hurtful these things are.

• 11:00Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and, and you know, like in, in order to self preserve, in order to make it through another day, the mind and the body, they're just brilliant, brilliant like machines. They have mechanized a way to actually protect us from ourselves.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And so they basically like structured all these coping mechanisms that albeit harmful or maladaptive or not helpful or not connecting when we're talking about relationships, right? They can, you know, still help keep you safe for another day. But the alternative to that is to then learn coping skills that actually can be adaptive, connecting. And that can actually be the better recipe for not only your ability to stay within healthy relationships with other people, but also for you to experience the type of sustainable and, and long-term mental and physical wellness.

• 12:00Lewis Howes?

  What's the next step after that? Once we start applying some of these self therapeutic experiences, you know, it might be 10 minutes of breath work or some type of release. How do we get to a place of truly healing that wound or that memory? You know, how long does it take of us doing this over and over again? Do we eventually need to process in other ways? Through talk therapy or more intensified therapies? What, what's the solution to? Absolute healing and is that even a thing?

• 12:34Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, there isn't really a 100%, you know, type of healing that truly exists. I mean, I think that anything that leans in the direction of perfectionism is a myth, including healing, right? However, there are ways in which we can live a life that is filled with ease and peace more often than not. And a life in which if triggers were ever to present themselves, that they would be just subtle and tolerable. And that we can have the actual tools, the, the sense of empowerment and agency over our own bodies and minds to actually release that process and move into the next thing that life has for us. Rather than being stuck and frozen, which is what tends to happen with trauma.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:17Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But the, the next step really is, you know, I, the, the way that I work is that I integrate a lot of these nervous system restoration practices for a long period of time with folks. And I, I've done it myself and with my family and with kind of everyone and in the book. Um, but this actually is the lengthier part of the work, the actual grounding.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  This can take months or years, right?

• 13:40Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, it can, it can. And you know, sometimes I, I actually like to give it a bit of context, like for people who feel like, well, let's say, you know, that I want to do this work, but how much am I gonna have to do in order to really?

• 13:55Lewis Howes?

  Might be a lot. It might be a lot.

• 13:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and that's okay.

• 13:59Lewis Howes?

  And it might feel exhausting and it might feel overwhelming and it might feel emotional and it might feel, you know, like it's all consuming at times.

• 14:08Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, all of the above.

• 14:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And, and that's actually, I wouldn't even go as far as saying maybe not might, but it will, right?

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for a period of time.

• 14:18Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, for a period of time and it is survivable. And if you have the tools to actually help you to settle. Once things feel like they're getting really heavy, then it's gonna make the experience more tolerable.

• 14:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:31Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And you're not gonna feel like you're thrown into the abyss of your like deepest, darkest emotions and have no way out. You're like in a black hole.

• 14:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's this, I don't know who's originally said this type of quote or this kind of phrase, but you'll hear people say, you know, what happened to you is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to overcome it, to heal it, to process it, to, you know, realize what it was and not let it consume your life.

• 14:56Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yes.

• 14:56Lewis Howes?

  And I think what you mentioned about like higher self, like learning about our nervous systems so we can work with it to become our best, highest self as most often as possible, right?

• 15:10Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Uh huh.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  Which means having peace and harmony inside of us as frequent as possible, because that is our true nature, peace and harmony. And I think that's what it comes down to. What are you willing to do to create peace and harmony, to actualize your highest self as frequently as you can?

• 15:26Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Uh huh.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  It's not about perfection. You're not gonna be this Zen person all the time, but that's a beautiful life, living in peace and harmony. Living in suffering and pain and agony and numbing yourself is not a beautiful life. It's a survival mechanism which is useful for a period of time, but not for all of time. And so we just gotta be aware of that.

• 15:46Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  And it's gonna take doing some intense painful work for a period of time for hopefully a lifetime of freedom afterwards.

• 15:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly. Yeah. And then, you know, I like to always like help people understand that if you're, let's say that the work needs to take a period of two years. Let's just say that. You need to focus. You need to do nervous system restoration practices each and every day for a period of two years. You need to do journaling and some of the digging work and do talk therapy. And you need to, you know, engage in, you know, connections with people that help you feel at home. All of that needs to be a part of your process. Those two years, when you take into consideration the forty that you've already lived. That have felt awful. Those two years feel like they're really worth it.

• 16:37Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  If you want to live the next forty, feeling more abundant, more peaceful, more grounded, more like you know yourself, your true core self, and more like that core self that is now burgeoning from within you is a reflection of your higher self.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and I'm just a big believer that flow and abundance does not come to those who are constantly in suffering or holding on to pain.

• 16:59Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yes.

• 16:59Lewis Howes?

  It comes to those that have peace, who have clarity, who are relaxed, in a more relaxed state.

• 17:05Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Lewis Howes?

  And that may seem like a nice thing to say, but if you're in your thirties and forties and you've got three kids and you've got, you know, responsibilities and job and you're overstressed, and you're thinking, I don't have two years of my life, let alone thirty minutes a day to go to the gym. How can I do this work when I have so much responsibilities, when I've got, you know, a partner that I'm in a relationship with, I've got kids, I've got bills, I've got all these different weights on top of me, doing this type of work seems like impossible. What do you say to someone like that?

• 17:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It isn't. It actually is really doable because the work requires for you to bake it into your life. It's not work that is a task apart from the rest of your life.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  It is your life.

• 17:50Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It is your life.

• 17:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And, you know, the work can actually, the way that I like to structure the work is to make it very accessible. And the reason why I like to make it accessible to anyone is because I want people to do the work and I want to make it as easy as possible. I've gotten that statement so many times, well, you know, I'm a mother of three and, you know, they're all really young and how am I going to find the time? I always tell people, listen, you have a thousand four hundred and forty minutes in the day. If you take five of those minutes and do a breathwork practice, you're already ahead of the game.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:25Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And if you do that for an entire year, three hundred and sixty-five days, what we know, what neuroscience is telling us is that it takes an approximate three to four hundred repetitions of a nervous system restoration practice for our body memory to start shifting.

• 18:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 18:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So if you take those three hundred and sixty-five days, that year of those five minutes, you're already doing work that is going to be monumentally effective in you feeling more settled and like your nervous system is actually. Experiencing a lot of ease and calm that it wasn't experiencing before you did the year.

• 19:03Lewis Howes?

  And how, how much is our partners in an intimate relationship picking up on our nervous system wounds and also our kids picking up just by watching and observing us and being around us? How much do others pick up our pain?

