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August 15, 2025 • 58 mins
Bruce Lee once said “Don’t speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke. Your body doesn’t know the difference. Words are energy and they cast spells.”
At the time, this sounded a little crazy, but with modern science, we can understand this more. Your words literally change your biology, and both positive and negative words have power of your mind, your body, and your health.
This episode dives into the science and practical applications of positive affirmations, vibrations and freuency as taught by other scientists that we've had on the show like Dr. Gerald Pollack and Dr. Bruce Lipton.
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
- What spiritual psychology is and how it's scientifically different than the "woo woo"
- The power of "I am" statements, mantras, and theta brainwave programming
- The science of water, vibration, and food blessing
- Generational trauma and epigenetics
- Meditation for the restless or distracted mind
- Balancing healthy living with freedom from perfectionism
More from Erin Doppelt:
Instagram: @erinrdoppelt
Website: erinracheldoppelt.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Erin Dupelt, welcome to Reversible.
(00:01):
Erin Doppelt (05:31.202)Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Josh (05:34.627)Well, it's a pleasure. Now, Aaron, if you could, I always want to give our guests some context. We've got some questions. We want to learn about spiritual psychology and what it is and why it helps us heal and how it's related. But first, let's talk about you. How did you end up here in this world doing what it is that you do?
Erin Doppelt (05:52.77)And that's the true question, right? And a parallel I see between myself and likewise maybe for you as well and many of the guests that you're having on this podcast, something went wrong, right? Something had to go wrong. Either you get sick, you fall out of alignment, you have anxiety, depression, seasonal sadness, cystic acne, whatever it is. I had anxiety, really under the skin anxiety.
And it was so present for me, especially during undergrad and college, that I took myself, I would take myself on these really long walks. I would take myself into nature for a really long time. And I would think to myself at 18, 19, 20 years old, this can't be it, right? There has to be something else. Like this feeling has to be rooted in something bigger than self. There has to be a solution or an understanding.
At the same time, I traveled. I was somebody that loved traveling and seeing the world and had deep gusto for food and travel and meeting people different than me. And I spent some time in Florence, Italy when I was 20 years old, first study abroad. And it brought me back into this love language of food is gusto, right? Food is such a language of love. You can eat differently.
when you are outside of America. It also brought me back to anxiety, right? Wherever you go, there you are. So often I'll hear from my clients, friends, students that they thought their problems would be solved when they booked the plane ticket and found themselves on the other side of the world. It's still you, it's still you my friend. So you have to confront yourself at some point. And ultimately.
This anxiety led me to a lot of really powerful teachers. One, it led me to bookstores. And I started reading everything from deep fantasy to nonfiction to spirituality. And once I got back to college, it brought me to my yoga mat. So I found yoga and meditation. I found it to be incredibly challenging and it brought me to the present moment. I would go to a yoga class, I would follow a flow. I was a spin instructor, I was an athlete in high school, I was a triathlete, like these were all new concepts for me.
Erin Doppelt (08:15.062)So the idea of slowing down and connecting to your breath, how life altering, how feminine, how different, and it catapulted this journey for me. And ultimately anxiety was the biggest teacher that brought me to prayer and meditation, to opening up the shoulders and hips, to recognizing that of course we live in a patriarchy and what does it look like to be the embodied feminine.
And that led me to Israel, that led me to ashrams throughout India, that led me to working in the slums of Mumbai, that led me to Columbia where I definitely studied a lot of positive psychology and emotional intelligence and mindfulness. However, something that I think is so important is oftentimes we will see somebody quote unquote healed or like they look like they have it figured out and the truth is something had to go wrong to get us here.
So whenever somebody experiences depression, anxiety, inflammation in the gut, dissonance, compulsive negative thought patterns, disattachment from self, like a huge heightened emotional state, instead of fearing it, you lean in. So I am, I don't know when this episode is going to come out. So I'm super pregnant and I'm having a baby in November, brachashem, God willing. And with the concept of birth, right? A natural birth, birth in general.
is you have to lean in. And I think in our culture, something that we see so often is we resist. We don't want to feel the pain. We want to take a pill and get over it, or just numb out via that 5 PM glass of wine, or Netflix, or to smoke something, or to sleep with someone, or to scroll mindlessly for hours and hours and hours and hours in hopes to regulate. But what does it look like if you got curious about the anxiety? What does it look like if you got curious about the influx?
the inflammation and the gut. What if you got curious about your belief systems? What can that lead to? So that's my journey right now. I think the obstacle, the heightened emotional state, the things that go wrong is just the beginning of the spiritual journey. And I encourage people to get inquisitive around that as opposed to resisting it.
Josh (10:31.527)interesting you talk about these remedies, there's self-medication with scrolling or sex or food or entertainment or these things that we do to sort of distract ourselves. It's almost like instead of taking pharmaceutical medications to manage things like anxiety, we're medicating with other things or medicating with dopamine or medicating with distraction with entertainment with whatever it is. And that is obviously not the most healthy practice. We're not getting to the roots or just masking our symptoms which in anything
and medication or in medicine is always bad. Just masking symptoms never gets us anywhere. Which really sort of leads me to the question, if we wanna understand, if we wanna fix something, we have to understand it. And so before we do, diving into these roots and how to fix and reprogram the subconscious mind, how do you define spiritual psychology? You talk about it a lot, but what does it mean?
Erin Doppelt (11:24.59)Spiritual psychology, if you were to apply to a master's or a PhD program in the States, it would be under the school of transpersonal psychology. That's like the term that was coined. And it's such a good question because people are just tapping into it. So spiritual psychology is the practice, the belief, the system of connecting to a higher power as you understand it. And you can
of course measure the brain with MRI as it relates to meditation or mindfulness. And of course you can, and there's so much research out there about people who are diving into these spiritual practices and feeling better. Their nervous system relaxed, they're having psychedelic experiences, they're rewiring their belief systems, they're relaxing their nervous system, they're coming out of flight, fright or freeze for the first time in their life or in a really long time.
But at the core, spiritual psychology is the belief of having relationship to a higher power as you understand it. And that's how I educate on spiritual psychology because it's not a one size fits all model. We know this with gut health and nutrition, and the same thing is true with spirituality. So there are some people who really align with their organized religion. I'm a Jewish woman. I deeply resonate with the lineage of it. So I'm happy to move forward in a process of being a spiritual Jew.
I'm also extremely well versed in Hinduism, Christianity. It's easy to be well versed in Christianity when you grow up in America. It's a Christian state. It's a Christian country. I studied a lot of Sikhism for a while, Buddhism. So there are so many incredible religions out there that you can tap into if you are looking to see what resonates. Spirituality is a bit broader. So it's connecting to Mother Nature as you understand it, connecting to energy at.
like the bottom line is you understand it. That can be food, that can be animals, that can be trees, that can be wishing upon a star or connecting to your lineage and praying to your ancestors that you felt quite close to. So that's the way that I like to educate on spiritual psychology.
Josh (13:39.387)So what's the connection then? Because there's spirituality, there's faith, there's religion, there's all these different things, whatever sort of term or umbrella we want to explore as individuals, right? My wife and I were Christians, and that's the route that we pursue for ourselves, and we find that's us, right? That's where we were raised, that's what we believe, we believe in God, but there's a connection. Obviously, in Christianity, some will believe that there are miracles, some believe miracles don't happen anymore.
Some people believe that faith can heal you. Some people believe that it's the mind and the emotions and our connection for the brain to heal the body. So what do you say is a connection between spirituality and our physical health, or particularly even just gut health? How do they play with each other?
(00:22):
Erin Doppelt (14:22.734)So my expertise is Eastern ritual and Western psychology. So merging the sacred to what we know in clinical psychology. And that's a lot of what I share in my certification trainings and also in my programs.
Erin Doppelt (14:37.59)When it comes to diving deeper, so when it comes to having a belief system, and when it comes to healing.
What we believe to be true is always going to be the foundation of our health. So whatever we focus on expands. So if you are stressed, your analytical mind, so your conscious mind, and keep in mind, conscious, subconscious, these are terms that are Freudian, that Freud brought into the world in the 1890s. These terms have been around for a very long time. This isn't new science, new clinical terms.
If you are stressed about something, you're bringing your analytical mind to a very specific situation, right? And your whole reality can focus on that analytical situation over and over and over again. I have a client years ago who would stress out about traffic, and a lot of her attention would be around dictating her life based on when she would avoid traffic in and out of the city.
And that ended up becoming kind of a big part of her personality, right? And it would dysregulate her when she was running late, like she was always on this very prompt schedule. And it overpowered a lot of other bigger themes in her life because her analytical mind was always focused on this one theme of missing traffic, avoiding traffic, not sitting in traffic. So the analytical mind and the conscious mind is what is occurring on autopilot.
So you and I having this conversation, we're aware of being on the computer. Maybe we hear a fan in the background. Maybe we're aware of the lighting in the room. This is our conscious mind. The subconscious is what lies beneath the surface. So the things that you and I are not present of right now in this moment. So the subconscious could be a belief system of
Erin Doppelt (16:35.526)Oh my God, I did a podcast forever ago and the Wi-Fi went out. That was so stressful and so embarrassing. Maybe that's playing in the back of my mind. Maybe in the back of my mind, you know, I'm in we're moving. We're in an apartment building. Maybe somebody is going to knock on the door and disrupt this. Like there's all these different things that could be lying dormant in the subconscious mind. And maybe that's why my leg is shaking or maybe that's why I'm perspiring a little bit. And these are themes.
that are always running at all times. So when it comes to our health, whatever we believe to be true is going to be reality. So if you are somebody who grew up and both of your parents were unwell, and you believe that because your parents were unwell, genetically you are going to be unwell, that will likely be your reality. However, if you believe that you move your body and you take time to connect to the sun and you eat high quality food,
high quality plants and animals, and you take time to sit and breathe, that is going to grow as well. So that is going to focus and that is going to expand. Well, we know and Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about this a lot as well. Whatever thoughts wire together, fire together. So when it comes to your health, having positive, healthy, uplifting thoughts is going to be incredibly important to your health over time.
Mantra, I am statements, that helps you rewire the subconscious mind. I am healthy and safe. I have healthy digestion. I eat amazing food that nourishes my body. This matters over time. So your thoughts are a huge, huge player in your health.
Josh (18:23.716)I don't want to be quoted on this one because I can't think of the name. However, I heard a story of a martial artist who actually was in a car accident or was hit by a bus, something of the sort, but he broke his back. Very famous martial artists, black belt techniques, the works, you know, I say that as if I've not been doing martial arts 15 years, I got no idea what the words are. But anyway, so this fella was a teacher, considered eighth degree Dan or whatever he was in his art, but very well versed, hit by a car, paralyzed.
could not move. I don't know if he was quadriplegic or paraplegic, and they said he'd never move again. This is just his life now. And over the course of two, two and a half years, through breath work and meditation, he visualized and pictured every single cell in his body, reworking rewiring within two years, he was up and walking and training again, he was back to martial arts. And that really goes to show the power of the mind over the body. It's like hypochondriacs who truly do become physically ill, because they constantly tell themselves they're going to get sick.
And that stress, we know the stress response dysregulates the immune system, but there are other factors that we suspect at play where your brain decides, okay, fine, we're sick now, and you become sick and you now have the flu when it's the middle of the summer and you're outside and you're perfectly healthy.
Erin Doppelt (19:38.637)Yes.
Erin Doppelt (19:42.838)There's a really powerful, so in the 60s, 70s and 80s, there is the book of Seth. So this prophet, Seth, an all-knowing voice started becoming channeled by this couple and they started writing down everything that Seth would say. And one of the books, the result of Sethism, Seth ideology is the nature of personal responsibility, the nature of personal reality. And wait, I need to check that, Seth, the nature of personal reality.
