i promise you that the amount of time that you spend on this episode is going to be worth your time especially if you're someone who always wants to get to that next level in life especially if you're someone who's aiming for big money big fame big success in life the reason i say that is because neuroscience as a subject the study of the nervous system the study of the brain is one of those pieces of biology that you can apply in everyday life and improve your productivity improve your efficiency improve your experience of life and even make your brain a lot more chilled out that's what this particular conversation was about it's an introduction to neuroscience from a very practical day to day perspective and i promise you this is that one conversation that will stay with you long after you listen to it all of the trs conversations are like that but this one stands out remember to follow trs on spotify but it's spotify exclusive now which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world and this is dr said wario who i'm sure many of you know already because of all the podcasts he's done on the internet but this is the first time he's on the runway show and i honestly feel we found a trs all-star this is the first conversation that we recorded on this particular day of shoots we ended up recording three more podcasts after this that was the power of this one conversation so now let me drop a bomb menu and let you enjoy this legendary conversation in peace [Music] doctor sid warrior welcome to the runway thank you for having me man super excited to be here been waiting to do this with you for a year and as i was telling you right before the recording started india hasn't been ready for a wave of science until now it's probably not ready even yet and over the next one year people are going to open up to how many science-based hacks they can use in their daily life so you're a neurologist in bombay firstly what does a neurologist do every part of your body is controlled by your nerves and all that is coming from your brain huh i take care of that whole system so from your brain to your spinal cord to your nerves to your muscles this entire system comes under neurology so neurologist looks after this whole system how did you figure you wanted to get into this it's a long story when i was in school i realized that i liked human behavior and i initially wanted to do psychology ended up doing medicine instead i took up medicine mbbs then thought i should do psychiatry because that is the closest thing to human behavior but realize that i wanted to study the whole body so i ended up doing general medicine that is md medicine and then it was very obvious that i want to do neurology because then that is you're sort of approaching the same thing from the hardware perspective got it so understanding human behavior but you're going around trying to understand the networks got it so yeah for the sake of one of the apps that i'm building it's called level that i'm doing with hashtag that's my next big startup mission in life uh we had to go deep into the subject of psychology so how to read a little bit of psychology i had to figure out what the logic behind therapy is uh and you know i love that you said hardware versus software yeah therapists psychologists they look at things from a beautiful software perspective right in terms of who is this human being how is their mind working and i'm sure they have knowledge about the hardware yeah but you or dr andrew huberman people like like a man crush i think are common man crashes yeah i love him uh and people should totally check out doctor human uh he's a neuroscientist yes uh in usa he runs one of the best podcasts i have heard in my life in general very crisp very detailed yeah but what i picked up from him was that you can actually hack your own hardware you can hack your own mind to make it perform even more to make it perform at a higher degree i love that you said therapy because what therapy does is basically outsourcing one role of the brain to someone else which is what is what is the role which is creating a story okay so when you are when your brain is functioning fine everything that you are experiencing in the world around you your brain is constantly creating a story to make yourself feel good and it empowers you to deal with those circumstances in mental health problems one of the drawbacks of the mental health is that your brain cannot process information as well as it could have otherwise okay so therapy basically helps you see the world differently so you're literally outsourcing a part of the job that your brain is supposed to do to somebody else to a professional going deeper into this concept of therapy uh i wasn't one of those people who was against therapy yeah but i wasn't one of those people who promoted therapy as well uh after studying the concept of therapy and hearing you know where people say that even if you think you're okay they say that everyone needs therapy so i went deeper into that statement what is the logic behind that and i realized a lot of therapy is being asked the right questions and realizing things from within yourself realizing things through the right questions absolutely there are so many ways in which we lie to ourselves because we are constantly adjusting think of it as surfing you are not aware of all the muscles in your legs and how your balance is constantly shifting but you still want to remain erect you don't want to fall down similarly in life every small thing that happens to you though your mom said something to you you are constantly adjusting your balance in order to still remain erect to still remain uh confident and comfortable those are sometimes those are small lies or small biases that we have if you're not able to do that you'll fall and if you keep falling down you'll lose confidence in yourself that you cannot maintain balance and then you go into a spiral so this is like a very basic way of understanding mental health so therapy is you're reaching out to somebody and saying tell me again how i can maintain balance got it so they teach you are there lifestyle factors that can actually be a substitute for therapy from a hardware perspective absolutely because again coming back to the example of surfing if your legs are strong balancing is easier it's not just surfing is not just a state of mind you need to work out your legs you need to work your back muscles i have a friend who does air pistol shooting and he spends two hours every day just working on his lower back because apparently you need that kind of tone in your muscles to just stand straight and uh pull the trigger similarly in mental health a lot of your basic hardware requirements should be taken care of which is sleep and diet and exercise if your hardware is proper suddenly the software seems to be working much better yeah you know um so we used to get a lot of criticism for this early on when i feel the neuroscience wave hadn't hit the general public where we used to promote the idea of mental fitness yeah so what is that that was a sort of acute sellable term that i had developed from my own experience