Neuroscience and Trauma Healing: Dr. David Rabin’s Tools for Leadership

Episode Transcript
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Skippy Mesirow (00:03):
Hello. My name is Skippy Mesirow, coach, former
elected official, and lifetimepublic servant. Welcome to
Healing Our Politics, The showthat shows you, the heart
centered public servant andpolitical leader, how to heal
our politics by starting withthe human in the mirror. It is
my job to sit down or stand upwith the best experts in all

(00:25):
areas of human development,thought leaders, coaches,
therapists, authors, scientists,and more, to take the best of
what they have learned andtranslate it specifically for
the public service experience,providing you actionable,
practical, tactical tools thatyou can test out today in your
life and with your teams. I willalso talk to leaders across the

(00:47):
globe with a self care practice,getting to know them at a deeply
human and personal level, sothat you can learn from their
challenges and journey.
Warning. This is a post partisanspace. Yes. I have a bias. You
have a bias.
We all have a bias. Everybodygets a bias. And I will be
stripping out all of theunconscious cues of bias from

(01:10):
this space. No politics,partisanship, or policy here.
Because well-being belongs toall of us.
And we will all be better servedif every human in leadership,
regardless of party, ideology,race, or geography, are happier,
healthier, and more connected.This show is about resourcing

(01:32):
you, the human doing leadership,and trusting you to make up your
own damn mind about what to dowith it and what's best for your
community. So as always, withlove, here we go. Welcome to the
Healing Hour Politics podcast,the show that shows you, the

(01:56):
heart centered leader, how toheal our politics by starting
with the human in the mirror.And, boy, do I have a barn
burner for you today as I sitdown with expert in
neuroscience, non ordinarystates of consciousness,
wearable technology, andseemingly everything else,
doctor Dave Rabin.
Doctor Dave, affectionatelyknown, is a MD PhD board

(02:18):
certified practicingpsychiatrist, neuroscientist,
and entrepreneur who has studiedresilience and the impact of
chronic stress on our lives forover 15 years. He is the
cofounder and chief medicalofficer at Apollo Neuroscience,
which has developed the firstscientifically validated
wearable technology thatimproves sleep and mood. In his

(02:40):
practice, doctor Davespecializes in treatment
resistant illnesses, includingPTSD, personality disorders,
substance abuse, and more usingminimally or noninvasive
treatment strategies. He is alsoa cofounder and executive
director of the board ofmedicine, a MAPS trained MDMA
assisted therapist, a trainedketamine assisted therapist. He

(03:00):
is currently studying theepigenetics of trauma, more on
that, and serves on the board ofthe Simplify Odyssey Foundation
focused on veteranrehabilitation and invest as
part of the Noetic Fund.
In this episode, we explorethat. How does he do all this
and how can you too buildsystems to be more focused,

(03:23):
productive, and effective on awide range of issues you care
about? We talk about his Jewishupbringing, much like myself. We
discuss the importance of, yes,cultivating a psychologically
safe space, but also a space ofrigor and competition and how
you as a leader can up level thesocial dynamics in your

(03:43):
organization to get the mostefficacy, the best policy, and
the best outcomes possible.Doctor Dave shares physical
practices that you can implementto own your triggers to return
to a rational, calm, connectedhuman.
We dig into the epigenetics oftrauma, the coding in our genes

(04:04):
that we receive from our parentsand pass down to our children,
and how you can performgenerational healing through the
application of work that yourchildren will receive. And the
top predictor of weight gain,burnout, anxiety, and more,
spoiler alert, they're all thesame thing. You will get tools

(04:25):
to work on them and so muchmore. I hope you enjoy this
energetic, highly tactical, andultra wide ranging conversation
with my friend and light,Doctor. Dave Rabin.
Welcome.

Dr. David Rabin (04:44):
Thank you.

It's truly an honor to have you, doctor Dave,
mister Rabin, on the Healing OurPolitics podcast, the show that
shows you, the heart centeredleader, how to heal our politics
by starting with the human inthe mirror. I don't think people
will have quite an appreciationfor how much you are doing, how

(05:10):
much good you're bringing intothe world, and how much impact
you can have on them and theirleadership. So I'm excited to
unravel that throughout our timetogether. I wanted to start with
just getting to know you alittle bit. What makes you tick?
How you arrived at now? And Ithought it might be fun to start

(05:30):
with an anecdote from yourpartner in life and love and
work, Catherine, who I justadore, we share having amazing
partners we get to do all thethings with, which is really
cool. And you and I are ofJewish descent. She's not. And
when we were together last year,she told me the story of the
first time that she went tosynagogue or temple with you.

(05:54):
And the rabbi was giving thesermon of the day, sharing the
perspective through biblicalTalmudic tradition, and at the
end, what happened is somebodywho was listening started
aggressively questioning therabbi. And I've heard you talk
about the importance ofquestioning in your own life and

(06:17):
work. And I wonder if you couldstart by just sharing how that
upbringing shaped you and how ithas helped bring you to this
place that you are on all of ourbehalves, really.

Thank you. And that's a great place to start.
And thanks so much for havingme. It's always a pleasure to
get to connect with you. It goeswithout saying.
But I think not to dwell on ittoo much, but at least in my
family and many of the familiesI know of others who grew up
Jewish, that there was aconstant emphasis on it being

(06:52):
okay to ask questions. And notin every situation, obviously,
you have to choose the timingright when you're going to ask
question, which is somethingthat kids have to learn and
sometimes we as adults have tolearn it too. But asking
questions to learn about theworld is okay and not just okay,
it's encouraged. And that if wedon't understand something, if

(07:13):
we don't know how somethingworks, we wanna know how it
works there. Right?
The only way you can actuallylearn stuff is to ask. And so I
think that having a father whomy both my parents are
physicians. My dad is also anelectrical engineer, and
engineers love to figure out howthings work. So I growing up
with him as major influence inmy life, also a researcher,

(07:34):
somebody who really enjoyedfiguring out how things worked.
And so we talked a lot about allof that kind of stuff and
science.
And my parents, as young as Ican remember, bought me those,
like, how things work books thatwere for kids that broke down
the weather and broke down the,like, basic things that exist in
your home back in, like, theeighties. I think that was

(07:55):
really helpful just getting myinquisitive, curious mind that
was interested in discoveringnew things kind of up and
running. And that's pretty muchwhere it started. And then where
it really accelerated was when Istarted having really vivid
dreams as a kid. I'm sure you'veprobably had vivid dreams at
some point in your life.
Right?

It's actually not been my experience. I've had
a handful that I still rememberthat we're recurring and we're
particularly vivid, but it'sactually an area that I've been
wanting to, and I've been sayingthis for 3 years, that I really
want to invest in developingbecause it hasn't been a natural
strength for me.

Yeah. It was never a natural strength for me
either, so you're not alone. Ijust think it's very interesting
that so many of us as humanshave had at one time in our
lives like, I've never had a lotof them, but I've had a couple.
I've had, I don't know, maybe,like, 3 or 4 really vivid dreams
a year for my entire life thatwere much more common when I was
a kid. And I didn't have controlover these dreams.

(08:53):
They were just, like, reallyreal. And I remember at the
times that really stood out tome were when I would have a
dream with my brother or afriend from real life in the
dream, and then I would wake upand I'd be chat talking with
them the next day, and I wouldreference something that had
happened between us in the dreamin real life as if it had

(09:16):
happened between us in reallife. And they, of course, had
no idea what I was talkingabout. And then I had to ask
myself, where did I get thatinformation? And then I realized
that information was a memorythat I had of the dream the
night before or a couple nightsbefore.
And over time, as I got older,you know, in, like, the 6 to 9
year old range, I started tohave sometimes, like, more

(09:36):
nightmares and scary dreams, andthose seemed really real. And so
I started to ask my parents,what are dreams? Like, what's
going on when we're sleepingthat makes us feel so much like
real life, and how do we makesense of that in my 6 to 9 year
old language? And they basicallysaid, dreams aren't real. Don't
worry about it.
It's not something to beconcerned about. And I think a

(09:57):
lot of parents tell that totheir kids because they don't
want them to think that theirnightmares are real because if
they think they're real, then,you know, they can become really
scared as kids. Then you startto fear sleep, so that's not
good. So I think they did theright thing, but in the back of
my mind from that point on, Istarted to continue to have
occasional vivid dreams. It mademe realize that they felt so

(10:20):
real, so, like, almostindistinguishably real from real
life that the way we use anddefine the word real must be
off.
There must be more going onunderneath the surface of what
we call reality, even as, like,under 10 years old because of
just what my parents told meabout that word applied to these
things that clearly felt real tome. And so from then on, I

(10:41):
started to become reallyinterested in consciousness and
sci fi and methods of thinkingand psychology and dreams, of
course, and all of that stuff.

When this was like a clear acute interest,
you're 6 to 9. Do you rememberwhere the first place you went
was to research or speak tosomeone or get a body of
knowledge?

I think it was like sci fi books.

Yeah.

Like, of course, started to get into
things, like and it wasn't 6 to9. I was probably reading at
that time, like, I started toget into, like, scary stories,
like, Goosebumps and, like,more, like, sci fi kids books.
Right? And then things like XMen and, like, the paranormal
and, you know, exploring thingsthat just were weird fantasy

(11:24):
type things because I'm justlike, I wanna learn more about
that. I don't understand it.
Everybody's telling me it's justmade up. But as I started to
learn more about these things,and, of course, growing up in
California as a kid, we grew upin Marin County, and Marin
County is named after chiefMarin of the Miwok people. And
so we learned growing up thatthey worship animals and have a

(11:47):
relationship with animals andspirits of animals in a way
that's very different than whatwe were taught growing up. But
growing up in this area, theMiwok traditions are part of and
taught of as part of what isconsidered interesting in
schools. And we actually learnedabout it in school.
So they talk about Coyote as,like, the he was, like, the
great father spirit and thatCoyote is, like, this kind of

(12:10):
trickster spirit, but also thecreator of all things. And it
was just kind of reallyinteresting when you start to
think about all of thesedifferent ways of interpreting
our interactions with nature,for instance, like the coyote
versus god versus any number ofother ways that we can interpret
it. It makes you realize howrelative everything is. Right?

(12:31):
Everything seems through acertain lens.
And, yeah, I think to answeryour question, that's kind of
how I got acquainted with allthat stuff.

It's really interesting because you have in
your mind, like, the way you'reconstituted, you have this
beautiful balance between thisopenness and creativity, the
willingness to see things beyonddogma and question, but you also
have that investigator spirit tothen go in and look at it. And I
think those things are not oftenheld in concert. Like, that's a

(12:58):
pretty rare presentation and areally cool thing. I'm curious
if so I grew up in a bilingualyou. Yeah.
Of course, man. Bilingual Jewishschool. And although even though
many of us, myself included,were spending most of our time
rebelling against the religion,the culture of questioning, I
still think is one of thegreatest gifts that I ever got.