Okay, I knew it was one of those. The nature of personal reality. And in this book, which is a complete channel of Seth, The Voice, it is all about how, if you don't really like the image in your mind, if you do not like your life, if you do not like what you see, you can change it. So you can change everything. You can decide right now and change everything that you see in your reality.
Everything is a reflection of your beliefs. Everything is a reflection of your thoughts. Change your thoughts. However, if you are traumatized, right? If you have an experience in the past that you have not allowed yourself to fully integrate, then it is going to be hard to shift the thoughts over and over and over again. So there's a deep practice here, right? It's first you have to become aware of how you feel and think. You have to be aware of why you have the thoughts that you have.
And then you need to consciously, very strategically, try to insert more positive thoughts. The ratio is usually 33 to one. So 33 positive thoughts to one negative. And then recite that over time. And you also wanna reprogram. So something that I teach my clients is you use the most sacred time when your brain is most suggestible to, open to suggestion, which is the theta brain wave state. This is right when you wake up in the morning. This is right before bed.
This is oftentimes also when you are like deep in meditation or coming out of meditation or Shavasana. This is the time when the conscious and subconscious they can communicate more clearly. It's almost thinner. You can tap in during this time. Whatever you experienced in the past. It's a really good time to chant your I am statement. So I am calm centered and present. I am healthy in my body. I am healthy and safe. I am a multiple.
Erin Doppelt (22:04.254)six figure CEO, I'm a bestselling author, I'm healthfully pregnant, like whatever your IM statements are. It is also a good time to practice. I teach a practice called snapshot manifestation. It's a manifestation practice. However, visualization of sitting in the feeling of having all that you desire is also really powerful in theta brainwave state. This is not your analytical state. This is when you are almost, you're very calm, you're open. You are...
in that space right before you fall asleep or right before rising. So you're starting to feel good. You're feeling light. You're feeling open. And that is going to add up and be more powerful over time. But it does require work. It does require especially if you are somebody who is trying to heal.
(00:43):
Josh (22:52.84)So these IAM statements, it's something I've heard about many years ago, something I've been exposed to lots through different seminars, business and self-improvement courses like Landmark and all kinds of stuff I've gone to over the years, which I've learned quite a lot from and I've carried through my life. But
Something I struggled with very much at the beginning of these IM statements is it felt like delusion. It was like, I am a millionaire, I am amazing. It's like, what's the difference between this and I can fly? And I think that's something that makes people very uncomfortable about IMs is we have to split that difference between reprogramming the subconscious and just complete and total delusion. So for those who are listening who may be new to this or might think it's a bunch of hokey garbage, what do you say?
to split the difference between I am in a positive reprogramming way versus just blatantly lying to yourself.
Erin Doppelt (23:43.382)I much rather people be delusional than to keep supporting their limiting beliefs, which is also probably an illusion as well. Right, so people have these compulsive, deep-seated, negative belief systems that are not ingrained in reality. So if that is possible for them, then why can't they become a millionaire? If that is possible for them, why can't they think of the most highest, beautiful, incredible thing in the whole entire world?
So I challenge that. That's actually not an obstacle that I see with my clients at all. It's how do I choose the right statement to accompany all that I desire? You have to focus on feeling states. So the I am is just a chance. So what is I am? And there's many people have interpreted this in many different ways. So mantra, which is a Sanskrit word in, in Hinduism, it's something that you would use to chant Jyoti. So Jyoti is like.
Erin Doppelt (24:39.23)It's a redactchia necklace or a bead. It typically is 108 on a string. You would hold it in your hand and you would chant your statement 108 times until it's deep seated in your soul. We have this in Christianity. We have this in Judaism. We have this in Islam. We have this in Sikhism. Like we have this in all organized religion where you are chanting the same thing over and over and over again, a type of prayer. In Judaism, you might do the Shema over and over and over again until the message is really deep within your system.
So what is mantra? Mantra is words of positive affirmation. What are words of positive affirmation? That's positive psychology. It's your statement to self. It is something that you are saying to yourself over and over and over again to change a belief, to change a thought, to create a new reality. And what we know to be true is that you can. You can create a new reality. So if people are having a hard time coming up with their I am statements, just remind them that
They have such a easy ability to come up with like the most negative compulsive scenario. Why can't the opposite also be true?
Josh (25:46.311)I think we're so programmed, and I mean statistically we are, to always circle around the negative and that negative creates issues with our mind, with our health, with our interests or everything. And then there's such a power behind changing the subconscious beliefs and those thought patterns to actually shift your interests, like your actual physical, mental, emotional interests and things. This I am a millionaire. Well, I may not be a millionaire.
But if I want to be, and I keep saying these things, I program my subconscious mind, I begin to be interested in things like business development and financial investing and things that I'm telling my brain to be interested in, which is fascinating. But I'd love to sort of learn your take on this and how it relates to health. Maybe it's the same interest or something else. Specializing in inflammatory bowel disease. I see a lot of Crohn's and colitis, which in most cases are autoimmune inflammatory conditions.
But the challenge is that doctors will tell their patients that there's nothing we can do, take these drugs and one day we probably cut out your colon and we'll just hope for the best. And they're put on these immune suppressants and all kinds of junk. But the reality is a lot of these cases aren't truly autoimmune. In fact, there's little evidence we don't have the blood labs or the antibodies and the physical biological data to be like, oh yeah, you're autoimmune. You just have the symptoms of cases that happen to be autoimmune. And so in cases where people have these
diseases, these inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases, or other issues that they're dealing with in the physical body. How do you find the subconscious mind translates to healing or improvement in physical health?
Erin Doppelt (27:23.022)You're doing such holy work in the world. It's so because yeah, I'm very familiar with a lot of what you are sharing. And I know there are so many powerful, extremely expensive drugs out there that is helping this population that has, yeah. Yes, and that means you need insurance and that means you need a job. And that means you need to stay employed at your company.
Josh (27:39.111)tens, tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Erin Doppelt (27:50.226)So there's a huge cycle there, a commentary on health insurance being attached to your job in the US, and we could go down that rabbit hole as well. When it comes to the gut, I'm sure you've had a lot of people talk about this before, so of course serotonin is developed in the gut. However, if you are always in a state of stress and you are always uneasy, or you are always sucking in your stomach, or you are always clenching your pelvic floor,
Erin Doppelt (28:21.544)You are activating your inner organs and telling your body that you are not safe. So if you are consistently breathing into your shoulders, if you are not letting yourself really exhale and take up space where you are, and your legs are crossed, and your arms are crossed, and your neck is crouched, and your back is hunched, you are telling your body it is not safe to take up space.
We are not safe right now. We are not relaxed right now. So we're not gonna do the basic thing of digesting our food. We're not gonna do the basic thing of pulling nutrients from the food that you are even eating. We're not gonna even be able to tell, like send a signal to go drink water. Nevermind that naked water isn't even the best thing for you, that you need minerals to even properly absorb that. I'm probably preaching to your choir.
But none of it matters if you are, I've worked with so many people with perfect diets, right? Quote unquote. You know, eating farm to table, high quality food, purified water, supplements as needed, taking magnesium, whatever that they need to do. However, if all the time your inner dialogue is negative and you are in a fear state and your result of eating this way is because of fear.
then that's not going to support you long term. So the opposite is also true. There's so many, and even myself, like I've traveled, I was on a trip with my in-laws and my husband, and we were in the Smoky Mountains, and we headed into town, and there was not, there was like no healthy concept restaurants at all.
We ended up, we were starving and I'm pregnant. So we just went to one of the first ones that we went to. And I ordered a big salad with like a lot of chicken and a lot of avocado, like all the things in it. And I try not to think about it too much. And I said, can I please get olive oil? And they came up to me and said, all we have is canola. So there's other places in the world where canola oil is completely rancid. It's not even on the same level as olive oil.
Erin Doppelt (30:29.598)And of course I didn't eat it. However, stressing about it in that moment would have been more detrimental than just eating the damn thing. So there is a nice balance, I didn't though. But like there is a nice balance of you have to live your life, you have to do what feels in alignment for you. And the stress that comes from living our life, trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle, there is a fine line there. So if you are going to
(01:04):
Something that I share with my clients is if you are trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle and you find yourself at a wedding or in a situation where you know the food isn't of highest quality, which I would just say is like the modern American diet, bless your food. Just bless your food, infuse it with something that's of highest good. Bless it with something that will enrich your body. Just put your hands over it and say, may you nourish me.
I think whatever animal you came from, I think whatever type of farm-ish you came from, I'm so grateful that you are here to nourish me right now. Let my body consume the nutrients that are in this meal and then eat the food. You're infusing it with love and that's a really good nutrient to start with.
Josh (31:42.879)You know that's something interesting as well that again a lot of people may feel is very hokey maybe has no scientific basis but it does. Can you talk about just as a little sidebar here the crystalline structure and water and the frequency and vibration from our words and how that actually interacts with our world around us especially things like water and food.
Erin Doppelt (32:02.558)Every religion, every spiritual practice blesses their food before they eat, blesses their water before they drink, blesses their wine before they consume. It is one of the oldest rituals that exists in existence of time. So for anyone to roll their eyes at blessing water, just go to any church, go to any temple, go to any mosque.
Water is so sacred. You wash your feet. You maybe even give a couple taps to your third-eyed center just to drop you in. When you bless something, and this is becoming more popular, so cacao ceremonies, you can maybe find them all over. Cacao is a sacred plant. I have a dear friend that farms in El Salvador and has this beautiful cacao growing on her land, and then she's sharing it with people.
This is a plant that you can infuse. You put your hands around your mug and you inhale the smell of the cacao or your coffee or your tea or your water with minerals in it or your food, your wine, right? Make it holy. And you bless it and infuse it with your, I like to do my highest manifestations, right? My highest wish, as if you're stepping into a portal.
So we know about water is the frequency of water is ever changing, right? It's there's no beginning and there's no end to water. If you live near the sea or a lake, it is all encompassing. If you're a water baby and all of us resonate more or less with the elements, earth, air, fire, water, ether. So fire people, you're typically pyromaniacs. You like to light a candle. You like to be by a campfire. Water people, you love showers, you love baths, you love swimming, you love cold plunges.
Air people, you love motorcycles and like having your hair in the wind and riding on a fast boat or being by an open window or even an air diffuser. Earth people, nature, crunchy crystals, like you've crystals around you, you've plants all around you. And then ether is the space in between. So the space in between me and my computer, me and my water, me in the window with the fresh light going down on me, how I'm sitting right now in a yogic position in a chair.
Erin Doppelt (34:24.886)That's all ether. So water is frequency where you are blessing and infusing it. And it's also a portal. So it's the process of, in Christianity, we have baptism. So you go into the water and you come out purified. In Judaism, we have a mikvah, right? You go into the water, you come out purified. So many sacred religions, you wash your feet before walking to a temple. Once we're dirty, you now are pure. You are purified.
And this purification is a stepping through. It's a homecoming. It's a coming back to your innocence. That is also true with your morning cup of tea or coffee. Infuse it with what you desire your day to be like. Infuse it with your highest wish for all. I like to like move into a snapshot manifestation. Move into your I am statements and a little asterisk for the I am statements. It's best if you connect to the feeling state. So I am a millionaire.