because i'd see my friends around me who didn't take care of their physical health didn't go to the gym ate whatever they wanted smoked a lot drank a lot uh i also drank a lot but i'd balance it out uh you know with a lot of working out lots of cardio great sleep lots of meditation which i also feel is one of those hardware polishing tools uh and i'd always see that definitely i had my ups and downs with mental health but i was able to pull myself out of those downs much more easily and that's why i mean i think 2017 2018 when we needed a shift from creating just fitness videos i thought let's create mental fitness videos i don't know what that is it's definitely not mental health yeah but it's something that i can't put into words and it was actually this hacking your own hardware so that the software works beautifully absolutely it's so think of going on a road trip right you know how to drive a car you know where to go but the better your car is the more oiled the engines are the more petrol you have the more you know how to maintain your car the better your road trip will be because who knows at what point you will get a puncture or something will happen so you need to know a you need to maintain it and b if something goes wrong you need to you need to know how to fix it so that is the way that i look at it that you have to maintain your body in order to maintain your mind because otherwise you're just adding more and more stress to your mind to compensate yeah for the lack of physical fitness also i think what most people fail to understand especially when they're in college is that life isn't easy like when you actually head into life you are challenged you are met with disappointment you are met with breakups slaps punch downs and you sort of need to keep your mind ready for those things people who have a weak hardware weak level of mental fitness sometimes get hit by life and then are not able to get up do you observe this you have you're just circling on a very cool definition of health so when you said mental health versus mental fitness when you go to the gym and you have to say lift 100 kgs on the first day it's not going to happen because your muscles are not used to it but you can gradually build yourself up to lifting 100 kg and it's okay similarly in mental health the ability to respond to a sudden stress is what mental health is when you are in a vacation you're surrounded by friends family everything is good you're mentally healthy but are you really mentally healthy when there is a stress can your brain take it that is what defines mental health so all this what you're trying to do when you say go for a run every day why you don't need to run but you're preparing your heart for that time when you might need that extra energy you're preparing your muscles similarly mental health is you're preparing your mind for whatever time you might need it for me that is mental health you're increasing reserve you know what i find [ __ ] up a little bit um kids these days gen z uh intelligent okay crazy intelligent because they've had access to information but they so often kind of voice out oh it affected my mental health so badly my mental health has gone for it without understanding this other side of mental health that yo life is difficult and you know as you grow older there are two gifts that enter your life the first is a gift of calm yeah you keep getting calmer with age because you realize your battles yeah okay they happened now then they'll happen now they're gonna happen later so you have a sense of calm the second gift is that if you're lucky you often discover these hardware polishing tools rather than addressing just your mental health and say oh my mental health has gone for a toss why not change that sentence and you might not change that thought and say hmm my mental health isn't in the best place but let's from today focus on action focus on working towards my mental fitness which could even begin with let's just focus on sleep getting great quality sleep because sleep has power and i'd love for you to one explain the biology behind everything that i said yeah and probably towards the end highlight specifically the biology of sleep the the thing what you said about kids saying my mental health is [ __ ] up on the one hand i love it that there is more awareness about mental health it's great that people are aware that mental health is something that can get [ __ ] up because we have gone a full circle earlier the thing was don't talk about mental health at all it's a taboo and now we've gone to the other extreme where everything is mental health yeah every small stressor is you know i'm i'm not mentally fit to do this anymore in a way great for the conversation or spread the word but at the same time the pendulum has to swing back towards the middle again where you realize that mental health is everything nothing is not mental health you going for a run is mental health you eating that bag of chips is mental health everything affects your brain so there is nothing outside of the mental health scheme [Music] the important thing about sleep is that sleep is when your brain takes care of itself think about this the moment you wake up the doors and windows are open everything in the world is entering your conscious self and most of your energy is just spent in creating that story how to deal with this right now i'm here talking to you everything that you're saying is input i have to deal with what you're talking about the visualization that you're creating when i'm sleeping the outside world is cut off now my brain has time to process it all those neurons that had been activated so now they will form new connections they'll form new ideas and then you might wake up with thoughts that you've not had before and another thing is there is a clean up process that happens so there is something called as a glymphatic system okay which is essentially the garbage removal system of the brain got it that is active in sleep your brain shits in sleep and shits and sleep okay and if you don't sleep you're basically constipated and that kind of accumulates so there's a toxin accumulation that happens over many years which is one of the things that they say leads to alzheimer's wow so it's very very important that you get good sleep i'm tripping out a little bit on you dude i'm really enjoying this podcast for real like i knew it would go down this path but uh you're answering so many of the things i realized in my mid-twenties late twenties things that i'd battled with in my early twenties in my teenage and i'm so glad that teenagers of today can just get access to this information bro you know what i i don't think information is the problem anymore i think it is about developing the state of mind where all that information can stick that is the challenge today retention retention appreciation of what you have 500 years ago we were living in a age of uh the problem was access to information but now there is an excess of information available information is no longer the problem we are the problem is what do we do with all this information so then you might equate something