• 19:20Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's almost instantaneous and especially the people that are closest to us, but especially children, because children are very, very keen on picking up on non-verbal cues. We actually, when we're like infants, that's the way that we understand whether or not the world is safe or not. We actually see the facial expression of an adult that's our caregiver. And if the facial expression is one that mirrors safety, calm and ease, then what we interpret that as is the world is safe, I can be calm. If the adult feels preoccupied, angry, right? Like babies pick up on that and their nervous system is also picking up on that. And so it's important for us to actually be more attuned to the

• 20:05Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  ways in which other people also pick up our energy and, and, and perhaps that can offer more motivation for people to actually do the nervous system practices that can actually be helpful for them and their families.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  If, if a, you know, a parent is watching or listening to this right now and they're thinking, wow, my kids are five or 12 or 16 and I'm just starting to realize that maybe I was too reactive based on a, you know, my nervous system wounds or for many years. Or maybe we shouldn't have yelled at each other as parents, you know, in front of our kids. Or we shouldn't have been so reactive in situations that we were explosive, but we didn't need to be. And they're starting to realize, okay, this could have some long-term effects on kids. And they've been living that way for a decade with their kids growing up. What can they instantly tell themselves right now about how they've shown up?

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  And what are some actions they can take to start breaking the cycle for themselves and their kids? Who still have developing minds, who maybe aren't as comfortable talking about emotions yet because they're younger still? How can they start shifting that without thinking I've ruined my kids' lives?

• 21:19Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You know, it's important for parents, for anyone really, to understand if I didn't know better, I couldn't do better. So if you didn't know that what you were struggling with was intergenerational trauma, because you were exhibiting toxic relationship behaviors that were reflected in your childhood home, and you absorbed those as the norm, as a status quo, then you wouldn't know to actually disrupt those and not pass those on, or not, you know, exhibit those in your home. However, it's important that if you now do know better, that you take actions, that you decide, okay, I know that there's a different way, and I understand that the way that I've been behaving is unhealthy. Let me shift. That is already a step in the right direction.

• 22:04Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  When it comes to children, it's important to understand that children can also engage in the healing process.

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  They can.

• 22:11Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of age-appropriate ways in which we can integrate the work with children. Children can meditate, children can do breath work, children can talk about their emotions. Children can, you know, do dance parties with their parents that actually help them to release some of the stress and tension of the day. And all of that can be a large part of what families can do together to actually do some collective healing and engage in age-appropriate types of practices that can help their children not only absorb the healing in the moment, but also understand for the long term, for the entirety of their lives, that they can do something that can help them to heal.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I believe that stress is the major source of our illness.

• 23:04Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Over and above diet, genetics, even treatment. It's a very big statement. And that stress, though, is psychological, right? Events don't cause stress. What causes stress are the views you take of the event. So if you open it up, you're more mindful. And if you said to yourself, rather than this thing is going to be awful, give yourself five reasons why it might actually be an advantage. So now, it could be awful, it could be advantageous. You're immediately somewhat relaxed. But I say, go to the next step. Let's assume it does happen. What are the advantages?

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  The worst-case scenario.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  And what are the advantages? And so then, when you say, you know, you'll be able to deal with whatever happens, then you're less worried about them. And, you know, you don't have to spend so much time trying to control the outcome. But for the big things that are happening in this world right now, I think that it's a super test of all I'm saying.

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. How do you manage stress, though?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  I don't experience it most of the time.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  You know, I was...

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  You're a professor at Harvard. You've got books. You've got people that rely on you. You see, you know, people coming to you with their problems. How do you navigate all that?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I surely, at this age, have had real things happen. I had a fire that destroyed 80% of what I owned way back when. You know, my mother died when she was a young woman. I'd been divorced. And so, none of those things sound so big anymore, but nevertheless...

• 24:40Lewis Howes?

  In the moment, it's like...

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, and when those things happen, I don't think that my responses are, well, you know, I'm of this earth.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  But it doesn't stay with me. So let's say the... And I wrote about this in The Mindful Body. When the house went up in smoke, that... I called the insurance adjuster. He came over the next day. And he said it was the first time in his 25 years of the job. Where the call was less bad than the damage. Most people go, oh, my God, oh, my God. And he gets there. One little room, yeah, yeah. And here, but you know, to my mind, it was already gone. What was the point in getting crazy over it? And I immediately felt that what had been burnt were things of my past. You know, so if I were to redo it today, you know, that day.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Would I, how many of those things would I have bought again or what have you? But it was still a little scary. Sure. And but I might as well tell the whole story now because this turned out to be wonderful. Really? How could it have been wonderful? Tell me. So I go to the Charles Hotel to live now because I don't have a house. And I have my two dogs. And so I'm a sight to be seen, right? You know, marching. Okay. It's Christmas. Wow. Christmas Eve, I go out. I come back and my room is full of gifts. Not from the hotel management, not from the hotel owner. But from the so-called little people.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  The people who parked my car, the chambermaids, the waiters, the waitresses. It was years that when telling the story, I would cry. Now I've told it so many times. And I don't remember except for one thing, anything that I lost in the fire. But every Christmas, I'm reminded of what I think is the basic goodness of people. Wow. So. Why did they give you all those gifts? Just to be nice because it was Christmas. Wow. Yeah, and they knew what had happened. And if you would have lived in a home, you wouldn't have had that experience. That's true, too. I hadn't realized that. But the funny thing is, the one thing that I missed, and I set that up for you to say, what was that one thing? I was teaching a large course and in a few weeks, all of my notes were burned.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  What was I gonna do?

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  So, I called the student from the year before who got an A, and I borrowed her notes. It was like a game of telephone.

• 27:12Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  And I apologized to the class before telling them that I don't know how this is going to go. You know, for the following reason. And I think it was the best class that I taught.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Because it was happening right then. You know, that all of the information I was giving them was a new version, or a version that I believed right at this moment. You know, when you present PowerPoints, it's just too easy not to use the same PowerPoints and to, you know, you don't want to think things through again.

• 27:42Lewis Howes?

