Here at LifeKit, NPR's self help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

I'm Cheryl Swoopes. And I'm Tareka Foster Brasby.

And on our new podcast, we're talking about the real obstacles women face day to day.

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Hey, y'all. Nimini here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, the Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records brings history to life through hip hop. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records.

Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know that feeling of I'm trying to manifest but nothing's happening? Manifestation is not creating a fantasy and then waiting for it to come true with no action from yourself.

Leading neuroscientist. Best selling author. Doctor Tara Swart.

We cannot undo a negative thought pattern. We have to overwrite it with a new 1. Your brain is 2 and a half times more strongly wired to avoid risk than is to get a

reward. Wow.

The number 1 health and wellness podcast.

Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.

The 1, the only Jay Shetty.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you choose to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is someone that I've wanted to talk to for such a long time, and I'm so excited because we finally have her in the studio. Actually, we're all the way in London because we didn't know when she was coming to LA and I'm so glad we made it happen. I'm speaking about the 1 and only Doctor.

Tara Swart. She's a PhD neuroscientist, former MD, executive advisor, best selling author and senior advisor for neuroscience and leadership at MIT Sloan. Her book is called The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain. If you don't already have a copy, I want you to go and grab it now. I promise you, you won't regret it.

Please welcome to On Purpose, doctor Tara Swart. Tara, it's such a joy to have you here, honestly.

Thank you so much. And thank you for, you know, squeezing me in when you're in London for such a short time.

No. No. Not this is something I was looking forward to all week. I can promise you. It's a Thursday for anyone who's listening.

And I've been recording all week, and I was really excited to sit down with you. I think the work that you're doing is so similar in value to the work I'm trying to do in the world. I really believe that for so long, ancient wisdom and the wisdom of the East especially Mhmm. Has been seen through 2 lenses. I think there's been a lot of enthusiasm towards it and a lot of value and reverence.

And at the same time, I think there's been, as you say, skepticism and cynicism around it. Mhmm. And so to have someone with your of your caliber, your research, your insight, and communicating in the way you do, I think, is such a great blessing and benefit for for the industry in and of itself. So thank you so much for the work you do. Thank you.

Really means the world. But let's let's dive straight in. And and if you hear me and Tara lock into some, what would I call them, inside jokes because we're both North Londoners, then, just please roll with us. But, Tara, I wanted to start off with where did you and why did you get so passionate about this work and finding the parallels between ancient wisdom and modern science? And why did that work call you?

As you know, I grew up in North London, and I was the oldest child of first generation immigrant parents. So I always felt like I was bridging 2 worlds. You know, I went to school. I didn't have any Indian friends, and, I just wanted to fit in with my friends. And then I would come home, and, obviously, we would have, like, the altars and the incense and the ceremonies and the rituals and everything.

And so, yeah, I would say for most of my childhood, I was living in 2 worlds. And then at the age of 18, I went to medical school, and I think I moved very much away from our cultural heritage and just lived like a teenager and someone in their twenties at university. And I was at university for most of my twenties because, I did medical school and a PhD, so 9 years at university. Around the time that I became a doctor, yoga was becoming quite popular in in society. So I sort of returned to that, and I would say that reignited my interest in our cultural heritage.

And but then still, I would keep it very separate from my work. So I was working in the NHS. You know, that really wasn't very holistic. But at home, I was eating in an Ayurvedic way and doing yoga. And some time passed, and these things came more into our culture anyway.

But still, at the time that I wrote the source, it was a risk for me as an MIT professor to start speaking about manifestation and visualization and meditation and things like that. But writing it really, for me, actually brought those 2 things together and and made me think, I don't have to keep my personal life separate from my professional life. And I have to say thank you to everyone that the response to it then, you know, took that even further. As we were discussing, you know, we both had books out around that time, couldn't really do world promo because of the pandemic. But very early on in the pandemic, I thought, oh, no.

There's gonna be a huge mental health crisis. And it was so unprecedented. I thought, what can I offer that isn't already available to people? But I will caveat that by saying, I think all of the ancient wisdom knowledge that I try to apply to modern mental health problems is is just things that we've forgotten. It's not anything new.

But it's about bringing you know, finding those things. It's like gold mining and bringing them to people and saying this could really help you.

It's fascinating that all of these things have been practiced for thousands and thousands of years. And, ironically, we've also had mental health and anxiety challenges for much longer than we believe we have. And I often think of the Bhagavad Gita and Arjun, which, you know, were spoken 5000 ago. But that experience that he's having on the battlefield is anxiety, stress. Mhmm.

He's having a sense of a loss of identity. Mhmm. He's worried about the surroundings and the impending war that's about to take place. And so you see that in a text that's 5000 years old, and then you have all of this wisdom that surrounds it. But being able to translate that Mhmm.

Into into what's happening now is is so needed, and and I guess that's why you had that positive response.

Yeah. And what I found really interesting is that it would be 1 thing if you and I sat here and talked about our own cultural heritage. But what I found is that if you look at the ancient Greeks, ancient Egyptians, Babylon, and, you know, all sorts of other ancient cultures, the first Americans, that there are so many similar themes of the things that keep us healthy and such new science as if it's just been discovered in the last year or 2, like things like connection to nature. I mean, how are we not understanding that for so long? You know?

I think because there were no planes in the sky and less traffic and our time in nature, in this country anyway, was limited. People were allowed, like, a 1 hour walk outside during the day at some points. Mhmm. The appreciation of nature grew. And then suddenly, as if from nowhere, comes out the science that time in nature helps your mental health, your physical health, your longevity.

It boosts your immunity. That there's just an impact of that awe inspiring sort of feeling of being in beautiful nature, on the way that your brain works. They're like so much modern science that is actually not 1 of those things that's new. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's not new at all. This this idea then, that we have the power to change our destiny, this idea that we have the power to propel our lives, whether it's careers, whether it's relationships, we have the ability to shift and pivot. A lot of people will hear that and they think to themselves, well, that doesn't happen to me.

It happens for those people. They hear that and think, yeah, you can't really think your way into anything. Or people hear it and say, no, I tried that once and it didn't work for me. How do you approach that conversation of helping people realize the power that they hold and the power of what's possible for any 1 of us?

I love the way you've kind of segued that from nature into manifestation because a few things here. 1 thing is that if you just observe nature, you see manifestation all the time. You know, you see a flower grow growing from a garden to a fully formed flower and then its petal starting to fall. You see trees growing, you know, all sorts of things. And the other connection there is that creating the environment within yourself and around yourself to allow things like manifestation to happen.

And that basically means at the simplest level that you set a goal. You say, this is what I want my life to be like or this is a specific thing I want in my life. And then there's a process that leads that to potentially manifesting in the real world. But I do agree with 1 of those skepticism points, which is that you can't sit at home and think about it. So I've been really, really clear about saying that it's manifestation is not creating a fantasy and then waiting for it to come true with no action from yourself.

So I actually renamed vision boards action boards as if to say that, yes, create imagery that represents what you want, but then you have to be doing something every day to move yourself closer to that. Whether it's being healthier just so that your brain's in a better environment or it's networking or dating or, you know, saving money, whatever it is that's gonna get you, let's say, the house that you want. You know, a great example is people might say, oh, I of course, I'd love a house in the Hamptons. But if that's not realistic for you in the short term, then you'll only reinforce the fact that you're failing at manifesting. So it's better to say, I'd like to be on the property ladder and start there and then obviously build bigger.

Did you find a difference? And I wanna get into the science and research part to show the validity of what you're saying. Did you find a difference in the science of measuring extrinsic and intrinsic motivators? Because I feel like manifestation is still always about what do you want? Mhmm.

Where do you wanna be? Mhmm. And as, you know, honestly, I can only speak I can only really speak for myself. But when I think about it, for me, I've if someone asked me what that was, I've always wanted to just wake up and do what I love every day. Like, that's that's really all I care about.

And so it's all I care about is I wanna wake up and do what I love every day and hopefully improves the lives of other people. And if those 2 things can go together Mhmm. And I find that a lot of manifestation stems around, like, what kind of house do you want? And what kind of car do you want? And what, what kind of life do you want, and and it gets very extrinsic.

And so I wonder whether I'm I'm intrigued. I'm really curious to know what the science suggests about when you're having an action board towards an intrinsic motivator or an extrinsic motivator.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Please. I'm I'm all ears. I'm here as a student to just listen because I'm so fascinated.