very useful with something not useful and say don't know youtube 100 uh we have a common friend my brother raj shamani uh like so i'm sure you've been on his podcast yes right uh raj shamani and myself around the beginning of this year we were creating motivational reels on instagram right and we were getting heavily criticized after point key how dare you spread toxic positivity how dare you spread uh hustle culture we weren't um both of us have like come up the hard way you know we're both self-made dudes we've we've really kind of worked our way to the problem we're sharing what we've learned over the years now if you are aggressive about reaching the top there is a certain level of aggression you need at the bottom also and those were the things we were trying to put out in the world uh keeping this in mind i want to highlight this one podcast i found on spotify around the same time so the podcast is called yours mentally podcast run by teenagers love it love it for the same reason you love it that mental health is being spoken about so much but they're speaking about it a lot from the software perspective which is also okay right almost no episode at least early on was addressing the hardware side of things was addressing mental fitness or what we call mental toughness which you hear the superstars of the world speak about be it david gorgans beard joe rogan be it kevin hart be it indranoi recording everyone's highlighted mental fitness mental toughness um what i love about the shows that they're spreading knowledge and they're curious to learn more and the teenagers i wasn't thinking like this when i was a teenager incredible but what i learned later on in life is that when you're going very deep into a subject it's also wise to take a step back and see it from another lens definitely see it from the lens of modern day therapists but also see it from the lens of modern day neurologists the hard way of the mind yeah you know and i do recommend the listeners go check out this podcast to understand the software side of things but i want to highlight the hardware side of things for example let me read out some of the early topics okay anxiety and teenagers teen relationships and infatuation insomnia and sleep cycles um gaming and mental health dysfunctional families gaslighting toxic positivity at that time and they had said oh there are instagram influencers who spread toxic and it was obvious that they were talking about myself but you're 19 years old you know life is going to hit you in many ways over the next 10 years uh your perspectives are going to change you're going to completely be a different person by the time you're 22 by the time you're 25 you're gonna be a third kind of person 29th fourth kind of person so um over the course of these years from the area of 18 to 28 i have gotten very deep into the hardware side of things and only recently because of podcasts like this i got into the software side of things yeah but the hardware side of things has honestly protected me the software side has educated me the hardware side is protected that's a lovely way of putting it yeah and and the protection is what you need to attack also first learn to defend yourself learn to have an armor on then you'll figure out how to use a sword also when i hear of teenage angst and the issues that they go through i kind of see it from a historical perspective because every time you see a pendulum swing extremely onto one side it is probably because it was on the other extreme a few years ago so if you take 50 600 years back teenage anxiety was a dismissed topic so every pendulum that is on the extreme was on the opposite extreme before and this is a reaction so the problem in our conversation is that how do we find nuance how do we find the middle ground between hardware and software how do we find the middle ground between discipline and empathy because now we are stressing too much on the empathy side of it feel feel more feel what the other person is going through you know feel sorry for them great because the pendulum was on the other extreme no empathy [ __ ] that but how do we balance empathy and discipline because if you take out one life is [ __ ] either one that's the weird thing and the reason that society was so focused on discipline before is because i feel empathy is a luxury whereas discipline is not you need to work in order to get [ __ ] done whether you feel sorry or not is not the point you need to get [ __ ] done otherwise we will not survive but as we evolve as a society i think we have been afforded the luxury of empathy now we can work and still feel things which is great but we need to bring discipline back yeah i mean in no way was i trying to attack those kids actually i'm appreciating them yeah but what i'll also highlight is gen z yeah i've seen two distinct types of kids nowadays and i've asked my gen z friends about this key is this true and they've all said yes what so the two distinct types are one hustlers self-improvement all forms fitness spirituality entrepreneurship personal finance all of it becoming a better human second one doesn't care second one's like yeah whatever cool but all of them are extremely sensitive which has its pros and cons the pros are that the world is becoming more empathetic yeah the con is that where do you draw the line in terms of taking offense towards small things which is why cancel culture has even risen as a thing i assume that basically this is the first generation of human beings that has had this level of information since the time they were babies right so they are very very aware of things and that awareness has caused the increased level of sensitivity but what they don't understand is the older generations haven't lived in the same world that they lived so they view things slightly differently older generations sometimes enjoy darker humor you know when was the last time you saw great comedy film in 2008 2009 i'm talking about english comedy you go see that film now they wouldn't be able to make that film today joe rogan keeps talking about most of it thunder hangover friends wouldn't have been possible science field wouldn't have been possible yeah so the whole world uh definitely has become more empathetic and people care about causes which is fantastic the environment um you know mental health but it's sort of also becoming what we call snowflake society extremely sensitive what do you think is happening to the human brain like why is that generation being like this right now i think it's an outcome of teenagers and i think they'll change over time uh also they they this particular generation they go all in on their feelings so if they love you you're their god and if they hate you they will go to any degree to bring you down bring you down this is a lovely uh thought process that what are you threatened by the idea of being threatened hasn't changed the biology of being threatened hasn't changed it's just what are you threatened by 10 000 years ago you're threatened by a tiger somebody some animal is coming to kill me so how do i escape it or how do i kill it as time goes the same biology but the focus