most people lose their free will to those programs and it's that uncompromising will where you keep training the animal to stay to get beyond all the Cravings the feelings the habits of the body and catch yourself the best-selling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty I think the most beautiful and powerful thing in the world is a repetitive thought but sometimes the most dangerous thing in the world is a repetitive thought absolutely and we think about the most beautiful things we create is because we're obsessed with this new idea and this new thought that we want to build something but at the same time we know countless people who they have a thought every day that says I'm unlovable I'm unworthy I don't deserve love in my life if someone's having a negative repetitive thought specifically around self-worth what they believe they deserve in love where do they start with that thought well we think primarily uh 90 of the time we think the same thoughts as we thought the day before the challenge with that is the thought that you keep thinking over and over again becomes a belief and nerve cells that fire together wire together so the more nerve cells fire the more they develop long-term relationships and the more hardwired they become the more hardwired they become the more automatic they are the more automatic they are the more unconscious they become so the process of change really requires becoming conscious of your unconscious thoughts which means just because you have that thought doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth if you have that thought and you accept it you believe it you surrender to it without analyzing it that thought will lead to the same Choice which will lead to the same behavior which will create the same experience which then will produce the same emotion same emotions then drive our very same thoughts in time our biology our circuitry our chemistry our hormones and even our gene expression stays the same because we're the same so in the process of change when you come up against that unconscious belief and you make it conscious most people get uncomfortable uh when they confront that thought and they're stopping an automatic process and the body which has been conditioned to be the mind because it's doing something over and over again that's a habit is craving the experience because it wants the emotion associated with it right so the thought of being unworthy produces the feeling of being unworthy that feeling that when the person feels unworthy tends to cause the person to think more unworthy thoughts it only takes a thought and a Feeling an image of yourself and an emotion a stimulus in response you can condition the body to memorize that behavior and that emotional state better than the conscious mind so the moment we inhibit that thought or the moment become conscious of and we no longer accept it there's a biological craving that takes place in the body because the body has been conditioned to be the mind so the body starts influencing the mind to think more corresponding thoughts equal to that feeling so here comes the assault then you're not only unworthy you're you're everything else that goes along with that feeling and this is where uh people have to make up their mind if they truly want to change because if you decide to confront that thought and make a different Choice get ready because you're going to feel uncomfortable it's going to feel unfamiliar and it's going there's going to be some uncertainty because you're stepping out of familiar territory now you're stepping out of the known and you're stepping into the unknown now this is really when you leave the bleachers and you get on the playing field because the brain immediately looks around in its environment to see if anything's changing because you're changing and you see that nothing in your world is changing because you actually haven't fully changed yet so the moment we look for evidence in our life and we don't see it sooner or later most people accept that thought which leads to the same Choice which creates the same behavior which creates the same experience that produces the same feeling then they say oh this feels right to me you know that feels familiar because you've just returned back to the known self I think that when people truly want to make up their mind to change and they become so conscious of those unconscious thoughts they would never go unconscious to them again that's the moment the body is being reconditioned to a new mind if you inhibit that choice that leads to that habit or that behavior a habit is when you've done something so many times the body knows how to do it better than the brain now you're stopping the body from being on its automation on autopilot and if the body's craving the feeling of unworthiness and you're stopping the body from feeling that way and you're aware in your life how you speak you're aware in your life how you're feeling and you're checking in you're saying do I really want to feel this way this is that River of change where you're going from the old self to the new cell so it makes sense then if those principles and biology work in that way they could actually work in our favor so if you said okay I'm going to sit down for a few minutes I'm going to come so conscious of my unconscious self my unconscious personality that Victory today would not be going unconscious to those thoughts behaviors and emotions okay let me get so familiar with them that I don't go unconscious okay I got that down I know what what thoughts do I want to fire and wire in my brain and if a belief is a thought that you keep thinking over and over again with intention and with attention you'll switch on that prefrontal cortex and assign meaning to the ACT and start installing new circuits in your brain if you keep doing it over and over again it becomes more hardwired it becomes more automatic and now you're installing a new belief that you are worthy of love you are worthy of abundance you are worthy to heal whatever that is that's the thought you do want to believe in and when it matters the most is when it's the hardest because if you don't have the circuitry in place you'll default back to the old programs right so then if you said how am I going to be in my zoom calls today how am I going to be in traffic today how am I going to be with my ex my co-workers and you started thinking about and rehearsing how you were going to act in certain situations the brain actually doesn't know the difference between the real life experience and what you're Imagining the research on mental rehearsal shows that the brain will look like in time that it's already had the experience and it's vacant of the experience now keep firing and wiring those circuits and you're going to begin to behave that way so now you're installing circuitry now to use in your life to get your behaviors to match your intentions if you said how would it feel to feel worthy of love how would it feel to be grateful for Life how would it feel to be worthy of abundance and you said I'm going to teach my body emotionally what this feels like before the manifestation of the event you're not waiting for your life to change to feel worthy you're actually changing your life by becoming worthy you're generating abundance you're generating love you're creating an elevated emotion now our data is so compelling because when you truly begin to elevate your emotional state and you could really lock in you know to those elevated emotions your body is so objective that it actually believes that it's living in a whole new environment before the environment changes in other words the body's believing it's in that new future and if the environment signals the Gene and it does and the end product of an experience in the environment is an emotion you're actually signaling genes ahead of the environment and your body will begin to become conditioned to a new mind now think about this if you did that every day the word meditation literally means become familiar with you become familiar with your old self you become familiar with your new self and you say I'm not getting up until I feel this feeling and then you'd say I want to be able to bring this feeling up whenever I want I'm going to keep remembering this feeling over and over again it only takes a thought and a Feeling an image of the future under motion is stimulus in response you can condition your body to believe it's living in a whole new life and when you feel the emotions of your future something amazing happens you're no longer in lack or separation so you're no longer looking for the event to take away that feeling of lack or separation your body's actually believing it's in the event and so then you're not looking for it you feel like it's already happened get ready because that's when your life begins to change and so we've discovered that if you're actually practicing this and you immerse yourself in that experience fully for seven days the amount of metabolic and biological changes that will take place in your body will be so significant that your body will actually believe it's