So in terms of the motivation, to make it really easy for people to understand, I called it magnetic desire, which is something that is so emotionally driven for you personally and aligned with, you know, what's logically doable in your life and what your intuition tells you and, you know, what your creative brain can help you to achieve. That if you have magnetic desire for something, then, you know, I always say if you follow your passion, you will be successful. But I'm mindful that that statement and even your 1 of I just want to wake up and do what I love are extremely privileged statements. Mhmm. So with manifestation, 1 of the criticisms is that, you know, that's a luxury for people who already have, you know, more than what they need.

And then they can say, oh, well, I would love, you know, to do this or have this. And so I think what I've learned in where I have ever felt slightly defensive around that statement is that whoever you are, wherever you are, there is 1 tiny thing that you could do to make your life better. And it's the micro changes that build you up to getting to a point where maybe you can actually do something that you love rather than do what you have to do to put food on the table for your children. But having said that, if your ideas for what you want to manifest are things like, well, all my friends are getting married and having family, so I want to get married and have a family, rather than I've really thought about what I want to do and my passion and purpose might mean that I have to delay having a family and that's okay, It's more likely to work out with the second 1 than the 1 that's kind of too guided by parental expectations, societal expectation, career, you know, aspirations. So I do think people have to dig deeper for manifestation to, you know, really work well.

Yeah. Walk walk me through some of the science that and the research that validates some of these claims because I think that's your that's your unique perspective, and that's been the unique angle that you brought to it. And I feel like it's great to understand that this stuff is actually being researched, tested

Mhmm.

Discovered. It's not just being said because it

Mhmm.

Not just sounds good, but that maybe there's a couple of case studies. But there's more than that. Mhmm.

So there's 2 main sort of, areas around that. 1 is the sort of 6 themes that I narrowed down from the 12 laws of attraction that I could explain with cognitive science, which is neuroscience and psychology. So when I first started that research, I saw that there wasn't even agreement over what the laws of attraction were or how many there were. So I thought, okay. Let me distill this down to, like, something that makes sense to me and then, like, see what we can do with it.

So the first 1 is abundance because 1 of the strongest gearings in the brain is loss avoidance. So to survive when we lived in the cave, we had to stay safe rather than take risk. Now for most of us who are lucky enough, you know, to live in the modern world and have basic safety around us, it's healthier for us to be willing to take risk. So you actually have to override that ancient wiring of the brain, which says, no no, don't go and, like, you know, fly to London and try to have meetings with lots of different people who may not want to meet you. Stay in LA because that's safer, and you've got your community around you.

And, you know, you know you you've got a big network. So for you to say, well, I'm gonna go to a new I know it's not it was your home. But in terms of, like, recent work, you know, kind of take a bit of a risk, take a week out there, you know, see who I can interview. That is you overriding that part of your brain that might say it would just be easier for me to stay in LA. So it's it's as simple as that.

It can obviously be a lot harder than that as well, but it's understanding that your brain will do quite a lot to stop you from taking risk. It's 2 and a half times as strongly wired to avoid risk as it is to gain reward.

And Say that part again. That's

It's 2 and a half times more strongly wired to avoid risk than is to get a reward. Wow. It's about believing that there are enough resources out there for everyone and that by, you know, perhaps entering a new career pool or a new community of people, that it doesn't mean that you're likely to fail. If you've managed to be in an abundant state because what that does in the brain is it moves the brain away from the fear and shame kind of states, which correlate with the stress hormone cortisol, to the love and trust and joy and excitement states, which correlate with the bonding hormone oxytocin. Now when your brain is in that state, it's much more likely to take a healthy risk.

It's much more likely to ask someone for a favor. We were talking about, you know, asking each other for favors before. You wouldn't do that if you thought, well, don't ask Jay because he'll just shut you down. Then you would never ask anyone. But if you start a conversation and someone looks like they want to be generous and help you, then, you know, you go into that oxytocin mode.

But you need to be pushing yourself into that mode as much of the time as you can. So the second 1 is manifestation, which is believing that with your abundant resources, you can do things in the real world that mean that whether it's that feeling of I do what I love or it's an actual house, that you have it in your capability to make that happen. Because, of course, if you believe it will never happen for me, 1 of these common statements, that's likely to become true. That's manifestation too. It's just negative manifestation.

And it's important to say that both manifestation and the process of neuroplasticity, which I will describe in detail, which is how your brain changes to allow you to grow and grasp new opportunities, they both have a good side and a bad side. And the classic example of a bad side of neuroplasticity is obsessing over an ex after a breakup. Because what you're saying to your brain is, this is what people do. You know? You trust them, and then they leave you.

And you just remind yourself of all the times that you should have, like, seen the signs and then, you know, all the times that it went wrong. That's also inducing neuroplasticity and potentially manifestation in your brain because if you don't make a change after that, your relationship pattern will stay the same, and you'll reinforce it further with more breakups and more, you know, sort of choices of partners that aren't ideal for you. The third 1 is the magnetic desire that I already discussed, which means that it has to be really authentic to you, but also aligned in simple terms in your head, your heart, and your gut. But in the source, I talk about 6 ways of thinking, which are logical, emotional, physical, intuitive, motivational, and creative. So if you think of something that you want and you ask yourself in 6 different questions, you know, why do I want this logically?

Why do I want it intuitively? And you can get a really good answer to those, then it's likely that, you know, you will be able to manifest that. Then there's patience, which has to do with neuroplasticity. So until we had sophisticated scanning technologies, a lot of this work cognitive science work was all thought to be psychological rather than neurological. So it would kind of be like, oh, you know, Jay, you're not mentally strong enough.

You gave up too quickly. And it would kind of infer an intangible psychological weakness that is kind of your fault. And I think that's another criticism of manifestation as well that if it doesn't work, then there's something wrong with you. If you understand that it's actually physical work, when you're changing something, when you're striving for something, you're actually connecting up neurons or nerve cells in your brain that weren't connected previously. You may even be growing new nerve cells from little embryonic, you know, baby nerve cells that then connect up with ones that already exist.

And you may also be adding an insulating coat around existing neural pathways to make them faster, to make them more efficient. So the patient's piece is because a lot of hard work goes on. You know that feeling of I'm trying to manifest but nothing's happening? That's in the patient's piece. Because when you get to a critical mass of neurons that have created a new pathway that is stronger than the pathway you had before so let's say it's just the things like that never happened for me pathway changes to a, well, actually, I've seen Jay do it, so maybe it could happen for me pathway.

That takes a lot of effort. But once you get to the critical mass of enough neurons, suddenly, it feels like everything's easy and everything's manifesting. And I do feel like people have to get a taste of that before you know, at least once with a quick win to have the courage to take it to the next level. Mhmm.

And

the last 2, which, I didn't expand on too much in the source, are, harmony and universal connection. And harmony is kind of also to do with the fact that you're aligned in yourself, but it also means that it should be aligned, like, with the world. Like, you're not doing some harm to get what you want. And universal connection is about the fact that, you know, we are all interrelated. If you believe that you can achieve something because there are enough resources in the world for everyone, then you should also be generous and pay it forward.

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Here at LifeKit and PR self help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

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As I'm listening to, I'm just thinking that so much of our psychology has been made so limited and scarce. When I think about the way we talk about our relationship with money Mhmm. You may have grown up in a family that says, We have just enough to survive. Mhmm. Or, we don't need more.

Mhmm. We have we have all we need. Mhmm. And those things become so hardwired. And therefore, as we get older, it becomes really hard to change them.

Mhmm. Right? And so that also applies to love. It's like, oh, if someone says, oh, my parents had a bad marriage, like, I I'm just scared I'm gonna repeat it. And then that becomes their narrative.

Mhmm.

When we're talking about changing those, does every thought count? Does every thought matter? Like, talk me through that.

Yeah. Absolutely. Every single thought matters. And that's why there's an old Buddhist saying that is replace every negative thought with a positive thought. And neuroplasticity completely backs that up because the way we rewire our brains is not that we so basically, we cannot undo a negative thought pattern or a negative relationship pattern.

We have to overwrite it with a new 1. So rather than focusing on the negatives, which is, you know, to do with that abundance piece, it's better to work out, what do I need to do differently to not keep repeating this obstacle or challenge that keeps coming up in my life. So the way that it physically works, the process that underpins neuroplasticity is underpinned by neuroplasticity is a 4 step process, and it starts with raised awareness, which is kind of what you've already said, which is really monitoring your thoughts, understanding what the beliefs are that are underneath driving those thoughts, and making you make the decisions that you make in the real world. And I would suggest that people spend at least a month monitoring that with journaling, maybe talking therapy, maybe talking to a friend as long as, you know, you're very clear that they that their agenda for you kind of doesn't, you know, affect that. And then the second stage is focused attention.