of that threat is different it could be an army it could be a an angry brother it could be somebody coming at you with a knife and gradually it is the government it's the police no it is now it is a tweet it's a concept it is abstract abstract things are threatening me now so in a way the if you study what has been threatening you we are actually studying the evolution of humankind because we are going away from animals into concept constructs threatening you so a monkey cannot get threatened by the idea that uh somebody tweeted something right the tweet doesn't exist the concept doesn't exist the story doesn't exist but now we are getting threatened by just abstract things hawaii may on the wi-fi some unknown stranger said some unknown things in a language you didn't even know somebody translated it you are angry cancel him so innovate is evolution but we have to understand that free speech is what leads to communication free speech is what led us till here so i am against cancer culture i believe that every time it should be a conversation especially for artists because art has the responsibility of figuring out what else can we do because art is basically creation and you cannot create perfectly creation means messing up creation means figuring out the 10 things that doesn't work so i feel that artists canceling an artist i feel is counterproductive to our own evolution and most cancer culture happens because of teenagers this is one thing i've observed but what they need to understand about biology is that your brain is still being molded right up to the age of 25 yeah uh even beyond even beyond yeah first could you explain that 25 mark because this is what i've read i think i heard it on hubermann yeah uh what what actually happens after the age of 25 and then could you explain what happens beyond all so think about this think of it like a tree the roots are there from the moment you're born so the basic structure is there and then as the tree grows or the stem the initial branches they all develop in the early during the early childhood years but the tips of the leaves the ones that you the things that you actually see from outside they keep on evolving till you're 20 25 30. so that is the prefrontal cortex so literally like a tree it goes from your neck up and all the way to the tip of your forehead so the evolution happens in this way wow so your prefrontal cortex which is the part right be behind your forehead that is the most recently evolved part of the brain got it so and that keeps the base as your spine your medulla oblongata so it's literally called a stem it's the stem that holds the brain okay and you're born with that that doesn't change throughout your life and then about that is the limbic system that is where the emotions are that constantly evolves and your prefrontal cortex is the one that decides your personality your logic your calculation that is immature till the time you're 16 17 18 25 30 keeps on evolving got it and basically your personality evolves depending on the stimulus as in what is outside exactly so if you read things you can involve your personality if you uh choose to be with certain people if you choose to cut off fringe your prefrontal cortex will actually physiologically change the networks will change the connections will change because what goes in decides what stays could you highlight this a little more like your networks will change is this the concept of what we call neuroplasticity yes absolutely okay so neuroplasticity is when neuron a who has never talked to neuron b suddenly realizes that oh you guys are right next to each other let us shake hands and neuron a talks to neuron b and that is a new connection just one second i don't think people understand how many neurons there are in the brain yeah let's start with that okay yeah so and and is it true that you only use a very small fraction of the total number of neurons in your brain okay let's deal with that so first of all in the brain there are more than a billion neurons each bill each neuron talks to another neuron through something called as a synapse and there are more than one trillion synapses so this is the basic hardware of the brain all of us have this the difference between you and me and everybody why are we so different if you are all having the same number of neurons is the way that they are connected that could be unique that is unique no two human beings are have the same connections of neurons that is what decides your personality that is what decides thoughts your thoughts your dreams all of it your voice patterns so when you learn when when you say that uh nobody people only use 10 of their brain that is not true all neurons are being used for all of us but what is the efficiency of those neurons what is the efficiency of those connections so for example if i want to tell you something and i want to tell raj something but i can't talk to raj i will tell you to tell raj that increases this the time it takes for that thought to happen but if you give me raj's number i can directly talk to raj so that increases the speed of thinking which is also what a reflexes so the first time you are playing cricket and somebody throws a bouncer at you you have no idea what to do but the 100th time you are playing cricket you already know that you to step back lift your arm hook a shot so that is your brain learning so neurons that haven't connected now connect and suddenly you have a new skill wow practice reading yeah exercise basically they create neural patterns in your brain yes uh again i'm an electronics and telecom engineer so i'll go back to electronics basically there are efficient circuits versus non-efficient circuits in terms of point a will be able to reach point b in an efficient circuit very fast yeah as in the electricity will be able to travel from point a to point b very fast in an efficient circuit but in a non-efficient circuit where there is resistance in the middle where there is things for the electricity to do in the middle it will actually take time to reach uh point b from point a and uh often science mimics the human body in many ways for example cameras are like building based on the human eye right electric circuits are based on the human mind and also the human mind the entire nervous system the spinal cord is is an electric circuit is electricity it is it is actually neurochemical it is it is sorry it is electrochemical okay so uh you have wires through which electricity runs but then wire a to wire b that synapse is a chemical so it's electric chemical electric chemical that is how connections run up and down your nervous system so why does sleep meditation exercise why do these things make your brain fire faster why does it give you more peace why does it make you so called more intelligent why do these things happen so the fundamental concept of peace i feel should be understood from the point of view of stress when anything is wrong in your system you have an increased amount of stress now this is true for neurology this is true for your bones this is true for your immune system if you have some bug in your stomach if you've eaten