living in that future and yet most of the people that come to our workshops are literally in a ballroom there's nothing really exciting happening in the environment but their bodies believing they're living in a whole new life and so one thought leads to a choice which leads to behavior which creates an experience that produces an emotion so then new information new knowledge begins to cause you to think differently if you can remember that knowledge and begin to make a different choice because you want to experience the truth of that information you'll have to behave differently and when the experience occurs and you feel the feeling of your abundance or wealth I guarantee you you're going to continue wanting to make the process of change something consistent in your life this is why I love talking to you I mean that literally you could just well you just said there I hope everyone listens to it again and again and again and partly I think there's something to be said for that the best things that have rewired my brain and my mind were things that I repeated daily I took something that I love listening to or loved learning or reading a paragraph of a book and I would literally just reprogram Myself by giving that to my mind every single day yeah and as I'm listening to you talk I I think there's a few really powerful things I wanted to pull out uh when I lived as a monk and studied The Vedas they would talk about thoughts in different modes and there are three modes the mode of ignorance the mode of passion and the mode of goodness and there's a hierarchy to those thoughts and so the mode of ignorance would be an unfulfilling thought or a completely feral and Security based thought which would be I am not worthy or I am unlucky and I can't do that I can't be in love no one can be in love with me that's like a mode of ignorance thought about a passion thought would be I can be in love with anyone I want and I can find anything and uh it's it's almost like you know you're lying to yourself and you haven't really you haven't really applied what you're saying and it's just this big bold statement but it doesn't quite sit and resonate and the more goodness though is I can take steps daily to create love in my life right now and and you start to see how people would often look at what we're saying and they think oh it's just positive thinking it isn't it's not it's not just a false statement what you're saying is what you two words you used intention and attention you're actually being conscious about where that intention and the attention is being placed you're intending that if I do something every day and I place my attention on XYZ then I can create this new reality for myself whenever I have a tough conversation coming up a tough meeting something difficult I'll rehearse it in my head and you're so right that you can prepare for the future even when I do skydiving or if I'm sitting in a cold plunge I'm preparing my mind before I even do it there's no point of just jumping in and diving in I think what's really interesting is that partly a lot of the anxiety and stress we feel is because we kind of hope that we'll never feel anxiety and stress again so there's a sense of like okay I can get to a place where I never experience anxiety I I almost think that that sets us up to be more hurt by the anxiety and inevitable uncertainty will feel I would love to hear your thoughts gosh without me I'd love to respond I got three thoughts going on at the same time do it so so to fulfill the first part of that question it's an experiment right it's an experiment life is an experiment so if your personality creates your personal reality and your personality is made up of how you think how you act and how you feel if you keep thinking the same way you keep acting the same way you keep feeling the same way your life is going to stay the same because you're the same so the experiment is okay let me begin to think differently so I got to remind myself how I do want to think and I have to remind myself of how I no longer want to think so I don't default and go unconscious let me remind myself how I'm going to behave so that I could actually get my behaviors to match my intentions and let me remind myself of how I'm going to feel if I'm able to succeed in that day then there should be some change in my life this experiment the the and and if it doesn't change that doesn't mean the law doesn't work for you it's just you're not that good yet it's just you just got to keep practicing right so the act of disconnecting from your life long enough to remind yourself of who you do want to be and who you no longer want to be that experiment then is the experiment called life now it's not that you react the question is how long are you going to react that's the real question because I mean I react all the time everybody does but if you're going to stay there and you're going to live in that emotional state you will see life through that lens of that emotion right so now it gets complicated because the stronger the emotion you feel towards certain people or problems in your life the more you pay attention to them and where you place your attention is where you place your energy so from a purely biological as well as Quantum State we could say then you're using that person or that circumstance to reaffirm your dependence on feeling that emotion so you have to hate your enemy and if your enemy dies you'll find another person to hate because that is that is the response right so the body is is the animal it's been conditioned a certain way and it's and if it's been doing something and feeling something for an extended period of time there's a modification of its receptor sites it's it's needing those emotional states so in the process of change just be ready because you're going to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time now the question is do you want to stay there so then most people think that they don't have any control over their emotional state they think I'm just this way and I feel this way well we we actually can show people that that's not the truth that when it's the hardest it matters the most and if you're able to really work and train your body like you're training an animal to stop feeling one way and start feeling another way if you believe that you're an eternal being let's just say that I mean just most religions talk about we're Eternal and most sex of thought only a few that don't whether you're going to heaven or hell or Nirvana or on the wheel you're pretty much going to be around for a long time that that moment matters so much in the light of Eternity because that's the moment you make up your mind to no longer be defined by your past why are you being defined by your past because emotions are a record of the past and so then if you're feeling that emotion your body is believing it's back in that same experience of the past so the more knowledge that we have and understanding that justified valid or not those emotions are hurting no other person but you because the long-term effects of living by those emotional states those survival states are actually down regulating genes and creating diseases sooner or later you're going to have to ask yourself is this loving to myself and forgiveness is just when you overcome the emotion you take your attention off that person or that problem you're you're freeing yourself and you're freeing them so people do the best with what they think is available that's my belief and if you're unaware that you can control your emotional states you'll rely on something outside of you to do that whether it's a computer game whether it's a Netflix show or whether it's a drug whatever whatever it is that you need to make that feeling Go away You're dependent on your outer world and I think that's a hypnosis that's a conditioning teach people that you can actually regulate and change your emotional states you give them the tools to literally step into a new future so that process of course is extremely uncomfortable and it's the question is how long are you going to stay in that emotional state and 50 percent of the story that most people tell about that past experience isn't even the truth because they're making things up and they're doing that so that they can justify why they haven't changed since some past event most people reach a point in their life where they reach crisis or disease or diagnosis or loss or betrayal where they finally go gosh it's time to change I think change is an ongoing process and the more we change the more we should see evidence in our life that makes it exciting yeah and I I think you're right that I've thought about this for a while that I feel most people know that they want to change and most people know what they want to change but they still struggle to make a change and so I found that we don't often have a values crisis we have a habits crisis because people don't know how to reprogram their habits and they've started to assume that the way they feel is who they are and I wonder how you think about this because I think we're living at a time where what you just said is