So that is then let's say you notice a particular pattern that you have. Let's say it's around money. Notice the next time, again for a month probably, that you don't buy something because you don't feel you deserve it because you think it's too expensive, or you wait for something to go into the sale and then you miss out on getting it. You know? So things like that.

So any any money behaviors or love behaviors, whichever. And at first, don't try to change anything, but just notice it, like, maybe straight after it happened. Then try to, in time, get yourself to notice when it's happening and see if you can reframe it. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. And then to try to get yourself to the stage where you think, normally, I wouldn't buy this because I don't think I deserve it.

But today, I'm going to treat myself because I believe in abundance, and I believe that I will achieve the, you know, career aims that I have that will make me able to afford that. The third stage is deliberate practice, which is that you regularly practice the new desired behavior until it becomes so ingrained in your brain that it's actually easier for you to do that than default to the old behavior. And the last part, it's not really 1 of the stages. It takes you through the whole process is accountability. So how do you hold yourself accountable?

Some people have a coach or a therapist or a partner that might hold them accountable. If you don't and you need to do it by yourself, then a vision board is a really good way of doing it because you've clearly stated what you want. You can see if you've, you know, got it or not. At the end of the year, you can say I manifested 60% of the things that I wanted. And I also use an app called Habit Share where I I record 12 micro habits each year, and I can track them.

I can share them if I want to. I found that was better for me than New Year's resolutions because I could just take 2 or 3 of them and try to, like, bring them into my toolkit each quarter of the year. And then by the end of the year, I would find, like, 8 of 10 of or 10 of those were habits already. So I I kind of do that alongside my bigger goals. Mhmm.

I find, like, when people think about this, 1 of the things that kinda keeps tripping them up is, yeah, I can say it and I can think it, but I don't believe it. Yeah. Right? And I'm sure you've heard that million times, that fear of, like, okay, well, you know, I don't believe I can start living my passion, and I don't believe that I can do what I love for work, or I don't believe that I have it's it's possible for someone like me to achieve whatever else it may be. And then I can say it to myself before I go to bed, but I don't believe it.

Mhmm. Because I don't believe it, I stop doing it after 2 to 3 days. Mhmm. What's the difference between someone who's practicing this in a way that it works? Mhmm.

And we'll get on to action in a second, but at least practicing the belief change. Because I'm I'm fully with you, by the way. Like, I remember I had a mentor that used to constantly say to me, you'd say, Jay, you're an entrepreneur. You're an entrepreneur. You don't you're an entrepreneur.

And at this time, I was working a full time job Mhmm. 9 to 5 and getting paid whatever it was. And he'd keep telling me, but, like, Jay, you're an entrepreneur. And I'd keep telling him. I'd be like, no.

I'm not. No. I'm not. No. I'm not.

I'm I'm an artist. I'm a creative. I'm definitely not an entrepreneur. The last thing I wanna do is run a business. Like, that's just not who I am.

Mhmm.

And if

you asked me, I would've said I'm a very self aware person at this point in my life. It wasn't that I didn't reflect enough. I felt like I really knew who I was. And I was like, this is and then it was only when I was required to have to be an entrepreneur did I have to shift into that gear and become 1. But if you still ask me today, I'm like, I'm an entrepreneur, but I much prefer being a creative and an artist and and a thinker.

That's that's where I thrive, if you ask me. Yeah. But I did something when I was required to do it. So, I see you smiling, and so I wanna I wanna hear your reaction to what I'm sharing.

4 things there. So I hope I can remember them all. The first 1 is that there's a step before what you said, which is that some people aren't even aware that they don't think they deserve it. So Wow. I discovered something quite by accident, which was a theme of people selecting images for their vision board, placing them onto the board, even spending the time to, like, shuffle them around, make sure it all, like, looks and feels right, and then telling me that they never stuck them down.

Wow. And I just had a light bulb moment, and I said, you haven't stuck them down because you don't believe you deserve them. And the person just, like, you know, had a bit of a meltdown. And so every time I've I've heard someone do, you know, a variation on that theme, I've I've talked about deservingness. So some so, like, even that has to be known in the first place.

Right?

We think it's too ridiculous or too out there or right.

Next, I do think it's about who you surround yourself with. So I started smiling when you said I had a mentor because that already means that you've sought out someone that's gonna challenge your thinking, that's gonna push you to be your best. And and my version of that is that, like I said, I spent 9 years at university to become a medical doctor in the NHS. I did not believe that I could do anything else. I didn't.

I had a vocational degree. I didn't have a more general degree where I could say I could go and, you know, apply to do something else. My best friend, whose kids I was just babysitting, she had read biochemistry at Oxford. She'd worked in the .com explosion. And then she just announced to our sort of closer circle 1 day at dinner, I'm gonna give it all up and go and, study a master's in sculpture.

And I remember thinking, that's incredible, but I could never do that. And it was only kind of like 1 and a half or 2 years later that I then said, I'm leaving medicine. And I remember my brother said to me, I'm really proud of you, but I could never do that. So it's almost like there's a chain of

Totally.

Yeah. And if you're around people who were only doing what you do, who also had self limiting beliefs, who, you know, had maybe some things even against being entrepreneurial. You might have stayed stuck where you were. And then the next stage is a lot of people try and then give up. Right?

And I'm not saying this is for everyone, but when I changed career, I went from having a, you know, not very high but stable salary to having nothing. And that was the case for quite a while. And a few people said to me, please just go and, like, work in the hospital for 1. You'll be able to pay your rent and, like, not, you know, kind of worry about money so much. And a lot of people hold down a part time job when they're becoming an entrepreneur.

But I said, if I do that, I will feel like I failed. So for me, I had to burn my boats. Like, there was no way back. I had to succeed. And like I said, I'm not saying that's right for everyone, but everyone will have their version of of the thing that will really make them say, I I cannot fail.

Mhmm. That initial challenge of, like, you're saying that even becoming aware that we don't believe we deserve something or something's meant for us, it can be such an uncomfortable discovery. Mhmm. Because it almost starts indicating towards the fact that there are past experiences, past traumas Mhmm. Past relationships that you now have to go back to and uncover and unlearn and understand because you've almost been living in a sense of darkness in that area of your life.

And I think that can be really disconcerting because it requires so much time Mhmm. To actually and and energy to actually go back there and excavate Mhmm. And look at it and and face it head on. What does science have to say about how can we look at our past? How can we look at our wiring in a healthy way rather than a judgmental way?

Because we could just turn around and say, I'm the worst that I've been thinking this way. You start criticizing yourself. I've I've wasted so much time. I always hear even sometimes I hear people and they're like, I wish I started when I was 18. I wish I started when I was 25.

And there's this regret Mhmm. That's underlying that feeling even if they did change.

Mhmm.

How do we look at our past and look at change in a healthier way rather than a negative way?

I think 1 of the things that you're talking about is this idea of having really in-depth psychotherapy and having to, like, uncover every trauma in your life to, like, get to the point where you're healed enough to move forward. I am obviously a fan of therapy in you know, for many reasons, but I don't particularly think that you have to uncover every trauma in your life to, you know, be able to move forward. The career change that I made, in fact, was to coaching. So coaching tends to be more forward looking, more, you know, sort of positive looking, unless there's, you know, some kind of major trauma. I don't think it's necessary to dig everything up in, like, years of psychotherapy.

But there are some sort of models in science that can be quite useful for people, whether you know, it could just be self discovery. So there's 1 called ghosts in the executive suite, And that talks about the childhood systems that you grew up in and the fact that the wiring that was embedded in the first 7 and then also the first 14 years of your life are likely to be very nonconscious now in adulthood, but still driving a lot of your behaviors. And so the business side of that is called in the executive suites. It's looking at CEOs who are behaving in a certain way, because of those. But it can apply to anyone's life.

And it looks at things like the boundaries and the values and the secrets and the sort of identities that you had as a child. So, you know, you may have had a home where everyone was welcome to drop in, and they would just be added into the family meal, and they could stay the night. And I may have been, you know, grown up in a home where you had to plan everything in advance. If someone was coming over, then, you know, the people would make sure there was enough food and make sure that a bed was made in advance and all this kind of thing. And then, you know, values tends to be a lot around money.