If that does sound ludicrous and when you have the feeling of. Like it just doesn't even seem in alignment right now, then you need a different I am statement, you need to think of something. Maybe it's I am abundant and it's the feeling state of having a cup of coffee and a new city and being excited for the day ahead. Feeling states are fine tuning what you most desire. I typically understand them as a bit more feminine. Our English language.
doesn't serve us when it comes to manifestation and reprogramming. You want to mostly connect to feeling states that are unique to you, and they don't need to make sense to anybody else.
Josh (36:04.203)I think one of the greatest tangible examples, I'm very much a science tangible person. I do struggle with a lot of the metaphysical, we'll say. Even in my own faith, it's something that I've definitely done a lot of work for because if I don't see it, touch it, feel it, it becomes very difficult, which actually makes a very concept of faith almost abstract or almost in some cases too abstract to really follow or deal with. But it's really interesting when I look at the tangibles of what you're talking about.
water and vibration. Like that IKEA commercial, right? They had two plants in these two cases in the same condition, same light. They had one speaker talking words like, I hate you, you'll die, you're not green, you're a filthy plant, whatever it was. And then the same conditions, but with better words, like, I love you, you're wonderful, you're growing, you're green, you're lush, you're vibrant. That plant grew, the other one died. And they show that in the same with rice. You have a control jar and a jar that you talk love words to and another one you talk hate words to.
One goes moldy, one stays the same, and the other one just, it looks perfect, like fresh white rice for months because of the frequency and vibration. And I mean, we are, depends on who you ask, 70, 80 plus percent water. If that makes that much of a frequency to mold in our food, what does it really do to one of the most complex computers and beings on earth, which is the human body, mind, and brain? It's wild to think about.
Erin Doppelt (37:28.686)That's why meditation is so important because people have normalized speaking ill to themselves all the time, because that's what we see in our culture. It's what we allow. So many women will even bond over making fun of ourselves. It's not healthy, sweet, or safe. So when it comes to I am statements, never ever say something negative about yourself after the words I am. Your body is always listening. So essentially to what you were just saying.
Your body is going to listen to everything that you are sharing and everything that you are thinking. So whenever you speak about thyself, make it kind, positive, loving, uplifted. Try to attach it to a feeling state of healthy and abundance and freedom. Absolutely, this is a really important conversation. If somebody wants to work with me, they have to be down to do the deep work of changing your inner dialogue, of changing your inner belief systems.
This typically requires a meditation practice. So I teach active meditation. I call it up-level meditation, which you shared in the intro. But I say it's best for people with ADD, ADHD, anxiety, depression, compulsive, typically negative thought patterns. Because when you live your life on repeat, speaking shit about yourself all day, how are you going to make yourself a beautiful meal? How are you going to launch and scale a business? How are you going to heal your gut? How are you going to write a best-selling book?
or a must listen to podcast. The first most important thing is to change your inner dialogue and the second thing is where did I learn this, right? Where did we learn to speak so ill about ourselves? Typically it's something that was passed down generation from generation, so there's a little bit of generational trauma that you need to check out. And then there's also a reality in which, and you have to believe that there is a reality in which you speak kind to yourself and you have all you desire.
That's the place to start, speaking about self.
Josh (39:29.352)There's a really interesting study on generational trauma. I think it's something that gets poo-pooed a lot, especially because we don't understand. It's like 500 years ago, what we didn't understand was magic and we just burn people as witches, but now it's called science. We have the development. We understand because we have the studies, we can measure it. We're in a measuring society. There was actually, for those who want to measure generational trauma, have you seen this study on the mice and the cherry blossoms?
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Erin Doppelt (39:58.226)No, what's this?
Josh (39:59.567)you might love this one. So they took some mice and they put the scent of cherry blossoms through the cage. And every time they do, they were standing on electrified floor, they'd shock the mice. And then again, they'd send the cherry blossoms through and they'd shock the mice. And what started to happen after enough times, every time they begin to smell cherry blossoms, the mice developed a trauma to the smell because they kept getting hurt. And every time they would freak out and have the same physiological responses as if they were being shocked. So we knew they had this trauma.
to the smell. And what they did is after those mice had babies, they introduced the cherry blossom smell and never shocked the feet of the babies and they had the same reaction. All the way to the great grand babies, four generations of mice experienced the same response, dulled a bit over time, but a similar response to the smell of cherry blossom without the physical stimuli because of the epigenetics and how that generational trauma was passed down. That is a tangible, crazy way to think about it.
Erin Doppelt (40:41.794)Wow.
Josh (40:57.111)and going back to illness, when you work with clients, do you go back generations? Do you go back to family trees and history to see what happened, to see what is manifesting in them today?
Erin Doppelt (41:11.946)You went out for a second. So we just asked the question one more time.
Josh (41:14.075)Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry, Internet gremlin. So when you work with clients, do you go back generations? Do you look at their family and their grandparents or great grandparents, where they came from? Like what is that exploratory process like when dealing with physical health?
Erin Doppelt (41:17.803)No worries.
Erin Doppelt (41:32.042)It's important to always recognize the lineage, right? So I ask my clients to always get curious. Why were you born to this specific family? Why is your specific family in this part of the world? Why do they look the way they look? Why do they pray to this specific type of God? Why do they eat this type of food culturally? Start getting curious there, right?
And then once there is that basic curiosity, once there is that understanding, once there is that, oh, like awareness as to why they came to this specific family part of the world, life in general, something that's so important for people to understand about clinical psychology in the West is so much is still based on Freud, Maslow, Jung, Ericsson, if you will. And Freudian model is...
laying down on a couch and talking word of mouth about the experiences that have happened in your life, typically to a therapist that is going to listen. And you are reliving the past over and over and over again. So when you relive trauma, you are strengthening that neural pathway. So for anyone who has gone through extreme trauma, you are reliving the experience and you are feeling the trauma as you are sharing it over and over and over again.
Of course, there are many different coaching modalities and therapies like EMDR that are helping people move through it. However, there is the opposite, like there's duality in this as well, where you can honor the past, you can honor your lineage and what brought you there. And keep in mind that like war and famine is a pretty common narrative for almost everyone, war and famine. People fled from something, right? It's how we kind of got to.
this specific part of the world where we are right now. So there always is that consistent tether that's going to be true for majority of us. And yes, it's important to honor the past. Yes, it's important to honor your lineage. Yes, it's important to get inquisitive. The easiest way to do it is to ask, how do I feel about money? Right, so when you ask somebody how they feel about money, they're gonna talk about their relationship with their father.
Erin Doppelt (43:43.01)When you ask somebody about money, they're gonna talk about the first time they made a couple bucks at a lemonade stand. When you ask somebody about money, they're gonna talk about the time that they tried to save $20 doing X, Y, Z. And that's when you can kind of start seeing the repetition of what was passed down from your culture. However, if you want to take up space in your life and be an active participant in your own life, you can honor the past, but you must move forward. So that means new belief systems. That means that although the trauma existed in the past, we don't block it.
We don't like put it in some part of the brain that we never opened the door. We coexist with it and we move on. It's not essential to strengthen the memory over and over and over and over and over again, and to have an identity around it, to have a big story around the extreme trauma or the family trauma. It's important to decide what you want your life to look like and to move down that path with gusto, in alignment, with new belief systems.
likely you need a dedicated meditation practice in a community that's going to support that as well.
Josh (44:47.619)It's interesting how these stressors become so deep seated. It's almost like without realizing it, we're choosing to hold onto them. We choose to hold onto these paths. We choose to create a narrative and a story around it. And it sort of becomes, like you said, our identity. And then we sort of have this baggage, like a ball and chain we carry everywhere. And it can be so easy, of course, to just say, well, you know, learn to let it go, learn to move on.
but we know like stress has such a detrimental effect on the gut. It creates inflammation, it decreases stomach acid like you talked about earlier, takes us out of rest and digest and puts us into fight and flight. We're not digesting food, we're not absorbing nutrients. It messes with our neurotransmitters and our sleep and all kinds. So if there are people dealing with these stressors, this ball and chain, this baggage you've been carrying around for a long time, you know, just learn to say, well, let it go is not the easiest way. To them, it doesn't make sense.
What are the steps and processes that you would implement with a client who's trying to learn to let go of these deep, seated, heavy baggage and chains that they've been carrying since they were kids?
Erin Doppelt (45:52.398)The first thing that you always do is you'd be in a meditation practice. You start breathing into the depths of your lower belly. What do we do when we breathe into the depths of the lower belly? We are increasing oxygen to the body. What happens when you have more oxygen in your body that is going to relax the amygdala, the back center of the brain, your flight, fright, or freeze. You are going to release the state of panic that so many people operate in. So I've been hearing from a lot of women that are struggling trying to get pregnant right now.
And then I ask a little bit more, right? Why, like how did we evolve to a time when our most basic biological, like everything around you is conspiring for us to get pregnant, for us to populate, for us to have more babies in this earth. And I connect with these women, of course we can talk about diet and of course we can talk about lifestyle. And it oftentimes ends up being these high power women with high power jobs who are working their asses off.
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and they're not taking time to really breathe and connect to their bodies. And this isn't true for everyone, it's just some of the samples that I've seen quite recently. And it's because of stress. So stress, as we know, you just shared, incredibly detrimental to the health. So if you are looking to get healthy, and I would say you do this at the same time as you clean up your diet, is you start a devoted meditation practice.
I believe so much of meditation in the West is quite masculine. So Headspace, Insight Time, or Calm, these free apps that introduce a guided meditation or a meditation in the lineage of MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, it's a silent seated practice. Now, if you are anxious, if you are sad, if you are in the heightened emotional state, if you are disconnected from your body, you have to move, you have to shake, you have to open up your shoulders, you have to open up your hips, you have to come back into your body.
There's a reason we involve to this human meat suit. Otherwise we'd be just like souls bopping around. So if you want to heal and you want to release stress and you want to change your belief systems and you want to live a radical life and you want to get healthy and you want to relax your nervous system so you can properly digest your food, you must have a devoted, delicious, dedicated meditation practice. So I believe 18 minutes is the sweet spot.
Erin Doppelt (48:13.778)This is like if you watch a Ted talk, they're typically 18 minutes long. It's the right amount of time to absorb content. It's also like life force energy. It's high in Judaism. It's like to life, right? It's the intention. So 18 minutes is the time for you to connect to your breath, open up your shoulders, open up your hips, increase oxygen in the body. And you're essentially preparing your body for more of a silent.
seated practice or to be a good parent or to be a good on like an entrepreneur fully present entrepreneur or a good doctor or lawyer or therapist like whatever the work that you are going to do and share with the world meditation is pivotal it's not optional at this point of course you're a science guy i like having to root things in science as well because it appeases both sides of the brain for whoever we are speaking to however
There's nothing like the feeling. So if somebody sits and meditates with me or watches my YouTube channel or joins me for a meditation on Instagram and you feel lighter after, you don't need to study for that. You feel better after. You don't need like a scientific research article to know when you feel better. The same thing is with food. And I'm sure you see this all the time. When somebody starts shifting their diet, do they need an article to say that this specific diet is the best thing when they're-
having the best sleep of their life, their skin is clear, they're having proper bowel movements, they're in a healthier head space. They feel radically better. Our feeling states are the greatest barometer of knowing what is in alignment and what isn't. However, we're at the point where meditation is mandatory. If you wanna live your highest possible timeline, meditation is a mandatory practice.
Josh (49:59.916)Meditation is something that I've definitely dabbled in the past, but I struggle. You know, like most people I get distracted, I'm thinking about while I'm meditating, thinking about not being distracted and thinking about my breath. I'm like, that kind of smells funny. Now I'm itchy, my butt's kind of sore. Maybe I should have gotten a pillow. It was just going to go down these rabbit holes. Is that meditation? Does that classify? Is there almost like a minimum standard for meditation? Like, how do you teach it? And what do you say to those who struggle with the concept of it like myself?
fidget and just now I'm sweaty, I'm itchy, my mouth tastes bad all of a sudden. What is that process like?
