The CUTTING EDGE of Neuroscience w/ Dr. Caroline Leaf

I do a lot of brain studying I've always you know subconscious and unconscious mind the conscious mind I've never heard that non-conscious mind before wow okay and then you can look at mind as different layers you've got your conscious mind operating right now we're awake driving us those are non-conscious no and not unconscious unconscious is when you're asleep non-conscious is the most intelligent part of us it's the biggest part of our Humanity a lot of people will think of that as being your spiritual level and then your conscious being your soul level all the experiences that you've ever had and been exposed to every single experience has been wired into the brain by your mind and as a physical treat I have a very good friend I've been thinking about the entire interview who has a child that's just really had chronic struggles with mental health issues what we all need is to feel empowered and not to feel that there's something wrong with us we also need to help our children develop psychological immunity so not just the immune system and then allowing a child a space no matter what they say to you no judgment no compassion but saying listen I see how you're showing up I validate I recognize let's work through this together here's a system that's scientific that we can work to together and the key is empowerment you have to get a person empowered to change their relationship with themselves and when that happens that's when the growth comes welcome back to the show everybody I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant oh sweet it's just true and she is always the smartest person in the room and never feels the need to prove it to you and that's the real definition of humility and Brilliance combined she's a cognitive neuroscientist and a true mental health expert and her Works made a huge impact in my life the last time she was on the show you guys went crazy because of how detailed her messaging is and her content is and so Dr Caroline Leaf thank you for being here today oh AIDS thank you so much for that lovely introduction I'm very I'm very very flattered very honored thank you and I love talking to you it's always just you're an amazing interview thank you pull the best out of me well I love listening to you she also has a new book out that you can pre-order right now depending on when you listen to it but you can border it at any time but how to help your child clean up their mental mess a guide to building resilience and managing mental health wow is that a timely book so let's start with some foundational stuff first what's the neuro cycle just so we set the stage for everybody kind of foundational part of your work right now absolutely well it is based on 38 years of research and I still do research finding ways to help people to manage their mind to drive the neuroplasticity of their brain in the right direction so that they can ensure up in life how they want to that's probably the most simple explanation so it's a system that helps you really get your mind where you want it to get your brain and body and your life where you want it does it help change their thoughts it changes your thoughts completely it basically helps you find the thoughts that are the things that are holding you back intrusive thoughts that are actually your best friend because it helps you find the intrusive thoughts that are making you feel whatever in your life from the traumas to the day-to-day struggles and it helps you deconstruct and reconstruct them so that they don't influence your future in the wrong way so you can decide how you want to use what you've gone through to help you in your future oh my goodness all right this is going to go deep here we go you guys I'm going to give you the stuff I always wanted to ask you that I didn't get to ask you before what is a thought that's one of my favorite questions so I've got some props here to show us I've got a green tree and a little toxic looking tree and these are basically great analogies for what a thought is so thought is a cluster of information it's a cluster of memories and two types of Memories One are the source memories like the roots of a plant okay which starts the plant growing and then the others are what you call interpretation memories which we could say are the branches of the of of the roots so what happens is when you when an experience begins like for example people listening to this conversation as you introduce me that's like a seed in the ground and then as I'm talking and reconversing that's information that's coming at them and going into the root memories because it's the source of the conversation while we're having this conversation and giving information to the listeners and they're growing The Roots because it's a good this is good information so if you hold up the green the green tree that is they are then interpreting what I'm saying according to their own unique way of thinking and feeling and choosing how the mind works because that's all this is all mind stuff not brain stuff this is mind stuff and then the mind is then you you basically your mind interprets what what you have heard in the root system into how you understand it so the branches are Branch memories or interpretation memories of what you've heard so I'm saying stuff about mental health and thoughts and whatever that's going into the root system but each person listening including yourself is interpreting this in their own way to unders to get their own understanding and having its own unique impact and then this will show up this information will show up in what they say and do and feel their life how they show up in their life so thought's a real thing that occupies mental real estate so I've got a model of a brain here okay so with our minds we are processing this information into the roots and whatever and but it's it's basically gravitational fields and electromagnetic light waves and auditory sound waves and to all this gravitational feel all these fancy physics things that then are which and then a sort of psychological mixing of all that physical stuff which then goes into the brain so the Mind uses the brain it needs a substrate within which to plant The Experience plant the tree so it takes the symptoms we are we with our mind put this into the brain the brain then responds and this is wired into the brain and that activates the different parts of the brain so that's why we say it takes up occupies mental real estate when you look at the brain as somebody who's struggling with a mental health issue which by the way that's a pretty broad term it is right it's really broad term but you mean you look at the brain of someone who really struggles with depression let's say are there parts of their brain that function differently is it a blood flow issue is it a is it a wiring over time of the neural Connections in their brain where they've just wired this thought and it's got coated with this myelin or what do their brains actually physically look differently when you when you observe them so these two parts to that answer first of all it's an excellent question the first part of that answer is that your brain will change based on your experience so it's not about us it's about us in the world you cannot divorce a human from the experience that they have and what it does in the brain is it their experience DR leaf or their their takeaway or belief or story they tell them so it's a combination it's layers so the experience happens our conversation could be the experience that's then processed by the mind which is this field all around and through us and you date your mind's not working so that's an easy way to understand mine because people say what is mind mind is you're pretty much your aliveness your ability to process experience think you'll choose can I ask this there's no specific location definitive location to the mind then correct in mind from what we