So, you know, you may have grown up in a household where people say money is a bad thing. It's not good to have too much of it. You know, even in many religions, they say that if you're excessively wealthy, that your chances of getting to heaven are kind of lower. So, you know, there's a lot of that rhetoric in our society. Identification is about things like, oh, you're just like your father, or you're just like, you know, your uncle used to be.

Secrets is we never talk about that alcoholic uncle kind of thing. And roles include things like, were you the peacemaker? Were you the go between? And all of those sorts of things may influence you later in life without you realizing it. Yes.

But there is self exploration and, you know, other work that you can do with people to help you uncover that. And also the really good news is that Freud talked about stages of child psychosocial development and things like trauma, neglect, abandonment, separation from parents, illness, and described in great detail what would go wrong with you for the rest of your life if you experienced any of those things. And then later, a psychologist called Erickson came along and talked about the vice and the virtue. So he said, if you have a childhood trauma at a certain age, then this is what could go wrong, but this is also your opportunity for something to go really right. And what I find is that a lot of the CEOs or really successful entrepreneurs that I work with had their first childhood disruption between the ages of 5 and 7, where the vice and the virtue are inferiority or industry.

And industry meaning hard work, so being industrious. So that means if you did have a trauma at that age, then you could either spend the rest of your life feeling inferior and undeserving. Or you could say, I'm gonna work so hard. I'm gonna get myself out of this situation of poverty forever. I'm gonna be self sufficient.

I'm gonna be financially independent. You know, and there's several other there's trust, mistrust, and, you know, other kind of vices and virtues that people can look up. It's all on the Internet.

Yeah. That kind of opening of the idea that you went through this, but it could also be an opportunity of this impediment could also be an invitation.

Mhmm.

Like, that kind of understanding I find to be really powerful. And I would agree with you. I think the most purposeful people I've met are people who went through a pain point. Mhmm. And now they don't want other people to go through that pain or they wanna help people through that pain.

Mhmm. And that's what created their ability to do that. Whereas someone else who may not have had that pain or may not have had that challenge almost can, at sometimes, feel less clear or a bit more lost because they don't know what the meaning of their life is or or where they stand.

But I think what often happens with those people is that, you know, life's just okay. Life's fine. You're married. You know, your kids are healthy. You're going to this sort of regular day job and you've kind of forgotten what you dreamed of when you were a child, what you're, you know, maybe you've just given up your real passion because it's fine to have this kind of quite easy life.

And and often, it does take a later disruption like a divorce or a bereavement to really, make people rethink that. And so, you know, a big example that affected a lot of people is the financial crisis. So a lot of people in financial services lost their jobs and then said, actually, I always wanted to be a teacher or a journalist, but I also wanted a more expensive lifestyle, so I didn't make that choice. And now I have the opportunity to do what I really want to do. So it I guess it depends on how you define wealth because wealth can be having a lot of money, but it can also be waking up every day and doing what you love.

Yeah. Or having a lot of free time or or whatever it may be. When when people are trying I feel like we live in a time right now where and you alluded to this earlier and I'm kind of going back to it. We live at a time where there's a lot of projected goals and expectations. And a lot of people can feel like they're so far away from their own goals because there's goals from other people around them.

Now, my mentor, I'm still good friends with him, knew me very well, and so he wasn't projecting his entrepreneurial thing. He was seeing something that I couldn't. But a lot of the times, there's, like, society, like, oh, let's live in hustle culture. Everyone needs to be an entrepreneur. Everyone needs to be a CEO.

Everyone needs to like, there's there's a lot of performance culture out there and productivity culture. And I find that a lot of people either struggle with that weight of that expectation Mhmm. Or they actually curl up into a ball and kind of don't wanna go anywhere and do anything. And it makes them hide from that as well because it's almost like everyone's just pushing them to

Yeah.

Be more ambitious and be more driven. Mhmm. At the same time, I would love to understand the psychology of being needing to open up to more challenges and more opportunities as just a healthy way of living. Mhmm. So if someone's stuck in that space of, you know, Tara and Jay, I'm just you know, I'm I'm kind of stuck because I do want more.

I I I'm trying to get there that I believe I deserve it, but then I don't know if it's that's what I really want or if it's what my parents want or what social media wants me to want or what my friends are doing. Mhmm.

I just wanna go back to something because

I only actually twigged when you said Tara and Jay that my brother's name is Jay.

Oh, no way.

Yeah. And I didn't put it together like that. And I wanted to say something that he said to me when I changed career, and I was, like, in my mid thirties then. He said the best time to plant an acorn was 200 years ago, but the second best time is now. Mhmm.

So for anyone that's saying it's too late, you know, I regret things, I think that's a really amazing saying. And then before you started really, like, posing your question, and I understood, like, where you were going with it, I thought, oh, I wanted to tell you about, at the start of the pandemic, when I said I sort of, like, saw that I thought there could be a really big mental health crisis, quite quickly, I would say within, like, a month or 2, I thought this is also an opportunity for a spiritual revolution or evolution. And so in all the research I've done since kind of the end of the pandemic, but the official end, I guess, which is more about ancient wisdom and neuroaesthetics. I believe that returning to ancient practices like chanting, humming, drumming, singing, And neuroaesthetics is is neuro arts. It's the science of why beauty and art and creativity and nature are so healthy for us.

So if you immerse yourself in nature, if you spend time making or beholding creative things like either singing or going to listen to a concert or sketching or going to an art gallery, etcetera, that actually opens up your mind in a way that the modern world and all that noise around you that you've just described doesn't let us. So that allows a level of introspection. And there's so many other things in that category that, you know, 1 can do. But that really helps you to separate your inner voice from all the words around you that are telling you what you should do. And I also always say, there's a certain age, and it could be different for different people, whether there's no more should.

You know, you've got you've got to an age now where what your parents should said you should do or what you think you should do or what your friends are doing is not it cannot be applicable forever because that is probably the 1 thing you'll regret on your deathbed. Right? So taking that time, but it is so hard because, you know, I still hear people saying, oh, I go for my nature walk, but I listen to a podcast at the same time. That's not giving you time for introspection. And I'm sure you're 1 of the few people that will agree with me that we aren't doing it, like, enough or any being.

We're just always doing. I often say to people, when do you sit down and actually do nothing? And I think that people maybe, not if they know me well, but if they look at my career, would say she's she's she probably never sits down and does nothing. I do a lot of sitting down and doing nothing. Me too.

Yeah. I think, you know, to access yourself, nature is a massive mirror for us. So time in nature you know, and the science for that in the last few years has just rocketed. Interestingly, at the same time, the science around having a purpose that transcends yourself, so not 1 that earns the money that you need to just live your life, not even 1 that just makes you happy and satisfied in yourself, but 1 that is more altruistic is actually very, expanding for our consciousness. And and I think that's probably what we're really getting at, a conversation that I don't have with many people, but I feel like I could have with you, which is that we need to sort of be able to access altered states of consciousness to really understand what our soul's purpose is in this life.

And breath work is a great way of doing that too. Obviously, there's a popular sort of trend at the moment for plant medicine. And and, you know, I'm watching the research on that at Johns Hopkins really carefully, and it and there's a lot of positive stuff around it. But what I'd really like to say to people is it's nothing that you can't achieve through time in nature, breath work, meditation, nourishing your body with really healthy food, sleeping really well, and crucially, having that really, like, positive, meaningful community around you.

Here at LifeKit and PR self help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

What's up y'all? This is Questlove, and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends. So did Steve, Laia, Fontigolo, unpaid bill, and we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like to nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists.

We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art.

I love QLS because of the QLS team supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving into music, everything, almanacing in musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought, then you're a lot like me. But you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme.

1 of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music.

Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Suprema.

In a galaxy far, far away. No, babe. That's taken. We're in our own world, remember? Right.

In our own world, where 2 space cadets And totally normal humans. Sure. Totally normal humans. Embark on a journey across the stars discovering the wonders of the universe 1 episode at a time. We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and

why you should never argue with your copilot. Especially when she's always right.

Right. And if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde.

Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills.

Hey. Join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs And super corny dad jokes.

Listen to In Our Own World as a

part of the My Gautura Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry. We promise to avoid any black holes most of the time.

What what's your understanding so far about the soul's purpose of what you've been able to discover and uncover on on this journey?