  You're innovating things. You're adding to it.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  And so I enjoyed it more than any other class I taught.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating. Now, you're speaking about kind of lost things from the past. A lot of people hold on to the traumatic memories. And it keeps them stuck in a mindset of resentment, fear, anxiety, frustration, guilt, whatever it might be from these traumatic experiences that either happened to them, that they interpreted, or that they were a part of, or did to other people. And they hold on to these memories. And put a lot of meaning on those memories. And it causes them to feel stuck, or gain weight, or get sick, and have anxiety. How powerful is our thoughts around the past?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Well, I think that what we need to do, and people, there's data, not mine, that shows trying not to think about something is totally ineffective. It always comes back. But, so what you want to do is not try not to think about it, but to think about it differently.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  Interpret it differently.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and your feelings will be based on your interpretations. You know, so that for me, the fire, you know, was not the scary thing. It, you know, so I lost some things. So who cares? Right. Um, and then I got all of this, uh, attention, this, uh, feeling of the goodness of stranger. Community, love, support, yeah. And so it, it's not a scary thing for me. So if we open up our minds and see that no matter what we're experiencing, there are multiple ways of understanding it. There is no one way of looking at it. Um, and that's what we do when we're being mindless, you know, um, and then it lends itself to,

• 29:29Speaker 02

  again, all sorts of possibilities. It occurs to me that we only talked about the counterclockwise study. I probably, with your permission. Go ahead. Yeah, share another one. Um, uh, there are many in the book, but to be more persuaded of this mind-body unity. Yes. Um, let's see, the next study in that series was, was chambermaids, which is. This is awesome, yeah. The chambermaids, um, I didn't realize this until we did the study. Didn't, don't see their work as exercise. Because the surgeon general says, exercise is what you do after work. You sit in a chair all day. That's when you get your exercise. And they're just too tired after work. Study was so simple, as many of these are, my studies. We just taught them that their work is exercise.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  So making a bed is like working on this machine at the gym, sweeping. And so now we have two groups. One group that doesn't realize their work is exercise. One group that now sees that their work is exercise. We take many measures. Turns out they're not working any differently, these two different views. They're not eating any differently. All that's changed is their mindset. Now work is exercise. As a result of that change, they lost weight. There was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down. Wow. Um, you know, so, um, I, our thoughts matter. Let's go, I'll go to the very present because there's so many things for us to talk about.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  I did this, uh, study recently with my graduate student, Peter Ungel. And, um, it's a study on wound healing. Oh, this is interesting. Now, so, in order to test, um, the one's mind, the degree to which your mind affects healing. The physical body, yeah, yeah. We had to inflict a wound. I'm not sadistic.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And even if I were, the uh, human subjects committee is not gonna let me. So it's a minor wound.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  But it's a wound.

• 31:26Lewis Howes?

  A little cut, a little paper cut or something.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  No, we used um, um, the Chinese cupping.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Um, so creates it.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  And all we have are people in front of a clock.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  It's like a bruise almost.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, like a.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Exactly. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is going twice as fast as real time, half as fast as real time, or real time. The question we're asking is, does that bruise heal based on perceived time? Which is the time the clock tells you. Or real time? And it turns out, it's perceived time.

• 32:00Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we're doing this now with um, people who've had um, hernia operations, um, uh, cataract surgery. Um, I want to do with broken bones as well, where we tell people, right now, you know, the doctor probably tell you, say, how long is it gonna take for me to heal?

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Three to six months.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Right. And I think they use the outer limit. I want to tell people, you know, some people have healed as quickly as, and give the quickening heal a start, healing time, and see what happens.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So if a doctor who is a credible expert, and is telling you, this is gonna take three to six months of recovery.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  You're not gonna do anything until three or six. Exactly.

• 32:42Lewis Howes?

  Of recovery.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  Um, you're just gonna wait until that end time, and then start feeling better.

• 32:50Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying if, what if a doctor said, you know, it's possible you could heal in two to four weeks?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  And start seeing incredible healing fast if you do these certain things. Do you think the body could connect to our thinking and our belief in that way?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  I think it's one. It's one, so will necessarily be connected. You know, so in the back of um, uh, after I talked about in the book about all these mind-body-unity studies, um, I give um, a treatment that we've come up with, that essentially, uh, you know, but I want to, let me backtrack a little bit. Most people know about placebos.

• 33:26Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Like, placebos may be our strongest medicine. I just think about it. You take a sugar pill, you take a nothing. And then get better. And you get better, yeah. So it's not the pill, you're doing it yourself. So my life's work has been to try to find out how to do this more directly. And what I'm just gonna tell you is a procedure that seems to work. And that could explain placebos and other things as well. But it's the answer to your question. Okay, so if you have three weeks to heal, and now you're approaching, the second week has passed, what are you doing? And this is what you might be doing. When people are given a diagnosis of a chronic disease, they tend to think that the symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Nothing moves in only one direction. There are all these little blips. It's sort of like the stock market. If it's going up, it doesn't go straight up. It goes up, goes down, a little up, okay? Or down, depending on... Sure, sure. And it's the same thing with any measure you're going to take over time. There are fluctuations. Now, what happens is, there are times you're feeling better, but you're not paying any attention to those times. All right? Because your expectation is it's only going to get worse. What happens if you pay attention? So what we do, we start by calling people every day, twice a day, sometimes three times a day at various times. And we say, how, let's say you have chronic pain, for example.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Nobody's stressed, it doesn't matter what it is. People in chronic pain think they're in pain all the time. People who are stressed, they're stressed, nobody has anything all the time. So we call and say, how is it right now? Is it better or worse than before? And why? The why is the crucial question. All right, so what happens is, now, during many times, it's gonna be better. So you're gonna feel, gee, it's not as bad as I thought it was. There are moments of relief. Why initiates a mindful search. Why now is it better than before? And by doing this, the very, and the process now gives you some control over the disease. So control itself is important to your health. Interesting.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  When you're in control, you're looking for ways to be better. To improve, yeah. Right, so we use the stress. So you're stressed all the time. I call you, how's your... Okay. Then, all of a sudden, you realize, you know, when you're talking to Ellen Langer, then you're maximally stressed. So then it's easy, right? Don't talk to me as a way of improving. All right. So three things happen when you do this attention to variability, which is just a fancy way of saying being mindful, noticing change. The first is that you see, hey, it's not that you're maximally awful all the time. Second, by asking why you're being mindful, that's good for your health. And third, that you're more likely to find a solution if you're looking for one.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Now, we've done this with Parkinson's stroke, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic pain, a host of real disorders. And in each case, we get very positive results. And so, you know, now we're looking at how this might actually explain the placebo. And the way is that you take a pill, now you're expecting yourself to get better. So you're looking, am I better? Oh, now I'm not as better as I was before. Why? And the process unfolds naturally. Now, so when I was trying to arrange it so people could take care of themselves rather than rely on a doctor to give them a nothing so that they take care of themselves.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  It doesn't seem that way because we're calling them, but most people now have smartphones. It's very easy. You set your smartphone to ring in an hour. You ask yourself, how is it now? Better or worse than before? Set it now for two hours and 10 minutes. Just vary the time. And you will be better even if it doesn't completely go away, although we have very positive, very positive findings. This is powerful. You know, and the thing about a placebo that's kind of interesting because when we, the BBC did a version of a replication of the counterclockwise study. And I remember there was this actress who was one of the participants,

• 37:53Speaker 02

  and she got better and she couldn't understand it. And she said, You know, you say it's placebo, but you know, arguing because placebos are bad. Now, placebos to people are bad only because the people who started talking about them with pharmaceutical companies. And for pharmaceutical, I want to bring this drug to market to make a fortune. And this damn thing, you know, this placebo is just as good. So then I can't bring it to market. But if you think about it, and then people say, it's only psychological, as if, wait a second. You know, physical is real, you know, psychological not, and I'm saying, they're both the same.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  So what influences the other? Do our thoughts influence?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  It's all happening simulta- more or less simultaneously. Yeah.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  So if we feel pain somewhere, we feel overwhelmed or stressed, or we feel sharpness of pain somewhere. Is our thoughts influencing that pain, or is our, the feeling of it influencing our thoughts?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  It's, it's one thing.