understand on a and from thousands of years of sort of looking at it spiritually and then also 150 years of modern science especially in the last few years mind can be seen as a biofield and it's got a very as a biofield in terms of gravitational fields quantum physics linking in with space-time linking in was you know all those complex Concepts and then it has it it needs mind needs a substrate it needs something physical that it can actually connect with and then then you show up as as you know the combination of mind and brain the physical substrate then show up is how you function so I mean we're going to quite heavy science here so I'm trying to make it as simple as possible so stop me at any point okay I want to stop your problems you are a person of Faith also one of the reasons I love you is it's it's rare to meet someone who's so scientific that's also very faith-based you you truly are and I had someone on my Show's his name is John Gordon he says uh he said to me there is no uh mind there's just the soul so you called it an electrical field so I don't know that there's that big of a distinction would you do you subscribe to that belief system that that the soul has energy and so therefore the subconscious mind or the Mind rather the mind is this energy field that you're describing absolutely so it's look at it in different layers let's think of what mind is let's break down mind mine is an ancient tomb for the people we could use it for spirit and soul so think of Mind spirit and soul as basically the same thing wow okay and then you can look at mind has different layers you've got your conscious mind operating right now we're awake driving us those are non-conscious no in not unconscious unconscious is when you're asleep it's a brain a state versus Ace versus a mind state so non-conscious is the most intelligent part of us it's the non-consciousness because I was going to ask you about it yeah so the none so minus three minus three levels conscious non-conscious non-conscious operates 24 7 super intelligent never stops it's on our side it's the big thing it's the biggest part of our Humanity a lot of people will think of that as being your spiritual level and then your conscious being your soul level if you want to sort of hook things with these different ways of looking at it scientifically I talk about the non-conscious and the conscious and then in between the subconscious which is a bridge and then unconscious which is used very incorrectly most of the time basically as I said when we sleep or knocked out to under anesthetic so you've done something with the the way that the brain's functioning well in a person's alive to put them in an unconscious state but the real stuff of Life all the experiences that you've ever had and been exposed to from a from us whatever time whatever we know whether it's just sort of late in the womb to where we're at now every single experience has been wired into the brain by your mind and as a physical tree so the mind has got these three levels and those conscious subconscious and unconscious are like you can look at them from a psychological perspective in that we are humans and we thinking feeling communicating understanding all that appreciating a rainbow love Etc all that's how our mind is experienced on a psychological level but behind the scenes it's all gravitational fields electromagnetic light waves Quantum energy space-time energy aromatic rings I mean I can go all the way down to into Einstein's base time Dimension and all that stuff and so these are we can and really start explaining mind and it's considered the hard question of Science and I never understand really why because it's the most obvious question of science because the fact that you and I can have this conversation and talk about these things as our mind in action it's our minds working our minds working it's a really good one like this there's an energy connections exactly there's an energy connection to tell you so I do a lot of brain studying I've always you know subconscious and unconscious mind the conscious mind I've never heard that non-conscious mind before and so it's one of the things in your book that like really fascinated me I want to get a little bit granular um because I asked you about those brains yes and you need to answer that question you're part of the part of the book you say there's warning signals so when you look at a brain is there an issue with someone that's got these mental health conditions and what are warning signals excellent questions so that kind of wraps up that question you ask me does can you see a depressed brain okay so first of all our current biomedical model will say you depressed because your brain looks like that that's back to front you're not depressed because your brain made you depressed your brain can't make you do anything your brain can only respond to what your mind is doing so the first step is mind then brain then body then how you show up in life so that's the order we've kind of got it back to front and the science actually shows the order that I'm depict is saying mind brain body how you show up is actually what science is actually saying is the correct thing saying brain produces mind is has been disproved you can't do that because then it's a simple um thought experiment if I had to take your brain out your head right now which I promise I won't do it and hold it I'm sure it's very big I need this you've got a big brain she has brainy there you go you've got to live rainy little um if I was holding up a dead brain a person's Dead brain now we could stare at it all day and do every kind of experiment Under the Sun it will never produce mind it will never produce a response to you and I it will never produce thoughts it's just basically already disintegrating so what is the difference between that and you and me it's our life force whatever you want to call it mind so mind is a very all-encompassing concept that makes us human so when you look at it like that we go through things and things like trauma and think of a scale of one to ten with one two three being the day-to-day irritations like traffic in LA and then you've got your real big traumas of eight nine and ten which are your abuses and bullying and War and you know that accept excessive things that are bad that happen to people and then you've got the in-between so if you look at that scale those are experiences that we have and we are wiring those experiences into our brain as these trees all day long so the different levels so if we have a traumatic experience like let's say this persistent childhood trauma each time that happens that experience has been wired in by the Mind 95 and unconsciously five percent consciously into this root this tree form now notice I'm holding up the toxic tree so the experience all the data all the memories all the bits and pieces of the experience each abusive event each word that's spoken each physical whatever it is is wired in here this is the processing by the person into the interpretation how they see themselves how they're coping the things they're saying about themselves how they see people how they see like all of that's in here now that gets wide into the bone as that's wiring into the brain each experience adding more memories more interpretation memories and so both as it's in the brain physically the brain very fast then also stores it creates a mind brain connection then creates a memory inside the body so every cell of our body and we have 37 to 100 trillion cells also stores a version of this memory inside our DNA so we've that's why we have mind brain body the mind is embodied so our brain responds our body responds to Life's experiences okay and I'll make a distinction between brain brain tumors and traumatic brain injuries and CTE and that kind of stuff in a moment but so essentially a child is having repeated I'm just going to use that as an example issue repeated issues this is