I did do some research into near death experiences and terminal lucidity and dark retreats. The original scientific interest in that was to understand the nature of consciousness more in terms of how separate it can be from the body. So if we look at the research on near death experiences, then we see that people who had the physical signs, as a medical doctor, I would say they were dead. So whether it was the amount of time that your heart had stopped beating or your brainwaves had, gone flat, have then somehow, which we can't explain, been able to become conscious in that body again and ex and describe an experience that they've had whilst seemingly not in their body. What's really interesting about that research is you don't have to have had that experience yourself because people will say, well, you know, okay.

That's great for those people if it made them understand their soul's purpose, but we can't all have that. Although you actually can if you go and do a dark retreat, which is why I then looked into those. And, you know, in the, ancient cultures like the Greeks and Egyptians, they used to bury people for days to, mimic death. And then when they uncovered them, they were the people that became like the mystics and the seers of those communities. So again, just things that we've forgotten.

But if you, you know, there's an amazing book called After by Doctor. Bruce Greyson, or if you just, like, look into the research around near death experiences, most common themes that people say are, I feel more compassionate. I feel more connected. I feel more grateful. I want to do things to help people.

And I just see beauty, like, in everything that's around me, and that that's supported by the modern science of neuroaesthetics. We can all choose to do that. You know, we don't have to have a near death experience to do that. If we're living more like that, then I think we get a greater clarity around the reason that we were put on this Earth. I mean, I think the biggest blessing any of us could have is to wake up 1 day and think, I know why I was put onto this earth.

I know what I need to be doing. And it's not always gonna be necessarily the thing that just gives you personal satisfaction. You know, it could be your calling, could be something quite different to that. Terminal lucidity is super, super interesting as a I mean, I did my PhD in neuroscience because I thought I wanted to become a neurologist, but then I became a psychiatrist, which is also super fascinating in terms of things like you can hear voices that aren't there and, you know, your mood can change, like, you know, not in your control. But internal lucidity is when people who either have had dementia for a significant period of time or have had a stroke, and so parts of their brain are physically altered or damaged, chemically or physically, and they have lost the personality and level of consciousness that their closest friends and family knew in them, can suddenly become completely lucid.

So we've got stories of, you know, parents who no longer recognize their children and their grandchildren just suddenly saying 1 day, oh, Jay darling, come here. I want to, like, you know, give you a motherly message. And it's usually a sign that they will pass away within 1 to 24 hours. But there's no physical explanation for how they could know the names and react in a completely maternal or paternal way towards an adult child that they didn't recognize for several years. So that starts to make you think, are we actually that connected to our body?

And if we're not, what does that mean? And I don't have all the answers, but Yeah.

It's fascinating. Yeah. No. Please, sorry. Carry on.

Well, I was just I was just gonna say it makes you think that what happens in this life and in this physical world and on this material plane can't be the be all and end all of everything. And if it's not, what does that mean about how I want to live? And to me, that brings me back to, I want to live a life that's guided by love. And, you know, I don't mean romantic love by that necessarily, although that could be included. If I've got a dilemma, if I've got a difficult decision to make, if I'm feeling like I'm in a really challenging situation, then I always go back to to love and gratitude.

And I've now included, observing beauty as part of that too because what they're all doing is moving us into the oxytocin state, which is our highest state, and really the only state from which we can live our best life. So it's really about doing everything that you can to move yourself away from stress and towards love and overly listening to that chatter around you is pretty much gonna do the opposite. So it is a little bit about liberating ourselves from that, I think, at least for moments.

When you talked about spending time in nature, you talked about chanting, you talked about humming, you talked about the art class, the the kind of more analog tasks as well. What do those tasks have in common from what's happening scientifically inside of us? Like, biologically, like, chemically, what's happening that's similar across those, or is it different?

Well, you know, I have this thing about if I don't know the exact answer, I always take it back to evolution.

Sure.

So what we know about our ancestors was that they had scarce resources, and it was all about survival and reproduction. So in terms of, like, what was our life's purpose then, it was literally live long enough to have children and pass on your genes, and then it didn't matter if you get got eaten by a saber tooth tiger. But those same ancestors who naturally, in their life, to survive, walked barefoot in nature, sat around a fire at night, looked at the stars in the sky at night, also chose, with those scarce resources, to make cave paintings, to dance around that fire, to sing, to to drum, to chant. And we don't know why. But the only conclusion that we can draw is that there was a benefit to survive a survival benefit.

And what we know now is and, again, some of these activities are luxuries. I completely get that. But when we make or behold any of those activities, that we in the brain becomes more hyperconnected. We get the benefit of novel experiences. We open up more connections in the creative parts of our brain, which actually allow us to solve complex problems better, to think more flexibly, to, override our biases and regulate our emotions better, all of which are obviously, you know, survival advantages.

Because if you think about just, you know, on the very most basic level, the implication of that in a relationship. You know, if if we were in a relationship and I was much more able to regulate my emotions, to solve problems with you, to, like, overcome any biases that I might have about the way that you're behaving, obviously, the relationship's gonna survive better. And 1 of the pieces of research I've really looked into from the neuroaesthetics is called shared trait vulnerability. And it's about the fact that people with psychopathologies like schizophrenia also tend to be more creative than the, general population. So if you think about some of the symptoms of of psychotic illnesses, it includes things like magical thinking, altered states of consciousness, you know, perhaps access to, I wanna put this really carefully, you know, sort of data and signs that we are choosing to ignore in the real world because our brain is filtering out information to help us survive, you know, as people who have, don't have a mental health issue.

So 1 hypothesis could be that you could use creativity, and all of those things are creative things, to open up more of your consciousness. And if you have a high IQ and you're mentally resilient, but you can also do that, I just think it's so exciting to think about what we could do with our minds that, again, is probably stuff that we knew that we've forgotten. But in our lifetimes or in the modern world, we haven't been practicing. And that is also 1 of the, hypotheses that comes out of the research on near death experiences, which is that our brains are actually filtering down our minds rather than the other way around.

Filtering down our minds meaning?

So our our our consciousness is capable of a lot more than what our brain allows us to do to survive in this material world.

And would the brain ever allow for more? Or is it just so against survival that we couldn't experience it here?

Well, the easiest way for me to, like, demonstrate that to you is it it allows for more when you take psychedelic or plant medication.

Right. Right.

And we know that a lot of, like, Kriya breathwork, for example, allows some altered states of consciousness and so does other breathwork. Time and nature alone can, you know, allow some altered states of consciousness or expansion of our consciousness. So so clearly, it can. And I don't know if we're afraid of it or, you know, there's some kind of survival or societal mechanism that prevents it. I mean, if you think about the tides in interest in psychedelics and how it's been shut down every time, It does make you wonder about the reasons for that.

It's so interesting to be in 1 of these rising tides at the moment and see what actually happens.

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I feel like as as you referred to earlier, meditation has been such a powerful Mhmm. Form of reaching altered states of consciousness and breath work you referred to, nature for sure.

I mean, I've I've had the fortune of spending some time in some special, special places both in India. And just this year, I got to go to Bhutan as well.

Oh, wow.

And, you know, it was definitely went to places that I felt they were it almost felt like there were places in the material world that were already in different realms. Like, it almost felt that way around. I love that. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, places I went to in South India, I definitely felt that because some of these temples are like thousands and thousands of years old. And they were built with that I mean, they're built with that kind of like Vedic mathematics and just the way their, the architecture and everything. Kind of how we marvel at the pyramids.

Or the Mayan ruins.

Yeah, the Mayan ruins. It's that kind of those those I saw those temples in South India, which, I guess, have less publicity in PR. But when I went there, I was like, Wow, this is just you know, there's this I remember this 1 kind of, hallway, and it's almost I forget the exact name they've given it, but it almost feels like a portal. Wow. And it's just pillars and pillars and pillars for so long.

Yeah. But it almost is seen as this transitionary portal. And so Mhmm. You kind of find these places in the world that have otherworldly, other realm aspects Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

That you almost feel like an automatic sense of connection to a part of you that's beyond. And having had those experiences, it's it's amazing to me as well. So many of my friends who've taken psychedelics or clients that have practiced that, no 1 ever comes back and believes that this 4 dimensional world is all we have, that that that that there is more. Yeah. What what's the benefit of that?

Or what what is what do you do you believe that's the next stage of human evolution? Is that spiritual dimension? Or is is that what we're leaning towards, hinting towards? Is is that how you see it progressing?