Erin Doppelt (50:34.839)Yeah, well, that's one of eight billion different ways to meditate. So what we know from nutrition, there's eight billion people in the world, there's eight billion different ways to eat for optimum health, there's eight billion different ways to have a devoted meditation practice. So when you wake up or when you decide you're going to start meditating, most people are just going to sit down on the floor, maybe with a pillow, set a timer, close their eyes and breathe. And they think they're meditating. However you're
Body needs to kind of catch up, right? You need some sort of system or protocol to follow to relax the body and the mind. So to answer your question, if you are sitting there and you are noticing all the sensations, mindfulness would say, you recognize the sensation as if a cloud is flowing by in the sky. You recognize the cloud, you see the cloud, you allow it to flow by. You recognize that you have the sensation of feeling sweaty.
You notice it, you inhale, you let it go. Fine, that's mindfulness. That's one of many different ways to meditate. However, if you started your practice by chanting three ohms, maybe standing up and moving into a sway meditation, maybe practicing the yogic breath, which is inhale, lower belly, inhale, upper chest, long exhale, release for two to three minutes. Maybe you even move into kapal balti, which is sucking your belly button towards the spine in a really quick rhythm.
to detox the internal organs, to increase vibration, to kind of shift your head space and to get this new clarity in your mind. And then you dropped into, maybe do a couple sun salutations, maybe a couple lunges, maybe a couple of yogi jumping jacks. And then you move into a silent seated practice or a loving kindness meditation or chakra alignment meditation. You will feel quite different. And it just requires a little bit of breath work, a little bit of stretching, a little bit of prep.
It's why so often I'll talk to people and they'll say, oh, I like to go for a couple mile run and then I sit and meditate because I can drop in deeper. Your body needs to release the energy. It's why at the end of yoga, you end with Shavasana. Yes, it symbolizes the death of your practice or you end with meditation, but you just moved your body for an hour, stretching it out, allowing it to flow, allowing it to express itself.
Erin Doppelt (52:50.066)And then you can move into the quiet breath, and then you can move into the stillness, because the most sacred thing is to be still. It's the thing that we are, we suck at as a species. We're never still, we're constantly going over and over and over again.
Josh (53:07.931)Hmm. It's really interesting because obviously there's something to be said for getting this subconscious mind for unloading a lot of things. You know, most of us, like we talked about earlier in this episode, was about sitting still, being bored, distracting ourselves, constantly not feeling through these emotions. I don't know who's credited for saying that man's greatest weakness is the inability to sit in a room quietly by himself. And so many of us are so bad at being bored.
because we need to be distracted. We're on our phones, we're looking for the next dopamine hit. We're on Instagram, like three in the morning, right? Like you said, just trying to scroll through and distract. One of the greatest things that I found for me is going for a drive with no music, no, just open the windows, let the air and the sunshine in. And I find I percolate. It's like my subconscious mind, if I have stressors and things, maybe I'm a little stressed about it. Maybe I'm just processing it. Maybe I'm starting to get anxious and I'm running myself in a ball and just like.
I was fine when I started to drive, now I'm anxious. But as I drive, it almost starts to release. As I drive, these 30 trillion thoughts in the back of my head of information I've been absorbing, like I obsess about my podcast and about what I'm doing in the gut world and how I'm gonna help people and the next thing I'm trying to learn, I obsess about it when I drive with no music. It's like my brain just starts to filter and thoughts start to come to me, ideas just happen. And that to me is like the power of being
bored. For those of us who might struggle with it, are there any practices? Is it meditation? Is it driving? Like what do you find? I mean, sure, everybody's different. What do you find is the best way to organize all these subconscious thoughts and stressors and all this excess? And then what is the benefit to our physical body and our health of unwinding all of that and organizing it to just kind of put it into the psychological mental shelf?
Erin Doppelt (54:57.73)First of all, when you drive, this is a very common pattern where the subconscious mind is taking over. So you know how to drive, you've been driving for such a long time, it does not require your conscious mind, it does not require your analytical mind, it doesn't require your awareness. So you are allowing your subconscious mind to take care of you while you are driving and to get you from point A to point B safely. Because your subconscious mind is distracted, it sounds to me that you can kind of have deeper thoughts.
new ideas, epiphanies, and inspiration. And there's something to be said there, right? You might even be relaxed. However, you are still driving. So this isn't like a stillness meditation. You are still doing something. I wouldn't even put this under the category of boredom, per se. I can understand if you're on a road trip and you're driving like a very long time, of course you might get bored. But boredom is a little bit different. And I don't think people experience that anymore. And boredom is actually quite a luxury.
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Josh (55:53.851)Hmm.
Erin Doppelt (55:53.994)the practice of giving yourself time to kind of just sit and be in the presence of your own energy to see what even feels like I don't even know if kids know what boredom even feels like So your question was What are the benefits of really shifting the subconscious mind and inserting more positive beliefs?
Josh (56:14.123)And really sort of, yeah, the benefits of shifting that mind and letting yourself really organize, because there's things that are in the back of our head all the time. I had a client of mine and she came in one day and I've had her for my list for years. And she comes in, this was when I was a personal trainer, she comes into the gym and I'm like, you're okay, something's off? She's no, I'm fine. You could see there were tears behind her eyes. She said, when was the last time you just let yourself sit still? And she burst into tears.
because there's so much on the back of her head that's constantly playing through stressors that she's constantly suppressing. And so what do you find is the benefit of allowing all these stressors in the back of our mind to finally come out and organize themselves so we're not just overwhelmed subconsciously?
Erin Doppelt (56:59.298)So this, I have a favorite example. I have multiple favorite examples.
I have dear friends and also past clients. They wanna be with their highest soulmate more than anything, right? They want to call in their beloved. They wanna start building a family. They want to be with this person so badly. So they download the dating apps. They ask their aunts and their friends that they're ready for a matchmaking. Do you know anyone who's a good fit for me? And all of a sudden they have a date set for Wednesday.
and they're excited about it. You know, they're texting back and forth with this guy that they're going on a date with on Wednesday. And then Monday rolls around and wow, work was so busy. Work was so busy and there's like a tickle in the back of her throat. And then Tuesday comes and she didn't even know, she didn't sleep well. Work is kind of still really intense. And then Wednesday comes and she takes out her phone and she texts the guy that she's about to go on a date with and says, you know what, I need to reschedule. I have a lot going on.
It takes a moment to step back and pause and realize, wow, this is the third, fourth, fifth time that she's done that. That requires your conscious mind to become aware of that. However, you need to ask your subconscious, why are you consistently self-sabotaging? What are you afraid of? Usually when it comes to these patterns, and I'll give another example, I'll have, and maybe you've seen this, like if somebody signs up for a program, a group program, they sign up, they're all in, and maybe it's a six month program.
They show up for that first month. They do their best the second month. And by the third month, they don't even show up anymore. Right? Or somebody who drops out of college after being really invested in it, and then they stop showing up. What is the self-sabotage rooted in? Or they're committed to a healthy lifestyle. They stock the fridge. They're going to eat all of these.
Erin Doppelt (58:54.882)grass-fed meats and pasture-raised egg and chickens and fruits and vegetables, and they bought fancy water and salts and minerals, and they're going to radically change their lifestyle. They hired a personal trainer, they're gonna get 10,000 steps a day. They're going to transform their life, and then right before weigh-in, they binge. They have a whole pizza, they go through the drive-through. Why?
Do we do this as a species? These are three incredibly common examples that I see all the time. I'm sure you also see it as well. Why do we do this? And it's because one, a lot of us are addicted to stress and drama. We thrive with the stress. We need a little bit of stress to stay in control because if we are self-sabotaging ourselves, then it's not an outside force that is self-sabotaging us.
And two, and this is the overarching theme of so much that I see when it comes to reprogramming the subconscious mind, it is the worthiness around having what you most desire. Am I worthy to be with my highest possible soulmate? Am I worthy to be healthy and happy? Am I worthy to be whatever the deepest desire and dream is? So yes, it requires your conscious mind to become aware of the subconscious.
The best way to do that is to notice a pattern. So to notice any specific patterns. Notice any patterns that you always find yourself in. Do you always find yourself in the same type of drama? Do you always find yourself in the same feeling state that comes through for you regularly? That's when you know that you're in a cycle and there's typically subconscious mind at play. Once you are aware of that,
you can typically end it. You can typically say, okay, I see this pattern where I blow off my date 12 hours before it happens, and I allow work or myself or my insomnia to get in the way of it.
Erin Doppelt (01:00:49.782)That is part one. Part two is getting over yourself. Allowing yourself to be exactly who you are while taking steps to walk closer to your deepest desires and dreams. This requires aligned action in the physical, so actually doing it, actually showing up for the first day, making the beautiful meal, showing up to walk the 10,000 steps, whatever that looks like for you, it's the physical action, you must have the physical aligned to the energy.
And when you are aware of your subconscious programming and where you are limiting yourself in this lifetime, you can then consciously, using your analytical mind, shift it. So what I would recommend to anybody listening, sit down and ask yourself, what are the same situations I find myself in over and over and over?
right, whether it's like dreading showing up for the first date and canceling last minute or signing up for a new wellness program and kind of blowing it off along the way. Where are the patterns? And then what can you do to overcome it? So number one, you got to change your belief systems. This typically requires a meditation practice. Number two, community. So a spiritual running buddy, a mentor, a guide, a coach, a therapist, somebody is going to hold you accountable and starting, starting from there.
And that's really where the deep work begins. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe in yourself more than your negative belief systems. And you're probably so different than the version of you that is attached to being safe in the negative belief system as well.
Josh (01:02:29.443)Very interesting. Well, Aaron, we are wrapping up to the end of our time together here today. I wanna make sure I respect your time as well. But before we finalize and just take this thing down, I do have one last question. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or haven't discussed or anything you'd like to mention to the audience listening at all, completely open floor?
Erin Doppelt (01:02:55.09)Your deepest desires and dreams are unique to you. It is not an accident that you want what you want. Your mission is to pursue it. So, so often we second guess ourselves, why do I want this thing? Am I worthy of having this thing? It is going to keep coming up for you. Maybe in the middle of the night, maybe when you wake up hungover in the morning, maybe when you find yourself next to your partner and you're questioning things, it will get louder and louder and louder.
time until you show up. So please trust your deepest desires and dreams. Message me on Instagram at Aaron R. Doppelt. E-R-I-N-R-D-O-P-P-E-L-T. I have so much content on manifestation and meditation and positive psychology and all these different ways for you to really radically show up for what your heart yearns for because that looks different for every single person. So give yourself permission.
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to pursue your deepest desires and dreams.
Josh (01:03:55.975)I love that. Now Aaron, is Instagram the best place to reach you? Is there a website or anything else people can check out?
Erin Doppelt (01:04:02.002)Yeah, Instagram is a good place to hang out with me. I have my website, erinracheldopelt.com, E-R-I-N-R-A-C-H-E-L-D-O-P-P-E-L-T.com. Best known for the Align Coaching Certification where you become a certified meditation teacher and spiritual psychology coach. It is a truly life-changing, amazing program. However, when this episode comes out, my book, Nothing Can Stop You,
is going to be everywhere books are sold in May, Eastern ritual, Western psychology, helping you do the thing that your heart most yearns for. And I have a lot of pop-up spiritual programming that I love to share and coach live. So definitely hang out with me if that's something that sounds expansive for you.