something wrong there is inflammation in your stomach so there is stress so you don't feel good similarly if there is too much stress on your bones there is pain in your bones similarly if there is too much stress in your brain that sets off like a chain reaction and that brings down the whole system is it is it something that i can refer to in extremely colloquial terms as brain [ __ ] like [ __ ] starts forming in your brain uh in colloquial terms it is back backlog you can think of it like backlog if you have too much uh undead stuff in your brain then it increases the level of stress it actually increases something called as cortisol that is a stress hormone baggage you mean baggage and baggage could be long term like oh i've had a breakup i've not gotten over or it could be tasks that you're supposed to do going forward and you're constantly thinking about those tasks yeah so you're uh you when you talk of thinking when you're saying something called working memory so you can only focus on three four five things at the same time and the more number of things you try to put on your brain at the same time it increases your stress because now you can't focus your attention is a precious thing so you can only divide our attention between two three things so the more things you try to focus on your uh you try to put on your attention the more your stress increases um okay where does meditation lie and all this because i know studies are being done on meditation lately in the last 10 years i think from 2008 it should started three things i know for sure is that one it has an impact on your prefrontal cortex heavily uh which is your learning ability i believe your personality your emotions emotional stability second it has an impact on your amygdala which is also the center for negative emotions like greed jealousy anger hate uh not specifically those are all concepts that we have created okay the amygdala the main function of the amygdala is what to pay your attention towards okay and that is triggered by a simple thing which is fear the whole job of the amygdala is to tell the brain where to focus on and nothing is more important than something that you are afraid of because evolutionary psychology like earlier we had to be aware of where the lines and tigers will come to eat us from when we were evolving a stone age exactly so if you have say a bunch of fruit on one side you need it you want to eat it it's good for survival but if there's a tiger next to it it is the role of the amygdala to tell you that ignore the fruit pay attention to the tiger because that is what is more important for survival so what if impact does meditation have on the amygdala it calms it down it says that don't be afraid of everything yeah so amygdala activation reduces on meditation okay so it is quite literally calming you down at a biological level so when they say it reduces the activity within the is actually just making you more chill in life yeah the third thing uh that i have understood about meditation's impact on the mind yeah are impacts on the corpus callosum which links the two hemispheres of the brain it effectively in layman's terms increases your processing power in a way yeah the corpus callosum is this uh doorway between the right and the left part of the brain so the the two halves of the brain talk to each other through the corpus callosum it is always talking to each other one interesting thing that a meditation does is it cuts off the outside world without you falling asleep right so meditation is that zone between awake and asleep another concept which is close to it is lucid dreaming yeah which is you are approaching it from sleep towards the awake state whereas meditation you are approaching it from awake state towards sleep one of the meditation courses i did explain exactly this in a cute way they said that imagine that sleep is your physical body being off but sometimes your mental body can be on during dreams because you're still perceiving colors you're still perceiving sound you're still perceiving logic meditation is where your physical body is awake but your mental body is completely asleep wow because you're going into a dark deep place what is meditation all forms of meditation advanced meditation also are basically about focus turning your focus into one thing it could be a breath a mantra the sounds around you but basically taking focus as a weapon and aiming it somewhere and constantly shooting at it while you're shooting at that one area of interest of course you're gonna have thoughts about your girlfriend about your breakup about your mom about your work then pull it back and try shooting at that target again and long term when you're doing this it's effectively like doing constant bicep curls for your brain that's a nice way of doing it if you if you imagine everybody around you walking around with a torch okay at any given point of time that torch can be pointed only towards one thing imagine the whole world is dark and everybody has a torch what they are pointing that torch towards is what their mind is seeing at that moment so all of us right now can only have one functioning thought at the same time it could be for a millisecond but that torch is on that thing for that millisecond so if i say everybody think of dog for a millisecond your torch was on a picture of a dog in your head and then the torch went to somewhere else your girlfriend or your phone or something some beep on your instagram page whatever what meditation does is it doesn't turn off the torch but it tries to turn the torch inwards so now your torch is still on but you are focused more inwards so when you say focus on your breath you are actually focusing on a process that is starting from the base of your brain because breath comes from your brain stem so you are literally turning that for power of your attention inwards inside your brain and so you are in a loop within yourself which is a beautiful thing because you're always stuck in external loops but now none of that matters because you've cut off the world and now you are as independent entity which is what is so beautiful about meditation this is where i want to highlight something i learned from dr hubermann um neuroplasticity for the average person is basically the ability to cut off certain habits and make new habits going forward because everything that you do in life in terms of success in terms of your relationship boils down to habits you work hard every single day consistently you put out a video on youtube every single day that's a habit but it's taking your it's but it's taking time for your brain to create that habit you uh cut off a certain addiction you're an alcoholic but eventually you cut it out okay and then it's had an impact on your long-term life your health has gotten better your brain has gotten more clearer or you've saved time you've saved money all this is an outcome of habits similarly in relationships if you're spending more time with your partner if you say that no i don't care every sunday the entire day is dedicated to my girlfriend or my boyfriend that's a habit so your whole life's outcomes and your