I mean, that's the feeling I got, you know, when I thought that things were just gonna go downhill for humanity. I kind of quite quickly thought there's an opportunity for it to, like, evolve to another level. And personally, being a medical doctor and a scientist, I look at people like Deepak Chopra, Daniel Siegel, Bruce Lipton, and, you know, because they're quite a lot older than me. I remember thinking, you know, when I was still a doctor that how could they be saying some of the things that they're saying? And, like, I don't think I would ever be able to say that in my career, but I've just said some of the things that I've just said to you.

And, I just wanted to add that, again, in my research, I completely agree with what you said about certain places. But, apparently, there's 3 ways of seeing, like, a thinning of the veil, if you like. You know, let's say we let's just hypothesize that we believe that there are spiritual planes or astral planes. Have you seen that Disney movie, Coco?

No. I've not seen Coco.

You haven't

seen it. I thought

you were gonna say Seoul. I've seen that, but I've not seen Coco.

Coco is about the Mexican day of the dead.

Okay.

So that's obviously an example of a time of year when the veil is thin. But, a lot of people around the world believe that some of the places that you've described and Ibiza and Hawaii are are vortexes where the veil is thin, and you can maybe, like, access a different spiritual plane in yourself or, you know, perhaps even more tangibly. And then there are also certain people. So, you know, obvious examples of the Dalai Lama. And I know people who've been touched by him, physically touched by him, have said that they saw the interconnectedness of everything, and it changed the way that they live their life.

So I think what you and I are really, like, saying here is that there are certain things, activities that we can indulge in that can change the way that you look at life.

Okay. And

I mentioned dark retreats, which I don't think a lot of people have heard of, but, obviously, silent retreats are a way of doing that that more people, I think, you know, have heard of.

Yeah. No. Don't and dark retreats too. Like, I think it's it's interesting that all of it's trying to get us to just be. Like, it all starts with this sense of just being.

But some of these activities, I think for for a lot of people, they seem so foreign. Right? Like Mhmm. I think dark retreats seem foreign. Silent retreats seem foreign.

Obviously, they're they're quite big differences to the way people live. Yeah. And even things like chanting and humming and and being in nature, like, those I think coming from a Indian background, like, chanting is somewhat far more accessible or normal or a practice that you grew up with, whereas in the in the Western world, that wouldn't necessarily have been a practice. What has been the, neurological impact of chanting? I'm intrigued by that because that's always been something I've been fascinated by.

Yeah. So I will tell you that. But, what I do now, which is just much more accessible to people, is I just listen to chanting on I've I found a YouTube channel. I just listened to it. I have it on in the background.

I don't particularly chant myself now, to be honest. But if you've got it on in the background, then it's creating a certain, like, vibration and resonance just in your home, which just literally you know, it's nothing magical. It's through sound waves. It's having an impact on we see that sound can have an impact on water, and we're mostly made up of water. So it's having an impact on you.

And what we act what what actually happens in your heart and your brain is something called entrainment. So particularly in the research shows that groups of people who are together, who are subjected to either chanting or certain pulsations of light, that their heart rates and their brain waves will synchronize. And this makes them much more likely to cooperate, to see themselves as not other, and basically to just be in that oxytocin state of love and trust more than

Well, I didn't know about the science behind that. It's so funny because 1 of my teachers would always tell us, said if you have a conflict with anyone in the monastery, you should dance and chant together.

Really? Like, that

was literally what he would say.

I saw your face when you went like this because you're like, oh, okay.

He would always say that, and he would always tell everyone that. It's like, if you're having a conflict with another monk or someone in the monastery or there's something, you should dance and chant together. And he and we'd always thought it was, like, a nice cute thing. Like, we didn't you know, you don't realize just how much you recognize there's spiritual depth behind it. But to even hear the idea that it's actually creating trust on a chemical level is is pretty far out because

Well, it's clearly creating coherence in terms of you wouldn't chant out of tune with each other, which

is Correct. Yeah.

1 of you will kind of fall in, you know, or you both do it. Same with the dancing. But once you're doing that, your heart rate and your brainwaves will change accordingly.

And that simple act of doing it even subconsciously is going to bleed into when you're trying to consciously operate. Yeah. That I mean, that's fascinating from a romantic perspective too, I guess. And and from a from a relationship perspective of how often are couples spending time together in nature, or how how often are couples spending time in the same frequency and vibration together? Is there any research around that that suggests the same for romantic love?

So those things I think are kind of a given, the 2 examples that you've just you've just stated. But, we know that now most of this research is done in voles, little they're quite cute. They're rodents, but they're quite cute. But it it's also been done in humans, which is, for example, that if you see your partner in distress, your cortisol levels will go up. Your heart rate will go up.

You will start sweating.

I can relate.

You will then seek to move towards your partner and soothe them with physical touch. We know that people who are in hospital in pain, that when their partner physically touches them, that their heart rate decreases, their blood pressure decreases, and they are in less pain if the couple are, you know, a really, like, well bonded couple. There's lots of bits of research around that. So it's definitely both the fact that if you, you know, do things together like time in nature or chanting or or dancing, that that will make you more coherent. It's also the fact that when you see or experience lack of coherence with, you know and especially the partner who's seeing the other 1 kind of out of coherence, that there is a move to go towards them and soothe them.

And it's and involves physical touch, which, like I said, can reduce pain in your partner.

Here at LifeKit, NPR's self help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

In a galaxy far, far away. No, babe. That's taken. We're in our own world, remember? Right.

In our own world, where 2 space cadets And totally normal humans. Sure. Totally normal humans. Embark on a journey across the stars discovering the wonders of the universe 1 episode at a time. We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and

why you

should never argue with your co pilot. Especially when she's always right. Right.

And if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde.

Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills.

Hey. Join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs And super corny dad jokes.

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You you kind of talked about these 2 ideas of and even what we're talking about now is this kind of spectrum that exists between stress and love. And you were talking about how, like, you know, you're you're trying to move towards love in your life. And you said not simply romantic love, just love as a force and as an energy source. And you were saying that, you know, stress, of course, sits at the polar opposite of that. And so much of our decisions today are based on stress naturally, whether it's stress to pay the bills, stress to survive, stress to take care of the people we love, stress because someone we love has been diagnosed with the disease.

Like, there's so much stress, and it's almost like, how could you ever infuse love with that? What have you seen when have is that even possible to measure what it's been like to infuse stressful situations with love?

So I just wanna go back and just, like, clarify something. So the stress hormone cortisol correlates with 5 emotions, which we will experience if we're under stress. So that's fear, anger, disgust, shame, and sadness. And then the bonding hormone, oxytocin, correlates with love, trust, joy, and excitement. And in between those 2 is, surprise, which correlates with noradrenaline, and it can flip people from 1 side to the other quite quickly.

So, like, you know, sort of you know, when, like, someone jumps out at you from behind the door? That but the the more positive side of that is that if, you know, you asked me a really surprising question and it made me think really differently, then it could make me stop being nervous and think, oh, wow. This is really interesting. I'm curious. Let's, you know, go down this road.

So the thing about those 2 ends of the spectrum is that they're like a seesaw, so they can't coexist at the same time. So the more you have trained your brain to go into the oxytocin mode, the less of the time it can possibly be in the stress mode. Physical exercise is something that we see if we use heart rate variability technology, that after you've done physical exercise, you there's a time period where you're actually in a non phase, but you you cannot be stressed. So there are things that we can do. I know you're talking about really difficult situations for people.

You know, how do you infuse that with love? But I wonder if that's bringing us back almost full circle to manifestation and visualization, which is that with all the forms of loss that I see people going through, loss of sense of self, can't trust yourself, breakdown of relationships at home, at work, in community, and even loss through death. If we believe some of the things that you and I have just spoken about, like from near death experiences and terminal lucidity, then I think that's the reason that it's important to expand your consciousness and have more spiritual beliefs because there is a choice there too to make a gift out of a really bad situation. I can completely see why people's lives get ruined by a loss and they feel regretful and bitter for the rest of their life. But I also think that it's possible if you can find some kind of legacy or learning or gift to make something good come out of the bad thing.

Mhmm. Yeah. No. That reminds me of, Edith Iger's book, The Gift and the work of Viktor Frankl Yeah. And that idea of that future motion, of how does how does what I do now, how will that make me feel in the future?