Josh (01:04:48.047)Well, that's brilliant. Aaron, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for joining us, taking your time to just share all this experience and knowledge that you spent years and years accumulating. I hope our listeners have gained something from it. I'm sure they have. And hopefully we'll have you back around again sometime soon.
Erin Doppelt (01:05:04.706)Thanks so much for having me.
Josh (01:05:06.443)My pleasure. Now, I'm just going to press that stop button here, Aaron. Is there?
Erin Dupelt, welcome to Reversible.
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Erin Doppelt (05:31.202)Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Josh (05:34.627)Well, it's a pleasure. Now, Aaron, if you could, I always want to give our guests some context. We've got some questions. We want to learn about spiritual psychology and what it is and why it helps us heal and how it's related. But first, let's talk about you. How did you end up here in this world doing what it is that you do?
Erin Doppelt (05:52.77)And that's the true question, right? And a parallel I see between myself and likewise maybe for you as well and many of the guests that you're having on this podcast, something went wrong, right? Something had to go wrong. Either you get sick, you fall out of alignment, you have anxiety, depression, seasonal sadness, cystic acne, whatever it is. I had anxiety, really under the skin anxiety.
And it was so present for me, especially during undergrad and college, that I took myself, I would take myself on these really long walks. I would take myself into nature for a really long time. And I would think to myself at 18, 19, 20 years old, this can't be it, right? There has to be something else. Like this feeling has to be rooted in something bigger than self. There has to be a solution or an understanding.
At the same time, I traveled. I was somebody that loved traveling and seeing the world and had deep gusto for food and travel and meeting people different than me. And I spent some time in Florence, Italy when I was 20 years old, first study abroad. And it brought me back into this love language of food is gusto, right? Food is such a language of love. You can eat differently.
when you are outside of America. It also brought me back to anxiety, right? Wherever you go, there you are. So often I'll hear from my clients, friends, students that they thought their problems would be solved when they booked the plane ticket and found themselves on the other side of the world. It's still you, it's still you my friend. So you have to confront yourself at some point. And ultimately.
This anxiety led me to a lot of really powerful teachers. One, it led me to bookstores. And I started reading everything from deep fantasy to nonfiction to spirituality. And once I got back to college, it brought me to my yoga mat. So I found yoga and meditation. I found it to be incredibly challenging and it brought me to the present moment. I would go to a yoga class, I would follow a flow. I was a spin instructor, I was an athlete in high school, I was a triathlete, like these were all new concepts for me.
Erin Doppelt (08:15.062)So the idea of slowing down and connecting to your breath, how life altering, how feminine, how different, and it catapulted this journey for me. And ultimately anxiety was the biggest teacher that brought me to prayer and meditation, to opening up the shoulders and hips, to recognizing that of course we live in a patriarchy and what does it look like to be the embodied feminine.
And that led me to Israel, that led me to ashrams throughout India, that led me to working in the slums of Mumbai, that led me to Columbia where I definitely studied a lot of positive psychology and emotional intelligence and mindfulness. However, something that I think is so important is oftentimes we will see somebody quote unquote healed or like they look like they have it figured out and the truth is something had to go wrong to get us here.
So whenever somebody experiences depression, anxiety, inflammation in the gut, dissonance, compulsive negative thought patterns, disattachment from self, like a huge heightened emotional state, instead of fearing it, you lean in. So I am, I don't know when this episode is going to come out. So I'm super pregnant and I'm having a baby in November, brachashem, God willing. And with the concept of birth, right? A natural birth, birth in general.
is you have to lean in. And I think in our culture, something that we see so often is we resist. We don't want to feel the pain. We want to take a pill and get over it, or just numb out via that 5 PM glass of wine, or Netflix, or to smoke something, or to sleep with someone, or to scroll mindlessly for hours and hours and hours and hours in hopes to regulate. But what does it look like if you got curious about the anxiety? What does it look like if you got curious about the influx?
the inflammation and the gut. What if you got curious about your belief systems? What can that lead to? So that's my journey right now. I think the obstacle, the heightened emotional state, the things that go wrong is just the beginning of the spiritual journey. And I encourage people to get inquisitive around that as opposed to resisting it.
Josh (10:31.527)interesting you talk about these remedies, there's self-medication with scrolling or sex or food or entertainment or these things that we do to sort of distract ourselves. It's almost like instead of taking pharmaceutical medications to manage things like anxiety, we're medicating with other things or medicating with dopamine or medicating with distraction with entertainment with whatever it is. And that is obviously not the most healthy practice. We're not getting to the roots or just masking our symptoms which in anything
and medication or in medicine is always bad. Just masking symptoms never gets us anywhere. Which really sort of leads me to the question, if we wanna understand, if we wanna fix something, we have to understand it. And so before we do, diving into these roots and how to fix and reprogram the subconscious mind, how do you define spiritual psychology? You talk about it a lot, but what does it mean?
Erin Doppelt (11:24.59)Spiritual psychology, if you were to apply to a master's or a PhD program in the States, it would be under the school of transpersonal psychology. That's like the term that was coined. And it's such a good question because people are just tapping into it. So spiritual psychology is the practice, the belief, the system of connecting to a higher power as you understand it. And you can
of course measure the brain with MRI as it relates to meditation or mindfulness. And of course you can, and there's so much research out there about people who are diving into these spiritual practices and feeling better. Their nervous system relaxed, they're having psychedelic experiences, they're rewiring their belief systems, they're relaxing their nervous system, they're coming out of flight, fright or freeze for the first time in their life or in a really long time.
But at the core, spiritual psychology is the belief of having relationship to a higher power as you understand it. And that's how I educate on spiritual psychology because it's not a one size fits all model. We know this with gut health and nutrition, and the same thing is true with spirituality. So there are some people who really align with their organized religion. I'm a Jewish woman. I deeply resonate with the lineage of it. So I'm happy to move forward in a process of being a spiritual Jew.
I'm also extremely well versed in Hinduism, Christianity. It's easy to be well versed in Christianity when you grow up in America. It's a Christian state. It's a Christian country. I studied a lot of Sikhism for a while, Buddhism. So there are so many incredible religions out there that you can tap into if you are looking to see what resonates. Spirituality is a bit broader. So it's connecting to Mother Nature as you understand it, connecting to energy at.
like the bottom line is you understand it. That can be food, that can be animals, that can be trees, that can be wishing upon a star or connecting to your lineage and praying to your ancestors that you felt quite close to. So that's the way that I like to educate on spiritual psychology.
Josh (13:39.387)So what's the connection then? Because there's spirituality, there's faith, there's religion, there's all these different things, whatever sort of term or umbrella we want to explore as individuals, right? My wife and I were Christians, and that's the route that we pursue for ourselves, and we find that's us, right? That's where we were raised, that's what we believe, we believe in God, but there's a connection. Obviously, in Christianity, some will believe that there are miracles, some believe miracles don't happen anymore.
Some people believe that faith can heal you. Some people believe that it's the mind and the emotions and our connection for the brain to heal the body. So what do you say is a connection between spirituality and our physical health, or particularly even just gut health? How do they play with each other?
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Erin Doppelt (14:22.734)So my expertise is Eastern ritual and Western psychology. So merging the sacred to what we know in clinical psychology. And that's a lot of what I share in my certification trainings and also in my programs.
Erin Doppelt (14:37.59)When it comes to diving deeper, so when it comes to having a belief system, and when it comes to healing.
What we believe to be true is always going to be the foundation of our health. So whatever we focus on expands. So if you are stressed, your analytical mind, so your conscious mind, and keep in mind, conscious, subconscious, these are terms that are Freudian, that Freud brought into the world in the 1890s. These terms have been around for a very long time. This isn't new science, new clinical terms.
If you are stressed about something, you're bringing your analytical mind to a very specific situation, right? And your whole reality can focus on that analytical situation over and over and over again. I have a client years ago who would stress out about traffic, and a lot of her attention would be around dictating her life based on when she would avoid traffic in and out of the city.
And that ended up becoming kind of a big part of her personality, right? And it would dysregulate her when she was running late, like she was always on this very prompt schedule. And it overpowered a lot of other bigger themes in her life because her analytical mind was always focused on this one theme of missing traffic, avoiding traffic, not sitting in traffic. So the analytical mind and the conscious mind is what is occurring on autopilot.
So you and I having this conversation, we're aware of being on the computer. Maybe we hear a fan in the background. Maybe we're aware of the lighting in the room. This is our conscious mind. The subconscious is what lies beneath the surface. So the things that you and I are not present of right now in this moment. So the subconscious could be a belief system of
Erin Doppelt (16:35.526)Oh my God, I did a podcast forever ago and the Wi-Fi went out. That was so stressful and so embarrassing. Maybe that's playing in the back of my mind. Maybe in the back of my mind, you know, I'm in we're moving. We're in an apartment building. Maybe somebody is going to knock on the door and disrupt this. Like there's all these different things that could be lying dormant in the subconscious mind. And maybe that's why my leg is shaking or maybe that's why I'm perspiring a little bit. And these are themes.
that are always running at all times. So when it comes to our health, whatever we believe to be true is going to be reality. So if you are somebody who grew up and both of your parents were unwell, and you believe that because your parents were unwell, genetically you are going to be unwell, that will likely be your reality. However, if you believe that you move your body and you take time to connect to the sun and you eat high quality food,
high quality plants and animals, and you take time to sit and breathe, that is going to grow as well. So that is going to focus and that is going to expand. Well, we know and Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about this a lot as well. Whatever thoughts wire together, fire together. So when it comes to your health, having positive, healthy, uplifting thoughts is going to be incredibly important to your health over time.
Mantra, I am statements, that helps you rewire the subconscious mind. I am healthy and safe. I have healthy digestion. I eat amazing food that nourishes my body. This matters over time. So your thoughts are a huge, huge player in your health.
Josh (18:23.716)I don't want to be quoted on this one because I can't think of the name. However, I heard a story of a martial artist who actually was in a car accident or was hit by a bus, something of the sort, but he broke his back. Very famous martial artists, black belt techniques, the works, you know, I say that as if I've not been doing martial arts 15 years, I got no idea what the words are. But anyway, so this fella was a teacher, considered eighth degree Dan or whatever he was in his art, but very well versed, hit by a car, paralyzed.
could not move. I don't know if he was quadriplegic or paraplegic, and they said he'd never move again. This is just his life now. And over the course of two, two and a half years, through breath work and meditation, he visualized and pictured every single cell in his body, reworking rewiring within two years, he was up and walking and training again, he was back to martial arts. And that really goes to show the power of the mind over the body. It's like hypochondriacs who truly do become physically ill, because they constantly tell themselves they're going to get sick.
And that stress, we know the stress response dysregulates the immune system, but there are other factors that we suspect at play where your brain decides, okay, fine, we're sick now, and you become sick and you now have the flu when it's the middle of the summer and you're outside and you're perfectly healthy.
Erin Doppelt (19:38.637)Yes.
Erin Doppelt (19:42.838)There's a really powerful, so in the 60s, 70s and 80s, there is the book of Seth. So this prophet, Seth, an all-knowing voice started becoming channeled by this couple and they started writing down everything that Seth would say. And one of the books, the result of Sethism, Seth ideology is the nature of personal responsibility, the nature of personal reality. And wait, I need to check that, Seth, the nature of personal reality.
Okay, I knew it was one of those. The nature of personal reality. And in this book, which is a complete channel of Seth, The Voice, it is all about how, if you don't really like the image in your mind, if you do not like your life, if you do not like what you see, you can change it. So you can change everything. You can decide right now and change everything that you see in your reality.