getting they're getting bigger and bigger the immune system of the brain is designed to support and help us and it receives a psychological event in the same way as it would see something like covert virus both protein structures so this thought tree that builds in the brain isn't some fictional Eerie Theory thing that energy of the experience and the psychology of the experience all make protein tree-like structures and the detail of the experience each abuse is inside little proteins as vibrations and aromatic rings and all this fancy stuff which then clustered together to make branches and these are the dendrites and this whole cluster we can actually talk about as being a deemed right this whole tree thing so in other words the toxic abuse is as real as a covert virus just for argument's sake people don't think of it like that so thoughts are real and there goes to your first question so they either put them brain then recognizes this the immune system of the brain says this is an evader I need to do something so it sends out immune factors is like it would do with a pathogen like covert virus and it creates inflammation and the idea is that your body would read this and create a defense system and try and fight this but and and if the covert virus is inside you can kind of do that in isolate a biological component because that's it but this is connected to the source so if the source hasn't been disconnected if the abuse is still continuing or if a person let's say the abuse has stopped but the person's never dealt with this this doesn't go away so that then creates a hyper immune response and that increases the vulnerability of the brain and the body to disease okay so the I wonder what Solutions you talk about brain preparation and um some other things we'll talk about in a second so there's the repeated uh if there's trauma repeated trauma it's that wires it deeper is is the because you're saying every you said every experience is stored yes so it is a higher emotional charge to an experience store it differently or it's easier to recall than a normal so we're having an experience where I just open that door right now that's an experience you're saying that's stored somewhere that would be different than if I opened that door and someone put a gun right to my face absolutely okay so how's that different so it's going to look like if you look at this tree over here this is one size so the more chat the more um traumatic the experience the bigger the uglier the more distorted the proteins fold differently all the chemical imbalances wrong the whole thing's chaotic okay but it's real and alive so obviously the bigger you quite right the gun versus just the door open it's bigger what if it's a good experience same thing same story exactly so it's exactly the same thing and this is the this is the we want to detox we want to deconstruct those but we want to build these so we want to spend as much time if you have a like if I recall our conversation once we go from here and I think of my great conversation with you I'm going to work on that for three or four minutes I'm going to think about that great conversation how amazing you are and that is now building my resilience because I now grow something good got it so the emotional charge causes you to do the repetition that you would have got on the repeated trauma so it's the repetition of something that's giving it the an organized repetition yes so you and when you repeat when you do that repetition if you do it in that neural cycle you then create a very stabilized change so here I'm going to increase my resilience got it and I can use that to fight these so the more of these I have the more I can deal with these because we've all got some of us have got more than eight nines and tens and others unfortunately because of circumstances but we've all got these we've all got things in our life and we all will have there'll be death and there'll be sickness and they'll be whatever so yeah so talking about the now the brain a person who's suffering extreme depression take the example of their child is repeatedly abused and they've hit adolescence or even childhood at whatever level and they're showing signs of withdrawal of of depression of anxiety those aren't illnesses those are warning signals now remember you asked me a few moments ago what are the warning signals so what will happen is that our non-conscious mind will find these push them through the subconscious to make you aware of them the way to fix them is consciously and deliberately and intentionally face these because the awareness of these will then weaken them these toxic thoughts and finding the source you can then you can't change what's happened to you but you can change and put plant food on for whatever I tell the kids you can put plant food on here and make this healthy route this route healthy again so that this shrinks into just a little shrivel branch and you grow a nice healthy version over there okay so that's the process of we can't change your story but we can change how it plays out into the future so swinging back to your first question yeah completely but the question about the depression what does this look like in the brain well when we look in the brain we will see an impact of this experience so when we've got the hyper immune response and this weird looking thing with all these things going proteins folded incorrectly and so on that creates it changes the energy in the brain and we see that in A disruption of Alpha Delta beta gamma Theta all the different waves that you want to flow the easiest way to understand this is just think of the waves on the beach okay they flow they build they crash on the beach they go back and they have different sizes but that's kind of how the normal wave but when we have a tsunami things have gone wrong you know so that's so this creates a tsunami in the brain and that looks different for every person and a consistent and persistent tsunami of energy in the brain and consistent persistent hyper immune response consistent chronic keeping of this thing over there eventually disrupts all systems in the brain and the body and we start it's affects neurochemistry the blood clot everything and eventually atrophy of cells Etc so we're not looking at this as the cause we're looking at this as the impact okay of life's experiences and so and it's different for every person and as a person starts dealing with the stuff we can then see healing come back we can see the tsunami get under control the hyper immune response the lowering of inflammation in the body and all these things we see change and that's what I've shown in my research we just actually published a paper this I've got five coming out this year we just published one recently showing how the extreme trauma with mind management with the neurocycle which is managing your mind which is finding these things through the signals and Recon you know Healing The Roots reconstructing deconstructing you can improve your management of this issue change how it plays out into a future in nine week Cycles you said that so it is uh 63 days you say yes so part of part of what I've done is to look at how long is it going to take me to do this right to change it and to to create a behavior change that will actually last in my life that I can still be sad and try and be depressed and anxious but not to the point where it actually works for me where it's a normal reaction where I'm just grieving of something in my past but it's not affecting my life functioning it's it's giving me a moment of honoring what I went through having that good reaction of you know the right balance of sort of being anxious and depressed about this but then not getting stuck then moving forward that is going to take you cycles of at least 63 to 66 days okay the more complex the trauma the more like the gun that you're healing if you're single that's not going to go away in one cycle that's going to