And who will I be able to help and serve in the future even if I can't help anyone now? And

And I think there's another point from both of them and also Nelson Mandela, which is about the mental prison that we create. Mhmm. And, you know, I know that Viktor Frankl spoke about that a lot, but I really love the quote from Mandela where he says, I knew when I walked away from prison that if I didn't let go of my bitterness, I would be in prison for the rest of my life. And I find all of those things really inspiring. And I've looked at a lot of the science that we've discussed today to help myself understand how you can possibly override that when there are so many difficult things in life and to try to bring that information to people.

And really and I'm not just saying this. That that's why I was so thrilled when you invited me to come onto your podcast because I think, you know, you just got such an amazing platform. And I and I'm just so grateful to you for letting me, like, you know, share some of my findings.

Oh, I'm so touched. No. That the the feeling is very mutual. I was so excited to have a platform that I could have this conversation with you and that you agreed to it. And, I I want to make sure out of just my respect for your work that you feel you're being able to touch on the things that you really deeply believe in and talk about.

Yeah. Well, I'm talking about some things that I actually don't normally

really talk about that much.

Such a

good thing. That's brilliant.

Okay. Good. Yeah. Good. No.

I what is it, I guess, that you're most fascinated by right now? Like, something that you're personally obsessed with. I imagine that when you're in discovery mode, just as when someone's healing, not healed. So in in a scientist's sense, it's like when you're just when you're learning, not teaching. Mhmm.

Like, what what is that for you right now?

Well, I think it it's broadly covered by a lot of the topics that we've mentioned, but I think the the tension that I'm interested in is how far you take these things. Because as you well know, you could take these things so far that you just, like, run off into the wilderness and become a monk and then and just disengage from real life. Right?

Yeah.

I think what I'm really curious about is how far do you take these things until you get to a point where you have some level of understanding or potentially enlightenment where you can live this life to the fullest? That, I'm obsessed with at the moment.

Yeah. And and and I am too. When I'm listening to you, I always think about how does something stop being a fad and a trend and the moment, and how does it become a real shift in lifestyle and a commitment to whatever practice it is that you Yeah. Feel is valuable? Because I find that as humans, we're always looking for the next thing to entertain us, and you can also have a lot of spiritual entertainment.

Mhmm.

And you can also have a lot of purposeful entertainment.

Mhmm.

And it just becomes another thing that you kind of use in order to escape as opposed to, no. This is what I'm dedicating my life to, and this is what I'm committing my life to, if that Yeah. Makes sense.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's just another way of saying what I was trying to say.

Yeah. Yeah. No. I was just trying to I'm I was just trying to dissect and understand that because yeah. I think for me, it's been really interesting having learned a very ancient philosophy and then grappling with trying to make it make sense in the real life that I live now has been such a difficult, beautiful, graceful, awkward path to

walk. Mhmm.

And I

don't think I've figured it out. I'm still walking that path and trying to make sense of it. And but I know that underlying it and you talked about this. You you alluded to this this idea of having a purpose for life based on service, being a place that we're all trying to get to. I think that's been the only guiding light.

Like, that's that's been the only thing that is the the light at the end of the tunnel that makes sense. Yeah. And and I find that when I'm I'm I'm deeply wanna help people find theirs.

Mhmm.

And I find that what distracts us, me included, from that is past desires, future opportunities. And, ultimately, I'd say the biggest 1, which is what I wanna talk about now, is this societal noise that keeps us bound. Mhmm. And that could be news cycles. It could be entertainment conversations.

It could be, like we talked about before, the expectations of work and life and people around us. And so, like, you're so swept up in all of that. Mhmm. And, naturally, most of the people around us, including us, are skewed towards negativity bias, confirmation bias. We're we're stuck.

And so to override, going back to where we started, to override that kind of primitive self to say, no, I'm gonna find the answer. I'm gonna push is so rare, if not impossible Mhmm. That how does someone kind of let go of those shackles and going back to your prison point? How do you how do you get out the prison? Because the biggest, I can't remember who said this, but there's this idea of, like it's it's a vedic concept, but I think maybe it's been said in a movie or something more recently.

The idea that the best prisons are the ones where you can't see the handcuffs. Right? This idea that you you don't even know you're trapped. Wow. Right?

Again, so much there, Jake.

Yes. Sorry. We're unpacking, like, with me, I'm just downloading on TV. So I'm like, you're super smart, Tara. So I'm like downloading onto you and, like, figure it out for me.

That's that's kind of where this how how our relationship's working right now. It works for me. So Well,

I think something I just picked up from you that's I think is really, really inspiring for me and I'm sure for many others is where you've talked about that beautiful but difficult journey. I think if you were sitting here saying, I figured it out and now I want to help others, I don't think I would have had the same feeling towards you at all. And it just made me think because I feel like I'm kind of interested in a lot of things at the moment and going down some rabbit holes and don't necessarily know, like, you know, where it's gonna end up, that maybe that's the beautiful thing. Maybe that's better than me coming here and saying, let me tell you everything I know about neuroscience. You know?

So, yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that, but I'm I know I'm gonna think about that overnight because I'm very reflective. That really touched me, actually, to to think that there isn't some golden nugget that you've got to come up with at the end. It's actually, you know, what you delve into and are curious about and where you go and how easy or difficult it is. I think that's actually, like, what the thing is for people. So now if only I could remember any

of the

other things that you said.

No. No. I'm glad you talked about that. And I and I wanna touch on that too. Like, I I do feel like I there was a point in my life where I believed I was teaching what I was learning.

Mhmm. And then I had to live what I'd learned, and then it all changed. Mhmm. Like, it just completely changed. And even now, that that's why I'm in that dance because you you don't know.

And the the situation is giving you, as we said earlier, each impediment is giving you a new invitation to learn, live, and react, and respond, and figure it out again.

Yeah.

And then that happens again and again and again. And so

I think it's like you know that phrase, healer, heal thyself? Mhmm. I think that I've never understood that phrase in the way that I have until you said what you just said, which is that you kind of create, like, an elixir that you can share with others if you actually do that. If you keep just trying to impart not what you think you know, I don't think that has I'm I'm gonna say it. I'm not sure it has, like, much effect at all.

But I think if you can impart a feeling of what you went through, I think that has much more power. Wow. And I'm gonna move on quite swiftly because I just remembered another thing I wanted to say. So you were talking about the noise around us. But also earlier, we were talking about all these ancient practices, a lot of which come from our culture and maybe don't come from other people's cultures.

I'll tell you the 1 thing I do that expands my consciousness the most that is the easiest thing that anyone can do from any culture. Do you wanna guess what it is?

No. Go for it. I have no idea.

Digital detox. Mhmm. So I don't watch the news anyway.

Mhmm. But,

obviously, I am aware of the most important things that are going on in the world because I've got people around me that make sure I stay informed. And that does not mean I make other people watch the news. It's just that my family will tell me if I need to, like, look into something. But when I do digital detoxes, which I usually do if I take 2, 3, 4 weeks off over, like, Christmas and New Year, that is the biggest change for me in terms of my mental space, my perception of time, how creative I become. At that time, I may also be probably spending a lot of time in nature and, kind of, you know, doing more of the kinds of exercise I love to do, like swimming in the sea and stuff like that.

But that 1 thing alone makes a noticeable difference for me. And it does take some time. You know, doing a weekend is great. Like, please do that if you can't do anything else. But if you can give it some more time, I noticed towards the end, I just become, like, super creative.

It's so true. I I can relate to it completely. I think that's probably 1 of my favorite habits too. And it's it's funny because everyone's like, no, Jay. I just saw you post yesterday.

I'm like, no. We've got to a point where we've built the systems where we can be online and offline at the same time. And and I couldn't agree with you more. I'm my best self creatively, even productively, if I'm if I'm not glued to doomscrolling or whatever else it may be. And I think it comes back down to that's what I meant by the noise, and that is the that is the answer.

That's a that's a great answer because I do think that you just have to switch the noise off. There isn't a way to operate in the noise and hope that you won't be affected by it. It's almost like you walk into a restaurant, you will walk out smelling like the food in that restaurant. Like, you can't go in there, eat, enjoy it, and walk out. Yeah.

And and I used to often think I I could do that. Like, I used to think you could engage with an energy Mhmm. And not be affected by it. And that's not true. Like, no one's powerful enough to do that.

And and you will you will kind of absorb that energy. And I do find that we're just losing spaces of high frequency and vibration that people can go to to have that the other way. So there's lots of places you could go to, and we all probably know what they are where, like, I don't like going there. There's no energy getting trained. I don't like going there because I don't feel my best.