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  You know, I raise my arm, that's affecting my wrist, um, my forearm. It's all happening essentially at the same time. You know, there were somebody, I can't believe that I couldn't remember, I couldn't find, who did this study. Where they did the biochemistry of a teardrop. And that a teardrop of sadness is biochemically different from a teardrop of happiness.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  I remember the iridologist, iridologist, who was able to look in my eye. And know there was something wrong with my golf club. It's all the same. I go like this, my mind, my brain is different.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  We don't have the sophisticated machinery, technology to, to pick up the difference. But if I took a few cells of your skin, and you were mindful versus mindless, the difference is there.

• 39:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  But we can't see that now.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 39:53Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating. What I mean, what would you see, say then, if people want to live pain free? If they want to live pain free, stress free, and they want to feel like they're aging gracefully.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  All in one minute.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  What can they be? What is the cocktail of ingredients that you should be doing on a daily basis to create that?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should accept that everything is uncertain. And so then you can't know those things. You know, if you forget something, doesn't mean now you're becoming sick, getting dementia. You know, you forgot something. And it's interesting because I'm a teacher, I'm a professor of these wonderful students at Harvard, and I give an exam and they get a lot of it wrong. They studied it, they just didn't remember. So, young people are not infrequently forgetful. They just don't worry so much about being forgetful. If you fall, some people then take themselves out of the world,

• 41:00Speaker 02

  you know, because they're afraid of falling again. And I remember in this, I was consulting this nursing home many years ago. And this woman who was, I was in the director's office, and this woman who was about, I'd say she was about 85 or whatever, visiting her sister who was 90. And she was bragging, she said, you know, "My sister wanted me to bring tongues to help her put on her underwear by herself, but I wasn't going to do it because she could fall." And I said, "Okay." And then I chimed in, which I probably shouldn't. And I said, "You know, we can prevent her from falling and burning herself

• 41:45Speaker 02

  or anything else that happens to people in the course of a lifetime. We can induce a semi-comatose state." And then she'll be perfectly accident free and so on. You know, so in some sense, I mean, it may seem silly, but some part of being human is the possibility of some of these things happening.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  Falling, yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and recognizing that you can get yourself through it in some of the ways we've already discussed.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I'm not suggesting that we all, you know, just throw caution to the wind, but I think a life that provides no opportunity for any of these things to happen, it wouldn't be one that I would choose for myself.

• 42:35Lewis Howes?

  People are sick and they want to heal, but why do you think so many people struggle to feeling whole and healing when there seems to be the answer to how to do it, but people continue to struggle with their health? Why do you think that is?

• 42:53Joe Dispenza?

  Hmm, well, there's a lot of things to unpack there. We have three types of stress that we process in the physical body. We have physical stress, that's like trauma, accidents, injuries, falls. And then you have chemical stress, like toxins, or pesticides, or pollutants, or viruses, or bacteria, or hangovers, nutritional deficiencies. And then you have emotional stress, right? And emotional stress can be family tragedies, car accidents, second mortgages, single parenting, 401ks, you know, whatever that is. But each one of those things, physical, chemical, or emotional, knock the body out of homeostasis,

• 43:38Joe Dispenza?

  out of regulation, out of balance. The innate capacity of the body when it's not overstressed is that it wants to always return back and regulate, wants to return back to homeostasis, it wants to return back to order. And that's kind of innate in us. That's an automatic process that's running through the autonomic nervous system. So we could say the job of the autonomic nervous system is to create balance and regulation and homeostasis, and it's automatic, right? And that part of the brain sits under the thinking neocortex, and it's called the chemical brain, or the emotional brain, or the limbic brain, or the mammalian brain. And it has all of those functions that make blood sugar balanced, hormone levels.

• 44:21Joe Dispenza?

  Digestive enzymes, it's doing what it can to take the body and constantly repair it and regenerate it, move it back into balance. All of those stressors knock the brain and body out of balance and the innate mechanism, the stress response, brings it back to balance. Well, it just makes sense. If you keep knocking it out of balance over and over again, and you keep moving it out of homeostasis, that imbalance is going to become the new balance, and now you're headed for a disease because that autonomic, automatic system can't regulate order in the body. So a system then is compromised, the system breaks down. And so if it's physical trauma, you know, your body can heal if you rest it.

• 45:05Joe Dispenza?

  If it's chemical imbalance, you take your pharmaceuticals, or you take your nutraceuticals, your vitamins, your minerals, your herbs, you intermittent fast, you eat a vegan diet, you do anything you can to get the body back so that it's using more energy for growth and repair. So for some people, digestion consumes more energy than the process makes, right? Really? So they're in a state of constant diminishing returns, right? So when the autonomic nervous system's out of balance and the digestive system is perceiving that there's a threat and danger all the time in the outer world, the person's living in fear, it's not a time to digest, right? So that system is compromised, right?

• 45:49Joe Dispenza?

  So then they become very sensitized to the foods they consume because the response constantly from the environment is weakening the organism, right? So they're victim to the environment, so they're more susceptible to have food allergies or whatever it is. So then the person then goes to a diet where they consume less foods that require more energy to break down. So it's like taking a camel in a desert that's fallen and lifting all the packs off it, getting it back up, and then slowly adding the packs back on, right? So people do things to get the body back into chemical balance, and sometimes we're refining or changing their diet in some way, and there's thousands of options for that, and you gotta feel good about it, and you gotta believe in it.

• 46:34Joe Dispenza?

  But the big factor is emotional stress.

• 46:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:39Joe Dispenza?

  Really, for the most part, seventy-five to ninety percent of every person that walks into a healthcare facility in the Western world, walks in because of psychological or emotional stress.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:50Joe Dispenza?