like you either kind of find a way to numb your feelings so you're turning towards something external to numb how you feel or today we're being told well feel every feeling and emotion completely and then often we don't kind of get to the reprogramming phase so I guess how do you know how how long to take a feeling seriously effectively and assessing it before you kind of take action on it a feelings and emotions are the end product of past experiences and we can remember experiences better because we can remember how they feel the stronger the emotion we have to some experience in our life the more altered we are inside of us the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot and that's called a long-term memory that that image is being bossed neurologically in the brain so then what most people don't know is that every time they remember that event that trauma that betrayal that loss whatever it is they're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body as if the event is occurring so what happens over time is that condition process conditions the body to literally live in the past so if a person is living by the same familiar feeling every single day whether it's guilt or unworthiness or pain or suffering or victimization or depression or whatever it is it's so important for them to come right up against that emotional state because they're coming up against the known the question fundamentally becomes for that person is it possible then to feel a different feeling now if you cannot feel a different feeling other than the feeling that you're used to feeling it should tell you volumes about that feeling because it's going to influence your very same thoughts so the research that we've done over and over again is that the only way you're actually going to reprogram your brain to work in your favor is you've got to learn how to regulate your brain waves and you know this of course beta brainwave patterns or thinking brainwave patterns it's the analytical mind it's our critical facilities the we're in beta right now we're aware of our bodies we're aware of the environment we're aware of time the neocortex is switched on it's what plugs us into three-dimensional reality it's the seat of the autobiographical self there's a lot of circuits in there from things you've learned intellectually and things you've experienced in your life so for the most part it's a repository of the past right and so ninety percent of those thoughts that we think being the same thoughts as the day before tend to become like automatic programs and they become more subconscious and more unconscious so in order for us to begin to change those programs we got to get into the operating system the only way we do that is we've got to slow our brain waves down in that thinking neocortex the challenge for most people is they have so many demands in their life they have so many emotional responses to circumstances in their life that they're living in a state of stress and living a state of survival and state of stress and survival You Don't Close Your Eyes you got to keep your eye on the ball you got to keep your attention on the outer environment so uh their brains tend to work in a higher brain wave pattern a mid-range or high level beta brainwave pattern that's like driving your sports car on first gear it's it's a lot of energy for the brain so so learning how to regulate and slow your brain waves down is something that we've been very very interested in when you teach people how to do that it could become a skill and when the brain starts to relax and it moves into less of that chatter that takes place in your brain and more of kind of an imaginary State the brain sees in pictures and images it's more creative we're moving into that Alpha state so now the door between the conscious mind in the subconscious mind opens up as we get beyond our analytical mind and our analytical mind is actually what separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind sometimes you slow your brain waves down you get into Alpha you're entering the operating system and that's where you can rewrite a new program that's where you can rehearse a new script that's where you can begin to plan your behaviors in an intentional way if you if you can't change your brain waves then it's like your computer running amok with all of those programs and you yelling at it telling it to stop you're not in the operating system some people can get to the point where they're so relaxed that the body's in a light sleep and yet they're conscious and awake and now they're in this Theta brain life pattern and in Theta that's a hypnotic State we're very suggestible to our thoughts we're very suggestible to information in that state and that state then is where we see the most change take place and so the person can literally change from the inside out when they learn how to get into the operating system you've just hit the net on the head with the constant experience everyone has I think again going back to what I was saying that when we're trying to make a change the thing that blocks us from making the change is usually stress if I'm trying to be a kind loving compassionate person but I'm stressed out I'm likely to be Snappy and rude and condescending if I'm trying to be healthier in my diet but I'm stressed out or burnt out I'm going to reach for the sugary food or the carbs and the fat like that doesn't come from anything else but stress to take away the feeling to take away the feeling take away the feeling right yeah so let's get real clear because I think it's important for people to understand what we're talking please stress and we're talking about living in survival is so important to name those emotions because anger and frustration and control and hatred and envy and jealousy and insecurity and unworthiness and guilt and shame and suffering and depression those are all derived those are emotions that are derived from the hormones of stress and psychology calls those normal states of Consciousness those are Altered States Of Consciousness because in stress the physiology is that we're knocked out of homeostasis we're an act out of balance because we perceiving some threat some danger some emergency and so the stronger the emotion you feel to whatever stressor there is in your life the more you pay attention to it and so in time then you have to keep your attention on all the important elements in your life so you sit down to do a meditation and when you're living in stress and you're living in survival there's only three things that are important in that moment your attention is on your body because you got to preserve it your attention is on something in your environment and what's in your environment people objects things places and you're very preoccupied with time and when you're in stress and you're in survival the brain goes onto a default mode and it's naturally trying to predict the next moment based on what it's learned in the past and so as you'd always try to forecast the future based on your memory of the past you can't be in the present moment right so and yet our our model of change what we discovered is that the only way a person can change is when they get beyond their body they get beyond all the elements of their environment and they get beyond that predictable Fusion of familiar past and they sink into the present moment which is the unknown so if you can't do that because of the hormones of stress most people will sit down and they'll say okay I'm going to close my eyes I'm going to start this process where I'm going to rehearse how I'm going to be today and they start thinking about their cell phone they start thinking about all their emails and they start thinking I can't meditate there's something wrong with me it's my mother's fault you know and they actually believe that thought to be the truth and then they get up and they they actually reaffirm it and they say I can't meditate now I can tell you that if you are willing to see that thought is just the thought in your brain and you're curious what's on the other side of that thought yeah you're going to feel uncomfortable but if you had some tools and skills to apply and you were able to take your attention off your cell phone and settle your body back down into the present moment that would be a victory and then your body would say come on you've got to feel a little frustration now you got to be impatient you got to be judgmental come on that's not what you always think that's how you always feel and you like an animal you settle the body back down into the present moment and you tell it it's no longer the mind that you're the mind that's a victory then the body says uh hey dude you're super busy you got a lot of things to do you got a lot of people to see you got a lot of places to go you got a lot of things to do and you've been doing the same thing every day your body's going to want to get up and do something you don't want to quit because your brain's telling you that you can't do this if you had the awareness to settle the body back down into the present moment you would be executing a will that's