(13:21):
And in some ways, the culture,like Talmudic culture of taking
this thing that's ascribed astruth in biblical text, but then
creating an entire valuedculture around questioning it
and arguing it and refining ourunderstanding of it and adapting
it to a modern and changing agein some ways is like the one

(13:43):
point o of the scientificmethod, right, where you have a
body of of knowledge that isseen not as the truth, but as
the truthiest thing we have, butthen to poke and prod and argue
about it in the hopes ofrefining it. And I wonder if
that was also part of yourJewish experience where you're
getting this creative input fromthe Native American tradition,

(14:04):
from your sci fi books.
Did you find that in communityamongst friends, teachers, you
had people to talk to and workthrough that with before you had
a specific framework in yourscientific work?

Oh, yeah. For sure. I think it was kind of
weird to talk about, though.There's a lot of stigma around
talking about dreams andparanormal stuff and spirits and
astrology and, like, all of thatweird stuff that, you know,
especially when you grow up in,like, a western science family,
there are certain things thatare not necessarily, like,
topics of general conversationthat you would talk about,

(14:36):
whereas you need to find thosekinds of places and people. So I
actually didn't have a lot ofpeople to talk about.
It was mostly like reading scifi with my friends, doing like
our own independentinvestigation into things. To
your point about the questioningand the sort of origins of
ancient Jewish thought and thescientific method. I think they
are very related. Maimonides,you know, is a very famous

(14:58):
Jewish doctor and one of theoldest forefathers of western
medicine who, I think,integrated a lot of this
thinking style critical thinkingstyle. And I would say that
probably, like, studying Torahin Jewish school when I was
there for a few years andunderstanding and then before my
bar mitzvah and that kind ofthing, and actually having to do
interpretations of it on our ownbased on what we knew and

(15:19):
provide evidence to back yourinterpretations and really try
to understand what they weretrying to say effectively about
how to live a good, happy life.
And what you can learn isteaching how to think. Right?
It's teaching you how tofundamentally appraise evidence
and come up with an an argumentthat makes sense, that's based
in reality, and then weigh outall the other kind of stuff.

(15:44):
Right?

Yes. Yeah. It's so wild. I I can't believe I'm
about to do this. If you hadasked my 13 year old self, he
was gonna go on a diatribedefending the benefits and
merits of the bar mitzvah, Iwould have looked at you
physically.
But as you say that it's sotrue. And tell me this maybe was
different than your experience,but you are I was a American

(16:06):
English speaking boy who wasn'tparticularly connected to the
religion. But through this riteof passage, I have to learn a
different language that'swritten in a different direction
with different characters. Ihave to open a scroll that's
literally 100 of years old thatmirrors something that is
millennial old, and then I haveto read it for comprehension

(16:31):
directly in the biblical text,translate it into my own
understanding, perform it infront of a large audience of
people, including musical notes,and then write a evaluation of
it to teach a lesson thatapplies to the modern day.

Yeah. That's pretty much what we had to do.

That's pretty wild. That's pretty wild. It's
pretty wild.

Yeah. I learned as much as I didn't enjoy it at
the time, I learned a lot inretrospect. Like, it was very
helpful to my learning how tothink without a doubt. And I
think that a lot of differentcultures have stuff like that.
Not necessarily the same, butsimilar, like, coming of age
experiences or community basedexperiences that where we
interact with different membersof the community traditionally

(17:17):
in these cultures to teach ussome of these skills.
But a lot of modern societydoesn't have that anymore, and I
think that we are desperatelyneeding it.

Yes. I'm curious if there was a in my
observation, what you were doingthen, which is kind of
questioning orthodoxy, thinkingabout new things and both
existing in this place ofatypical thought. But also,
like, I imagine there was a lotof people at your bar mitzvah,
you had friends, you were incommunity, etcetera, and you

(17:47):
still straddle that line now inso many ways, working on things
that are generally accepted,lauded in the mainstream, but
also working on things at theedge of science that do not have
universal understanding at thispoint. And I wonder if there's a
point in your path where youthought this is really for me or
if you questioned that or if itclicked at any moment that I'm

(18:10):
gonna continue to be doing thisor if it just sort of happened.

I mean, it did just sort of happen, and it also
didn't. When you discoversomething that's really
interesting and you're taughtthat discovery is important and
not just important, but, like,one of the best feelings you can
get out of any feeling in yourentire life, the feeling of
discovering something new, it'slike, god, that feels good.
That's, like, such a amazingfeeling that all humans are

(18:35):
capable of feeling. And I justwanted more of it. And asking
questions and learning newthings and doing research in
whatever way, ideally, ways thatwere not super expensive or
commercially or effort costly,was always something that was
really interesting to me.
And I always just wanted tofigure out dreams, you know,
dreams and and consciousness andhow we interact with the world,

(18:56):
how we make meaning of theworld. Like, what is reality?
Right? Think about that questionin and of itself. What is
reality?
Is reality what we say, which isthis, just as is, no
interpretation needed, or is itseen through the eyes of the
beholder, and does it havelanguage to it that is its
identity and its functiondetermined by the words we were

(19:20):
taught to describe it? Yeah.Think about that and how
powerful that is. And it goesback to, like, the indigenous
tribes of Mexico and SouthAmerica and how they talk about
the intentional use of languageand that the words you choose
could be the single mostimportant decisions of your
entire life. On a moment tomoment basis, we carelessly use

(19:41):
words, and then that distortsour nature and our sense of
reality.
So I think, like, as I startedto learn more about that, then,
of course, psychology and mentalhealth by nature of psychology
being a tool to help treatmental illness where people who
often have been struggling withdistortions of meaning in their
lives for many years started toreally stand out to me as a
fascinating field because it'slike the interface between

(20:03):
healing and language, and that'ssuper cool. And when you think
about the indigenousperspectives on this, the last
thing I'll say on this for nowis, like, why why do you think
they call it spelling? Right?

Because casting

a spell. Yeah. Because you're casting a spell
with your words.

Yeah.

And you wanna make sure you're casting the
right one, and so you need tospell it and say it properly,
which goes back to what we weretalking about a second ago with
your Torah portion singing.Right? It's crazy.

Totally. I mean, I think of I had 2 thoughts pop
up in my head, 1 dark and onenot so dark, but MLK's I have a
dream speech. Right? That's notwritten on the page, but he
shows up and there's supposedlya 1000000 people there. We still
are under that spell in abeautiful way.
I think about I watched arecreation, a colored recreation

(20:50):
of World War 2, and I watchedAdolf Hitler on that podium.
That man is casting a spell. Hedidn't trick anyone. Right? They
were with him, and that wasreally scary, but our words
really can elicit a massresponse.
And the other thing you'retalking about perception versus
reality, what is reality in someways? Consensus reality. What we

(21:12):
agree is generally true is theonly thing that matters for
functioning, but it doesn'tnecessarily mirror what's
happening in the world. We know,for instance, that roughly 97%
of the known universe is darkmatter and dark energy, things
that we can't see or directlyinteract with outside of the
forces of gravity. We know thatwe can now measure that effect,

(21:33):
but we have no idea what'sthere.
We hold hands with a loved oneand derive so much pleasure from
that touch. And yet if you werereally to go down, we're never
actually touching. There'salways distance physically
between the cells. And so Ithink it's it's super, super
fascinating. And you haveseemingly wiggled your way into

(21:58):
just about every area ofexploration around this.
And I want to start byunderstanding how. So just as a
little recap, and I'm not gonnaget all of this, but I have a
rather large piece of paper withsome of the things across
section that you are working on.As we know from the intro,
right, MD, PhD, board certifiedphysician, neuroscientist,

(22:22):
You're a practicingpsychiatrist, and you're working
specifically with people who aretreatment resistant, so really
hard cases. You've been trainedin MDMA assisted psychotherapy,
Ketamine assisted psychotherapy.I believe you're practicing in
those as part of your practice.
You are Just Ketamine. JustKetamine. K.

MDMA is not legal yet.

Did you participate during studies,
though?

I actually received training to be able to
kick off some of the mechanisticstudies and how MDMA therapy
works to induce some of itschanges, which we published in
February of 23, but I wasn'tactually in connect groups.

Got it. Okay. Nonetheless, has the skill set.
The tool is in the toolbox.Exactly.
Medical officer and cofounder ofApollo Neuro. It's a wearable
device. I see you got the clipon you right now. Right? The
first evidence based device toalter mood and energy through
the experience of touch.
You're actively involved inresearch on noninvasive

(23:19):
treatments for things like PTSD,substance abuse, executive
director of the board ofmedicine. I'm out of breath
working on studying epigenetics.You work with veterans through
the Semplify Odyssey program,and then also being a venture
fund partner, the Noetic Fund.Now what I find interesting
about this is many of the peoplelistening, it's probably the

(23:41):
only audience where many of thepeople listening are gonna be
wearing the same number of hats.They're on 20 community boards
and commissions.
They're serving in office. Theyare on multiple nonprofit
boards. They have a regular jobfrom within their roles, whether
they're elected or staff.They're working on 15 different
projects that couldfundamentally change their

(24:02):
universe. And what many of us,myself included, have struggled
with is how to organize ourlives in such a way to do that
effectively.
And you seem to havesignificantly decoded the ring.
So I'm curious if you couldshare how are you actually
splitting your time? What arethe tools or partners or

(24:26):
approaches that you are using tobe so effective seemingly
effective? And maybe maybethere's other areas where it's a
challenge, but I'd love to learnhow that all works.

Yeah. It's actually not as complicated as
it sounds. I mean, I think theit comes down to really and I
appreciate your kind words. I amjust an extremely passionate
person. I love to do this kindof stuff.
All the things you mentioned arereally fun for me. And so when
I'm working with good people,this stuff feels natural, and I
get energy from it. And I getenergy from it because it's

(24:55):
engaging and it's fun and it'sintellectually stimulating to
me, and it and I'm, like, doinggood for the world, and I'm
seeing, like, people actuallyfeel better as a result of the
work that I'm doing or learn newinformation. It helps their
patients feel better. And so Ithink that combination of just
enjoying the process, like, it'snot a means to an end all the
time.
Yeah. It's the means itself.It's the process itself that is

(25:17):
so important. And because I'mI've really tried to focus on
enjoying the process, and I do,that by being present with it,
that I'm constantly learning andI'm constantly developing myself
as a human. And even when thingsare really hard, which they are
right now and, you know, andthey have been and they have
been on and off for a long time,sometimes things are just really

(25:38):
freaking hard.
And you just have to rememberthat we're on a journey, and
it's not always gonna be hard.It's just sometimes shit
happens. Right? You remember theshit happens, sir, from when we
were growing up?

Oh, yeah.