  Pretty much four out of five people, what's really causing their health condition is that they're emotionally stressed and emotionally out of balance. Okay, so what are the emotions that are connected to the stress hormones? It's anger, it's hatred, it's violence, it's frustration, it's competition, it's control, it's judgment, it's envy, it's jealousy, it's insecurity, it's fear, it's anxiety, it's worry, it's angst, it's hopelessness, it's powerlessness, it's guilt, it's shame, it's unworthiness, you know? And psychology calls these normal human states of consciousness. These are altered states of consciousness. So our response to someone or something in our environment, or our response to our

• 47:34Joe Dispenza?

  own thought, an image of what could happen in the future, a memory of the past, could actually cause chemicals to be secreted from the brain.

• 47:44Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 47:45Joe Dispenza?

  That causes the body to actually believe it's living in that same environment of fear or danger, right?

• 47:52Lewis Howes?

  So what am I hearing you say there? Just so I'm correct. We can think of thought of our past memory, whether it's true or not what happened.

• 48:02Joe Dispenza?

  A memory, exactly.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  A memory of something that we think happened. It may have happened, it may have been something that we continue to make up that happened, right? A memory.

• 48:11Joe Dispenza?

  Fifty percent of that is a lie, so yeah, more than likely.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  Fifty percent of our memories are lies.

• 48:16Joe Dispenza?

  Yeah, they're not the truth.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Or they're expanded into something else, right?

• 48:20Joe Dispenza?

  They're embellished.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  They're embellished. So we can think of a memory, a painful memory, and we can hold on to that thought, or we can think about something we're worried about in the future that hasn't happened, may never happen.

• 48:29Joe Dispenza?

  We can pick some worst-case scenario and obsess about it.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  And we can obsess about it, and just the thought alone could create an emotion that could make us sick? Is that what I'm hearing?

• 48:38Joe Dispenza?

  Yeah, because...

• 48:40Joe Dispenza?

  That thought, when you're seeing that thought in your mind or remembering that image, it's the image and the emotion, it's the thought and the feeling, it's the stimulus and response that's immediately conditioning the body into that state of imbalance. So it's a scientific fact that the long-term effects of the hormones of stress push the genetic buttons and create disease. If you can turn on that stress response just by thought alone, your thoughts are literally gonna make you sick, okay? Crazy. So that's the greatest example of the mind-body connection. So the next fundamental question is, okay, if our thoughts can make us sick, is it possible that my thoughts could make me well? Well, if that's the case then, then I'm gonna have to manage my attention

• 49:22Joe Dispenza?

  and I'm gonna have to manage my energy, because where I place my attention is where I place my energy. And I'm gonna have to inhibit that thought that has conditioned the body to subconsciously be the mind of that emotion. And the body's so objective that it does not know the difference between the real-life experience that's creating that emotion and the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone. To the body, it's exactly the same. So the body's believing it's being chased by a predator. The body's believing it's in an offensive situation where it has to attack. The body's believing it's constantly needing to be ready and it's constantly out of homeostasis, it's constantly out of balance. It's in emergency, it's in fight or flight, it's a different system

• 50:05Joe Dispenza?

  in the autonomic nervous system where you're stepping on the gas, where you're mobilizing enormous amounts of energy for some threat, some danger, real or imagined. But that thought and the feeling, the image, the emotion, the stimulus response is conditioning the body to automatically be the mind of that emotion. So then, now the body becomes conditioned and addicted. Now, this gets to be a problem because people get addicted to their own thoughts. It becomes their personality, right? It is their identity. And they become addicted to the life they don't even like. Because their response to the coworker, to the boss, to the ex is actually giving them a rush of energy, a rush of adrenaline, and they're associating that rush of energy with some problem or condition in their life. And now come time to change.

• 50:49Joe Dispenza?

  And manage your attention and manage your emotion. It's no different than breaking addiction to anything. There's cravings. The body, the body wants to return back to how it's been conditioned into the familiar past, into the known.

• 51:04Lewis Howes?

  Even if it's uncomfortable, painful and a horrific feeling, we, why do we go back into that feeling?

• 51:10Joe Dispenza?

  Because we don't believe there's anything in the future. If we knew that the best way to create a future really is to change your state of being. Then, then you would have to manage your attention on that thought and have to say, is this thought actually the truth? And how long am I going to keep thinking this thought? And firing and wiring that circuit in the brain. So there's biology because now it's an automatic program. It's a belief. A belief is just a thought you keep thinking over and over again until it becomes subconscious or unconscious. So to change then is become so conscious of that unconscious thought, that unconscious belief that it wouldn't slip by your awareness. A notice and checked and now the body's in rehab. Because it's overdosed and it's been on a bad trip.

• 51:52Joe Dispenza?

  And the body, which has been conditioned to be the mind is 95% of who we are, right? By the time we're in the middle of our life. So there's David and Goliath. And the body's just saying, look, you think you've been making all your decisions your whole life. Actually, you haven't. The body has been making these decisions because it's the mind. So then the body says, okay. Lewis, this is really good that you want to be kind and compassionate.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  That's not who you've been for 30, 40 years.

• 52:18Joe Dispenza?

  The body says, let me just send some thoughts or some memories of the past. That are going to just cause you to feel that emotion. So the, the body starts saying to the mind, you can't, it's too hard, you'll never change. This is too uncomfortable. I don't like this. Go back to make the same choice, do the same thing, create the same experience, feel the same emotion. So you can return back to the known and that's how people seamlessly return back to that same identity. So. Back to the concept of health. Physical balance, okay, let's talk about that. What do you want to do? Intermittent

• 52:57Joe Dispenza?

  interval training, you want to do yoga, you want to do Pilates, you want to do sprinting, you want to do running, you want to do weights, whatever it is. Get your body more physically balanced and physical balance has to do with strength, flexibility and endurance. And get those three in balance, right? So you want to do acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, whatever it is that you want to treat your body to, to honor it in that way. Get it back into physical balance and there's no doubt in any, in any one of these areas, you're going to have to stretch yourself outside of what you think you can do. Cause that's the only way you're going to change.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:40Joe Dispenza?

  So just when you think you've had enough, then go a little bit more. Stretch yourself out that way without hurting yourself, but do it with intention. Do it with assigning meaning to why you're doing that activity. Get the greatest value out of it, works better when you do.

• 53:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:54Joe Dispenza?

  Don't resist and get into it. Face off with whatever it is, the pain, the limitation, whatever, and just mark your progress and have it be something that you mindfully want to improve on. Do that and your body will get stronger, get more flexible and have more endurance. Okay, so

• 54:11Joe Dispenza?

  take care of your body chemically, you know, get a blood test.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:15Joe Dispenza?

  I don't know, do, do whatever you need to do to get it chemically back in the balance. If you're, if you're having these symptoms, then you're going to have to maybe start eliminating certain things and making different choices. Does that mean that stuff is bad? No, it means you're out of balance and it's bad for you. And don't make it a thing like you have to do it forever. Just understand why you're doing it. So take your nutrients and your vitamins and your minerals and understand why you're taking those things and do that with the intention.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:42Joe Dispenza?