greater than the program because most people lose their free will to those programs and it's that tedium in the beginning that is an uncompromising will where you keep training the animal to stay to take all of its attention off the environment to get beyond all the Cravings the feelings the habits of the body the drives of the body and catch yourself defaulting to that predictable future bringing your body back into the present moment siphoning energy back your attention into the past based on those familiar emotions of the past we've discovered that if you're willing to do that for just a few days you could actually liberate an enormous amount of energy from your body you go from particle to wave from matter to energy and you're literally transmuting those limited emotions into elevated emotions and something really beautiful happens if you're willing to fire The Crucible and sit through that long enough all of these emotions move that energy moves right up into the heart and the person starts falling in love with life they start feeling this state of gratitude this gratefulness to be alive of this inevitable word of relaxed and awake and something really magical happens when we've discovered this little simple thing and that energy makes it to the heart there's only one place it wants to go and it goes straight to the brain so the person starts relaxing into their heart when they feel this feeling and the more they relax into the heart the more their brain all of a sudden starts becoming aroused and they start going into these elevated gamma brainwave patterns now gamma is not unconscious gamma is actually super conscious it's actually super aware you're outside the program now so when that occurs and the Brain goes into gamma brainwave patterns what we discovered is not it's not a little gamma it's not a lot of gamma it's not a whole lot of gamma it's a supernatural amount of gamma and we start seeing these brain waves where we see Theta start carrying Alpha and Alpha starts resonating with beta and beta starts creating High beta and high beta starts creating gamma and you see these standing waves of brain coherence happening and the person feels so amazing that they don't want the moment to end and so we see when they put their attention on their heart like like filling a gas tank we see on the gauge of the on the scan this very low frequency start rising in the heart the the energy that's the heart uses to to function actually goes up because they're placing their attention there and where they Place their attention is where they Place their energy and then you see the parasympathetic nervous system come up with it that's the nervous system of relaxation and then we see it kind of drop and we see the sympathetic nervous system starting to go up and now sympathetic regulation is an arousal right but the arousal is in fear the arousal isn't hatred or aggression the arousal is in pain that's the arousal created from survival there's only one other arousal and that's ecstasy that's Bliss and the person all of a sudden feels connected to something greater now here's the beauty we we could see people do this in 15 minutes the most important takeaway around all of this is that feeling that they're feeling is not coming from anywhere outside of them no person's doing that no wardrobe change is doing that no sports car don't football game nothing is doing it to them it's actually coming from within that is the moment they stop looking for it outside of them and the love affair begins and so when we start feeling these elevated emotions these more selfless emotions it's not like you have to try to forgive it actually is the side effect of you changing your emotional state you no longer want because you feel so whole how could you want anything so we we started interviewing people when they have these moments and and they had such an incredible amount of love that they felt or we measure their oxytocin levels they're a love chemicals very elevated the amount of gamma in terms of coherence was 200 300 400 standard deviations outside of normal in coherent gamma now three standard deviations outside of normal in gamma is about two percent of the population 200 300 400 a lot of energy in the brain so the brain all of a sudden is receiving an enormous amount of energy so we've discovered relaxed in the heart and awaken the brain and that process of transformation is your willingness to sit pass that thought pass that emotion and keep training the animal and sooner or later you can recondition it to a new mind and the system for this new mind and this journey that you're talking about is meditation like this is coming through a meditative practice is that similar to the breath work meditation practice that you just did research on or is that totally separate these wow okay yeah yes so um our week-long events are uh a full immersion experience we've done the largest studies on meditation than have ever been done just because we have a community of 1800 people that come to an event that are going to be getting up at the same time doing the same thing pretty much eating making the same food choices and pretty much a big laboratory right and so our discoveries in working with 1800 people in in measuring brain waves their brain function before and after the event measuring their gene expression before and after the event we're measuring uh 2882 metabolites in their blood we're measuring DNA expression we're measuring urine we're measuring saliva we're measuring the energy of the room we're measuring everything and meditation in a sense that it's not in the traditional way um what we do is we look at what really works you know we're actually looking to say well that's something that we can actually see it change in so we teach meditation three ways to become familiar with your old self and to become familiar with your new self that's what the word meditation means familiarization to become familiar with so we use that model for change so slow your brain waves down and get beyond your analytical mind this meditation and you teach your body how to do that and we've discovered a formula that that simply makes it very easy for people to do it you practice it you'll get good at it just like anything else you practice so so to get beyond the analytical mind there's another way to reprogram ourselves and then meditation is really about getting beyond your body or disconnecting from your body disconnecting from your environment and forgetting about time and that is that eye of the needle where we begin to make the most significant changes so we're data driven you know we're really looking to see what it is and and when we see brains respond in the same way it helps me enormously to teach the material better and so the more people understand what they're doing and the more they understand why they're doing it the more naturally the how becomes easier and nothing has left the conjecture if nothing is left Superstition or Dogma or even in spiritual you know traditional words you know science as the Contemporary language to demystify that process and you give new people numerous times to overcome themselves and numerous times to connect sooner or later you'll start watching transformation right before your eyes and so one of the cool things that we've discovered is that we have so much compelling data to suggest that you're greater than you think more powerful than you no more unlimited than you could ever dream we have compelling data that suggests that your nervous system is the greatest pharmacist in the world that it makes drugs that work better than any drug in a drugstore a drug study is about 18 to 25 cause and effect causality our data is between 75 and 85 percent cause and effect this is a person creating their own Pharmacy of anti-inflammatories their own Pharmacy of anti-carcinogenic chemicals their own Pharmacy of pain relievers who are seeing this over and over again so we have this incredible data that says that this is no longer pseudoscience this is the real this is really science the side effect of a person's transformation is has changed my belief in what's possible I have seen people stand on the stage with stage four cancers that were in every single organ in their body and that metastasized and and they have no sign of cancer in their body and we have data that suggests that you put the blood of an advanced meditator and a uterine cancer cell a pancreatic cancer cell 70 of the mitochondrial function in the cancer cells diminish the mitochondria is the energy packets of the cell it's taking energy out of the cancer cell works perfect with what we're seeing with uh the testimonials uh that that people are telling around the world we've seen blind people see we've seen deaf people here we've seen people with spinal cord injuries walk again we've seen ALS change we've seen all kinds of unbelievable health conditions Changed by a person simply changing the way they think the way they act and the way they feel how long have you seen certain things lost like how much does the practice have to continue daily to sustain impact because I feel that you