whole life's experiences boil down to habits habits are caused or broken by neuroplasticity yeah what people need to understand neuroplasticity is that it's two pronged there are two parts to creating or letting go of habits the first is the actual actions that lead you to forming the habits or letting go of it no i don't want to pick up that joint so i will choose not to take it from my hand i choose not to enter that room i choose not to hang out with those people because i want to quit smoking weed i want to stop drinking alcohol that's the action okay definitely it's formed some sort of new neural patterns in your hair but to solidify those neural patterns this is what the key about neuroplasticity is and correct me from wrongdoing yeah it's so far it's perfect okay the second aspect of neuroplasticity in terms of uh solidifying a habit going from i don't want to drink alcohol to no i just don't need it anymore you know that bridge like solidifying the habit you want if i'm going from oh i have to upload a youtube video to oh it's thursday of course my youtube video is going up today that aspect gets solidified in sleep when you're relaxing when you're resting when you're chilling or when you're meditating your identity is formed in a stretch you know when stress is down actions can get started you can kick start an action in times of stress somebody shouting at you your gym trainer shouting give drop down give me 10 more that is you're trying to lay the groundwork but it's not your identity your identity happens when there is no gym trainer and you're still dropping down and giving yourself 10 more push-ups because that is who you are now and that what that is what takes time but the beautiful thing is i think of identity like lego blocks we take so much pride in this is who i am you know this is or so much shame in oh no this is who i am both of those things are unnecessary because you can change so you can become whoever you want by just building those blocks in a particular way just as you said building those habits or something can just come and change the way that you've arranged your own blocks so you have to be always be aware that identity is a fluid thing and you can work at changing it and be aware that something else can come and change could you explain the biology behind what i said in terms of specifically what happens biologically in your brain yeah there is a term i want to introduce it's called long-term potentiation okay basic concept when neuron a wants to talk to neuron b initially they are very shy because say one of them only knows marathi and the other one knows only hindi now they can't communicate so neuron a starts teaching neuron b how to understand marathi because that is the essence of communication if i'm saying things and you don't understand if you don't have the receptors for it what is the point i could keep talking and nothing will go through so neuron b starts learning marathi and as it learns more and more marathi everything that neuron a is saying starts to make sense and now neuron b can carry that message forward and tell its friends about what neuron a said this is what long-term potentiation is so in a chemical way neuron b starts developing more and more receptors for what neuron a is saying and once it learns the language now they're best friends so that new habit is formed which is why they say there's a universe inside you little human beings inside you every neuron is having relationships with other neurons and trying to communicate and work together and there's one neuron that is the people want to avoid because okay you know that is the addiction let us not talk to that network anymore or the self-doubt neuron yeah so these are all just networks in your brain that you want to dissociate with so that those neurons will figure out other things to do you know there's so many spiritual angles behind what you say for example um the gita constantly talks about a fight between two aspects of yourself in your own mind that you have a dark aspect and you have a bright aspect and your role as a human being and this is the initial part of the gita okay before they actually explain the rest of the logic they say that your role as a human being every single day at night is to ask yourself that which side have you allowed to win have you allowed your light to win or have you allowed your darkness to win because the darkness is inside you the light is inside you and what you're saying that there are dark neurons inside you there are bright neurons there are positive ones which develop good habits which will bring you success which will bring you money which will make you more empathetic which will make you a better person which will make you a better level yeah and then there's dark ones which say no i'll be selfish i'll doubt myself i'll fear my life i'll hate that person i'll be jealous of that person every night ask yourself which one is one why every night again because night is the time you're going to enter sleep and habits are going to become identities actions are going to become identities uh specifically highlighting sleep what happens in your brain which solidifies these habits is it what you said that neuron a connection with neuron b the good connections become stronger it is it is also about understanding that all these so called dark neurons or neural networks came because of a reason nothing is actually dark nothing is actually negative all these networks evolved to keep you safe that is the irony of things all the bad habits that we have of eating more of watching netflix all day of not wanting to exercise all these bad habits actually evolve to keep you safe in the times of the stone age yes in times of deficiency in times where we didn't have resources unfortunately our brain has not evolved to live in the 21st century it still thinks that we are in the stone age it still thinks that if there is a high calorie food in front of you eat it when will you get the next one you will have to cross the desert to find the next fruit eat cow similarly for social validation social validation is a huge powerful motivator in your brain so when somebody says i don't like you why does it feel so bad because in your mind the tribe is kicking you out and in the jungle if the tribe kicks you out you are dead because you need the tribe to survive which is why cancel culture makes people feel like ending their careers but if you have a powerful neural network and you say no my actions and my plans are bigger than the cancer culture you'll be able to overcome cancer online which happens to all of us nowadays exactly because you need to be aware that you're not in the jungle anymore and so when you mentioned gita i really love that you brought it up i actually tried to do an entire neuroscience of gitas series wow so just read through the whole thing and try to understand is there a scientific basis for this at my level whatever i could understand and there is so there are verses in the gita that talk about how we are slave to our senses that basically means slave to our initial pleasure systems which are how do we train someone to do something