  Put a meaning behind it, you'll get a greater outcome.

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  But it sounds like if you take care of the physical and you take care of the chemical. You still might feel or be sick if you don't take care of the emotional.

• 54:54Joe Dispenza?

  That's exactly where I'm going. So get those two in order.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  But you can do all the right things and still feel stressed and still feel sick.

• 55:01Joe Dispenza?

  No, listen.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Still feel like my brain and my body is not working and I feel exhausted and I feel drained, right?

• 55:06Joe Dispenza?

  Right, because your response to the environment and response to your own thoughts is weakening the organism. You're squandering energy. Okay, so do all the physical things. Do all the chemical things, but be controlling, rigid, judgmental, self-judgmental. You know, get really over focused on your food and get really over focused on everything. But you're controlling everything in your life and you're living in fear.

• 55:30Joe Dispenza?

  None of this is going to make much of a difference until you get your body back into homeostasis and balance emotionally. Right? So, so why? Because the moment you return back to this same emotion, your body's so objective, it's believing it's living in the same past experience. And you will behave as if you're in the past and you will think as if you're in the past. And you're literally living your life from the past. And that's the way it is. And so it takes crisis, it takes trauma, it takes disease, diagnosis, loss, betrayal. So for people to finally go, I've had enough, right? Why wait? You know? So you do the organic diet, you do the intermittent fasting, you do the vegan, you do the gluten free, you do the keto. You do your exercise.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  Supplements, everything.

• 56:16Joe Dispenza?

  But you're just controlling and rigid. You are going to take the signal to your cell, which is fear, and make organic fear proteins. That's what you're gonna make. And I have no, listen, I take care of my body, I exercise, I eat well, I make great choices. But I know that if this component, then, and we have case histories of people that have healed themselves of ALS, of lupus, of cancer, that complete reverse, Parkinson's, complete reversal of their health condition. One person in one hour got bad news. In one hour, all of her symptoms came back. She's went right back to the same emotion signal, the same gene.

• 57:01Joe Dispenza?

  If the environment signals the gene according to epigenetics, and the end product of an experience in the environment is an emotion.

• 57:09Joe Dispenza?

  And it makes sense then, as long as you feel that emotion, you're signaling the same gene and your body's believing it's living in the same environment. Seamlessly, you'll return back to the same health condition because you'll up-regulate the genes and down-regulate genes and you'll move your body back out of balance. And, and as I said seamlessly, the condition in one hour came back, she couldn't get out of her car. She said, "If I did it once, I could do it again." She just reversed the process and the second time she was able to do it again. She learned that nobody or nothing is worth it, justified or not. The only person we're hurting is ourselves, okay? So self-regulation, getting your autonomic nervous system back into balance and homeostasis

• 57:55Joe Dispenza?

  is going to require then breaking the addiction to those emotions. And those emotions that are driving certain behaviors and thoughts that cause a person in an instant to say, "I want to be healthy, I want to live for a long period of time." And then they go back to making the same choice because they return to the same emotion. And now they're back in the past. And, and-

• 58:18Lewis Howes?

  It's like you're fighting against what you really want, what you say you want-

• 58:21Joe Dispenza?

  Right.

• 58:21Lewis Howes?

  -by living in this past emotion.

• 58:23Joe Dispenza?

  Because you got 95% programmed, working against 5% of your conscious mind that's saying, "Okay, have the intention." And you could say, "I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm immortal, whatever."

• 58:33Lewis Howes?

  Abundant, yeah.

• 58:34Joe Dispenza?

  Yeah, and your body's saying, "Dude, you're miserable." Dude, that thought never makes it past the brainstem to the body because that's not consistent with the emotion of the body because we only accept, believe and surrender to the thoughts equal to our emotional state. We never accept and believe or surrender to any thoughts that are not equal to our emotional state.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Can you say that one more time so people can fully understand that?

• 58:57Joe Dispenza?

  We only accept, believe and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to our emotional state. We'll never accept, believe and surrender any thoughts that are not equal to your emotional state. So you could say, "I'm abundant, I'm eternal, I'll live forever, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy." And if you're programmed, your body into that emotional state, it's going to say, "You're not that, you're miserable."

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't believe it.

• 59:20Joe Dispenza?

  It only accepts the thoughts of suffering and misery because it's equal to that emotional state. So then here's the fundamental question, okay? Take a person who's- Identity is resentment. Yes. And their identity is anger and frustration and betrayal. Uh huh. And you ask them, "Why are you this way?" And they'll say, "I'm this way because of this event that happened to me 15 years ago." Stronger the emotion we feel from some event, the more altered we feel inside of us, the more that chemical continuity is disrupted from something that surprises us, that alters our state, the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot. That's called a memory, right? But the problem is that we think about that event over and over again after it happens.

• 1:00:02Joe Dispenza?

  We're producing the same chemistry in the brain and body as if the event was occurring. And so the body is conditioned, literally, into the past. So we're living in the past. So a person says, so you say the person's resentful about everything. They're seeing their life through the lens of resentment and frustration and anger, and everything's upsetting them. Well, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You say, "Okay, now it's an addiction, you gotta change that." And the person goes, "Oh, okay, that makes sense." And now you gotta get out of the bleachers on the playing field and say, "Okay, these emotions could literally have something to do with my health." Just saying. If I stop feeling these emotions, what if I start feeling these emotions?

• 1:00:44Joe Dispenza?

  Okay, what would be the emotions that would make me happy? These emotions are making me feel really bad. The memories are making me feel really bad. Can I remember a future? How would I feel if my future could happen? I gotta trade those emotions for different emotions. Well, if I've been practicing feeling these emotions and that conditioned my body and my mind, it's gonna take some time for me to start making different chemistry with the intention of making that chemistry, getting my body back into homeostasis and balance, work on my breath. When I breathe, I change my state, practice breathing, work with your body so it can start to relax, so that it feels safe enough to feel something other than that again.

• 1:01:26Joe Dispenza?

  And if it takes you three weeks, it would be worth it, right? Absolutely. So then, person then starts, "Okay, I don't really know how to feel gratitude." Okay, well, maybe start calling out and giving, and give to people. I promise you, start giving, start feeling grateful. And then start practicing feeling gratitude. Teach your body. Just for 15 minutes a day, what it would like to feel gratitude, what it would be like. And our data shows that you take someone to do that for four days, three times a day. They make a immunoglobulin called immunoglobulin A. It's your body's natural blue shot. It's the greatest immune chemical we have. 50% increase in the subjects we studied in four days.

• 1:02:11Joe Dispenza?