Right? Every religion every single religion
has their own way of describingwhat they say when shit happens
to them. Right? And that's justlife. So, you know, it's always
harder for everyone goes withoutsaying.
Right? But it's always harder.We should say it anyway and
acknowledge that it's alwaysharder for us sometimes when
things are challenging andthat's okay. And it's okay to

(26:13):
have to struggle sometimes. Butas I've learned to try to juggle
so many different things thatare all in large part
interrelated, but majorlydifferent pieces of the same
puzzle and certainly a huge timecommitment, I've realized that
being present with the process,mentally speaking, as a
cognitive exercise is one of thesingle most important things

(26:36):
that we can all do for our dayto day lives.
Because then when we're present,we have access to a 100% of our
cognitive abilities. And whenwe're not present, we have
access to only the amount that'spresent. Being present is like a
best resource allocation tool,and there are lots of things
that help with that. Like, I useApollo because I never learned
how to breathe properly. SoApollo has been a huge help for
me to train my attention.

If I were to just, like, to make this visual
for people who, like, hear theword presence on an ad Yeah. In
there, but I don't know whatyou're talking about. And tell
me if this is how you wouldthink about it, but I'm sitting
at a computer. I've got a largepanel LED. It's designed as a
flood.
It's supposed to, like,illuminate the whole room. Let's
imagine the luminous capacity ofthat is our total opportunity

(27:17):
for attention. Right now, it'svery diffuse. The opportunity to
presence it would be to shroudthat light down to something
that is more akin to a laser andthen focus it on one specific
thing. That is that a fairrepresentation?

Yeah. Exactly. And it can be as simple as
saying, I'm going to you can sayit out loud right now. I'm going
to intentionally direct all ofmy attention to the feeling of
my breath coming into my noseright now.

Oh, I'm gonna try it. Right. I'm going to
intentionally direct all myattention to doctor Dave Rabin
right now.

You're already doing that, though.

That's cheating. I just wanted to double check.

Point of an interview. But the point is you
can change your attention byjust saying by, like, that's the
spell. Right? It's theacknowledgment of I am going to
put my attention on thefollowing right now. This boring
ass work that I really don'twanna do, my taxes, whatever, I
am going to sit down, I'm gonnado it, and I'm gonna verbally
commit to myself that I am incontrol of my attention always.

(28:18):
Right? I'm always in control ofmy attention. Nobody can take
that away from me. They alwaystry, but nobody can take that
away from me. And I can bringthat back to my breath and
center myself in this moment.
And as soon as you take commandof your attention, that means
you can take command of yourpresence. You're bringing
yourself back to the moment.You're centering your mind back
into your body. And that'scalled, like, somatic awareness

(28:39):
or restoring your sense ofembodiment. Right?
Mind in body. Body's alwayspresent. So we can always bring
ourselves back. And we can do itwith soothing touch, giving
ourselves hugs, getting hugsfrom others. We can do it with
listening.
We can do it with singing. Wecan do it with breathing. You
can do it by wiggling your armsaround. Whatever it is,
movement, intentional movement.But it's the intention

(29:00):
intentional attention capturethat is critical.
And I think as you trainyourself to do that, because
most of us never learned to dothat, I never learned to do
that. That's why we developedApollo. But the point is you can
teach yourself how to do thisnaturally through breath or
through other techniques,meditation, mindfulness, or you
can use tools. And the more youdo that, the easier it gets to

(29:22):
be able to do lots of thingsbecause you start to be able to
gain cognitive capacity, likeyou're restoring your core
resource of attention back toyourself. And then you could
say, oh, okay.
I I need to make a list. Right?That's where it starts. I need
to make a list of all the shit Ineed to do. So then you go and
you make a list, and then yousay, okay.
Well, I can't do all that in oneday, so let's spread that out
over x amount of time. What'sreasonable? Okay. Well, it would

(29:44):
take me 40 years to get all thiswork done myself, so I need to
hire, like, 30 employees. Right.
And then these are all thepeople that I need to do all of
the following things. And if youdon't know, you go ask somebody,
then you just try to hire reallygood people or find friends who
are really awesome, who sharethe same vision as you, and then
you just go at it. And the moregood people you have around, the
more cool stuff you can getdone.

Yeah. Yes. Sounds easier than it is, but
it's really it's one of thosethings that's, like, simple but
hard.

You have to want it. Right? You have to know
it first to get anything. Whatis what is manifestation? Right?
Manifestation is having yourattention set on something that
you want for your life oryourself, identifying the steps
to get to that thing, and thenactually doing the steps to get
to that thing, and then actuallyreceiving the thing. And you can

(30:34):
fuck that up at every singlestep of the way. Every single
step of the way. You can even doall of the things. You can have
the vision.
You can see what you want. Youcan know exactly what it is. You
can picture it in your mind'seye, and you can picture you
enjoying it with your friendsand family. You can plan it out
every step of the way. You caneven get every step of the way

(30:55):
by completing every action youget to the last point, and then
you hit what's called the upperlimit problem.

Mhmm.

Where you get right to the threshold of
getting that thing that you havespent years years doing all the
hard work to get, and you dosomething to screw it up right
at the last second. Right? Andthat happens to people too. And
so it's really about having thatcrystal clear vision, mission,
energy, mood, action, behavior,alignment. Right?

(31:24):
Where you're saying, I am goingto make this happen, and then
you actually go and make it soas would say.

Okay. I wanna follow-up with a number of
questions that tease out somestuff that I think I and others
have struggled with in thatprocess, but I'll just embellish
a little bit on that higherlimit problem because this is
something I see as a coach alot, and and it speaks to what's
real versus what's, quote,unquote, not real, what's
conscious versus unconscious,but just an example of a client

(31:54):
who a woman who wanted to excelin her career did all those
steps. Right? Had the goal, hadthe visualization, did the
training, put the steps in onand on and on for a long time
and finally got to the placewhere that door was open and the
job was hers. And all of asudden found herself in a
position of, I don't think thisis for me.

(32:14):
Not sure why, but, like, oh,maybe I don't wanna step through
the door. And what we found inunpacking that is her parents
were happily married when shewas younger. They got divorced
at some point that was traumaticfor her and her experience. And
right before that divorce, momgot a big job. And

(32:35):
unconsciously, the fear thatwasn't aware of is, oh, if I do
this, my relationship, my familywill crumble.
And sometimes it takes gettingunder the hood and finding that.
And then once you haveawareness, it's not like the
fear disappears, but yourecognize that's old
programming. And all of asudden, you can step through,
like you say, with attention,with clarity. You can have the

(32:56):
conversations with other people.Hey.
This is a fear that I have. Arewe aligned in this, right, to
set the stage for that? How arewe gonna support each other in
this as we move through? What dowe do if something doesn't go
well, but it becomes a consciousthing that actually became an
opportunity for the family tocome tighter together in support
of that shared goal? But it justtakes time, you know, and it's

(33:18):
not what we were trained to doto your point.

At least not most of us. At least not most.

Certainly not me.

Yeah. Not me. Not a lot of the western world
people that I know, but I thinkthe point is well taken.

Yeah. I mean, in some ways and if you're
suggesting that, and tell me ifyou're not, but that other
cultures have more of anemphasis on that. I think that's
true. I've seen that. It tendsto be cultures who don't have
access to a lot of the shortcutswe've built.
And I think with access totechnology, to the Internet,
whatever, we atrophy the othermuscle because we tell ourselves

(33:50):
it doesn't matter, but it's notactually true. It takes both.

Right.

Yeah.

And both is, like, superpower level
unlocking. Right? One alone,like, like, controlling your
attention to have the ability,like, a monk has of, like, years
or decades of meditationtraining, attention control
training. Like, that is asuperpower in and of itself. You
combine folks like that with theability for technology to
enhance our access to thosefeatures, and you start to get,

(34:16):
like, superhuman abilities.
Right? Like, to me, that isactually where I think cyborg
cyborg, I say in quotes, but,like, human machine augmentation
is actually can take us in areasonable amount of time where
we could actually not just beable to control a phone with our
brains because of a neuralimplant. You could be able to
control your entire computer andyour phone and your car and a

(34:39):
whole bunch of other stuff withtactile or worn augmentations.
So the ability to, like, notnecessarily who wants to have
something put in your brain ifyou don't have to have something
put in your brain? Like, therisk is so high of neurosurgery.
Like, so high. We don't talkabout that enough, but, you
know, I think that's reallyimportant to note. And there's

(35:00):
so many things now that we cando where we can start to use
technology thoughtfully andintentionally just like our
breath to augment our lives, tohelp us be more meditative more
of the time, have more access tomore of our attention more of
the time, able to physicallyrecover faster. Think about
those kinds of simple things,and then think about how much of
an impact that could have on theaverage American's life. Right?

(35:23):
Impact that's unseen in somecase or unpredictable in some
cases because it affectsdecision making. Right?

Yes. I was thinking the best way to
understand what it could begoing forward is to look at the
ways that we don't pay attentionto it happening going back. I'm
wearing a sweater right now.Like, sweaters were not
something that humans knew howto do when we came out of East
Africa. Right?
I don't know when we startedmaking sweaters, but it was it
was a ways after that. We didn'tneed them. It was really warm.
It was a good climate. Butbecause I have this sweater, I

(35:52):
have access to the entirelandmass of the country.
I have access to the resourcesin it. And if I don't, someone
else does, which is part of whyI even have an iPhone that works
in the first place becausesomeone was able to go mind
that, and they were able to doso because they had the
knowledge to do it because theylived past 30, which is
something we didn't have beforewe had food safety and hand
soap. I mean, there's so manyways that we have extended our

(36:14):
experience that are largelyinvisible to us. And if we
imagine the next step is comingfrom the physical form where our
physicality is safe, and in someways, that's now created a
condition where our minds aresick or in disease. And now we
are going to apply that to thecognitive and to the collective,
to the connection between us.
And I think, you know, you canget pretty wild and excited

(36:37):
about what is possible. It's agreat observation.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think this is the most
exciting, I think, frontier ofdiscovery. Right? And it's
paradigm shifting. It's likeparadigm shifting for the field.
Like when you think about someof the recent studies that have
come out, let's take mentalillness as an example where for
many years, maybe it was, like,4 decades or more, we have been

(37:03):
taught biological psychiatry,which was a huge deviation from
what you might callpsychological psychiatry, which
is what came before, where youhad Freudian analysis and
Freudian techniques.

Could you explain, like, just a little bit
for people who are not familiarwith those terms, what those
things mean and where we'reshifting from and to?