probably take two or three or four sites okay so let's talk about during those 63 days let's get let's do something practical so now we kind of understand what it looks like how it affects how it gets wired all that other stuff so let's be let's let's do strategic stuff now for a second okay so um what is you you wrote this for how to help your child but when I'm reading the work I'm like this helps humans right that's in general but so what is something a strategy said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you I'm using my description of it right so I've always said that now I know why yes okay what is something a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their child or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do okay so what you do is you do the five steps of the newer cycle because what I did was strategically look over the years at how can you actually get find the signals and do this whole deconstruction reconstruction thing so you can't get in one shot so you what you want to do is do a neurocycle the goat which is five steps and I'm gonna and and I'll go through this in a moment but you're going to do five steps in the sequence the first part of the sequence is the first more or less three weeks where you go through the five steps in around 45 15 to 45 minutes not more and not less then the second 42 days where you're stabilizing you just do it in five minutes so the five steps are basically Gathering awareness and notice I say Gathering okay so it's a very conscious and deliberate it's not like a mindfulness awareness which this is beyond that so when we talk about mindfulness meditation breathing decompression all of those are very important to prepare the brain so what you would do before you dive into the neurocycle and you'll see this in my box and in my app I've got an app as well called the neurocycle these are two to three minute brain preparation which could be anything from focusing on momentum worry to doing a 7310 breathing exercise so it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control then you all could be a meditation a prayer whatever then you move into the actual work and I'm about to slip off this chair then you move into the work it's so into this into the work of gather away in a step one to Gathering awareness is a very specific process everything's very laid your mind brain connection psycho neurobiology mind brain body I'm actually psycho neurobiologist to study that connection is very ordered and sequenced and structured and if you want something to change you've got to follow the steps of the order so the neurocycles are system in that you can put CBT techniques you can put pre you can put whatever works for you but put them in the right step so when we gather awareness we we are gathering Gathering apples off a tree we're not just randomly looking at things you're very organized okay what am I going to get the awareness of my emotions I'm feeling depressed I'm feeling anxious I'm feeling frustrated whatever just just label them what am I what related to that emotion what am I doing what are my behaviors what am I doing what am I saying how am I doing and saying them so maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal then the third thing is you're going to say how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing maybe cardiovascular issues heart palpitating and then fourth category is how am I looking at life in this moment as I feel depressed gut ache and withdrawing I feel that life sucks very simple example those are four signals so you'd go Step One is together those four step two is to ask why okay a little deeper why am I feeling these emotions now you're not solving the whole problem don't try and solve it in one day just go as much as you can handle it's very draining so that's why I say limit so it's why am I having this maybe I'm having this depression I seem to be having it because of um it's happening a lot I'm not sure why but it's happening five times a day or chilling what's happening once a week oh if it is once a week am I having the same behaviors why am I getting that why am I doing that withdrawing how often am I doing what other things am I doing why do I think I'm doing that so you work through each of those signals and try and get some more don't stay too long on those two steps and then you write now you don't Journal you write you dump you literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on because the first step was to get the awareness the Second Step was to do this reflection thing and then you dump it down on and literally remind them just write it all over the page I've developed a system called the metacog and the kids it's the bubble Cog and it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree so it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows and everything's connected everything's either on a line in a bubble if you don't like doing that just write any old way but try to write dimensionally don't do it in lines try and just put it all over the page because it brings in forces the two sides of the brain to work together creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious through the bridge of the subconscious yeah and it starts diving deep I mean it's like I can tell you now that when I work with patients that who had symptoms of schizophrenia the extreme example but just to show you how well this works we would have them just basically met a cog out what all these steps I'm going through and they would have one whole personality on this side and they're continuing the same conversation in another Hall so you'd see the shift and then we could show them hey look what's going on and from there we could unpack and find roots and things like that so it's phenomenal in getting Insight now you spoke about introspection early on introspection Insight it means diving into the depths of the non-conscious that's the most intelligent step one reflect step two writing step three you're bringing order out of chaos you're getting those three steps of taking deeper deeper deeper getting increasing your introspection inside pulling up things that are associated now that is things all over the page a lot of it won't make sense things may shock you that come out day one not really but as you progress through the days more and more will come up and like for example around day seven people start saying I never saw this connection um they're 14 uh like inside insight into oh that's associated with that I didn't see that this is why I'm doing this so there's tremendous growth if you don't force it you just go through the cycle I think during that awareness and the writing and that you are uncovering some of the things that may trigger you as well totally so it's step four excellent questions step four is what looking at what you've gathered awareness reflected on and written you look what are my triggers what are the patterns this has happened what can I do so step four is moving towards reconceptualization reconstruction healing putting food on the plant food on the roots to heal them it's leading to that acceptance you're not going to know why someone raped a child why someone did this that's their story but that's your story so you need to find out I'm not crazy I don't have a broken brain I'm not genetically fooled I don't have a mental illness I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me I can't answer why I have to get to a certain level of acceptance but at least I know why it's not me it's because of and that helps you heal and move forward so it's very Progressive it's not walking in circles round and around and around you know this is where you can bring in things like these all psychodynamic Theory and acid there's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these because this is a system yeah into these spaces what's the fifth step the fifth step is an action active reach so you're going to from the