know this isn't as you know isn't a one-off thing and that isn't what you're encouraging like this is the experience of when someone's coming to a retreat or an event they're having this incredible experience but then do you measure how people continue to practice Yeah it's important yeah it's super important for us um uh and of course we have mounds of data but let's see if I can say this uh as as clear as I possibly can when a person has that arousal where they're feeling that elevated emotion and their their eyes are closed they're in a room with 1800 people there's music playing in the background they're not eating they're not smelling they're not tasting they're not moving about and feeling on some level they're having an inner experience right and the body is so objective that it's literally believing it's living in a new environment and so that elevated emotion somehow tends to drag the body right out of the past into the present moment so many people with everything from eczema to muscular dystrophy when they have those events there's a biological change that takes place in their body where they feel completely differently now some people heal all the way some people are out of their wheelchair and they're walking again but they're limping and that doesn't mean it's over it just means they made contact where they they hit gold and so there's varying degrees that we see we've seen people for seven years work on a terminal health condition to them seven years to heal that health condition some people it takes two years three years some people they do it in three months we there's no predictable menu that we can say it's this way now when people have those more profoundly aroused States it seems like their change is much more immediate and much more permanent but for the most part we see people's response pretty dramatic now it's also important to say that we have seen people heal from from terminal cancers stop feeling those elevated emotions and returned to responding to the circumstances and conditions in their life and return back to the same personality the same personality is the same personal reality and their bodies believing it's living in that same environment and they're feeling the same way and they're in the habit of acting the same way and thinking the same way and lo and behold the condition returns we've seen people heal themselves of Parkinson's disease more than once have one response to some very serious event in their life that produced a very strong emotion and in one hour their condition returned because they literally went back to their old self and we've seen that person turn around and reverse the condition again again people do the best with what they think is available the person standing on the stage who's we've had numerous Physicians and researchers stand on the stage they're the four minute mile they're telling the community I'm the example of Truth now this is no longer philosophy this is no longer Theory here's my scans I we had someone with bilateral breast cancer just recently no evidence of cancer in her breasts or any lymph nodes no longer on our liver I'm looking out at the audience and everybody's leaning in there's the form in a mile and that person's telling the truth and they're they're telling a story and it's not pretty it's not always Rosy they they went through a lot of Dark Nights they went through a lot of their condition getting worse but every day they had to show up for themselves if they stopped showing up and doing the work they would really not believe it was possible but if they showed up and did the work it means that they believe it's possible and I think when you believe in possibility you got to believe in yourself you believe in yourself you got to believe in possibilities so it used to be a few examples of of that now we have so many great testimonials so many great stories that now people it's becoming infectious just like a virus or any bacteria becomes infectious now health and wellness becomes as infectious as disease and you get a community of people starting to break through when you start seeing these changes where people stand on the stage invariably you're going to see a very strong shift in Consciousness and Consciousness is awareness and if you're unaware that you could actually heal yourself you'll make the same Choice once you see it I think it starts creating a brush fire and and that's really the exciting part so we've seen so many great testimonials that are undeniably uh great stories of transformation and many many of those people still no longer have their eczema still no longer have their Parkinson's still no longer have their cancer yeah since since the last time we spoke I know your team of researchers went and did some work I wanted to ask you some questions about this you did some research on the impact of one minute breath work how does this impact our heart rate variability and how does HRV impact our anxiety let's talk about uh heart rate variability because it's important thing so so your brain is trying to control and predict everything that's taking place in your life because stress is actually created when you can predict something you can't control something or you have the perception that something's going to get worse okay so you switch on that primitive nervous system the fight-or-flight nervous system and as you shift your attention from one person to another person to another thing to another place to another problem every one of those different elements has a neurological Network in your brain so the arousal of the hormones to say pay attention there's danger as you start shifting your attention to each one of these elements that have neurological networks in your brain your brain starts firing very incoherently and in fact you could actually by thinking about your problems turn on the stress response just by thought alone and that's what most people do so now there you are you're sitting in traffic the heart is pumping because it's trying to get blood to the extremities because A Primitive system switching on saying that there's there's a predator there's danger and the heart is beating against closed arteries and the Heart starts beating out of rhythm it starts beating out of order and it starts beating very incoherently so when you have incoherence in the brain and you have incoherence in the heart when waves are incoherent when they intersect with each other they cancel each other out and when they cancel each other out that's less energy in the brain there's less energy in the brain you're going to default to some of those reflexive systems If energy is diminished in the heart you're not going to trust you're not going to be vulnerable you're not going to want to commune you're not not going to want to connect you're not going to want to feel grateful it's not a time to feel any of those things it's time to run fight and hide okay so most people say okay well I had a stressful day I was stressed out the entire day at the end of the day they turn on the TV and they they relax the important thing to write realize is that if you're relying on something outside of you to change that emotional state you'll become dependent on it so is it possible then to begin to create more coherence in the brain and the answer is yes because when you're under the gun of those chemicals of survival you're narrowing your focus on the cost you hear something moving in the bushes you freeze and you narrow your focus and it's that narrowing Focus that tends to be obsessive when we're in stress we overthink things we over analyze that actually we've discovered makes the brain worse and it actually makes the heart regulate more out of order so then we said okay if the brain is narrowing its focus and it's becoming over attentive what if we teach it how to do something else what if we teach it how to broaden its focus and instead of focusing on something material or something known just open up and focus on nothing in the act of broadening Focus actually cause a person to stop thinking and doing and start sensing and feeling is actually what starts to slow their brain waves down the redundancy of Shifting your attention from one person to another person to another problem to another thing causes the brain to fire like a lightning storm and the clouds very incoherently so as you start to open your awareness and sense nothing we've seen this thousands of times those different networks that are firing out of order start to synchronize and what sinks in the brain links in the brain and the Brain becomes more orderly it starts to become more coherent if you could learn how to rest your attention in your heart and where you place your attention is where you place your energy regulate your breath start slowing your breathing down even if you did it for one minute you could actually begin to change your brain waves and you could actually cause your heart to start functioning more regulation in more order if you said okay I'm going to work with my body and I'm going to start breathing and I'm going to start feeling emotions that I do want to feel yes it may take you