Yeah. So as of, like, the early 1900 with
Sigmund Freud and then laterCarl Jung and many other famous
psychiatrists and psychologists,this is how our current field
today of psychiatry andpsychology was founded through
this theory of mind. And it wasa way to talk to somebody and
ask them certain kinds ofquestions, ideally in a

(37:45):
nonjudgmental way to learn aboutthem so that we can understand
how to interpret what it isthey're experiencing. Like, to
your point, how to know thatthere is a past difficult
situation you were in that'spreventing you from getting to
your goals in your currentsituation. Right?
Like the woman you justdescribed earlier with the
returning down the job at thebest job she's wanted at the

(38:07):
last second. Right? Because of apast experience. Like, if you
know this is because ofsomething that happened to you
in the past and you're not underthreat anymore and you're safe
enough to make the rightdecision with a clear head, then
you're gonna make the decisionthat's best for you not run
away. Right?
And think about how lifechanging that can be for
somebody. It's, like, absolutelylife changing. And it can be the

(38:27):
difference between beingmentally ill or physically ill
and a huge tremendous successand contributor to society in
your community. Right? Andhappy, joyful every day.
It can be that degree ofdifference. So what Freudian
psychology the origins ofpsychology, which is like
psychotherapy, it's talking toeach other, started to get

(38:48):
replaced in the 19 eighties lateeighties nineties with
biological psychiatry, which wasthis idea that that mental
health, mental illness is due toimbalances of neurochemicals in
the brain. And the reason forthat was because with the
discovery of LSD, believe it ornot, by Albert Hoffman in 19
forties, there became this hugemodern understanding of

(39:09):
serotonin and the neurochemicalenvironments in the brain. And
so because of the discovery ofLSD, which a lot of people don't
know, we learned so much aboutthe serotonin system that we
were able to discover almostevery modern mental health
medicine. LSD contributed.
So that's like the Prozac, theZoloft, the antidepressant SNRI
drugs, the antipsychotic drugs.Like, all of those drugs are all

(39:31):
working in large part or in someway through a lot of the
receptor systems that werediscovered through the study of
LSD.

In some ways, that's the Hubble Telescope goes
up above the atmosphere for thefirst time and opens our eyes to
an entirely different world.Many things in other experiments
that had nothing directly to dowith Hubble happened thereafter,
but Hubble's eye on thosethings, bringing them into our
awareness was required as aprecedent. Exactly.

Yeah. Yes. LSD was kind of like the It's

the Hubble.

The telescope. Right? It's a telescope that let
us see all these different otherthings that were going on
underneath the surface, Andthat's a great analogy. And then
from there though, we kind ofslipped up and made a mistake
that was a misinterpretation ofthe findings of the impact of
drugs on some of these folkswith mental illness, which was

(40:21):
that if a drug like Prozac orZoloft, which increases the
amount of serotonin in thesynaptic cleft in between your
brain synapses and helps youfeel less depressed in certain
cases or in many cases. In thiscase, it's, like, probably 50 to
60% of the time.
It helps certain people withdepression or anxiety. Does that

(40:43):
mean that you have been bornwith a genetic imbalance in your
serotonin where you have toolittle serotonin and you require
the drug to fix it? Or is itpossible that you have learned
to think about yourself and theworld in a certain way that has
made you not feel good, and thencertain parts of your brain
involved in not feeling good arereflecting the way you're

(41:03):
feeling, and then the medicineis correcting that. Right? Is it
chicken or is it the egg?
What's actually happening? Andso there was a misinterpretation
that happened there when westarted to accidentally make the
assumption that your geneticspredetermine your mental health
and that your mental healthwants to identify as being ill,
requires medication treatment tomake you better, and there's no

(41:25):
cure, and you're sick for life.And that was a big issue that is
now kind of being turned around.

To offer very weird analogy, but just roll
with me here. You know, you havea resort on ocean or a large
lake, and there's a particularlevel the water's at that's
really good for the people whocome there, and they really like
to see that water level on thebeach. All of a sudden, you go
out for a snapshot in time,like, a second, and you notice
that the water level is lower.And you freak out and think, oh

(41:55):
my god. Something's wrong.
We need to refill the ocean andcontinue to pump water in all
the time. And it's maybe, butalso maybe you're in the middle
of a tide, and that's a naturalebb and flow that will come
back. Or maybe you're in adifferent season where the water
is frozen and has created an icedam offshore until the water is

(42:16):
not coming in, and there's anability to naturally correct.
And if you rush to or youoverascribe one particular cause
to that scenario, in someinstances, you'll solve the
problem, which happens for manypeople, and that's great. It's
amazing to have that tool.
But in others, you're actuallycreating another problem and a

(42:36):
long term problem by misapplyingthe solution that doesn't feel
that condition. Am I gettingthat right?

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. I think that's
a I think that's a great way tothink about it. Another example
of when this has happened inhuman history is with infection
and handwashing since youmentioned handwashing earlier.
Right?

Saved more lives than any invention ever. Right?

But when it was discovered Vilified. Yeah. It
was not believed that germs werepassed down for many years,
probably centuries. It was notaccepted that germ theory
existed, that there were germsthat could be passed down from,
like, my hands to your body.Right?
That was not something that wasunderstood or that could be
seized.

Responsible for your sickness. Get out of here.

Right. But I think this is a really important
story because it gives us asense of how far we've come and
yet how not far we've come.Right? So prior to, like, 190 8
or in, like, in the 19 twentieswhen antibiotics were first
invented or discovered byAlexander Fleming who discovered
penicillin, we didn't reallyhave germ theory. And so what

(43:41):
doctor Ignatius Semmelweis,who's a famous, I think,
Austrian physician, decided todo an experiment in 18 eighties,
18 nineties.
And he said, at that time,doctors were doing autopsies and
then going and delivering babiesand not washing their hands. And
the maternal and infantmortality rate was, like, high.
Like, 40%, 50% of women orbabies would die in a given

(44:05):
labor. And he said, what if Ijust use some antiseptic stuff
between when I go in to deliverthese babies? Wonder what would
happen.
So he did it. And he did it on,like, a 100 women, and he
reduced mortality rate forinfants and mothers by a very
significant percent, like, mid 2digits percentage, like maybe
40% reduction or something likethat. And then he went and

(44:27):
presented this at the medicalmeeting. And, of course, back in
the 18 nineties, all the otherdoctors were men, and there were
no female doctors. And so hepresented this at the meeting of
of all the doctors at themedical sciences convention of
that time.
And he had actual evidence thathe was saving lives of women and
babies, and they booed him offstage, and they

(44:49):
institutionalized him for thatdiscovery Yeah. Where he was
then beaten and likely died ofinfections that were caused by
people beating him withoutwashed hands and restraining
him. And the reason why, whichis the best part of the story,
because none of the rest of theparty's story is good, really,
but it's a good lesson. The bestpart of the story is the reason
why they boot him off stage,which was because the man's

(45:12):
hands at the time were thoughtto be infallible, incapable of
doing wrong. That was themedical rationale.
The scientific medical rationalewas that the man's hands are
incapable of fallibility,incapable of doing wrong. Right?
And at that time, infectionswere thought to be life
sentences, forever a deathsentence if you could not treat

(45:36):
it quickly, and often resultedin amputation and significant
shortening of life. All of asudden, antibiotics were
discovered. Ignaz is vilified.
Even though he he died, like, 20years before and
institutionalized an asylum,he's vilified because all of a
sudden, handwashing becomes themost important discovery or one
of the most importantdiscoveries ever next to

(45:56):
antibiotics, which proves thatwe can now kill bugs and prevent
transmission, which extendedhuman life decades in one
generation, and turn somethinglike infection, which was
thought to be incurable andoften a life sentence of death,
terminal illness, turn that intosomething that could be cured in
5 to 7 days with penicillin.That changed everything, and

(46:20):
that is where we're at now withmental illness. And that's what
I think is so important forpeople to understand because we
are at the phase of mentalillness where mental illness is
considered uncurable. We aretaught to not use the cure word
with our patients because it'snot known that there is one. And
yet, on the surface of what'shappening with psychedelic
assisted therapy, with MDMAassisted therapy, finished

(46:43):
trials, and at the FDA's deskwith technology that is actually
treating illnesses in in a majorway for mental health, we are at
the verge of actually in thenext 5 years starting to have
publicly available antibioticequivalents for mental illness.
It's probably not gonna be 5 to7 days, but it might be, like, 3
months, and then you're cured ata very high rate from an illness

(47:07):
you might have been strugglingwith for decades, and nothing
could be more exciting to methan that.

So I wanna get into that, but I wanna just
highlight something for ouraudience because it can be so
easy to look back at others, inthis case, those who demonized
and vilified doctor Fleming andbe like, how stupid were they? I
would never do something likethat. Well, just to point out,
that's what everybody thoughtthen too. And as someone in a

(47:37):
decision making role, a questionyou could ask yourself is what
was something I heard recentlythat I dismissed out of hand?
What was something that before Iconsidered it, I wrote the
person off because of the party,the association, the clothing
they wore, the flag or non flagon their lapel pin.

(48:00):
What have you written off, andwhat would it look like for you
to not repeat that mistake bygenuinely listening and
questioning your own thoughts?And what you might find is
you're right, and that's great.And if you do, then more
evidence, more ability for youto go out and make a case that's
gonna strengthen what you'redoing. But if you're not, you

(48:22):
don't want to end up being theperson who delayed the next
antibiotic or the next handwashing. And so I just I just
really wanna highlight thatpoint.
Such a salient story.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so much we can learn from this
stuff. I think the tendency isto say, I'm ashamed of that
human behavior, and I'm justgonna ignore it. I'm gonna shut
it down or repress it. But theopportunity is to really dive
head first into it and face theshame and say, hey, what do you
have to teach me? And the shameis gonna be like, don't be a
dummy.
Right?

Well, I mean, if you think about the mechanism
behind the thought process ofthat, it's the exact same
thought process that led thatperson to denounce or distance
from Fleming. Because I wasjoking earlier, but I wasn't
joking. I can't hurt someone.It's like the ego doesn't wanna
be responsible for your death.And so unconsciously, it says
that's a bullshit theory.
But, actually, all you're doingis protecting the self rather

(49:17):
than supporting the highertruth. And in this situation of
you now, by discrediting thosepeople who wrote them off,
you're doing the same thingwhere you're saying, oh, I would
never do that. I'm not like thatdumb person. Right? You're again
protecting your own ego thinkingyou have a higher degree of
cognitive processing or process,and yet you're repeating the

(49:37):
same mistake in that process.
And so just that recognition.

I get what you're saying. Yeah. So I didn't
mean to sound like that. What Iwas trying to emphasize

was sounding like that. I'm saying, hey. Just
be aware.

Do it.

I do that. Yes. Speak for Dave. We all do it. I
do.
No.

No. We all do it. Yes. But we all do it.

Responsibility and opportunity to check
ourselves in leadership and notdo it, not continue that
pattern. And when we do catchourselves, give some compassion,

do a better next

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Right. That's exactly right. Because we all do
it. I've done it. We've all doneit.
And I think that's the key isit's not personal.

Yes.