Mhmm. I think we're losing places in society that have the opposite effect. Mhmm. Like, where does someone go to and you're saying nature is is definitely 1 of them. And

that was free, obviously, to people.

And that one's free as well and accessible. And it's it's it's become harder. I I read this article a few years ago, and it was talking about how what we value as a society has changed by the tallest building in the town. And so back in the day, the tallest building in the town would be the church. So you could see the cross from anywhere.

Mhmm. And that would be the center point of community. Mhmm. And then that changed to the Government Building, the Capital Building. You'd see that building, the State Building became the tallest building.

And today, if you looked at any city center, it'd be the the commerce, it would be the business, it would be Yeah. You know, the tallest building will be a bank.

That's so cool.

Yeah. And it was just this idea of how society shows what's important and what's powerful too. I'd I'd add that as well that it's also what we see deem as powerful. Mhmm.

And

I wanted wanted to get your take on what is it your perspective on on God and and the source in that sense? Like, what have you discovered or seen from your research in that space?

I mean, that's a very difficult question to answer. I think you

don't have to if you don't want to.

No. It's not that I don't want to. I mean, it's difficult for me because I have to put my scientist head on when And I want that. Answer that question, which is that clearly, God brings a lot of comfort to a lot of people. And probably, you could argue that it can't be disproven that God exists.

But with the science that we have at our fingertips at the moment, it can't be proven. So I have nothing against people, you know, having that as their primary, like, source of comfort and guidance in life, but I can't give you any evidence that Yeah. Such a thing exists.

Even even with the, experiences that people have had on the psychedelics or things like that, I've I've heard or met so many people who have had, like, god interactions or godlike interactions Yeah. And things. I'm sure you have too. Yeah. That's that's what I was trying to get at from from the research point of view.

But you're saying that that's still not you wouldn't count it as proof in the scientific sense?

No. I wouldn't count it as proof.

And I would say that the person who described that in the biggest detail to me, who's someone that I really trust, who's a positive psychologist said, I had what I can only describe as a godlike experience. I don't think anyone can really say more than that.

Mhmm. The

people with the near death experiences often talk about something similar as well. And there are some common themes like a tunnel of white light, you know, a being that's, like, more full of love than anything you've ever experienced. It does tend to hold archetypes depending on what religious or cultural background you come from. Not always, but mostly. So, yeah, again, I'm cure you know, I'm curious, but I'm always gonna be that person that is very happy to go down a rabbit hole, but will also say that this is the end of what we know, like, currently.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No. No. And and that's totally that's totally interesting and fair, and it's, yeah, it's just been something I've been fascinated by from a scientific point of view because it's it's, yeah, trying to understand the, as we've talked about today, the otherworldly or other realm is is something that's beyond us.

Like, we don't we don't even have like you said, the brain doesn't even allow us to go there.

That's what we think. Yeah. But I I think if we even believe that hypothesis, there must be more that we can do to try to go there. Yes. Yes.

And and I will say that science does say that a sort of a healthy, moderate amount of religiosity or belief in God is is beneficial to our mental health, and none or fundamentalism is actually, you know, negative for our mental health.

We've talked about it so much today. I know. I'm like, we've really gone there. And and it was more than I thought too. I've, like, avoided I've avoided every bullet point my team sent me and thought

about it because

it's been so much more fun just diving into your amazing mind and research and just getting getting an inking. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you really wanna touch on? Right?

Take this on your heart

and mind. I'm like, just making sure that to sit with someone and really pick their brain and someone who can speak about so many different things in such a broad range of topics is so rare. I'm so grateful to you for that because I love how much how curious you are. I love how much you're willing to push the envelope. I love how challenging you are of both sides of the idea, whether it's spirituality or science.

And, we we end every On Purpose episode with a final 5. So I'd love to ask you these 5 questions. Okay. Some of them are things we ask everyone and some of them will be geared towards you. Okay.

So, doctor Taraswati, these are your final 5. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

There's a few. But You can

say all of them.

Okay. So 1 is particularly to do with writing because the first time I had to write up my PhD and then every time I've written a book since then, which I'm actually doing at the moment, I struggle. So somebody said to me, just write something. And I think that's quite an important metaphor for life. Like, you just have to start.

You have to put 1 foot forward. You know? And then it's much easier than looking at a blank page. And then the other 1, I think, which I didn't really understand at the time but is kind of where I am now is is follow your heart.

What what do you understand about it differently now?

I think at the time, I was probably in my, like, late twenties or early thirties, and I thought you can't live life like that. You've got to do the right thing with your career. And, you know, like, I sort of worried about what my parents would think. And, but now I just I believe that if you do that, you can't go wrong.

I love that. Question number 2. What is the worst advice you ever heard in a city?

I'm

not gonna say it's the worst advice, but I'm I'm gonna say that the concept around it is perhaps flawed in a way that, again, I understand differently now, which is that when I was at school high school, my English teacher said to me, you're so good at drama that you should read English at Oxford and go to RADA, and you could become an actress. Now in those days, there were no, like, Indian actors or actresses in, like, the Western world, really. And so my father said, over my dead body, and you will go to medical school. I've obviously had a very privileged education. I'm very pleased to be where I am now, but I just wonder what could have happened if I'd actually been supported in that because because I'm not doing medicine now, and I'm way more successful now in something that, you know, my parents couldn't have imagined.

So I just think this clipping of the wings of of children, I think, is is bad advice.

Question number 3. Is it possible to manifest love?

%. I did. How? I did it with my vision board.

Walk us through it.

So I had been divorced for quite a few years, and I basically become a workaholic. And I'd had a lot of success with vision boards for my work. And then I remember just slightly thinking, I think I'm using my work to run away from love again. And then I just pushed that thought aside. Then the following year, I thought, okay.

I'm gonna put this tiny little heart on my vision board, but it's all gonna be about business and travel and so nothing changed. And then I really thought to myself, okay, Tara, if you believe in this manifestation, if you really, really believe in it, you've gotta prove it to yourself that you can manifest love. So I put this, like, huge engagement ring on the top left corner of my vision board. I never usually put phrases on it, but I was looking through magazines and I saw this phrase that said joy comes out of the blue. It was actually a Tiffany advert.

I just loved it. So I put it, like, on the top of my board and the various other things. So I did that for '20 for 2015, and, actually, nothing had happened by the But February 2016, I met the person who was to become my husband on a plane, so that's out of the blue in the sky. Mhmm. And we got engaged that year and then married the following year.

Wow. Yeah. I love that. That's a great story. That's beautiful.

I'm sure that'll give people a lot of hope. What are people doing wrong, when manifesting love? Where are people going wrong?

I think it's a lot to do with this noise around us that you talked about. So I think a lot of it is at a certain stage of life where you just think that's what you should be doing. And, personally, I will go with a theme that you sort of alluded to as well, which is that I think people are going for a lot of external characteristics when they actually should be going for, like, values and, you know, what the human being is actually like and what the relationship would be like rather than the material things that surround it.

Absolutely. And question number 5, fifth and final question, we ask this to everyone who's ever been on the show. If you could create 1 law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Love everyone. Just give out so much love.

Yeah. Yeah. So so needed. Yeah. So needed, especially now.

Well, doctor Tara Swart, thank you so much for coming on on purpose. The book is called The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain. Please, if you don't have a copy already, go and grab 1. And, of course, if you don't follow doctor Tara on social media, please go and subscribe and follow on all channels. I can't wait to share this.

I wanna hear what resonated with you, what connected with you. Please tag us both sharing insights, your favorite clips, things you're practicing, your action boards. I wanna see it all. And Doctor Taraswad, thank you so much for your time and energy again. It was truly a joy.

So thank you.

It was amazing for me too. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Hey everyone. If you loved that conversation, go and check out my episode with the world's leading therapist, Lori Gottlieb, where she answers the biggest questions that people ask in therapy when it comes to love, relationships, heartbreak, and dating. If you're trying to figure out that space right now, you won't wanna miss this conversation.

If it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as you're having the conversation. It's so lovely.

Here at LifeKit, NPR's self help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio. Hey, friends.

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Captain's log, stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map. Yeah. Because you refused to ask for directions. It's space, Gem.

There are no roads. Good point. So where are we headed? Into the unknown, of course. Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, identity, and the human spirit with a hint of mischief 1 episode at a time.

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