Everything is a reflection of your beliefs. Everything is a reflection of your thoughts. Change your thoughts. However, if you are traumatized, right? If you have an experience in the past that you have not allowed yourself to fully integrate, then it is going to be hard to shift the thoughts over and over and over again. So there's a deep practice here, right? It's first you have to become aware of how you feel and think. You have to be aware of why you have the thoughts that you have.
And then you need to consciously, very strategically, try to insert more positive thoughts. The ratio is usually 33 to one. So 33 positive thoughts to one negative. And then recite that over time. And you also wanna reprogram. So something that I teach my clients is you use the most sacred time when your brain is most suggestible to, open to suggestion, which is the theta brain wave state. This is right when you wake up in the morning. This is right before bed.
This is oftentimes also when you are like deep in meditation or coming out of meditation or Shavasana. This is the time when the conscious and subconscious they can communicate more clearly. It's almost thinner. You can tap in during this time. Whatever you experienced in the past. It's a really good time to chant your I am statement. So I am calm centered and present. I am healthy in my body. I am healthy and safe. I am a multiple.
Erin Doppelt (22:04.254)six figure CEO, I'm a bestselling author, I'm healthfully pregnant, like whatever your IM statements are. It is also a good time to practice. I teach a practice called snapshot manifestation. It's a manifestation practice. However, visualization of sitting in the feeling of having all that you desire is also really powerful in theta brainwave state. This is not your analytical state. This is when you are almost, you're very calm, you're open. You are...
in that space right before you fall asleep or right before rising. So you're starting to feel good. You're feeling light. You're feeling open. And that is going to add up and be more powerful over time. But it does require work. It does require especially if you are somebody who is trying to heal.
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Josh (22:52.84)So these IAM statements, it's something I've heard about many years ago, something I've been exposed to lots through different seminars, business and self-improvement courses like Landmark and all kinds of stuff I've gone to over the years, which I've learned quite a lot from and I've carried through my life. But
Something I struggled with very much at the beginning of these IM statements is it felt like delusion. It was like, I am a millionaire, I am amazing. It's like, what's the difference between this and I can fly? And I think that's something that makes people very uncomfortable about IMs is we have to split that difference between reprogramming the subconscious and just complete and total delusion. So for those who are listening who may be new to this or might think it's a bunch of hokey garbage, what do you say?
to split the difference between I am in a positive reprogramming way versus just blatantly lying to yourself.
Erin Doppelt (23:43.382)I much rather people be delusional than to keep supporting their limiting beliefs, which is also probably an illusion as well. Right, so people have these compulsive, deep-seated, negative belief systems that are not ingrained in reality. So if that is possible for them, then why can't they become a millionaire? If that is possible for them, why can't they think of the most highest, beautiful, incredible thing in the whole entire world?
So I challenge that. That's actually not an obstacle that I see with my clients at all. It's how do I choose the right statement to accompany all that I desire? You have to focus on feeling states. So the I am is just a chance. So what is I am? And there's many people have interpreted this in many different ways. So mantra, which is a Sanskrit word in, in Hinduism, it's something that you would use to chant Jyoti. So Jyoti is like.
Erin Doppelt (24:39.23)It's a redactchia necklace or a bead. It typically is 108 on a string. You would hold it in your hand and you would chant your statement 108 times until it's deep seated in your soul. We have this in Christianity. We have this in Judaism. We have this in Islam. We have this in Sikhism. Like we have this in all organized religion where you are chanting the same thing over and over and over again, a type of prayer. In Judaism, you might do the Shema over and over and over again until the message is really deep within your system.
So what is mantra? Mantra is words of positive affirmation. What are words of positive affirmation? That's positive psychology. It's your statement to self. It is something that you are saying to yourself over and over and over again to change a belief, to change a thought, to create a new reality. And what we know to be true is that you can. You can create a new reality. So if people are having a hard time coming up with their I am statements, just remind them that
They have such a easy ability to come up with like the most negative compulsive scenario. Why can't the opposite also be true?
Josh (25:46.311)I think we're so programmed, and I mean statistically we are, to always circle around the negative and that negative creates issues with our mind, with our health, with our interests or everything. And then there's such a power behind changing the subconscious beliefs and those thought patterns to actually shift your interests, like your actual physical, mental, emotional interests and things. This I am a millionaire. Well, I may not be a millionaire.
But if I want to be, and I keep saying these things, I program my subconscious mind, I begin to be interested in things like business development and financial investing and things that I'm telling my brain to be interested in, which is fascinating. But I'd love to sort of learn your take on this and how it relates to health. Maybe it's the same interest or something else. Specializing in inflammatory bowel disease. I see a lot of Crohn's and colitis, which in most cases are autoimmune inflammatory conditions.
But the challenge is that doctors will tell their patients that there's nothing we can do, take these drugs and one day we probably cut out your colon and we'll just hope for the best. And they're put on these immune suppressants and all kinds of junk. But the reality is a lot of these cases aren't truly autoimmune. In fact, there's little evidence we don't have the blood labs or the antibodies and the physical biological data to be like, oh yeah, you're autoimmune. You just have the symptoms of cases that happen to be autoimmune. And so in cases where people have these
diseases, these inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases, or other issues that they're dealing with in the physical body. How do you find the subconscious mind translates to healing or improvement in physical health?
Erin Doppelt (27:23.022)You're doing such holy work in the world. It's so because yeah, I'm very familiar with a lot of what you are sharing. And I know there are so many powerful, extremely expensive drugs out there that is helping this population that has, yeah. Yes, and that means you need insurance and that means you need a job. And that means you need to stay employed at your company.
Josh (27:39.111)tens, tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Erin Doppelt (27:50.226)So there's a huge cycle there, a commentary on health insurance being attached to your job in the US, and we could go down that rabbit hole as well. When it comes to the gut, I'm sure you've had a lot of people talk about this before, so of course serotonin is developed in the gut. However, if you are always in a state of stress and you are always uneasy, or you are always sucking in your stomach, or you are always clenching your pelvic floor,
Erin Doppelt (28:21.544)You are activating your inner organs and telling your body that you are not safe. So if you are consistently breathing into your shoulders, if you are not letting yourself really exhale and take up space where you are, and your legs are crossed, and your arms are crossed, and your neck is crouched, and your back is hunched, you are telling your body it is not safe to take up space.
We are not safe right now. We are not relaxed right now. So we're not gonna do the basic thing of digesting our food. We're not gonna do the basic thing of pulling nutrients from the food that you are even eating. We're not gonna even be able to tell, like send a signal to go drink water. Nevermind that naked water isn't even the best thing for you, that you need minerals to even properly absorb that. I'm probably preaching to your choir.
But none of it matters if you are, I've worked with so many people with perfect diets, right? Quote unquote. You know, eating farm to table, high quality food, purified water, supplements as needed, taking magnesium, whatever that they need to do. However, if all the time your inner dialogue is negative and you are in a fear state and your result of eating this way is because of fear.
then that's not going to support you long term. So the opposite is also true. There's so many, and even myself, like I've traveled, I was on a trip with my in-laws and my husband, and we were in the Smoky Mountains, and we headed into town, and there was not, there was like no healthy concept restaurants at all.
We ended up, we were starving and I'm pregnant. So we just went to one of the first ones that we went to. And I ordered a big salad with like a lot of chicken and a lot of avocado, like all the things in it. And I try not to think about it too much. And I said, can I please get olive oil? And they came up to me and said, all we have is canola. So there's other places in the world where canola oil is completely rancid. It's not even on the same level as olive oil.
Erin Doppelt (30:29.598)And of course I didn't eat it. However, stressing about it in that moment would have been more detrimental than just eating the damn thing. So there is a nice balance, I didn't though. But like there is a nice balance of you have to live your life, you have to do what feels in alignment for you. And the stress that comes from living our life, trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle, there is a fine line there. So if you are going to
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Something that I share with my clients is if you are trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle and you find yourself at a wedding or in a situation where you know the food isn't of highest quality, which I would just say is like the modern American diet, bless your food. Just bless your food, infuse it with something that's of highest good. Bless it with something that will enrich your body. Just put your hands over it and say, may you nourish me.
I think whatever animal you came from, I think whatever type of farm-ish you came from, I'm so grateful that you are here to nourish me right now. Let my body consume the nutrients that are in this meal and then eat the food. You're infusing it with love and that's a really good nutrient to start with.
Josh (31:42.879)You know that's something interesting as well that again a lot of people may feel is very hokey maybe has no scientific basis but it does. Can you talk about just as a little sidebar here the crystalline structure and water and the frequency and vibration from our words and how that actually interacts with our world around us especially things like water and food.
Erin Doppelt (32:02.558)Every religion, every spiritual practice blesses their food before they eat, blesses their water before they drink, blesses their wine before they consume. It is one of the oldest rituals that exists in existence of time. So for anyone to roll their eyes at blessing water, just go to any church, go to any temple, go to any mosque.
Water is so sacred. You wash your feet. You maybe even give a couple taps to your third-eyed center just to drop you in. When you bless something, and this is becoming more popular, so cacao ceremonies, you can maybe find them all over. Cacao is a sacred plant. I have a dear friend that farms in El Salvador and has this beautiful cacao growing on her land, and then she's sharing it with people.
This is a plant that you can infuse. You put your hands around your mug and you inhale the smell of the cacao or your coffee or your tea or your water with minerals in it or your food, your wine, right? Make it holy. And you bless it and infuse it with your, I like to do my highest manifestations, right? My highest wish, as if you're stepping into a portal.
So we know about water is the frequency of water is ever changing, right? It's there's no beginning and there's no end to water. If you live near the sea or a lake, it is all encompassing. If you're a water baby and all of us resonate more or less with the elements, earth, air, fire, water, ether. So fire people, you're typically pyromaniacs. You like to light a candle. You like to be by a campfire. Water people, you love showers, you love baths, you love swimming, you love cold plunges.
Air people, you love motorcycles and like having your hair in the wind and riding on a fast boat or being by an open window or even an air diffuser. Earth people, nature, crunchy crystals, like you've crystals around you, you've plants all around you. And then ether is the space in between. So the space in between me and my computer, me and my water, me in the window with the fresh light going down on me, how I'm sitting right now in a yogic position in a chair.
Erin Doppelt (34:24.886)That's all ether. So water is frequency where you are blessing and infusing it. And it's also a portal. So it's the process of, in Christianity, we have baptism. So you go into the water and you come out purified. In Judaism, we have a mikvah, right? You go into the water, you come out purified. So many sacred religions, you wash your feet before walking to a temple. Once we're dirty, you now are pure. You are purified.
And this purification is a stepping through. It's a homecoming. It's a coming back to your innocence. That is also true with your morning cup of tea or coffee. Infuse it with what you desire your day to be like. Infuse it with your highest wish for all. I like to like move into a snapshot manifestation. Move into your I am statements and a little asterisk for the I am statements. It's best if you connect to the feeling state. So I am a millionaire.
If that does sound ludicrous and when you have the feeling of. Like it just doesn't even seem in alignment right now, then you need a different I am statement, you need to think of something. Maybe it's I am abundant and it's the feeling state of having a cup of coffee and a new city and being excited for the day ahead. Feeling states are fine tuning what you most desire. I typically understand them as a bit more feminine. Our English language.
doesn't serve us when it comes to manifestation and reprogramming. You want to mostly connect to feeling states that are unique to you, and they don't need to make sense to anybody else.