Right? It's just part of being human. That's
the neuroscience piece I wantedto emphasize, which is that this
is about the neuroscience offamiliarity and unfamiliarity.
Right? Think about how we evolveas organisms on this earth.
We evolved to fear things andreject things that are
unfamiliar to us, unless theyare clearly safe and provide

(53:37):
benefit. Just by default, weautomatically have fear or
rejection of things that areunfamiliar to us because
unfamiliarity poses at least atiny amount of uncertainty,
which poses a at least apotential tiny amount of threat.
And so for us to be able tosafely, keyword, experience

(53:57):
diversity, unfamiliarity,newness, the unknown, we have to
feel safe enough to allow ourguard to come down
physiologically speaking,meaning it looks like our heart
rate coming down, our breathrate coming down, our blood
pressure coming down, feelingyour thoughts start to slow
down, feeling safe enough inyour own body to be able to take

(54:19):
in that new information andactually interpret it properly.
Give it the credit that itdeserves and ask yourself the
question, hey. Is it possiblethat what I was taught might not
be telling me the full storyabout this specific thing?
Maybe I should try to learnmore. Nobody's asking you for a
definitive lifelong decisionright now. This is just about
discovery. Discovery is anactive lifelong process. Right?

(54:41):
You don't have to convict everysingle time you make a decision
to believe something. It'sreally about just exploration
and understanding that what weknow now could be completely
disproven by what we know in 5seconds from now, and that's
just how life is.

Yes. And so I'm gonna come back to the tools,
techniques, approaches tocultivate that inner security,
the psychological safety, tohelp in cultivating environments
where others can find that. Butbefore we do, I would really
like to dig into kind of theneuroscience of this. You've
talked around a handful ofthings, the MDMA assisted

(55:20):
studies for treatment resistantPTSD. You've mentioned another
number in passing, but can youhelp us understand sort of the
mechanistic basis for what'sreally happening in these
states, how it differs fromnormal processing, and help us
understand what's happening?
Because it's probably very weirdand new to a lot of people.

I can break this down fairly simply. It's
one of my favorite things to do,but talking to you in this
conversation gave me a new wayto think about it myself. Always
learning. Right? So when youhave a really amazing
conversation with somebody thatmakes you wanna tell them all
the things about you, and theyclearly wanna learn about you,

(56:03):
and you just wanna tell them andbe completely candid and honest
with this person.
Name any features of that personthat make you wanna do that.

It's a great question. And, honestly, it's a
hard one for me because Ipresent as very open, and I
would say I'm 90%, severalstandard deviations more open
than the average person, newexperiences, ideas. But there's
10% of stuff that I still have alot of guilt or shame around
that I really don't wanna tellanybody.

Right.

So I'm imagining who would I wanna share that 10%
with. I would want to havecomplete confidentiality to know
it's not going to be broadcastto others in a way that I
perceive real or true to be ableto hurt me. I would wanna feel
really held and loved by thatperson. I would want to know

(56:50):
that whatever I share would notchange their opinion of me, that
they were truly there just withmy best interest in mind. And I
would also want it to be in asafe space, and I know that's a
charge word.
I don't mean it in a way of,like, we don't have differing
opinions. That's not how I meanit. I mean, a place that's

(57:12):
comfortable, warm

Physically.

Welcoming physically. That actually feels
like an important piece of it tome.

So let's run through that list again real
quick. So starting we can startfrom the back of the front or
any order. Right? So the lastone you said, physical safety.
Safe space.
We'll call that physical safety.Then the first one you said was
confidentiality. Right? Sosafety of information. Right?
Safety of privacy. What werewhat were some of the other ones
that you knowing that the personisn't gonna change their opinion

(57:40):
of you based on what you tellthem. Safety from judgment.

Yeah.

Judgment free zone. Right? What else?

Like loving presence or warmth.

Right. Safety of connection, feeling a
genuine, authentic connectionfrom this person where they're
not doing this because they wantto get something from you.
They're doing it just to bethere for you because they love
you. Yeah. Right?
Unconditional love andaffection, connection, safety.
Yeah. Right? So even that isenough to emphasize my point,
which is that it is those thingsthat you just described and

(58:14):
probably a couple other things,but that's really the core of it
that helps people even withoutdrugs involved at all, just in
the basic original psychotherapytalk therapy model that helps
people feel safe enough to talkto us and expose vulnerability.
And vulnerability, the placeswhere we feel ashamed, guilty,

(58:38):
weak, in pain, emotionally,mentally, physically in pain,
those places are the placeswhere healing occurs.
And if those parts of ourselvesare too ashamed or too guilty or
too afraid to come up to thesurface in a conversation for
healing, then it's really hardto heal them. And the whole core

(59:02):
of the healing experience ingeneral, but specifically
important for mental health, isto create that safe space, all
encompassing physical, mental,emotional, legal, and financial
safety. Create that safe spacewhere people can comfortably be
safe enough to be vulnerable.And then when they're safe

(59:24):
enough to be vulnerable, thewound is exposed. We can clean
it out just like a physicalwound in the ER.
If you get a cut, we can cleanit out. We can wash it out, and
then we can bring the edgestogether, and we can sew it up
so you don't have a scar orinfection afterwards. Right? And
that's what we're doing whenwe're doing really great, normal
face to face talk therapy. Andwhat psychedelic medicines do is

(59:48):
they amplify that process byamplifying neural signaling and
pathways that are involved in,at least they do a lot of
things, but this is one of themajor things they do, is that
they amplify those safetypathways, especially MDMA, to
help people feel safe enough togo back and remake meaning
around extremely traumaticexperiences and things that they

(01:00:13):
never want to remember or mayhave told themselves that they
will never remember.
It helps them go back and remakemeaning around those things and
those experiences from aposition of safety. And when you
do that, what you do is you'reable to rewrite your own story
from a perspective of safety andstrength, not from a perspective
of weakness and victimization.Does that make sense?

Skippy Mesirow (01:00:35):
It does. And I'm wondering if I am a veteran in
one of the studies that you'retalking about, I'm treatment
resistant, which means I've I'vehad these other elements that
are not pharmacologicallyinduced, and that hasn't worked
because it's treatmentresistant. Right? So I'm still
having symptoms. I'm stillhaving these issues.
Now I go in and I have this MDMAassisted treatment. What's

(01:00:56):
happening differently in mybrain?

Dr. David Rabin (01:00:59):
So the emotional cortex, what we call
the limbic system, and thelimbic system includes whole
bunch of stuff. And there's awhole bunch of stuff that's
happening, by the way, so I'mjust gonna try to break this
down as simple as

you can. Go ahead and be nerdy as you want.
I'll bring it back, but I'mquite curious. We don't often
have someone with the requisiteknowledge as a neuroscientist to
get into this, and someone'sgonna be interested in it. I'm
one of those someone's, so bringit on.

Yeah. I love this stuff. But basically, this
emotional cortex of the brain issimilar to all the other sensory
cortices of the brain, the partsthat sense the physical feeling
of touch and temperature, theparts that sense sound, the
parts that sense smell, thephysical parts of that. And then
there's the part of our brains,the limbic system that senses
the emotional component of everyexperience. So why did this

(01:01:45):
thing that I just tasted make mesad or happy or angry, or why
does the smell of my mom'schicken soup make me feel so
good?
All of those kinds of emotionalparts of an experience that go
hand in hand with experience iscentered in this emotional
cortex, and the insulate cortexis a very important part of
that. And it's in a networkbetween 3 different parts of the

(01:02:06):
brain that connect to our stressresponse system, which is called
the HPA axis or thehypothalamopituitary axis. This
governs all the stress responseand recovery response in the
whole body, and then that alongwith the vagus nerve, which
calms everything down.

Can you say what the vagus nerve is and how it
functions? Because I hear thisterm all the time and I honestly
don't know.

So the vagus nerve is cranial nerve 10. It's
a nerve that is also known asthe wandering nerve because it
innervates almost every singlepart, if not every single part
of our entire bodies. It comesout of the, brain stem, and it
is innervating all the parts ofour bodies because it tells the
blood vessels and the organsystems that are involved in

(01:02:49):
rest and recovery, likedigestion, reproduction,
immunity, metabolism, storing ofenergy, or spending of energy,
sleep and recovery systems, allof those systems, we want to be
active when we're at rest andnot running from a bear or a
lion in the jungle are governedby the vagus

nerve. Got it. So if it's Christmas and your
brain is an Amazon distributioncenter, the vagus nerve is the
biggest superhighway in thecountry that can most quickly
get those packages out to kidsall over the place.

Yeah. And then there are other superhighway and
then there are well, well, eventhe caveat of that there are
other superhighways that alsolead directly to those kids that
bring those kids coal just asquickly, if not more quickly.

Than basic process. This is the good kid
highway. Well There's a separatebad kid highway?

Yeah. There's 2 highways that go to exactly the
same places. Oh, okay.

What's the bad kid highway?

That's the sympathetic nervous system.
That's the stress responsesystem.

Okay. So this is call

the fight or flight system. Right? So these
two systems are in balancetogether. They coregulate where
blood goes. So think about that.
So the vagus nerve says whenyou're calm and safe and in a
comfortable environment, thevagus nerve says, okay, dilate
all the blood vessels. And youcan experience this right now,
by the way, if you do a minuteof 6 deep breaths where each

(01:04:08):
breath is 5 seconds in and 5seconds out with like tiny hold
at the top and the bottom, youwill activate your vagus nerve.
You can also just rub the sideof your neck very gently on one
side and you'll activate yourvagus nerve. You can hold your
breath. There are differentthings you can do that rapidly
activate your vagus nerve.
But what happens when you dothat is it dilates blood flow to

(01:04:29):
all of the parts of the bodythat we want to get resources
when we are recovering. So yourdigestive system can now break
down and absorb food properlyand nutrients. Have you ever
wondered why your stomachs upsetall the time when you're
stressed out? Because there's noresources or blood going to your
digestive systems, yourdigestive systems. I think I'm
running for a bear.
We should shut down. You don'tneed me right now. Let's just
take everything we can asquickly as possible without

(01:04:50):
using as much energy and let goof the rest. Right? That's
stress belly.
Right. So digestion,reproduction, the single biggest
cause of infertility anderectile dysfunction and
anorgasmia in women is stressand anxiety. Right. Think about
that. Right.
What else? Immunity. Singlebiggest, most common reason for
getting sick. Working too hard.Single biggest reason for

(01:05:13):
gaining weight, working toohard.
Overeating, working too hard.Burnout, depression, anxiety.
Right? This is no mystery. Andthe reason why that is is
because the vagus nerve governsthose parts of our bodies.
So but the superhighway forfight or flight nervous system,
the stress response system alsodoes, and it says when you're

(01:05:33):
stressed out all the time, takeblood squeeze the blood vessels
to all the organ systems that orrecovery systems that aren't
required for immediate survivalright now, fight, flight, or
freezing, and send all thoseresources, that blood, to
skeletal muscles, heart, lungs,motor cortex of the brain, fear
center of the brain. We'regetting the f out of here. The
getting the f out of here is thesystems that need to be

(01:05:55):
activated when we perceiveactual or perceived threat. So
too many emails, too much news,too many responsibilities, too
many rainy days in a row. Right?
Too little sleep. You name it.This all tricks our bodies into
being in that fear response allthe time, which then takes
energy away from recoverysystems like the vagus nerve

(01:06:17):
governs, then we get sick overtime. That's how sickness
effectively exists andmanifests. And so the emotional
brain is a core part of thatbecause the insulate cortex that
governs empathy, feeling whatother people feel,
introspection, self reflection,feeling what we feel, and
interoception, awareness andfeeling of our bodies is all

(01:06:40):
deprioritized when we're understress or threat because blood
flow gets taken away becausenone of those things are all
that important when you'rerunning from a lion.