we give them something that makes them feel good so if you have a dog you give it a treat every time it poops where you tell it it sits where you tell it you give it a treat the dopamine network in the brain is the treat that the brain gives itself dopamine is your feel good hormone dopamine is the hormone that makes you feel good so every time you do something that is good for survival your brain rewards itself with a dopamine treat literally like training a pet okay good boy you ate that fruit here is some dopamine for you so now you say oh wow i feel good let me do that again you had sex great there is a lot of dopamine for you because now your species will reproduce and you will not all die a lot of dopamine your friends are all proud of you you are the leader a lot of dopamine you get money that is power you have power over your society lot of dopamine every time you do something that is good for your survival you get dopamine that is how we are trained the pleasure of the census is we are stuck in that dopamine loop taste touch sight sound smell every time you are doing something that is good for survival you get a dopamine kick you are stuck in that loop let me keep doing that more and more this is the limbic level even if you cut off your prefrontal cortex you can still function at that level what does the prefrontal cortex do the prefrontal cortex has the ability to detach from the limbic create stories about yourself what is my identity beyond this dopamine loops beyond this just circle of pleasure and pain which is we are always in that loop how do we detach from that how does the prefrontal cortex detach from the limbic that is what geeta is talking about [Music] why do they say that physical pleasures are the lowest form of pleasures then you have intellectual pleasures which are higher and then there are spiritual pleasures which the layman might only understand as meditation or faith or bhakti but there are higher spiritual pleasures which honestly advanced meditators know about but we're not allowed to speak on public forums but uh could you kind of highlight intellectual pressures and spiritual pleasures as deeper pleasures than just ejaculation or eating a cake or you know even even like whatever uh what do you say like listening to music when you say pleasure we tend to club a lot of things together so the most basic happiness hormone is dopamine but that's not the only one there are other systems in the brain such as endorphins opioids so opioid everybody knows it as a drug but there is actually an opioid system in the brain so our brain uses natural opioids to keep you motivated to make you happy there is this whole endocannabinoid system which marijuana and weed uses and all of these systems come together to give you what is known as pleasure so ejaculation is one of the most primitive forms of pleasure it is plain and simple dopamine kick there is a part of your brain called nucleus acumen with a dopamine pod you feel good it's like you're using a dick as a handle to release dopamine absolutely and it is the most primitive form of dopamine surge it is also one of the only forms of dopamine kicks available in the prehistoric time for somebody who is alone by themselves this is not something that people think about much but i was considering how we talk of addiction and a lot of things that we are addicted to now we are addicted to because they are available alcohol smoking porn food food is one of the biggest addictions now swiggy is one of the biggest addictions but all this is available now netflix is available now 10 000 years ago for that cheap dopamine thrill what does one do one of the easiest ways of getting a dopamine gig would be masturbation there is a reason why so many of our texts would focus on masturbation because at that time that was the biggest addictive potential action that was there so i feel that masturbation is a great place holder for talking of dopamine networks but it is definitely not the only one because if netflix existed at the time of gita i'm pretty sure it would have had a lot to say about netflix as well which is why buddha had said a human that conquers its mind is greater than a human that conquers a thousand other humans in battle it's the same logic yeah it's the most difficult challenge but what happens once you do control it according to the gita and according to neuroscience i'm assuming that it is echoing a thought put out there by sushant singh rajput he said that the more you learn the faster you learn so if you learn a lot every day in year one you'll be able to read three books and retain three books in year two that will become five in year three it'll become ten because you're able to go through books faster because your brain's used to reading a lot and you're able to retain more because your brain's already retained a lot you're increasing the capacity of your brain in the same way that controlling your brain initially cut out one bad habit it could be processed sugar i don't want to eat cake i don't eat pastries i don't eat mid-thighs but maybe on the weekends i'll drink alcohol and that's fine in your one in year two say that okay now kind of process sugar why not apply the same thing to alcohol then cut out both process sugar and alcohol in year two in year three cut out matter this is basically my story [Laughter] in year three cut out sugar alcohol and marijuana therefore if you want to leave non-veg cut that out and once you've gained the ability to cut these things out your brain becomes sort of a weapon now it's polished now it's working faster you're able to learn more you're able to do more able to overcome yourself more now apply that on your career and go into the professional world with that sense of weaponry of your brain with that sense of the armor in your brain the ability to say no is the most under appreciated skill that we humans have like deny yourself of your pleasures just the ability to say no to yourself it is so difficult when you and it doesn't matter what you're saying no to can you say no because what we are talking about is your identity who are you who is this you who has the ability to say no so a lot of times we are actually acting from a limbic level i am my hunger i am my horniness i am my anger all these are coming from the limbic level but if that you shifts from the limbic up you are evolving so if you are your prefrontal cortex now you can turn back look at your limbic and say no i don't want to jack off i know you're feeling horny but i i don't want to i know you're feeling hungry but i don't want to eat i know you're feeling angry but i don't want to react that ability to detach yourself from your emotions is what evolves you and it improves the quality of your life and career also yes because your pfc now has the strength to make decisions outside of emotional baggage and that's why they say that okay in the gita first you run away from physical pleasures and sensory pleasures you become a stronger human that way your mind becomes stronger and then with a stronger mind you're able to conquer more in the world the eventual goal according to spiritualism the gita