a few minutes to get there but if you keep practicing it over and over again the heart starts producing a very profound signal it starts to produce an external magnetic field it's it's it's measurable so now you have a coherent brain which means you can get very intentional and you have a coherent heart which means you can feel the emotions of your future before it happens somehow you have this broadcasting of this wi-fi signal and the Brain tends to be electrical in nature so it's sends out an electrical charge into the field the heart is the magnetic charge it's what draws things to us it's the it's the magnetic field and now you actually by changing the way you think and the way you feel you're changing the signal in the field then if you're able to maintain that state for an extended period of time I say something magical is going to happen in your life something unusual some unknown experience is going to occur if you keep thinking the same way and feeling the same way your life should stay the same so we do one minute practices we do five minute practices we do 30 minute practices we want to get so good at doing it with our eyes closed that we can do with our eyes open yeah no I when I hear that like I've had personal genuine experience of that where I've done that when I've had when I'm having a moment where I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling stressed or you know something unpredictable has happened and I feel that change in my heart rate and I notice my breathing change I notice it become more shallow I noticed it become more random I know that when I'm practicing breath work I'm able to come back to Stillness I'm able to come back to that sense of balance and then I'm able to actually approach the issue at hand with more clarity with more connectedness and a feeling of confidence but when someone else who may not have had that experience here or may not be trained in that they're just thinking well how do I solve the problem right like they're they're listening to me and you're going well but I can't because I just I need to solve this problem like you're saying like I'm gonna be 30 minutes late for a job interview or I just had an argument with my partner this morning and I've got a big presentation this morning as well at work now I'm stressed about it because I'm thinking about that or my kid just had got yeah I had to rush him to hospital and I'm like like I guess when you're looking at it from a very human point of view it's really hard to understand the value in this what do you say to anyone who's thinking and feeling that way uh no I think it's I think it's a reasonable conversation I mean um uh sometimes we have to be super aroused yeah and sometimes we really have to pay attention and sometimes there are threats and dangers where that primitive nervous system actually works in our favor and and that's the emergency system but you gotta also realize that you only have a certain amount of energy and if if you're living in emergency mode for an extended period of time there's no energy for growth and repair there's no energy for long-term building projects and so when it's needed and you have to outrun the Predator you go you don't sit and try to make friends with a predator we're not that good you run right the problem is if you keep that alarm system switched on all the time it gets very addictive it's a great answer it gets very addictive right and so I've looked at people's brain scans and watch their brain get worse in the early days and tap them on the head and say what were you doing in there 100 of the time they were analyzing the problems in their life within that disturbing emotion and if an emotion is a record of the past and they can't think greater than how they feel they're thinking in the past there's no solution there across the river get beyond the emotion and you'll see possibility because you're no longer in the box of that emotional state now that's so much easier said than done because you're going against thousands of years of programming of living and survival I mean 200 years ago it wasn't easy being human I mean we're in survival all the time and famine you know every disease I mean it was it was hard to be human and so we have to lay down the very thing we used our whole life to get what we want for something greater to occur and it goes against thousands of years of programming it's not something that you get good at doing once you got to keep practicing so so so you really have two ways to look at it if you're if you're living in stress and you're living in survival and that system is switched on then everything will be a threat everything will be a danger everything will be a reason to rush to be impatient to be frustrated to be judgmental because that's that's the Consciousness that's the emotion we're living by so now you you have a problem with a co-worker you have a problem with your partner whatever it is that you use as an example and you have to give a presentation now now you really have one of two choices either be victimized by those conditions in your life and you stay in that emotional state and I'll say to you Jay worry that way while I'm this way because of this person the circumstance the person or circumstance is controlling the way I feel in the way I think anything that controls the way I feel and the way I think I'm victim to right okay or I actually can be a Creator now okay so when it's the hardest that matters the most okay so there's gonna be a story a valid story that's going to go along with those emotions that you're gonna have to give up that you can address at another time from a different state if you're altered in that state and you say something you do something you write the email you send the text you'll always regret it you'll always say I should have never said that I should have never done that we've got to learn that we're in an altered state at that time so there's only one of two choices you either stay there the whole day and tell everybody that story or you say okay let me take a moment remember that this is the experiment called life okay let me practice getting relaxed in my Army slow the animal down let me practice I will take a few minutes now let me breathe let me get my state back let me change everything okay let me remember who I am who I want to be when I open my eyes and let me practice that again now even if you had to do that 10 times in one day I would say it was a day worth living I would say it was a day worth living and when we do walking meditations uh in our our Retreats we're doing walking meditations so you can practice doing it with your eyes open yeah like if you're going to be relaxed in your heart and awake in your brain and you can do it with your eyes closed okay let's take it out for a test drive yeah let me open my eyes let me pay a little bit more attention to my inner World let me practice feeling this feeling and we practice feeling this way and let my brain do what it does let me get to finally change my physiology let me change my state let me walk as the healed personally walk as the Abundant person let me walk as if my prayers are answering me walk in the state if I keep practicing that over and over it's going to become a habit right yes so so we hit it as many ways as we can we have at least seven or eight different breaths that we do because we see how they all work in the brain we have all kinds of meditations we have Sitting meditations we have standing and walking meditation laying down meditations because we want you to be able to do it because your eyes open with your eyes go standing walking any way you can so that you don't default and return back to that person now if you do default you didn't fail that's a program you just went unconscious and how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering that's the moment of change no one no one cares how many times you fell off the bicycle if you ride the bicycle now you ride the bike so is it's the constant process uh every single day and I think that sometimes we look for evidence in our life and it hasn't happened and I think it's so important that we still show up yeah yeah because that's the that's where you're changing the most and when you get to that point where you could care less if it happens or not because you feel so happy so grateful for who you are get ready because your life is going to begin to change in magical ways I'm so proud of our community not because they do the work every day not because they're trying to be good or please anybody they do it because they don't want the magic yeah to really and I know the experiment is too good is they don't they're going to continue to be a Creator in their life so then when they change the way they feel and the way they think and they start seeing evidence in their life they're gonna remember what they did inside of them to produce that outcome and they're going to believe they're creator of their life unless they're the victim of their life and that's empowerment yeah and you can take that away from anybody you can't tell me now you're too sick to do that you can't tell