Yeah. You actually very much need and want
both of those systems. It'sabout having them responding in
a normal range at the times whenthey're desired as opposed to
the times when they're notdesired and they're triggered by
something that isn't actuallyrelevant to the physical
environment, even thoughpsychologically we might think
that it is.

Exactly. And they're in balance together, so
we want them to be balanced. Wewanna have equal access to them.
But if you don't learn as achild how to train your breath,
or you don't learn as an adulthow to train your breath and
control your attention, then youdon't actually learn how to
control these systems. Like,these systems we were taught
run-in the background, and youdon't need to worry about it
until you get sick.
That doesn't make any sense. Theif we have control over the

(01:07:33):
systems, why would we not teachpeople how to control the
system? Why would you not showpeople show the pilot all the
knobs on the plane and what theydo? Right?

Well, we believed we didn't have to.
Right? And conservation ofenergy is a thing in the nice
way. Laziness in a not nice wayis a thing. And I we're having
this conversation this morningabout navigation.
Right? Like, literally, like,how do I get around my world?
And I was saying how I feel verylucky to have just been young
enough that my first solointernational trips, I had to

(01:08:03):
use a paper map, I had to haveconversations with people in
other languages, I had to learnhow to geolocate myself. And
although I don't exercise thatmuch because my phone or my car
just does it for me, I can goback to it if I need to. But for
people who are 5 years youngeror didn't have the the privilege
to travel at a younger age, thathas been atrophied since birth

(01:08:25):
because I just assume my GPS isgonna be there.
And so I can understand, eventhough retrospectively, it seems
like a bad call, I canunderstand how we thought, oh,
well, scientists are saying allthis stuff is taken care of. If
I have a problem, I'm gonna picka pill, so why would I bother
spending my time on that? Right?I mean, I can understand how we
got here.

Yep. Nailed it.

Okay. So going back to the veteran PTSD trial
example, here's how I'munderstanding it, and you tell
me if this sounds correct. Whenin the theater of combat, in
actual physical violence, thehighway of response, right, the
parasympathetic, we needed that,and that turned on strongly, and

(01:09:04):
that's what got us out of thatbuilding. It got us out of that
firefight.

Sympathetic.

Sorry. Sympathetic. Apologies. Got us
out of that building, got us outof that firefight, and that was
a really helpful thing. We'resuper glad we had that symptom
or system.
Then we get home and imagine,like, in that environment, I was
in a small room and somebodyburst through the door. Right?
And so the fear memory issomebody bursting through the
door. And in response, mysympathetic system fortified

(01:09:31):
itself. It put metal on theoutside of that door so somebody
couldn't shoot through it.
But every time I hear somebodyknock on the door, I just go
right back into that place.That's super scary. My defenses
go up, and that's my nervoussystem protecting me from
something that it's learned is athreat. In a normal, I shouldn't
say normal, but in a moreaverage on the bell curve

(01:09:52):
presentation, simply creatingthat environment you talked
about with a therapist, thephysical safety, the safety from
judgment, the safety ofconnection, the unconditional
love, that might be sufficientto go back into that, but when
my sympathetic nervous system isso heightened, even just a
little tap on that door, I hearlike a cannon and I shut down in

(01:10:13):
fear and I'm unable to go intoand process that. And the
pharmacological intervention ontop of that, in this case, the
addition of MDMA goes in andputs like a large mattress
topper on the back of that doorso that when someone does go to
tap or even to knock, I don'thear the loud bang and it
doesn't trigger that response,and now I'm able to go in and

(01:10:36):
process those things.
Is that kind of a fair analogy?

I would say it's more than a large mattress
topper, though. It's likeputting on goggles onto that
person that allow them to seeand feel themselves the way they
saw and felt the world as aninnocent child, which is why we
sometimes call it child's eyes.So if you think about that's a

(01:11:02):
lot more than a mattress topper.That's like being able to go
back and reexperience your lifein different meaningful ways,
like see how differentsituations of your life impacted
you in the past with the warm,loving hug of your mother the
entire time or your wholefamily. Right?

(01:11:23):
The warm, loving hug of yourentire family hugging you while
you're going back and watchingthese incredibly challenging
situations that you had to facein the past. And so you then
what that affords you theability to do is to reappraise
the meaning around thoseexperiences from the standpoint

(01:11:43):
of gratitude for the awarenessof how this happened and you
recovered from it, and gratitudefor the support of anyone there
was that was supporting youthrough it, and gratitude for
your own ability to be resilientand overcome it. And then
forgiving yourself, findingforgiveness in yourself for the
challenges and mistakes youmight have made along the way,

(01:12:04):
and then being compassionate foryourself and then loving
yourself. And so it invites thatradical safety that's enhanced
by the molecular action of themedicine, like in the case of
MDMA, is the lighter fluid thatyou throw on top of the coals
to, like, really get them goingbefore you actually cook the
food. That's what it's doing.

(01:12:24):
And it's just like safety. Andthen the person's like, oh, that
doesn't mean shit about me.That's just some shit that
happened to me. Bad shit happensto everybody. Fuck.
And you're it's not my fault.And you're like, oh, it's not my
fault. Oh, wow. I never thoughtabout it that way before. Maybe
it's actually not my fault.
Right? Maybe this is just shitthat happened. Oh, wow. Is that

(01:12:47):
possible? Yeah, that's possible.
Okay. Well, if that's possible,then maybe a lot of these things
are just stuff that happened. Itdoesn't actually mean that I'm a
bad person that this happened tome. Right? And then all of a
sudden, your new thought patternstart to be formed around safe,
positive reference towards selfunder times of stress rather

(01:13:08):
than negative reference towardsself and others around times of
stress.

And there's a experience that I've had, and
I've talked to others who haddescribed the same of the
distinction between anintellectual versus an embodied
knowing. I'll give an example ofmyself from one of those healing
spaces. I had struggled withweight on and off, lost 70
pounds at one point for reallysince my childhood. I think

(01:13:33):
distress eating was a symptomfor sure, but I had known how to
eat healthy for a long time. Ihad known when I treated my body
well and I made particularchoices, I was fitter, I was
happier, I was physically moreable, I was more socially
accepted.
Like, I knew what that was. I'dbeen there and then I'd fallen
off. I'd been there and I'dfallen off. But in that

(01:13:55):
container, all of a sudden, andI don't know how to describe
this other than what wasintellectual all of a sudden in
a snap became so unquestionably,evidently true at seemingly a
cellular level. Like, all of asudden, it was just something
that I knew rather than I know.
And I wonder if we understandhow that happens.

I don't think we understand how that happens
yet. We know it happens. We knowthere's a difference between
intellectual knowing andembodied knowing. I can't say
that we fully understand howthat happens. What I will say is
that from the experiences andthe data we're seeing from some
of these MDMA studies wherepeople who have severe PTSD go

(01:14:43):
from a state at time point 0where they don't believe that
they can ever feel better totime point 12 weeks later with 3
doses of MDMA and 42 hours oftherapy to being over 60% in
remission and fully believing,Right?
Experiencing, living, believinghealth, and knowing that it is

(01:15:03):
achievable by them and fullembodied knowing. Right? And I
think that what we do see isthat there is a modification to
the actual code that sits on topof our DNA, which is called our
epigenetic code. And this is alayer of code that governs how

(01:15:26):
much our genes turn up or turndown. And this impacts every
single gene in our body, stressresponse genes, like skin color
genes, hair genes, everything,digestion related genes.
Every single gene is regulatedby epigenetics, and that's how
our cells and our skin know tobe skin and our brain cells know
to be brain because they allhave the same DNA code. Same in

(01:15:47):
every cell in the body, in caseyou didn't know. The same DNA
except in sperm and egg, whichhave 50%. Every single other
cell has the same. It's justlike a computer.
How does a computer know how torun 8 different mobile
applications in the same iOS?Right? It could be that there is
another layer of code that says,hey, you're in this kind of

(01:16:08):
phone. You're not in a GooglePixel. You're running Android in
a Samsung phone.
So I need to now adapt my entireexperience of this app for your
Google Pixel instead of yourSamsung phone because the entire
hardware is different, and sothere needs to be another layer
of code that says, alright, thatsoftware needs to be adapted.
It's in a different hardware.It's in a skin cell. It's in a

(01:16:31):
brain cell. This needs tofunction differently.
We don't want brain cellsgrowing on the skin and skin
cells growing in the brain.That's what we call a teratoma.
These are very, very highlyconserved over 100 of 1000000 of
years layers of code thatregulate what does what and how
we respond to stress, and it canchange, and it's modifiable by
the environment. So to get backto your question earlier, we

(01:16:53):
showed that we know through thework of many people, including
doctor Rachel Yehuda, thattrauma gets encoded on DNA in
the epigenetic code aroundcortisol receptor functioning.
So, if you experience trauma andyou get diagnosed with PTSD, you
will more likely not have achange in the epigenetic code on

(01:17:14):
your cortisol receptor genes,which changes the way your
cortisol receptors function.
MDMA assisted therapy, since ourpublication in February, has
shown that we can actuallyreverse and repair that, that
the cortisol receptor seems tobe functioning better because
the epigenetic code has beenmodified based on having this 12

(01:17:34):
week experience with 3 doses ofMDMA, and people continue to get
better long term. It's not justthat they're better and then
they get worse again. It's thatthey continue to get better
after treatment has stopped withno additional treatments, which
is fascinating. People arelearning to heal themselves
again is one of the ways we canthink about interpreting that
data. And so that could be, wedon't know for sure, but that

(01:17:59):
could be the biological link towhat you're talking about, which
is embodied knowing.
Right? It's that the body cellshave now learned some
information that is being storedin the epigenetic memory, and
that memory gets passed downacross generations just like
DNA.