Josh (36:04.203)I think one of the greatest tangible examples, I'm very much a science tangible person. I do struggle with a lot of the metaphysical, we'll say. Even in my own faith, it's something that I've definitely done a lot of work for because if I don't see it, touch it, feel it, it becomes very difficult, which actually makes a very concept of faith almost abstract or almost in some cases too abstract to really follow or deal with. But it's really interesting when I look at the tangibles of what you're talking about.
water and vibration. Like that IKEA commercial, right? They had two plants in these two cases in the same condition, same light. They had one speaker talking words like, I hate you, you'll die, you're not green, you're a filthy plant, whatever it was. And then the same conditions, but with better words, like, I love you, you're wonderful, you're growing, you're green, you're lush, you're vibrant. That plant grew, the other one died. And they show that in the same with rice. You have a control jar and a jar that you talk love words to and another one you talk hate words to.
One goes moldy, one stays the same, and the other one just, it looks perfect, like fresh white rice for months because of the frequency and vibration. And I mean, we are, depends on who you ask, 70, 80 plus percent water. If that makes that much of a frequency to mold in our food, what does it really do to one of the most complex computers and beings on earth, which is the human body, mind, and brain? It's wild to think about.
Erin Doppelt (37:28.686)That's why meditation is so important because people have normalized speaking ill to themselves all the time, because that's what we see in our culture. It's what we allow. So many women will even bond over making fun of ourselves. It's not healthy, sweet, or safe. So when it comes to I am statements, never ever say something negative about yourself after the words I am. Your body is always listening. So essentially to what you were just saying.
Your body is going to listen to everything that you are sharing and everything that you are thinking. So whenever you speak about thyself, make it kind, positive, loving, uplifted. Try to attach it to a feeling state of healthy and abundance and freedom. Absolutely, this is a really important conversation. If somebody wants to work with me, they have to be down to do the deep work of changing your inner dialogue, of changing your inner belief systems.
This typically requires a meditation practice. So I teach active meditation. I call it up-level meditation, which you shared in the intro. But I say it's best for people with ADD, ADHD, anxiety, depression, compulsive, typically negative thought patterns. Because when you live your life on repeat, speaking shit about yourself all day, how are you going to make yourself a beautiful meal? How are you going to launch and scale a business? How are you going to heal your gut? How are you going to write a best-selling book?
or a must listen to podcast. The first most important thing is to change your inner dialogue and the second thing is where did I learn this, right? Where did we learn to speak so ill about ourselves? Typically it's something that was passed down generation from generation, so there's a little bit of generational trauma that you need to check out. And then there's also a reality in which, and you have to believe that there is a reality in which you speak kind to yourself and you have all you desire.
That's the place to start, speaking about self.
Josh (39:29.352)There's a really interesting study on generational trauma. I think it's something that gets poo-pooed a lot, especially because we don't understand. It's like 500 years ago, what we didn't understand was magic and we just burn people as witches, but now it's called science. We have the development. We understand because we have the studies, we can measure it. We're in a measuring society. There was actually, for those who want to measure generational trauma, have you seen this study on the mice and the cherry blossoms?
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Erin Doppelt (39:58.226)No, what's this?
Josh (39:59.567)you might love this one. So they took some mice and they put the scent of cherry blossoms through the cage. And every time they do, they were standing on electrified floor, they'd shock the mice. And then again, they'd send the cherry blossoms through and they'd shock the mice. And what started to happen after enough times, every time they begin to smell cherry blossoms, the mice developed a trauma to the smell because they kept getting hurt. And every time they would freak out and have the same physiological responses as if they were being shocked. So we knew they had this trauma.
to the smell. And what they did is after those mice had babies, they introduced the cherry blossom smell and never shocked the feet of the babies and they had the same reaction. All the way to the great grand babies, four generations of mice experienced the same response, dulled a bit over time, but a similar response to the smell of cherry blossom without the physical stimuli because of the epigenetics and how that generational trauma was passed down. That is a tangible, crazy way to think about it.
Erin Doppelt (40:41.794)Wow.
Josh (40:57.111)and going back to illness, when you work with clients, do you go back generations? Do you go back to family trees and history to see what happened, to see what is manifesting in them today?
Erin Doppelt (41:11.946)You went out for a second. So we just asked the question one more time.
Josh (41:14.075)Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry, Internet gremlin. So when you work with clients, do you go back generations? Do you look at their family and their grandparents or great grandparents, where they came from? Like what is that exploratory process like when dealing with physical health?
Erin Doppelt (41:17.803)No worries.
Erin Doppelt (41:32.042)It's important to always recognize the lineage, right? So I ask my clients to always get curious. Why were you born to this specific family? Why is your specific family in this part of the world? Why do they look the way they look? Why do they pray to this specific type of God? Why do they eat this type of food culturally? Start getting curious there, right?
And then once there is that basic curiosity, once there is that understanding, once there is that, oh, like awareness as to why they came to this specific family part of the world, life in general, something that's so important for people to understand about clinical psychology in the West is so much is still based on Freud, Maslow, Jung, Ericsson, if you will. And Freudian model is...
laying down on a couch and talking word of mouth about the experiences that have happened in your life, typically to a therapist that is going to listen. And you are reliving the past over and over and over again. So when you relive trauma, you are strengthening that neural pathway. So for anyone who has gone through extreme trauma, you are reliving the experience and you are feeling the trauma as you are sharing it over and over and over again.
Of course, there are many different coaching modalities and therapies like EMDR that are helping people move through it. However, there is the opposite, like there's duality in this as well, where you can honor the past, you can honor your lineage and what brought you there. And keep in mind that like war and famine is a pretty common narrative for almost everyone, war and famine. People fled from something, right? It's how we kind of got to.
this specific part of the world where we are right now. So there always is that consistent tether that's going to be true for majority of us. And yes, it's important to honor the past. Yes, it's important to honor your lineage. Yes, it's important to get inquisitive. The easiest way to do it is to ask, how do I feel about money? Right, so when you ask somebody how they feel about money, they're gonna talk about their relationship with their father.
Erin Doppelt (43:43.01)When you ask somebody about money, they're gonna talk about the first time they made a couple bucks at a lemonade stand. When you ask somebody about money, they're gonna talk about the time that they tried to save $20 doing X, Y, Z. And that's when you can kind of start seeing the repetition of what was passed down from your culture. However, if you want to take up space in your life and be an active participant in your own life, you can honor the past, but you must move forward. So that means new belief systems. That means that although the trauma existed in the past, we don't block it.
We don't like put it in some part of the brain that we never opened the door. We coexist with it and we move on. It's not essential to strengthen the memory over and over and over and over and over again, and to have an identity around it, to have a big story around the extreme trauma or the family trauma. It's important to decide what you want your life to look like and to move down that path with gusto, in alignment, with new belief systems.
likely you need a dedicated meditation practice in a community that's going to support that as well.
Josh (44:47.619)It's interesting how these stressors become so deep seated. It's almost like without realizing it, we're choosing to hold onto them. We choose to hold onto these paths. We choose to create a narrative and a story around it. And it sort of becomes, like you said, our identity. And then we sort of have this baggage, like a ball and chain we carry everywhere. And it can be so easy, of course, to just say, well, you know, learn to let it go, learn to move on.
but we know like stress has such a detrimental effect on the gut. It creates inflammation, it decreases stomach acid like you talked about earlier, takes us out of rest and digest and puts us into fight and flight. We're not digesting food, we're not absorbing nutrients. It messes with our neurotransmitters and our sleep and all kinds. So if there are people dealing with these stressors, this ball and chain, this baggage you've been carrying around for a long time, you know, just learn to say, well, let it go is not the easiest way. To them, it doesn't make sense.
What are the steps and processes that you would implement with a client who's trying to learn to let go of these deep, seated, heavy baggage and chains that they've been carrying since they were kids?
Erin Doppelt (45:52.398)The first thing that you always do is you'd be in a meditation practice. You start breathing into the depths of your lower belly. What do we do when we breathe into the depths of the lower belly? We are increasing oxygen to the body. What happens when you have more oxygen in your body that is going to relax the amygdala, the back center of the brain, your flight, fright, or freeze. You are going to release the state of panic that so many people operate in. So I've been hearing from a lot of women that are struggling trying to get pregnant right now.
And then I ask a little bit more, right? Why, like how did we evolve to a time when our most basic biological, like everything around you is conspiring for us to get pregnant, for us to populate, for us to have more babies in this earth. And I connect with these women, of course we can talk about diet and of course we can talk about lifestyle. And it oftentimes ends up being these high power women with high power jobs who are working their asses off.
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and they're not taking time to really breathe and connect to their bodies. And this isn't true for everyone, it's just some of the samples that I've seen quite recently. And it's because of stress. So stress, as we know, you just shared, incredibly detrimental to the health. So if you are looking to get healthy, and I would say you do this at the same time as you clean up your diet, is you start a devoted meditation practice.
I believe so much of meditation in the West is quite masculine. So Headspace, Insight Time, or Calm, these free apps that introduce a guided meditation or a meditation in the lineage of MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, it's a silent seated practice. Now, if you are anxious, if you are sad, if you are in the heightened emotional state, if you are disconnected from your body, you have to move, you have to shake, you have to open up your shoulders, you have to open up your hips, you have to come back into your body.
There's a reason we involve to this human meat suit. Otherwise we'd be just like souls bopping around. So if you want to heal and you want to release stress and you want to change your belief systems and you want to live a radical life and you want to get healthy and you want to relax your nervous system so you can properly digest your food, you must have a devoted, delicious, dedicated meditation practice. So I believe 18 minutes is the sweet spot.
Erin Doppelt (48:13.778)This is like if you watch a Ted talk, they're typically 18 minutes long. It's the right amount of time to absorb content. It's also like life force energy. It's high in Judaism. It's like to life, right? It's the intention. So 18 minutes is the time for you to connect to your breath, open up your shoulders, open up your hips, increase oxygen in the body. And you're essentially preparing your body for more of a silent.
seated practice or to be a good parent or to be a good on like an entrepreneur fully present entrepreneur or a good doctor or lawyer or therapist like whatever the work that you are going to do and share with the world meditation is pivotal it's not optional at this point of course you're a science guy i like having to root things in science as well because it appeases both sides of the brain for whoever we are speaking to however
There's nothing like the feeling. So if somebody sits and meditates with me or watches my YouTube channel or joins me for a meditation on Instagram and you feel lighter after, you don't need to study for that. You feel better after. You don't need like a scientific research article to know when you feel better. The same thing is with food. And I'm sure you see this all the time. When somebody starts shifting their diet, do they need an article to say that this specific diet is the best thing when they're-
having the best sleep of their life, their skin is clear, they're having proper bowel movements, they're in a healthier head space. They feel radically better. Our feeling states are the greatest barometer of knowing what is in alignment and what isn't. However, we're at the point where meditation is mandatory. If you wanna live your highest possible timeline, meditation is a mandatory practice.
Josh (49:59.916)Meditation is something that I've definitely dabbled in the past, but I struggle. You know, like most people I get distracted, I'm thinking about while I'm meditating, thinking about not being distracted and thinking about my breath. I'm like, that kind of smells funny. Now I'm itchy, my butt's kind of sore. Maybe I should have gotten a pillow. It was just going to go down these rabbit holes. Is that meditation? Does that classify? Is there almost like a minimum standard for meditation? Like, how do you teach it? And what do you say to those who struggle with the concept of it like myself?
fidget and just now I'm sweaty, I'm itchy, my mouth tastes bad all of a sudden. What is that process like?