triggers and and things like that you want to move towards an antidote for today and action for today so what can I do today to keep me in a safe space I've done the work for today I'm not going to fall back into working on this anyway I've got to get going through the day and also your brain and mind need a rest you're not they get tired so it's an action it's like a visualization a statement a combination a little pray an affirmation a so this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique like maybe a little visualization exercise or a so it's something that you do and say maybe something as simple as I can do this I don't know how and then visualize a rainbow I mean it could be something as simple as that to an actual little technique or it could be a breathing technique so it's an action that keeps you going through the day which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing so you're removing energy from this thing because this process has brought this from the non-conscious to the conscious and it's weakened these branches in the non-conscious strong in driving in the when the non-conscious and conscious are working together then this is weakened the protein branches the chemicals so I can start restructuring and reorganizing what I'm thinking when you're doing this because this applies to two different people so everybody stay in here okay so those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain the other part of me listening to this is if you're um thinking I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry depression I also think that's the formula to create a change like if I had a goal in ambition I'd become aware of what I wanted right I'd have all these Reflections about it I would then write about it so and I like the idea of it not being linear like a book but actually all over the place so there'd be like that's almost like a dream personal vision board or dream board that you're doing then I'd think about what were the triggers I need to create to generate this state could be snapping my fingers it could be seeing something could be walking into my office it could be getting into my car it could be a particular person so I'd use that trigger to then create that state and then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this right so that that cycle can be used to uncover trauma you know reverse trauma create brain health but can also be a creative process in order to change your life so you are brilliant because that's exactly where I started my research 38 years ago with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life they just right and it's called brain building so it's the neurocycline that was the first iteration of the things to develop brain building so it was helping kids learn so getting data in as opposed to deconstructing sure it was constructing sure so it's taking from the knowledge in education school to learn for an exam or what is the goal in Your Vision so that's the brain building aspect of the neuropsychics this is huge right here I got to tell you something because everyone always wants to create change they're like all right do I get a vision board out like do I so this is a five-step process it actually does it to actually do it and to do it reinforcement and by the way in 63 days exactly you're a different human being totally different I do a thing you're from a visualization techniques I should share this with you and maybe you can speak to why it might work so everyone asks me I don't visualize very well yes you do you just need to get quiet and it's a muscle you build you know when you decide to start visualizing your life it is difficult but one thing I've done is I've created I teach it to a lot of my athletes is I use what I call like a highlight reel technique so what I actually start with is I start I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work but I want you to speak to it I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights so it could be for example you know the birth of my son the birth of my daughter a home run I hit in baseball an award I got a sale that I closed that was important these are things my brain are already familiar with to your point earlier it's already been wired I've already repeated the emotion it's already in there and so I see those things and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar and then I move to what I want so my brain I think begins to think they're one big highlight reel is there any data to prove that that's true meaning I'm already visualizing what I've already something I want I've seen an achievement I've seen an achievement and then I see the one that I want to achieve and for me my brain more easily sees the future when I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past because I think we do that in Reverse so if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life we see this we repeat it over and over and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relationship and that's why people end up dating the same person exactly right exactly okay so I'm jumping out of my cheers with excitement because you've seen exactly the correct thing so what you've just described you mean by said a moment ago if you have I said um I spoke about how I'll pull this conversation because it's a great conversation yes that's what we're talking about here so you are recalling these you're recording those and you're using those to unmask your natural resilience yes exactly so I actually call these insurance policies okay so they literally so when I work with a person to actually be able to build their brain we're building an insurance policy so you should be spending time on doing exactly that so as you do that you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain you're going to the highest level of intelligence you unmask resilience you increase your wisdom you tune into the depths of your non-conscious way intelligence pretty much your intelligence resides because your conscious is basically a Workhorse and it's Guided by your non-conscious so what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non-conscious now your unconscious is genuine is a gentle lady gentleman um and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this growing and keeping you stuck in those so it's on your side but you have to tune in to what's coming up so when you describe when you want to do something difficult you first think of something good what you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non-conscious which is that process you've then called those up you've activated your resilience you've put yourself in a highly intelligent wise State now you're in a state that's more able to cope with it so when I work with a patient for example I would never start with that I would say okay let's talk about you know your favorite moments or your tell me a story about tell me a great movie Yes you know let's talk about a great book anything and then we would focus on that when they were in that state I knew that I had got their mind brain connection their psycho and you're about like I feel like thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create exactly what you do this yes you have you've changed all the flow you've these changed what we they increase gamma which is which is a way that you want to flow okay and when your eyes are open you want like this what we call low gamma across the whole brain okay I mean and then there's certain other patterns I don't want to go into the details and that's got to go into have a certain beta pattern and so on those energy waves when they are flowing in that state they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert to respond and do what they designed to do which then impacts your neurochemistry then your endocrine system your cardio everything then comes together and you are in this Prime state where HPA axis is now on high alert and you now are in the