me you're too old to do that you can't tell me you had a horrible past you're too out of shape you can't even tell me that you never meditated before because of people that come they know nothing they get dragged by somebody and they have the most profound experience because they're not expecting anything and we have data to suggest that when you don't expect anything you're going to have a profound moment so everybody can do it there's nobody that's so special to be excluded from this process and we have had people that have had brutal pasts with abuse with trauma we we've seen the Navy Seals and prisoners with horrible horrible memories uh literally transformed literally transform uh in seven days and I could say right now that you make the time every single day to decide who you're going to present to the world and you get up as that person you're going to fall a lot of times but sooner or later once you start to change it's pretty hard to go back yeah I think we so easily forget that anything that we've achieved today any place we've got to was a commitment to refining the process it was a disciplined effort to make a tiny Improvement on something else when you give the cycle example the bike example the idea that you got back up and you maybe changed one thing you knew to shift your balance differently you knew to Pedal at a different pace like you tried these different things and it's what you're saying that it's an experiment if we keep trying the same thing we get the same result but the point that I love that you brought up to that answer was the idea that sometimes you do need to be an emergency but don't make emergency a habit exactly and I think that's where most of us Veer off on the wrong path I was asked recently anyone who knows me today knows that I'm a hard-working productive high performance type of individual I live a very scheduled life and a and a disciplined life and the biggest question I get around the holidays is Jay are you able to switch off and I always go back and give the credit to my to my monk training and say I switch off immediately uh as soon as I'm on the flight home I was I remember before Christmas I was I was getting on a flight home back to London and I was off the moment I stepped onto the flight and it was because I was it's not because I'm special though because I'm unique or I have superpowers it's because I've simply done what you said where it's I've trained myself to always be present and so if I'm really present in my work like I am with you now then when I'm on the plane I'm just present and I know that it's time to switch off and so I I think the idea that our presence bleeds and our lack of presence bleeds and it's not that you can selectively be in emergency here and not in emergency here the state you're feeling is going to spread across your whole life like I know a lot of people who are high performance and and I've had to be mindful of this as well it's like they're high performance at work but then they take that high performance and they give it to their family and now that family is getting a high performance dad and they don't want that they just want their dad or they want their mom and so how do we develop that I guess that's a highly trained ability is is what you're saying is we get the ability then to say okay I know when to use this and when not to that's that's a more heightened State yeah I mean look there's not there's there's nothing wrong with with the hormones of stress I mean that's the only way we could actually survive or we're part human part animal part Divine I mean we have two things at work here I think the biggest challenge for a lot of people and 70 of the time uh people are living in that state of survival living in that state of stress the more you understand what that actually does to you the more you can make better choices on how long you actually do want to stay there here's an example many people who are changing a health condition in our work they start to do the work they start noticing I'm sleeping better I have less pain I got my appetite back I feel like I have more energy they start noticing these subtle subjective changes that go to their doctor and their their scans still show that they have their health conditions so they're noticing a change but they're not healed all the way no they don't say it didn't work they say what is it about me that I still have to change in order to heal what thought what Behavior what emotions so they're work in progress right many of those people discover that they have one really good hour of meditation where they feel connected they feel like their heart is opening up they feel like their brain is coherent they feel really great they don't want the moment to end and then they spend 15 or 16 hours of their day back in a program rushing around back in their emotional states responding and reacting and they realize that how could one hour of an elevated State way against 15 or 16 hours of my response to everyone everything in my life emotionally is derived from those familiar emotions of fear or anger or hatred or or pain or suffering whatever okay so now this is where the practicum actually goes to the next level because they're no longer just sitting down and rehearsing who they want to be they're actually rehearsing for their life they're saying okay when I see that person when I'm in that circumstance I can't go unconscious and feel this emotion and I can't go unconscious and say these things or act this way how am I going to act what would love do what would greatness look like they don't know they read about it they get more information and they're building this model and now all of a sudden the response to people to circumstances to problems in their life are changing that's because they're changing then they notice that their health condition starts to improve a little bit more now now they don't say how come my Alzheimer's or my Parkinson's or my ALS has been healed they're saying how much more can I open my heart in my day and feel this with my eyes open all day long if I understand that if I live by these emotions I'm signaling genes ahead of the environment oh I'm going to stay in this state because it's this emotional state that is actually going to heal me so I remember this feeling I remember this feeling I remember this feeling and now they're no longer trying to remember the Feeling Just for any other reason but because I want to remember the feeling when they're with their eyes open now it's their understanding that the more that they change the more that their health changes and and you can have the best diet and you could do the best exercise and you could be really rigid when the food choices and vitamins and minerals and keep your body chemically balanced and physically balanced but if you're not emotionally balanced and you're constantly in that fight-or-flight system stress is when your body's knocked out of homeostasis the stress is when your brain and body are knocked out of balance so so you you could have all those things working for you but if you are living in fear or you're controlling and you're rigid and you're perfectionist and you're hard on yourself it's going to make sense that that is going to have to change in order for you to change right and so yeah people start getting they start getting it that's the only way I'm going to change if I don't change it's not going to change yeah one of my favorite things as a practical exercise I ever did was I literally had script and I mean handwritten like I wrote scripts for how I wanted to feel when I experienced ego or envy and so for for every emotional challenge I had something that I thought was an unhealthy thought I literally had like pages and pages and pages of scripts that were built up from research that were built up from spiritual literature that were built up from science whatever it may be of what did I want to be able to say to myself when this thought or that thought came up and it sounds so basic but it really does rewire your thoughts when now all I can think of is that script sure and I need to update that script regularly sure that's a good point I mean I mean I'm constantly yeah it's constantly yeah it's not once I'm constantly I mean I mean 95 of Who We Are by the time Middle Ages a set of unconscious thoughts behaviors and emotions I mean those are beliefs and perceptions that we have about ourselves in our lives so I mean this is a never-ending process of self-discovery I mean there's always challenges that you'll have in your life that are going to initiate you into becoming conscious of what you're unconscious to yeah and you got to meet those challenges from a great level of Consciousness and the Consciousness that's created and you can't if you don't your response in the way you feel and the way you think being the same and if you believe that how you think and how you feel creates your life if you don't change the way you think and the way you feel your life is going to stay the same because you're the same I mean that's the way it works so fundamentally it's so important for people to understand that