  Immunoglobulin A, up 50% in four days. Where is that chemistry coming from? They're not taking anything, it's coming from within them, right?

• 1:02:20Lewis Howes?

  No supplements, no injections, no topicals.

• 1:02:23Joe Dispenza?

  No, no, just their bodies, their autonomic nervous system is manufacturing a pharmacy of chemicals that's causing an immunity to the body.

• 1:02:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:34Joe Dispenza?

  Right, so now, a person practices feeling gratitude, okay? What is the emotional signature of gratitude? When you receive something, or you just receive something, when something wonderful happened to you, or something wonderful is happening to you, you feel grateful.

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:47Joe Dispenza?

  So the emotional signature of gratitude is something just wonderful happened, or something is happening to me. But you're in a state of receivership. You've just received something, right? So the emotional signature of gratitude is received, right? So now, if you're in a state of gratitude, it makes total sense then, you will accept, believe, and surrender the thoughts that are equal to that emotional state, and you could actually program your autonomic nervous system to make the pharmacy of chemicals that causes growth and repair to happen in the body.

• 1:03:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:03:17Joe Dispenza?

  And that's exactly what we're discovering. So then, when people understand what they're doing, and they understand why they're doing it, the how gets easier. So you can assign meaning to the task and switch on the prefrontal cortex, and when you switch on that prefrontal cortex, it wants to get an outcome. It doesn't want to mess around, it wants the outcome. You're doing it for the outcome. And that's kind of a strong intention, and a change in energy or an emotional state, and that's changing your state of being. And when you change your state of being like that every day, get ready, because you're going to start having synchronicities, and opportunities, and coincidences, and weird things start happening in your life to prove to you that you're actually the creator of your life, instead of the victim of your life.

• 1:03:59Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Gosh, there's so much I want to unpack here. One of them is... You mentioned something around seventy-five to ninety percent of people go into the doctor's office and it's based on an emotional imbalance that probably causes or influences them to be there, right? They might feel physical pain, but it's based on an emotional state that they've been in for a long time.

• 1:04:19Joe Dispenza?

  And a host of bad choices.

• 1:04:21Lewis Howes?

  A lot of things, yeah, yeah. But a lot of it is emotional as a baseline.

• 1:04:26Joe Dispenza?

  That's exactly correct.

• 1:04:28Lewis Howes?

  You talked about frequency, we talked about emotional signatures, and we talked about identity and personality. When I went to your advanced seven-day experience, when I went there, you had an entire, I don't know, probably a few-hour explanation about frequencies and energies. The highest level frequency where we could be at to allow us to feel more abundant and peaceful and have balance and harmony to lower-level frequencies that are going to cause us to feel more stress and anger and, you know, feel like we're in constant breakdown, right? And the higher the frequency we get to, the more conscious we are, the lower the frequency, the more unconscious we are. Essentially, I'm paraphrasing, you

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  know, hours of research and science that you teach during this. What is the lowest level of emotion that will keep us stuck in a non-receivership, a non-abundant mentality and state, and a place of pain versus the highest level of emotion that we can be in more frequently that will allow us to feel more peace and in harmony in our health, but also in our life? What are those two opposite emotions?

• 1:05:41Joe Dispenza?

  Okay, I just want to finish the last thought about physical, chemical, and emotional stress. I know I want to answer that. So if you're truly interested then in sustaining homeostasis and balance, then you're going to have to self-regulate.

• 1:06:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:06:02Joe Dispenza?

  And it would be wonderful, and we're working, we have this new program called the Inner Health Coalition, because we've had so many doctors, so many researchers, so many healthcare providers come through our events. Many of them heal themselves from all kinds of health conditions, from spinal cord injuries to stage-four cancers, that really just want to really look to see how this model could actually fit in their clinic. And there's got to be a different conversation that can happen around health because... Chronic health conditions are created from a lifestyle. And if you don't change your lifestyle, nothing is going to change because nothing changes in our life until we change. So then,

• 1:06:48Joe Dispenza?

  if then you would go to a practitioner where you could actually practice brain and heart coherence, which is our formula. Get your brain feeling those elevated emotions, uh, you're, I'm sorry, get your heart feeling those elevated emotions. And then get your brain coherent and do the, do the exercises to get your brain and body back into regulation, into homeostasis. And then the key element is not that you react. I mean, who doesn't react? The question is- You're a pervert, Dr. Joe. You never react, right? The, the question is how long? Right. How long are you going to do that for? I mean, if you keep it going on, then there, it must be an addiction because an addiction is something you think you can't stop.

• 1:07:32Joe Dispenza?

  Or knowing something isn't good for you and you do it anyway. That's when you know you're addicted, right? So, so then get the patient to really work on the emotional states that are keeping them and their body in the past. It's so hard for people, I feel like, right? Yeah, because, because, because up until recently, there haven't been a whole lot of scientifically proven formulas or ways to teach people how to do that. People by nature want to get over their emotional state. They've just been hypnotized. They've been programmed, they've been conditioned into using something outside of them to take away this feeling inside of them. To numb the pain. Yeah, to, to, it's nothing wrong with this. Distract, numb.

• 1:08:17Joe Dispenza?

  But, but you could, you could, you know, you could go watch a movie or you, you could do this, you can do that. You can do, we, do all these different things, go out to dinner, just, just to make the feeling away. But the problem is, the feeling always comes back. You're right. And so now when the person reaches that point where they're saying, nothing's making this feeling go away, this is game time. This is where the person's not responding to texts any longer. Right. They don't want to go to dinner with the same people. They don't want to do the same things. They don't watch the same TV show. They want to get on the computer any longer. This is, this feeling is disturbing. Nothing's making it, no drug, no shopping spree, no, no sports car. Nothing's making this feeling go away. This is a, this is a key moment, right? Because now the person's going to start to realize

• 1:09:01Joe Dispenza?

  that no one or nothing in their life is going to make this feeling go away but them. Right. And this is the key moment. This is where the person really decides to change. This is the, because they can see themselves for the first time because they no longer feel like themselves. They're no longer distracted by that. They can see how they think. They can notice how they've been acting and decide, oh my God, I don't want to do that anymore. The choices they've made or the experiences they just want to no longer do. And the feelings that they no longer want to feel, right? And they start breaking their emotional agreements with everybody and everything in their life. And people really get worried because they're no longer predictable. They're not showing up as the memory of themselves, right? So what do you do? You medicate them. The person's depressed, you know, their midlife crisis.

• 1:09:46Joe Dispenza?