ideal State for the solution fine this is so good you guys this is why I do the show right here so let me just give you this again step one gather awareness step two reflect step three right play draw step four recheck step five active reach which is basically what we've been describing here what about physical movement and brain health and it's not in here but I want to ask you ask you about that I find that my anxiety and depression and concern and worry or angst is often something physically I'm doing I feel like there's a physical nature to it and I have found that when I change my physiology I tend to feel like I've changed maybe maybe your physical body is your unconscious mind I don't know I'll let you answer this but when my body begins to move in a certain way I have found that to be a pathway out of some of the negative emotions that I'm feeling and I'm wondering even with children is part of the mental health issues we're seeing that they're less and less active physically meaning a lot more video gaming right a lot more stuff on their phone a lot more stuff on their Mac or their iPad whereas when I was a kid I'm sure mental health issues were very prevalent but we're outside playing we were playing football we were running around we were running we had there was nothing to do inside right so we were outdoors more and I know that's not really part of what we're talking about here but I'm just getting related is it related it's totally related and part of you'll see in in the in my books in my neurocycle app where all these tips are the nearest cycle if I literally walk you through the process and in the children's book um the active reaches I encourage that physical activity I encourage and you'll see throughout the actual five steps you can bring in the physical activity in different ways so basically your body your mind stores in three places mind which is all around you these gravitational fields and so on brain the trees but in the body in the cells so therefore you that's why we have body memory that's how when you have to call them something that you get your body responds as well so that body response is really important like um for example if you're trying to get your children to talk after school and they don't want to talk and let them have a little rest but go for a walk start doing something and the action activates and releases so it's not that the non-conscious is is the body it's that the non-conscious is operating in the body it's your driving system it's mind driving see an unconscious is the thing that's always using every part of you your mind brain and body are on your side they're all we have this intent this this psychoneurobiological link that is our superpower that literally when we understand how to read it we can move forward so you explained you said that if you feel angst you can feel your body feeling it angst emotional warning signal your body feeling it physical warning signal you you're probably not totally focused initially on your behaviors and your perspective then you move as you move you start unlocking and getting an idea of okay and that's full under the behavioral signal as well then it starts unlocking the others and you start getting into that space where you can work on on going through this process and then you can fit movement in anywhere the reason I feel so big about physical stuff and brain mental health is like take your spouse for a second you think about the moments of your life that you feel the most connected let's just be honest a lot some of it can be your sexual time exactly why what's happening something physicals happening between the two of you um when I want to open up and like with my children or something like that when I really want to get them to talk you're so brilliant because I found you know putting them on the couch or sitting on their bed is okay but if we take a walk it's brilliant we take a walk to your point where we're changing something there um you know even laying on the couch with your spouse watching Netflix when they're actually touching each other and playing on each other compared to when you know they're on one side of the couch and you're on the other there's just there's a deeper connection when something physical is involved exactly the other part of it that you write about in the book that I've never really looked at before and you talk about this particularly with children so the book is written you know Dr Lee's books have been for everybody this one's more specifically guided towards children but really everything right to have parents help parents we have parents and children right but sleep so if you have a child or yourself because I know this is true with me when I'm not sleeping something's not so good with me typically right but it's interesting to me I never thought about sleep when it came to my children if they're not sleeping that's probably an indicator or something so let's talk about sleep and children and even how it relates to each of us individually absolutely well what I've tried to do in this book is to try and find the things that I know are heartbacking topics to try and help parents have a and to teach the nurse cycle in such a way that it's super simple it's very practical whatever so I take areas like trauma sleep Etc and I'm glad you've mentioned the sleep because there's so much scariness around sleep too because you know you go to a doctor one of the first things they'll say about Israel John sleeping are you sleeping and they have to sleep well they're going to die it's not quite quite that extreme you know it's very fear-mongering and yes there is a valid point to sleep sleep is very important and but how many hours of sleep a person should sleep in a day we don't actually know really and also people have different patterns of sleep so this thing that your child must sleep eight hours a day is not necessarily yes exactly but if your child isn't sleeping and there is a persistent pattern of nose of of bad sleep there's something going on that's definitely would be classified under your behavioral warning signals and it's worth investigating and that's why I actually put sleep neurocycles into the book on things there's different ones that you can do because preparing yourself for sleep starts when you wake up in the morning you know it's like when you wake up in the morning the first thing is as the chemistry starts readjusting so that you can become conscious at that moment to train yourself to just how what what are my four signals what am I feeling am I complaining what am I feeling sad am I complaining we'll quickly assist do a quick assessment of your full signals so what are my emotions what am I what's my body doing what are my behaviors In This Moment Like I know I'm lying in bed but in my tense um and what's my perspective I don't want to do today if you can catch that takes you those four things can take you 10 seconds and can really really prepare you for a night's sleep it sets you into it opens your mind that you can actually then face the day so that's one thing you can do I've got a whole thing there that you can do a sleep neural cycle for children as they wake up then if you see there's a pattern of children not sleeping it's to find a time during the day that's a good time either early evening when they've been to school they've had dinner they've played that's sort of a good time to kind of work around but you can you know fine don't do this when they exhausted and then you can do a whole neurocycle to try and work through what the cause could be when we don't sleep the main reason we don't sleep and a lot of people will maybe not agree with me here but the main reason we don't sleep is because we have unresolved issues I sure agree it changes your energy in your brain and your brain all the things the melatonin and all those things because there's so many cases and I actually give a case in the study in the book of a very