the quran the bible is always become one with god what people refer to as moksh or enlightenment what do you think from everything that you've read everything that you've heard happens at the level of enlightenment biologically moksh when they say oh your kundalini rises things like that what do you think actually happens that's the eventual end goal for your soul that's what people consider before that is okay finish off all your material desires if you want to become a billionaire finish off that if you want to get married and send your kids to a great school and have them become capable adults finish that but the highest mission in life is supposed to be becoming one with god which is enlightenment which is kundalini jaguar which is all these things biologically what do you think of enlightenment as a concept i feel that our biology is trained to first and foremost keep you alive everything that the body is trained to do it is trying to keep you alive that final stage of enlightenment is when your brain is convinced that there is no need for so much panic anymore there is no need to try so hard to stay alive anymore life is a part of a series of events it comes and goes and now you are beyond all this it is one thing to say this it is another thing to actually believe in it or feel it because if there is a fire in the room none of us would sit here we would all panic and go because our limbic system will take over it has veto power we may think that we are in control but our limbic system has ultimate veto power if it wants to it can make us do anything i believe that the final level of spirituality is gaining complete control over your limbic so that all those fear anxiety all that is gone and the weird thing is that once that happens i don't think we will be us anymore because we under appreciate how much our fears and anxieties actually define our personalities so to be truly disconnected from our emotions means to be truly disconnected from our identity what i love about philosophy and spirituality is that it is the study of future sciences science that's not been discovered yet and this is what i love about talking to people like yourself who are people of science you know science is your life and i've seen that people who actually dedicate their life to sciences also submit to philosophy and spirituality they say that there's some knowledge in there which we've not yet reached but we're trying to go there um and speaking about enlightenment i definitely feel the first step is what you said where you're not a slave to your own biology anymore the second step is what i believe to be some sort of a cheat code kind of for your brain where maybe certain systems get turned on like your endocannabinoid system in a way that it's never experienced before that's why they say that's perpetual bliss enlightenment and then i feel there's probably 18 or 18 000 steps after that that happened which we can't even fathom when they say that oh then you're capable of miracles you're capable of uh being at multiple places at the same time all these things you read an autobiography of a yoga yeah uh you know all these larger than life things that you hear of when we say that okay there's a universe inside you uh but it's just not completely jaggery yet it's not awakened yet i feel there's certain levels of science which we can't even perceive right now yeah i also feel that when we talk of ourselves as evolved we are being very generous because very egoistic and it is it makes sense because we need to feel good about ourselves so when we call ourselves evolved that is actually our limbic system fooling us so that we all feel good about ourselves we are not evolved we are very much monkeys who have figured out how to operate a smartphone but we will get there the hope is that as we keep on evolving we are going to get more and more detached from the limbic and we are going to understand that this is who we are this is what identity means this is how the brain works and gradually we will dissociate from all this but we are nowhere close to that yet um doctor said wario you've got 20 million podcasts in you if we keep jamming like this let's call it quits on the first episode right here let's drop it off where people are hungry for more uh this is the first conversation you me you and me have had in person yeah i do uh was incredible probably maybe in the last tiny section of this podcast which could just be a few sentences i'd like to summarize everything that you said when we talk about making money or or gaining success it begins with first fixing your mental health it begins especially in the modern day right understand the nature of therapy go for therapy if you need it second understand the power of sleep relaxation just chilling third form habits uh understand the concepts of neuroplasticity deny yourself of your pleasures sometimes have goals which are stronger than your pleasures sometimes and the fourth is understand that material success is the first step towards larger than life success which people refer to as enlightenment or spiritual evolution would you like to add anything to this kind of timeline i would like to add that we are fed this image of success which is the last stage so all for every kid grows up watching cristiano ronaldo but the amount of pain that you have to go through to reach there nobody really appreciates unless you start down that journey so i feel that we have to change our relationship with pain just as a thought and the first way to the first step towards pain is start saying no to yourself just to see what it can do say no to yourself see what happens to your body and then figure out completely agree brother step one is say no to your pain your pleasures whatever you know say no to your biology being affected i'd say step zero is hearing it from somewhere which i hope that these kind of podcasts actually do for audiences for listeners you could be 18 you could be 60 put good podcast good content good books into your mind and see it becoming a step zero for your step one yeah so thank you for creating this episode dr siv my pleasure man uh lots more to talk to you about right after this see you guys soon not much to say in this outro all i can say is that personally as a fan of neuroscience this was a very invigorating conversation as i said in the intro we recorded three more podcasts after this and this was one of those few guests where i didn't feel tired by the end of that shoot day i probably had two or three more podcasts in me we're definitely going to bring dr sid back on the show i'd love to know from you guys what other topics you'd want us to cover in the realms of neuroscience next up with dr said on the english podcast we're going to talk about the dark side of neuroscience and insanity all the scary stuff as for the hindi podcast we're going to be addressing porn addiction and addiction as a concept in general remember to follow the nvi show on spotify every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this was dr sid warriors introduction on the runway lots more to create with my man crush of a brain we will see you soon [Music]