it is actually possible to change it really is possible it is yeah it is I love that you keep repeating that because it's I think that's the hardest part where you've just again the the broken record is I can't change nothing will change and not realizing that it's just a set of habits it's just a set of routines that you've adopted as your reality and you're going to be uncomfortable so get used to it so you could either stay uncomfortable or you could actually say how do I want to feel let me instead of memorizing this emotion let me memorize this emotion let me open my heart when it goes against everything that I've been taught and programmed to do I mean and that's really when it really begins to matter the most so it's it's really an exciting time and and I'm so happy to see that people are wrapping their minds around all of this and doing it you know doing it for themselves absolutely absolutely have you found a difference and I want to get a bit more technical yeah have you found a difference between meditation with breath work and without breath work because I know you do both and and what do you find is the usefulness and benefits of either so we do so many different types of breath breath for so many different types of reasons the breath that we were talking about with Inspire pulling the mind out of the body we do that breath to take that creative life force that sits at the base of the spine that that energy that can create another another life form the energy we use to digest a meal the energy that we use to run from a predator we're taking all that energy that's stored in the body emotionally and we're pulling that energy back up into the brain If you practice this breath repeatedly there will be a release of energy into the brain we have the data to show that you're going to have a lot more energy in your brain you're going to be way more coherent in your brain and you're going to be more conscious right and so why is that important why because when you regulate your brain waves we don't want you to fall asleep we want you to actually be really relaxed and awake at the same time so we do this one breath called pulling the mind out of the body that's the Inspire Series where we're taking all that Creative Energy and we're with the breath pulling that energy right up to a specific area of the brain when you do that properly your brain will go into an altered state that's the reason why we do it then we do all kinds of other breathing like breathing to change the heart rhythm uh sometimes when we're doing a laying down breath when we're practicing getting into that mystical state uh just when the audience is just starting to move into a slower brainwave State we'll do a very forced inhalation exhalation inhalation over and over again like a hiker's breath only so that the person feels euphoric and so euphoric that they don't want to fall asleep and they'll move into a slower brainwave pattern in the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind opens and many times there's a mystical experience waiting for that person that's transcendental so so we do all kinds of different breathing techniques because we have different intentions behind each one of them if people want to dive into those where where should they go if they want to kind of grab some of those techniques or get access are they only at the events there's an online course that we offer called the progressive Workshop in the Progressive Workshop we teach a few of those breaths and if you come to a week-long event you'll have an opportunity to do all of them and we start at six in the morning we finish it I don't know Cancun the last one we did I think we finished at 8 or 8 30 every night it was just a great group of people and we go seven days Jason and some mornings a little earlier but uh you got a lot of practice you got a lot of tools so by the time you leave you can you can use them in your life yeah that's amazing yeah for anyone who can't obviously get to the Live Events then the online course will be helpful but if you can go yeah and I think I think there's some good descriptions also in in becoming Supernatural my last book where we break it all down uh yeah and then there's some tutorials that we have on our website to help you with some of the breathing here I love that Joe is there anything I haven't asked you about today or anything that's on your mind and heart that you really want to share with everyone or something you've been working on or or anything you feel compelled to share gosh we uh we covered a lot we've covered a lot we're doing some really cool research with random event generators and random event generators are sophisticated coin tosses you know if you the more you toss a coin the more you're going to get 50 50 heads heads or tails right so this machine generates program machine generates um about a thousand tosses in a second so you're looking at a very very sophisticated machine and if you run for 30 minutes you're going to see in time an equal number of ones or zeros or heads or tails and you're gonna see the straight line when you get a group of people together with brain coherence and hard coherence they're emitting a field and when we do healings in our events a hundred percent of the time when we do those healings those random event generators have dramatic skews to show that random events become less random and more intentional and it's Collective networks of observers that determine reality and it's not the number of people it's not the amount of energy because it could be entropic it's the most coherent energy and causing a machine that's programmed to behave in a very very different way and I think that idea of community of people coming together when everybody else is in fear to show courage when everybody else is in pain to show compassion when everybody else is in anger or hatred that to show love I mean I think by Nature as human beings I think we are wired to give to connect to commune to take care of one another to heal one another to shine for one another and our data is so exciting to actually support that theorem yeah I love that you brought that up and I'm that's you know that's very macro and big as well but also micro in that you're you're measuring people's daily experience I think you know when I think about families who live together or couples or Partners or whoever you may be you know when you're sleeping together when you're waking up together at the same time when you're sitting for meals together when you know we realize and we know that the sign shows that your heart rate sync up like your heartbeats sync up when you're with someone and I think think it's really interesting because I think today in our individualistic world there's a big desire to do things at our own time when we want how we want but if you're truly trying to build a relationship with someone else or build community there's so much to be said for doing these basic practices at the same time together right it's really hard to be in community when you're in survival uh because survival makes us put our attention on ourselves right uh and I think that when people are not living in survival when they're out of survival our nature really is community is is culture is connection and it starts with the self then it starts with our closest relationships and builds out from there and I think that's a a healthy model you know for for the world I mean when you're working on yourself and I'm working on myself and I'm okay with me and you're okay with you we're going to be okay with everybody you know and I think when we're not okay with ourselves uh that's when it gets complicated it's amazing everyone who's listening and watching make sure you go and follow Joe across social media we'll put the links to everything uh in the sections there so you can follow along but I want to make sure that you share with me your greatest insights tag me and Joe on Instagram on Twitter on Tick Tock whatever platform you're using let us know what you'll be practicing I hope that there's parts of this conversation that you'll listen to again and again and again because you have to realize that the first time you hear it there may be some inspiration there may be some insight but the second time that repetition is going to help you actually apply rewire and reconfigure so make sure you repeat listen and make sure you share this with a friend as well so you can discuss it talk about it put it into your own language and your vocabulary that's such an important part of putting this into practice as well uh Joe as ever thank you so much for making the time and effort I know that you've always got unpredictable things happening in your life like this morning but you chose to be here and uh thank you so much for being here I really appreciate it thank you Jay thank you for having me thank you if you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with Dr Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain you want to drip dopamine don't dump it because when you dump it with the fries and the alcohol the porn you don't have much left and so then you have to