you know quite a traumatic situation of childhood was abused physically and sexually from three months of age but just could not sleep through the night and they did everything all the sleep aid all this white noise everything you can possibly do and not that those don't work they are definitely going to facilitate and help but the core issue was the child's abuse and what the impact of that although the child was out of that unsafe environment that you had to deal with what was going on and that child was very young so once the parent just happened to come across my stuff and do the neurocycle and the child so like the to the parent doing it and sort of doing it and within four days this child was sleeping now this was an eight-year-old I didn't what they didn't use this book because this book wasn't out yet the child sought the mum was doing sort of change in the mom because if the kids watch us and this was an a joke and said I want to do what you're doing and so she adapted it as best she could and this child started sleeping within four days so the core issue there was a trauma that was unresolved and you said it to yourself I know I do if I've got something that I haven't dealt with or something's worried me or I had that phone call before bed that sits that's it my sleep's gone until I've dealt can I give you one with children that I think absolutely and I know you're such a person a face so I'm going to give you what helps me sleep and it leads to this unresolved stuff and I just want to say this to everybody it's prayer and let me say why so prayer at night is a chance for me to take my burdens and put them on my higher power in my case Jesus but whatever your faith is and I know you're you share my faith and I wonder how many people are praying with their children at night because this is an opportunity for your children to probably open up I think it's an opportunity for them to relieve themselves of their burdens and I have found that when I have really deep beautiful prayer even if it's brief that I sleep better at night because there's a perspective that I get that I'm protected and safe I really wonder that the second thing is I want to ask you about both these so this is for adults but it also affects our children more and more our children are on their screens late at night I know it's just a brain issue so I'm not necessarily trauma but there's all this data about blue screen time and how it's difficult to sleep I don't know if it's accurate or not but I know there's when you're doing homework it's stressful I think people let their children do their homework too late at night and now that's a problem now it's a stressor now it's a trauma also they're on their screen and a lot of these schools put so much homework on their children just being real real system is a problem so when your kids get home from school wouldn't it be smarter to get them a to start doing their homework earlier so they're off of their screens and away from stressful stuff before sleep also true for you as an adult and just prayer I know it's not a major part of what's happening in here but am I right that both of those things would probably make an impact on sleep and maybe then their mental health absolutely you know you you pray if you look at pre in terms of any religion or any philosophy or any belief if people don't even believe in anything it can be seen as a way of just trying to organize yourself yes and fine and then believe that it's um it's not just me there's something more there's this and we know what's common to all mankind and that's love so you know to talk to a child about loveness so you could do a loveness neurocycle you could call it a pre and you recycle whatever you want but you can actually say okay well let's look at what are what am I feeling right now and how why do we think we feel that you could go through the five steps and that's your prayer and your little Act of reach could maybe be in some quote a little scripture it could be a visualization of something whatever but a beautiful quote or something like that so that is basically a form of prayer because you're tuning into an unconscious which is your spirit which is your wisdom which is your and you're teaching a child to do that so yes it is a form of unloading your burdens into either you believe it's Jesus God Loven us whatever I love to talk about godness and loveness because that's something that's relatable to anyone you know so you kind of step into that space and there's so much physics behind this too in quantum physics and science behind how you're collecting the Consciousness and I mean it's just we could talk for another two hours about that so yes totally I do believe that and it'll set your brain waves to a point where your brain can start shifting into sleep mode which will then have a neurochemical effect on the the melatonin and those kinds of things and controlling adrenaline and so it will have it has what I've shown with my work is that when you use mind and specifically the tool of the neurocycle which is mind management and as I said you can put whatever you want in that you are changing your psycho neurobiology so you're changing cortisol levels you're changing homocysteine levels you're changing all the things that can keep you awake you are getting them to the point where that you're dropping changing getting brain balance with the brain waves that kind of stuff so it's real I mean that's very very real I think I've done an interview in like 45 or 50 minutes with more stuff we've done thought trees we've done the neuro cycle we've done the non-conscious Mind we've done you know all of these different things here we've done the Highlight Reel which I kicked in here today if if I was asking I could ask you one more question did you want me to ask this answer the second part of the other question yes yes what was the second part of the other question second part of the question was blue screen oh yes okay bullying social media all that stuff it's immersed Us in stimulation so it's good very good and bad it's all we need to do is teach our kids to manage it that's the key it's not going away so it's not a bad thing if we know how to manage it so it's just finding what works for you and your family in terms of blue screens and all those things there's a lot of science that supports and contradicts the concept listen if a person's worked up it doesn't matter what you do about blue screens they're still going to stay awake so sometimes people if they relax enough and they're watching their film or whatever before they go to sleep it's not going to be an issue it's very much up to the individual it's how we're managing it what you've got to experiment with your child and with yourself and see what works for you okay that's really important so I said by individual aspect but just to bear in mind if we don't manage the emotion that we live in before for example very quick kids would get bullied at school that's not anything new bullying's been around since the difference is it follows them home now it's an immersion versus an experience an immersion experience versus an intermittent experience and when you have that distinction that's what so we have to learn to manage the emotion so I mean I can go for hours about that alone but that kind of get away I would love you to say for hours I would actually love that you know that unfortunately you have somewhere to go I can sit here all day I know I could stay all day chatting to you as well let me ask you one last question because I think people want to know this I have a very good friend I've been thinking about the entire interview who has a child that's just really had chronic struggles with mental health issues over and over to the point where they've done cutting and it's gotten really uh severe and that child probably in my opinion should be more physically active I know they have prayer in their life the neural cycle could be a