Erin Doppelt (50:34.839)Yeah, well, that's one of eight billion different ways to meditate. So what we know from nutrition, there's eight billion people in the world, there's eight billion different ways to eat for optimum health, there's eight billion different ways to have a devoted meditation practice. So when you wake up or when you decide you're going to start meditating, most people are just going to sit down on the floor, maybe with a pillow, set a timer, close their eyes and breathe. And they think they're meditating. However you're
Body needs to kind of catch up, right? You need some sort of system or protocol to follow to relax the body and the mind. So to answer your question, if you are sitting there and you are noticing all the sensations, mindfulness would say, you recognize the sensation as if a cloud is flowing by in the sky. You recognize the cloud, you see the cloud, you allow it to flow by. You recognize that you have the sensation of feeling sweaty.
You notice it, you inhale, you let it go. Fine, that's mindfulness. That's one of many different ways to meditate. However, if you started your practice by chanting three ohms, maybe standing up and moving into a sway meditation, maybe practicing the yogic breath, which is inhale, lower belly, inhale, upper chest, long exhale, release for two to three minutes. Maybe you even move into kapal balti, which is sucking your belly button towards the spine in a really quick rhythm.
to detox the internal organs, to increase vibration, to kind of shift your head space and to get this new clarity in your mind. And then you dropped into, maybe do a couple sun salutations, maybe a couple lunges, maybe a couple of yogi jumping jacks. And then you move into a silent seated practice or a loving kindness meditation or chakra alignment meditation. You will feel quite different. And it just requires a little bit of breath work, a little bit of stretching, a little bit of prep.
It's why so often I'll talk to people and they'll say, oh, I like to go for a couple mile run and then I sit and meditate because I can drop in deeper. Your body needs to release the energy. It's why at the end of yoga, you end with Shavasana. Yes, it symbolizes the death of your practice or you end with meditation, but you just moved your body for an hour, stretching it out, allowing it to flow, allowing it to express itself.
Erin Doppelt (52:50.066)And then you can move into the quiet breath, and then you can move into the stillness, because the most sacred thing is to be still. It's the thing that we are, we suck at as a species. We're never still, we're constantly going over and over and over again.
Josh (53:07.931)Hmm. It's really interesting because obviously there's something to be said for getting this subconscious mind for unloading a lot of things. You know, most of us, like we talked about earlier in this episode, was about sitting still, being bored, distracting ourselves, constantly not feeling through these emotions. I don't know who's credited for saying that man's greatest weakness is the inability to sit in a room quietly by himself. And so many of us are so bad at being bored.
because we need to be distracted. We're on our phones, we're looking for the next dopamine hit. We're on Instagram, like three in the morning, right? Like you said, just trying to scroll through and distract. One of the greatest things that I found for me is going for a drive with no music, no, just open the windows, let the air and the sunshine in. And I find I percolate. It's like my subconscious mind, if I have stressors and things, maybe I'm a little stressed about it. Maybe I'm just processing it. Maybe I'm starting to get anxious and I'm running myself in a ball and just like.
I was fine when I started to drive, now I'm anxious. But as I drive, it almost starts to release. As I drive, these 30 trillion thoughts in the back of my head of information I've been absorbing, like I obsess about my podcast and about what I'm doing in the gut world and how I'm gonna help people and the next thing I'm trying to learn, I obsess about it when I drive with no music. It's like my brain just starts to filter and thoughts start to come to me, ideas just happen. And that to me is like the power of being
bored. For those of us who might struggle with it, are there any practices? Is it meditation? Is it driving? Like what do you find? I mean, sure, everybody's different. What do you find is the best way to organize all these subconscious thoughts and stressors and all this excess? And then what is the benefit to our physical body and our health of unwinding all of that and organizing it to just kind of put it into the psychological mental shelf?
Erin Doppelt (54:57.73)First of all, when you drive, this is a very common pattern where the subconscious mind is taking over. So you know how to drive, you've been driving for such a long time, it does not require your conscious mind, it does not require your analytical mind, it doesn't require your awareness. So you are allowing your subconscious mind to take care of you while you are driving and to get you from point A to point B safely. Because your subconscious mind is distracted, it sounds to me that you can kind of have deeper thoughts.
new ideas, epiphanies, and inspiration. And there's something to be said there, right? You might even be relaxed. However, you are still driving. So this isn't like a stillness meditation. You are still doing something. I wouldn't even put this under the category of boredom, per se. I can understand if you're on a road trip and you're driving like a very long time, of course you might get bored. But boredom is a little bit different. And I don't think people experience that anymore. And boredom is actually quite a luxury.
(02:07):
Josh (55:53.851)Hmm.
Erin Doppelt (55:53.994)the practice of giving yourself time to kind of just sit and be in the presence of your own energy to see what even feels like I don't even know if kids know what boredom even feels like So your question was What are the benefits of really shifting the subconscious mind and inserting more positive beliefs?
Josh (56:14.123)And really sort of, yeah, the benefits of shifting that mind and letting yourself really organize, because there's things that are in the back of our head all the time. I had a client of mine and she came in one day and I've had her for my list for years. And she comes in, this was when I was a personal trainer, she comes into the gym and I'm like, you're okay, something's off? She's no, I'm fine. You could see there were tears behind her eyes. She said, when was the last time you just let yourself sit still? And she burst into tears.
because there's so much on the back of her head that's constantly playing through stressors that she's constantly suppressing. And so what do you find is the benefit of allowing all these stressors in the back of our mind to finally come out and organize themselves so we're not just overwhelmed subconsciously?
Erin Doppelt (56:59.298)So this, I have a favorite example. I have multiple favorite examples.
I have dear friends and also past clients. They wanna be with their highest soulmate more than anything, right? They want to call in their beloved. They wanna start building a family. They want to be with this person so badly. So they download the dating apps. They ask their aunts and their friends that they're ready for a matchmaking. Do you know anyone who's a good fit for me? And all of a sudden they have a date set for Wednesday.
and they're excited about it. You know, they're texting back and forth with this guy that they're going on a date with on Wednesday. And then Monday rolls around and wow, work was so busy. Work was so busy and there's like a tickle in the back of her throat. And then Tuesday comes and she didn't even know, she didn't sleep well. Work is kind of still really intense. And then Wednesday comes and she takes out her phone and she texts the guy that she's about to go on a date with and says, you know what, I need to reschedule. I have a lot going on.
It takes a moment to step back and pause and realize, wow, this is the third, fourth, fifth time that she's done that. That requires your conscious mind to become aware of that. However, you need to ask your subconscious, why are you consistently self-sabotaging? What are you afraid of? Usually when it comes to these patterns, and I'll give another example, I'll have, and maybe you've seen this, like if somebody signs up for a program, a group program, they sign up, they're all in, and maybe it's a six month program.
They show up for that first month. They do their best the second month. And by the third month, they don't even show up anymore. Right? Or somebody who drops out of college after being really invested in it, and then they stop showing up. What is the self-sabotage rooted in? Or they're committed to a healthy lifestyle. They stock the fridge. They're going to eat all of these.
Erin Doppelt (58:54.882)grass-fed meats and pasture-raised egg and chickens and fruits and vegetables, and they bought fancy water and salts and minerals, and they're going to radically change their lifestyle. They hired a personal trainer, they're gonna get 10,000 steps a day. They're going to transform their life, and then right before weigh-in, they binge. They have a whole pizza, they go through the drive-through. Why?
Do we do this as a species? These are three incredibly common examples that I see all the time. I'm sure you also see it as well. Why do we do this? And it's because one, a lot of us are addicted to stress and drama. We thrive with the stress. We need a little bit of stress to stay in control because if we are self-sabotaging ourselves, then it's not an outside force that is self-sabotaging us.
And two, and this is the overarching theme of so much that I see when it comes to reprogramming the subconscious mind, it is the worthiness around having what you most desire. Am I worthy to be with my highest possible soulmate? Am I worthy to be healthy and happy? Am I worthy to be whatever the deepest desire and dream is? So yes, it requires your conscious mind to become aware of the subconscious.
The best way to do that is to notice a pattern. So to notice any specific patterns. Notice any patterns that you always find yourself in. Do you always find yourself in the same type of drama? Do you always find yourself in the same feeling state that comes through for you regularly? That's when you know that you're in a cycle and there's typically subconscious mind at play. Once you are aware of that,
you can typically end it. You can typically say, okay, I see this pattern where I blow off my date 12 hours before it happens, and I allow work or myself or my insomnia to get in the way of it.
Erin Doppelt (01:00:49.782)That is part one. Part two is getting over yourself. Allowing yourself to be exactly who you are while taking steps to walk closer to your deepest desires and dreams. This requires aligned action in the physical, so actually doing it, actually showing up for the first day, making the beautiful meal, showing up to walk the 10,000 steps, whatever that looks like for you, it's the physical action, you must have the physical aligned to the energy.
And when you are aware of your subconscious programming and where you are limiting yourself in this lifetime, you can then consciously, using your analytical mind, shift it. So what I would recommend to anybody listening, sit down and ask yourself, what are the same situations I find myself in over and over and over?
right, whether it's like dreading showing up for the first date and canceling last minute or signing up for a new wellness program and kind of blowing it off along the way. Where are the patterns? And then what can you do to overcome it? So number one, you got to change your belief systems. This typically requires a meditation practice. Number two, community. So a spiritual running buddy, a mentor, a guide, a coach, a therapist, somebody is going to hold you accountable and starting, starting from there.
And that's really where the deep work begins. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe in yourself more than your negative belief systems. And you're probably so different than the version of you that is attached to being safe in the negative belief system as well.
Josh (01:02:29.443)Very interesting. Well, Aaron, we are wrapping up to the end of our time together here today. I wanna make sure I respect your time as well. But before we finalize and just take this thing down, I do have one last question. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or haven't discussed or anything you'd like to mention to the audience listening at all, completely open floor?
Erin Doppelt (01:02:55.09)Your deepest desires and dreams are unique to you. It is not an accident that you want what you want. Your mission is to pursue it. So, so often we second guess ourselves, why do I want this thing? Am I worthy of having this thing? It is going to keep coming up for you. Maybe in the middle of the night, maybe when you wake up hungover in the morning, maybe when you find yourself next to your partner and you're questioning things, it will get louder and louder and louder.
time until you show up. So please trust your deepest desires and dreams. Message me on Instagram at Aaron R. Doppelt. E-R-I-N-R-D-O-P-P-E-L-T. I have so much content on manifestation and meditation and positive psychology and all these different ways for you to really radically show up for what your heart yearns for because that looks different for every single person. So give yourself permission.
(02:28):
to pursue your deepest desires and dreams.
Josh (01:03:55.975)I love that. Now Aaron, is Instagram the best place to reach you? Is there a website or anything else people can check out?
Erin Doppelt (01:04:02.002)Yeah, Instagram is a good place to hang out with me. I have my website, erinracheldopelt.com, E-R-I-N-R-A-C-H-E-L-D-O-P-P-E-L-T.com. Best known for the Align Coaching Certification where you become a certified meditation teacher and spiritual psychology coach. It is a truly life-changing, amazing program. However, when this episode comes out, my book, Nothing Can Stop You,
is going to be everywhere books are sold in May, Eastern ritual, Western psychology, helping you do the thing that your heart most yearns for. And I have a lot of pop-up spiritual programming that I love to share and coach live. So definitely hang out with me if that's something that sounds expansive for you.
Josh (01:04:48.047)Well, that's brilliant. Aaron, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for joining us, taking your time to just share all this experience and knowledge that you spent years and years accumulating. I hope our listeners have gained something from it. I'm sure they have. And hopefully we'll have you back around again sometime soon.
Erin Doppelt (01:05:04.706)Thanks so much for having me.
Josh (01:05:06.443)My pleasure. Now, I'm just going to press that stop button here, Aaron. Is there?
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