Interesting. If anyone's not familiar with the
work of Rachel Yehuda, please gocheck it out. She's remarkable
human, remarkable researcherdoing some really amazing work.
That's fascinating. And so whatI'm hearing from that is just as
a bit of a recap is our currentcondition is not predestined.
It's not unchangeable. If we arein a place of challenge or

(01:18:41):
trauma, or I should say thepresentation of trauma or fear,
Those are mutable, changeableconditions. They require
application and work on ourbehalf, sometimes directly,
sometimes with another person,sometimes with a pharmacological
intervention. All of those orone of those may apply to you.
And when you do that work, whenyou apply the effort and

(01:19:05):
techniques of healing, you cannot only improve your own
existence, experience,effectiveness, but you can also
rewrite the genetic code thatwill be passed down to your
children and their children.
You can literally performgenerational healing that is

(01:19:26):
heritable or at least that'swhat the evidence is beginning
to suggest.

Yeah. You can literally stop the cycle in any
moment. Every single human hasthe ability to stop the cycle of
hurt, and it starts by justchoosing what you put your
attention on to take it fullcircle. In every moment, there
exists fear and love andeverything in between. And you
can choose in any moment fromwhat perspective you want to

(01:19:53):
approach the world.
Do I want to approach the worldfrom a perspective of being
afraid all the time ineverything that I do, or do I
want to think about the worldfrom perspective of love when
I'm not under threat, when I'mnot actually facing a survival
situation? We have that choice.And so choose the lens. Be
intentional about choosing theframe of reference from which

(01:20:13):
you are referencing the worldbecause that effectively steers
all of the meaning that you getfrom the world and everything
that you do. And that singlechoice has a huge impact on all
of it, all the way down to thebiology.

Yes. And I wanna start with the recognition that
we are all dealt a differenthand in life, that chance has a
lot to do with it, that beforewe can make that conscious
choice, the world imposes itsown evidence on us.

For sure.

You know, you work in some really tough cases.
So for someone who's listening,who has very bravely taken their
challenge and decided to be in aplace of leadership or policy
work or service as a policeofficer or teacher, like,
they're doing their best, butthey're listening and thinking,
yeah, Doctor. Dave, fuck you,right? I grew up without parents
in a violent environment. Wewere robbed by the time I was 3.

(01:21:10):
I didn't get to go to theschool. Other people did, we
didn't have a teacher or booksin the school. Who who are you
to tell me to love, right? I'mobviously being, you know, big
about it, but just like howsomeone like that steps into
your office or into a study, howdo you meet that person and
what's available to them thatmight be approachable coming

(01:21:32):
from that place ofunderstandable and justified
fear?

I mean, it's all understandable and justified
fear, right? It's learnedbehavior. It's a learned way to
think about the world. I don'ttake it personally when people
tell me they don't get it or Ithink this is bullshit or
whatever. That's the way theylearned about the world.
I have my things too. Right?It's not personal, though. And
so when we can take thepersonalness out of it or the

(01:21:58):
trick where we start to thinkthat there's a personal notion
to it, we would step aside fromthat and just watch, just step
into what we call in therapyobserver mind. So it's
nonjudgmental listening, justwatching, observing what our
thoughts and feelings are doing.
And what we realize is that it'sjust about listening and meeting

(01:22:22):
you where you are and meetingwhoever it is where they are,
and everybody is in a differentplace, and that's okay. But the
point is it's not your fault,and there's nothing inherently
wrong with you that got youthere or that resulted in you
feeling like a victim for a lotof your life, which a lot of
people do, which is avoidablealso. It's learned behavior, and

(01:22:44):
it's not personal. Right? I goback to these indigenous
traditions, like the fouragreements and all these things,
because I think they're reallyimportant traditions about
helping people understand thatto not take it personally and to
always do your best, and thatshit happens to all of us.
Every human being has had reallyhard times in one way or
another. And it's aboutunderstanding that and

(01:23:04):
understanding that we actuallyhave more control over our
reality than we think we do assoon as we start to learn the
practices and the techniquesthat allow us to restore and
remember how to control ourreality. So when I actually work
with clients who are strugglingwith this kind of stuff, which
is most, I would say that a lotof it comes from a motivational

(01:23:24):
approach, which is this is aninterview, so it's a little
different. I don't tell mypatients what to think or what
to do ever, and I rarely givethem my opinion. But I think
that in the patient setting, I'masking them questions to
understand what they want out oflife and what their motivations
are to get what they want out oflife and what they care about,

(01:23:45):
and then I help them find theirown path.
I help them draw the dotted linefrom I'm here and I'm unhappy to
I wanna be there and be happy,so what do I have to do? Okay.
What are the kinds of thingsthat are making me unhappy?
Let's talk about that. And thenwe talk about that and we're
like, okay, are there any ofthose things that you don't need
to do, but you're still doingthem?

(01:24:05):
And like, oh, yeah. Getting riproaring drunk on weeknights and
yelling at my wife probablyisn't something I should be.

I help them a whole bunch.

Yeah. Maybe that's actually making it worse.
Never really thought about thatway, doc. Maybe that's something
I could cut back. You're like,do you think cutting that back
would increase your ability toaccess some of your goals?
And they're like, I don't know,but I'm willing to find out.

Right. Let me try. Let me ask the question in
a slightly different way becauseI I recognize the importance of
self determination in thisprocess as a coach would do the
same thing. Right? You don'tgive advice and you rarely give
or ever give direction.
If you were to isolate so ifthere's a spectrum from 100%
fear to a 100% love, right, andno one's really at either of
those poles, but you're pullingfrom the lower quartile. Right?

(01:24:51):
So people who are are stilllocked in a fear perspective,
What are the techniques orapproaches that they have self
determined that you have foundor observed to be most
successful frequently?

We talked about some of them. I would say the
two most important ones there'sactually 3 most important ones
probably, but probably don'thave time to go into all of them
in detail, but it really startswith gratitude. And gratitude is
a word that we are not taught touse properly, but it is an
incredibly important word, andit represents the emotional

(01:25:26):
muscle of grace andgraciousness, which is a dual
feeding system. So when Iexpress thanks to you and you
feel good about doing somethingnice for me, then I feel good
about making you feel good, andthen you feel good about making
me feel good. And then we have amutual feel good relationship,

(01:25:49):
right, which is the way humanrelationships were meant to be.
We're supposed tosynergistically mutually
collaborate to improve eachother's lives. We even have
entire parts of the braindevoted to collaborative
adaptation. Mhmm. It's thatfeedback loop around gratitude
that is really important and tomake that really actionable for
people. The way to think aboutthat is it's very, very hard to

(01:26:09):
be grateful for bad stuff thathappens to us.
So don't do that. Be gratefulfor yourself for getting through
it. Find things about yourselfto be grateful for doing good
things for yourself, for doingthings that have helped you
survive, to help you overcomestress. Right? And even if
they're simple things, I'mgrateful that I got out of bed
today.

(01:26:30):
Right? Most people don't saythat. Most people don't care
about that shit. That's the sameshit we do every day. But if you
take a moment to say, I'mgrateful for getting out of bed
today and having energy to dothat, I'm grateful for making
myself a delicious breakfast.
I'm grateful for the sun on myskin and the feeling of warmth.
I'm grateful for these comfyclothes. Whatever it is, I'm
grateful for being able to takea breath right now because I

(01:26:52):
chose to. All of those thingsare like strengthening your
biceps in the gym When you'reworking out, it's literally
pumping gratitude iron, andyou're strengthening neural
networks in your brain around. Iassociate going about my day
with being grateful for thingsthat are happening in my day and

(01:27:14):
for myself, most importantly.
And then you start to train thatmuscle and that literally shifts
your mindset from, wow, I haveto get up today again. Why me?
Why do I have to do all thisannoying shit today? Why me?
What's wrong with me that I haveto feel so miserable all the
time?
Right? It's not just you. It'severyone has these thoughts.
Right? So we need to normalizethat part and then help people

(01:27:37):
understand that it's okay thatyou've had these thoughts.
We're all taught to have thesethoughts and think about the
world in this kind of why meoutlook way, but why me is a
fear response. Right? Expressinggratitude is a love response.
It's a love muscle. And so if wetrain the love muscle or start
to by practicing gratitude andjust trying to discover things

(01:28:00):
in our lives, in us, everymoment of the day that we can be
grateful for, then we live alife of grace.
And that is a really powerfulinitial way for people to very
actionably, very simply start toget through this. You don't have
to be grateful for the bad stuffthat happened to you, but you
can be grateful for yourawareness of the lessons you've

(01:28:20):
learned from the mistakes we'vemade. Right? Failure is the best
teacher. So don't necessarily begrateful for the pain.
Be grateful for what you learnedfrom the pain.

Yeah. And just to make it specific, and there's
a number of ways to do this, asimple journaling practice in
the morning or the eveningbefore bed, capturing 5 things
that you are genuinely trulygrateful for. And as Dave said,
focusing on the easy ones. Ihave a client right now who
struggles with being selfcritical, something that I can
certainly relate to, and theirwork right now is to each day,

(01:28:55):
at the end of the day, 5 genuinecompliments to themselves. And
so there's a number of ways thatyou can get at that.
Other things other than agratitude practice that would be
great first steps, maybe ifthere's one more that you think
would be a particularly helpfulfirst step for someone who's
still very much in that fearplace. I I

mean, the simplest ones are, like, get and
give yourself more hugs. Right?Just like do this.

They're hugging himself, if you're wondering.

Yeah. Hugging yourself is really important.
It's not weird. We should bedoing it more. We're supposed to
get lots of hugs every day.
Hugs are really important. Andbreathing. So, like, doing
breathing and actuallyintentionally directing your
attention to your breath is away to restore a sense of
control to yourselfinstantaneously. And anxiety and

(01:29:41):
stress come from more thananything else feeling out of
control. So if we direct ourattention to things we have
control over, like givingourselves a hug or moving around
or taking a breath, where ourattention goes, then you're
automatically restoring a senseof control, which makes you feel
less anxious and stressedbecause you're spending less
time thinking about things youdon't have control over.

(01:30:02):
So starting to understand all ofthis stuff is extremely
empowering of us to be able toactually make the changes we
need to make for ourselves. Andit's a day to day, moment to
moment thing that doesn'tactually require a lot of work.
It just requires the diligenceto continue to remind yourself
nonjudgmentally to do it becauseeverybody slips up and everybody

(01:30:24):
forgets. So it's about, oh, Islipped up. I was nasty to that
person and expressed fear, and Iactually had a fear.
It's okay. I made a mistake.Let's learn from that
experience. I'm grateful for theawareness that I made that
mistake. Let's learn from theexperience.
And so you can see this cyclethat comes back to between
thought questioning, breath, andgratitude that starts to feed

(01:30:48):
this loop of self healing, whichis really building these
emotional muscles. And then fromgratitude, there's forgiveness,
self forgiveness, and selfcompassion, and self love. And
those are some of the thingsthat come out of indigenous
Chapivo Medicine in SouthAmerica that are really
interesting, other emotionalmuscles that we can train to be
more healthy and sustainably somentally, emotionally,

(01:31:10):
physically, and to start tolittle by little kick us out of
these difficult places that manyof us get in. It affects
everybody. So the I use thesepractices literally every single
day.
I kid you not every single day,and they have changed my life
and made me so much more of ahealthy person throughout.