game changer for them so I can't wait for them to hear this I really really believe the neural cycle could be a game changer and to think that maybe in 63 to a certain amount of days if it's more traumatic you said a little bit longer that someone can create positive and or remove negative things in their life balance the two together when is I guess the last question I would have for today is because it's worth asking when is it time for medication for somebody in their brain is that something that you know I'm You Must Believe In some cases if someone's you know schizophrenic that potentially they need medication or do you believe medication never when does something okay so this step and the risks of doing so okay so loaded question first of all you'll just quickly refer to your friends um childhood self-harming what is the age just very quickly teenager teenager okay so that what they need what we all need is to feel empowered and not to feel that there's something wrong with us and our current biomedical model will say that you've got a broken brain and so that creates a sense of hopelessness we also need to help our children develop psychological immunity so not just immune system like our immune system helps you know we build our immune system you build your muscles and resistance training you've got to build a psychological immunity and what we've taken from our children in a lot of our current models is that ability to say it's okay to be a mess let's work through this mess together so a huge part of my work in the book that I've just released is about you as a parent how to manage your own get your own anymore and model exactly and then allowing a child of space no matter what they say to you no judgment no compassion but saying listen I see how you're showing up I validate I recognize let's work through this together here's a system that's scientific that we can work together and the key Aid is empowerment you you have to get a person empowered to change their relationship with themselves and when that happens that's when the growth comes the cutting the self-harm whether whatever it is alcohol addiction whatever it may be is coming from yes the tourism you can go through all the I bet you that child probably has had so much therapy that they can tell you why they're doing it to a certain extent but to get the change in a person's life it starts with feeling okay I am empowered to do this it's okay to be like this it's not me I'm responding to life circumstances here's a plan for me to be able to move forward and be empowered to actually realize that my brain and my body do it with my mind when I I know my wise man wants it to do so that's a simple answer to that Medicaid a very complex answer but I'm going to do the easiest quickest version up front I'm not telling anyone to stop their medication immediately because of the withdrawal let's make a quick distinction between drugs and medicine medicines are aimed to try and fix a problem like insulin for diabetes we can we can test for diabetes we can find we know there's a biological cause and we've got a drug that's fairly specific to the problem when it comes to what is a child cutting which is a behavior depression perspective of life sucks battling all the things that you describe with your friend's child which is obviously this is very surface what I'm saying but that cluster of things that is not a a brain disease that's going to be fixed by a drug that's not coming from something wrong in the brain and a chemical imbalance the this is coming from some tester of toxic issues and things that that child doesn't know how to process self-cutting for example is so much pain inside yourself that it's too much inside so it's easier to to transfer the pain to The Cutting so that that pain detracts from the internal pain and that's an energy that's no energy is lost it's only transferred so it's transferred energy so we must transfer child's energy into being able to create safe spaces so that they can talk to us as parents not just the therapist but us as parents caregivers people that they trust peers peers are fantastic for supporting and that will help them sort of transfer that energy so a drug is something that like alcohol um cocaine and psychotropics they fall under the same category they're not fixing anything they're not just storing there are drugs they are and a drug is a psychoactive substance so it changes the state of the brain versus a medicine is trying to fix something so antidepressants on fixing a chemical imbalance that's been disproved it's a myth the pillars of Psychiatry that are used to say that you've got a chemical imbalance Etc they're not doing that what they're doing is they are providing temporary relief so if someone is in such a bad state so for example someone's having very extreme delusions and hallucinations which is not a disease of schizophrenia it's schizophrenia symptoms so instead of saying schizophrenia bipolar et cetera as a label or diagnosis which is very unscientific and inaccurate and does this actually does harm researchers shown to the person it doesn't recognize the enormity of what they're going through it's rather let's say they describe it as behaviors because of something huge in their life and let's look at this whole person they don't need a disease label and a medication to validate what they're going through it's valid enough for them to get the support they need a labeling a drug put it in a little box and make it small telling them the story letting them talk going through that process gives it the size that it needs if it makes sense so the drug the way I would recommend drugs is to see them as drugs locations and if someone's in an extreme State temporary like you don't if you have a headache you take an ibuprofen to relieve the symptoms but you don't go on ibuprofen chronically in other words every day that's how we should look at these things so if someone's in a yeah so if someone's in a really bad Way Madison and by the way she also said in the very beginning that if you're on medication she's not encouraging you're not going to get off of it and if people do want to withdraw I have interviewed top scientists in the world that are drug withdrawal experts and they can go and listen to my podcasts and they can search through drug withdrawal and they'll have the top experts with all the resources to guide them to that process what a remarkable conversation it just flew by I did it did fly by you're brilliant you're exactly how I introduced you you're very kind I think the neural cycle can change people's lives on undoing trauma undoing negative thoughts but also creating your life through the neural cycle so guys I'd pour myself into that you can get any of Dr Leaf's books but right now you got how to help your child clean up their mental mess which boy do we need a guide to building resilience and managing mental health which all of you and I need and we have brainy which is a toy for the kids that we've created these are brainy characters throughout the book Aiden we've made toys as well so it's really something about the parent and the child the child can hold us up and you're awesome you guys get the book share the episode change people's lives it's that simple we're the number one growing show on the planet because you all share it every single week because I get brilliant people to sit across from me and we get the best from them in the hour we spend with them thank you thank you you brilliant yourself was incredible questions thank you I just get to sit here and ask you stuff it's easy all right everybody I love you God bless you max out your life [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Ed Mylett

Views: 130,223

Keywords: ed mylett, mylett, maxout, the power of one more, dr caroline leaf, neuroscience, mental health tips, brain hacks

Id: MQsXfM1BZjo

Length: 56min 26sec (3386 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023