  But really, it's the soul saying, um, there's a future. And you may not know what it is. You can't go back to that. Right. You just can't go back any longer. You can't, you already know, you can predict everything that's going to happen. You gotta start, you gotta start saying no, or you gotta start looking deeper. You gotta start changing. And this is where, um, it's so important for people then to understand that this is not a bad thing. This is actually a good thing. It just doesn't feel good any longer because you're, you're ready to change, right? So this is what we should be naturally doing. So when the person says, oh my God, I want to feel something else in my life than this.

• 1:10:28Joe Dispenza?

  Okay, I'm going to watch how I respond to my coworker. I'm going to re-watch how I respond to my own thoughts. When did I default today and return back to the old self? Uh, uh, and they get really serious about looking closely at how they can change the way they think, act and feel. And we have so many testimonials of people. That were diagnosed with chronic health conditions and they got themselves in their meditations back into elevated emotional states and changed their energy and changed their frequency. We'll get to that. But then they get up from their meditation and they spend the next fifteen hours in fear and frustration.

• 1:11:09Lewis Howes?

  Why is that though?

• 1:11:10Joe Dispenza?

  Because they went unconscious, they defaulted. So you gotta get so good at doing it with your eyes closed, you gotta start doing it with your eyes open.

• 1:11:17Lewis Howes?

  Oh man.

• 1:11:18Joe Dispenza?

  And that's the big game.

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  The game, that is the game.

• 1:11:20Joe Dispenza?

  That is the game, that is the game, right? Because this is the plane of demonstration, you gotta demonstrate. So you gotta, you gotta start, that's why the walking meditations are so important in our work, because you gotta walk as it. If you're gonna be relaxed in your heart and awaken your brain, you better do it with your eyes open, so let's practice with our eyes. No other way to do it. You wanna get so good at it, that you can do it in the most adverse situations. That's you know and you own it, right? So, so then the person then realized that she had to watch her response to her ex, she had to watch her response to her bank account, she had to watch her response to the news. All of those things, she didn't, no drug, no surgery, no chemo, no radiation, no diet, no supplements were taking her health condition away.

• 1:12:03Joe Dispenza?

  Until she realized I had to change, right? So now she, she noticed doing her meditations, her pain levels went down. She noticed she was sleeping better, she noticed she had more energy, but her values for that health condition were still the same. And she said, it's not that this doesn't work. They weren't, she wasn't doing her meditations any longer to heal. She was doing her meditations to change. And so then she'd say, okay, what do I wanna believe today? What thought do I wanna fire and wire in my brain? Remember it. I gotta keep remembering, so I don't forget to think this way. And a belief is just a thought you keep thinking over and over again. So she wanted to hardwire that in her brain. She wanted that to be a new voice in her head.

• 1:12:38Lewis Howes?

  Because thoughts that wire together.

• 1:12:40Joe Dispenza?

  Fire together and wire together, right? So then, how am I gonna behave? Closing your eyes and rehearsing how you're gonna be with your ex. And literally, there's gotta be another way to be. I can't respond the way I have responded. It's only weakening me. I gotta change my state. Okay, I'm gonna be loving. We rehearse it. Mental rehearsal. When you keep doing it, rehearsing yourself in the scene, planning your behaviors, your brain will look like you already did it. And if you keep doing it, it's gonna become more automatic. It's gonna become like a software program. So the brain looks like the experience has already happened. And now you have hardware and software in place to use when you're with your ex. Because you installed it, right? So now you're doing the meditation to remind yourself who you no longer wanna be and remind yourself who you do wanna be.

• 1:13:25Joe Dispenza?

  So now, okay, the person's now behaves that way. And now her response to her ex is different. Evolution that day. And the body's no longer brought back to the past. And she does it once, and she wants to do it again. She wants to get better at it. And she starts healing. And she says, "I gotta stay in this emotional state. I don't care who it is or what it is. Let me close my eyes. I'm gonna feel this emotion 100 times if I have to. Just so that I can feel it so many times that I can bring it up whenever I want." Now, they're becoming familiar with a new state of being, right? And when you feel the emotion of your future before it happens, you'll always believe in that future. Wow. And if you feel the emotion that keeps you connecting in your past, you'll believe in your past. And that's just the way it is.

• 1:14:07Joe Dispenza?

  And then you return back to the same self, your same biology, thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices, doing the same things, creating the same experiences, feeling the same emotions. And your biology, your neurocircuitry, your neurochemistry, your hormones, your gene expression all stays the same because you just return back to the same. Okay, so we said, seven days. Taking a group of people is what I said to the scientists at University of California, San Diego. Seven days. Biology stays the same this, and they all agreed. I said, "Give people new information. Combine quantum physics with neuroscience, with neuroendocrinology, with psychoneuroimmunology, with epigenetics, with electromagnetism. Build models of understanding. Get people to learn new information. They're gonna have new thoughts."

• 1:14:50Joe Dispenza?

  Now, give them the instruction so they can make a new choice. They can do a new thing. They can create a new experience, they can feel a new emotion. Will their biology change in seven days? Lo and behold, the change way greater than we ever expected. Novice meditators. People who never came to a week-long event, never really meditated that much. The novice meditators.

• 1:15:13Joe Dispenza?

  Seven days, their biology at the end of seven days looked like they were living in a whole new life. And it wasn't, you know, 20% or 10%, it was the majority of the collective. Now, all of those people have different genomes, different genotypes. And they're all different cultures, different races, different ages. But when we look at the biology of gene expression, they're signaling the same genes. They're making the same proteins, the collective, the herd, the flock.

• 1:15:47Joe Dispenza?

  The school of fish, there is an emergent biology that's changing collectively. The probability of that happening is insanely minimal. Let me just say that. So then, think differently, make a different choice, do a different thing, create a new experience, feel a new emotion, keep doing that. Your biology will change, and that's exactly how people heal. So, the emotions that keep us, I would say, in our more limited animal, mammalian, human state, have everything to do with anger and aggression, fear and anxiety, and suffering and pain and guilt and shame.

• 1:16:27Joe Dispenza?

  And, you know, our resentment, all of those, those are, think of, think of energy as emotion. So those emotions should ultimately be retired as wisdom. Because the memory without the emotional charge is wisdom, and now the game is over and you're ready for a new experience. And you can't go to the future, holding on to the emotion of the past, right? So you've got to overcome that emotional state. So then, you start feeling gratitude, you start feeling more gratitude, you start feeling love, you start feeling more love, you start feeling kindness, you start feeling care, you start feeling appreciation, you start feeling creative, you start feeling inspired. You practice feeling those emotions, and you get that heart of yours back into balance.

• 1:17:13Joe Dispenza?

  We discovered that once energy makes it to the heart, it's going right to the brain. And it's going to go straight up, and it's going to tell the brain, in that moment, the heart is the creative center. It's safe to create.

• 1:17:25Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:18:09Lewis Howes?

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