Yeah. And just to highlight something you said
earlier in the specific aroundthe breathing practice, 1
minute. So take out your iPhone.Let's be honest. It's with you.
Maybe you're an Android, but yougot a phone on you. Set an alarm
for 1 minute from when you saidit, close your eyes, breathe in
for a count of 5, hold in thebreath for a count of 2, out for
a count of 5, I think that'swhat you said earlier, and do

(01:31:51):
that until the bell rings. Andwithin that minute, when you
open your eyes, you will findyou open them to the same room
but a totally differentenvironment than you went into.
It's really true.

And if you do it for longer, it works even
better. Totally. And you can doit on the go. Right? I think you
don't have to sit there and doit.
You can do it on a walk. You cando these breathing techniques
when you're moving around. Andif anybody hasn't tried Apollo
who's listening, you candownload the Apollo Neuro app on
your iPhone, and it willactually guide you through that
breath work through feeling. Andso there are lots of different

(01:32:22):
ways that you can experiencethese states.

Yeah. Definitely go check that out. A lot of good
stuff there. The last thing Iwanna touch on, so we've talked
about the internal regulation.Most of the people listening to
this are gonna be in a positionwhere they also have the
opportunity to help or aidexternally regulate their
environment.
You could imagine being in acity council meeting, for
instance, and there's just lividangry people and comment. You've

(01:32:48):
got colleagues who you know orat least you have the story are
coming at something from adifferent perspective. There's a
ton of fear of loss, fear ofthings going the wrong way, fear
of outcomes, and the result is adynamic where it's very hard to
see each other as people andspeak as people. And as you
said, in that place, the higherfunctioning doesn't work great,

(01:33:13):
and we do a poor job of havingdynamic creative discussion,
which is what actually isnecessary to solve complex
problems. And we end up withsubpar or no policy on issues
that are really necessary.
We end up in gridlock. And ifyou were sitting in one of those
chairs and you were having thathard time, because we all do and

(01:33:34):
we all have an outcome that wewant, What might you do to help
in some way lower thetemperature in the room, shift
from that place of fear to loveand help even if it's in a small
way to create or cultivate theconditions for a more
respectful, generative dialogue?

I think the most important thing is to
remember first and foremost thatwe're all human first before
we're anything else, beforeyou're black, white, brown,
before you're male, female,before you're anything other. In
addition to being human, we'reall human first. And as humans,

(01:34:18):
we all have the same core needs,wants, and desires. We need
food. We need shelter.
We need safety, physical safety.We need air, and we need water.
And we need love and affectionand connection, physical love
and intimacy, and emotional loveand connection and intimacy and
community. We all need thesethings. This is not special to

(01:34:40):
any one group of humans despitewhat we have been taught and
what we might have taughtothers.
All humans need this stuff tohave good, healthy, happy lives.
We also need other things. Weneed a sense of autonomy. We
need a sense of mastery. Right?
We need a sense of being able tofeel like we can take charge of
something that is special to us,like our special skill. We need

(01:35:03):
the opportunity to learn how toself discover ourselves. And
these are all not complicatedthings, but they are things that
are critical needs for healthy,happy human existence. We need
breaks. Think about how simplesome of these things are.
And yet, we do not afford everyhuman these things. We approach
the conversation that what Irepresent and my constituents

(01:35:26):
are more important than what yourepresent and your constituents.
For whatever reason, I am goingto make a decision that's gonna
result in getting what I wantover getting what you want
without the option forreasonable compromise. And I
think that's where there's areal struggle because without
the requirement for compromise,then stuff just gets gridlocked,

(01:35:48):
and then we don't actually makeany change or the change becomes
so expensive to make that itjust never ends up happening.
And over the time it happens,it's just a huge mess.
It doesn't actually do what itwas supposed to do, which
happens all the time in ingovernment. And we see it all
the time in the US government.And so I think a lot of what we
really need to be focused on isrooting the conversation in the

(01:36:09):
core human needs first, which iswhat we all need, and then have
that set up as the foundationfrom which we make all other
decisions. And if we have amajor decision that negatively
impacts one of those core needs,then that should be at the top
of list of things that we'rediscussing and coming to
consensus agreement around tofix immediate. Right?

(01:36:30):
This is basic human existence.And if you wanna take it another
level, we with the earth are allalive before we are anything
else. We all share aliveness,and we need the earth to stay
alive as humans. So if we don'tuse that empathy cortex of our
brains to think about what otherhumans and what ourselves and

(01:36:52):
what the earth wants movingforward in this relationship,
that is a two way relationshiptogether, the earth could very
quickly become inhospitable toall of us. And if it does, then
we're fucked.
Majorly fucked. There is noother place for us to live as
humans other than the earthright now. And we are probably

(01:37:14):
at least a decade away fromhaving any kind of reasonable
habitable colonization of anyother planet, and it's going to
suck compared to the Earth. So,let's just be real here for a
second about what we all need todo, which is recognize not just
on an individual human politicallevel, but on a worldwide level,
We are all life. And unlessyou're not like me, we all wanna

(01:37:35):
stay alive and have a vestedinterest in staying alive.
So we need to recognize that andcenter around that and then make
our decisions based on that,staying alive together. And that
should be governing all of ourdecisions. Once we start making
decisions based on that, itdon't matter what color or shape
or size or look you are or whereyou came from or your

(01:37:57):
background. All of that stuffdoesn't matter anymore at all.
Right?
It's totally trivial.

Yeah. And just to recap that from the
perspective of, say, a mayorwho's running a meeting in a
municipality or a staffer onCapitol Hill is putting together
an agenda for a policydiscussion, The first thing I
heard is recognize the realityof the human experience. You
have the opportunity to put in abreak. You don't have to have a

(01:38:26):
5 hour meeting without abathroom break, without the
opportunity to stretch orrelieve stress if it's a
difficult conversation, you canput that in. You can lead people
in a breath or 2.
You can recenter people whenthey are triggered. You can
bring them back to the presentmoment to the room, offer them a
glass of water, ask them aquestion to see if they're

(01:38:48):
present, if they can come back.And when you're in discussion,
you have the opportunity tovalidate others' perspective, to
demonstrate your understandingof where they're coming from.
Doesn't mean you have to agreewith it. Doesn't mean you have
to vote for it.
But just to recognize theirhumanity and that you understand

(01:39:09):
and see them opens the door fora more meaningful conversation
that's more likely to result ina good outcome for everyone.
Those are the key takeaways thatI heard in there that I think
are very actionable. Would youagree with those?

Yeah. Gotta find the common ground.
Everything's about findingcommon ground. That's how we get
to solutions. So find the commonground.
It's right there. We're allstepping on it.

Yeah. The job is the solutions, not the fight.
And we forget that when we arein that place in our minds, but
we have now some of the tools toget out of that as well. And so
that's our responsibility beforewe come into the room and after
we leave the room. I I wouldlove to do this for about 2 more
hours, but in respecting ourbiological needs and calendars,

(01:39:49):
I wanna kinda start to wrap usup, and I wanna just ask where
do people find you, your work,Apollo, neuro, anything else
that you would want to pointpeople to for anything?
What are some of those resourcesfor them?

You can find me on socials at doctor David Rabin
on Instagram and Twitter. Youcan find me on my website at
doctor dave.io or my clinic,apollo.clinic. And you can also
find apolloneuro@apoll0neuro.com. That's
apollo neuro.com. And you canalso go to wearable hugs.com,

(01:40:26):
which is what the kids call it.
I love it. And if you wannalearn more about my work in
consciousness and psychedelicmedicine and the rest of what's
going on in that world, I have 2shows on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts. 1, the consciousnessshow is called Your Brain
Explained, and the psychedelicnews show is called the
psychedelic report, which is abiweekly show where we cover the

(01:40:48):
latest news and goings on in thepsychedelic space. And I look
forward to seeing you all outthere.

Told you there was more things that I didn't
mention earlier. They just keepcoming out of the woodwork. It's
pretty amazing. Final question,same for every guest. Our
audience are not passiveobservers.
These are the proverbial humansin the arena. If you were to
leave them with just one thing,a thought, a practice, an
inspirational quote, anything atall that would best resource
them to be a vector for healingour politics, what would you

(01:41:20):
leave them with?

I think the millennial old temple at Delphi
does it much better than I do.It's a temple of Apollo. The
temple of Apollo has manydifferent things inscribed on
it, but 3 of the main pointsthat are inscribed on the top of
the temple are very famous andvery much forgotten in our
society, and they are number 1,know thyself. Know who you are,

(01:41:45):
figure out who you are, discoverwho you are without guilt,
without shame, without judgment,figure out yourself. That's the
lifelong journey that we're allon.
Learn who we are and learn whatwe're capable of and dive into
that unknown. Number 2 issomething to the effect of
gluttony brings ruin. Don't begreedy. Don't take more than you

(01:42:11):
need. Number 3 is don't havehubris, like approach the world
with humility.
Don't act overconfident in theface of what you don't know.
It's one thing to dive headfirst into what you don't know
with the goal of trying tolearn, and it's another thing to
dive in thinking that youalready know everything and that

(01:42:31):
you have nothing to learn andthat you're the teacher. We're
teachers in certain contexts,but in general, we are the
students of nature and theuniverse. And it's really,
really important for us toalways remember that. It's
surety brings ruin.
Approach the world from a placeof modesty and humility. Open to
what's out there. Don't beoverconfident. Don't have
hubris. And nothing to access,don't be greedy, and know

(01:42:55):
thyself.
I didn't think those are still,if not still true today, as true
as they were when they werefirst inscribed.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time and
your work and for being herewith us today and being in my
life as well. And you are anincredibly positive force
everywhere you go. I'm sograteful to know you.

Oh, thanks so much, Skippy. I really
appreciate it, and likewisegrateful to know you. Thanks for
having me.

Thank you so much for joining us today. If
you wanna put what you've heardhere today into practice, sign
up for our newsletter, theleader's handbook, where each
month you'll receive just oneemail with a curated selection
of the most useful tools andpractices discussed on this
podcast today and over thecourse of the last month.

(01:43:42):
Delivered in simple how toworksheets, videos, and audio
guides so you and your teams cantry and test these out in your
own life and see what bestserves you. And lastly, if you
wanna be a vector for healingour politics, if you wanna do
your part, take out your phoneright now and share this podcast
with 5 colleagues you careabout. Send a simple text, drop

(01:44:05):
a line, and leave the ball intheir court.
Because the truth is the morethose around you do their work,
the better it will show up inyour life, in your community,
and in your world. Have abeautiful day. The Healing Our

(01:44:28):
Politics podcast is brought toyou by the Elected Leaders
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in mental health, well-being,and performance coaching for
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(01:45:11):
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You'll reduce stress, anxiety,and overwhelm and become a more
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