How to Fix Your Energy and Live Life At Your Full Potential w/ Dr. Pedram Shojai

Ari: Let’s talk about the Qigong master, the Kung Fu master, the Eastern wisdom. You have a doctor in oriental medicine. A doctorate, I should say. You are a doctor in Oriental medicine. A huge part of your background knowledge is coming from that kind of Eastern body of knowledge in addition to your study of nutrition and more Western science approach to natural health. Let’s talk about the concept of energy in the context of the Eastern paradigm and Chinese medicine.

Dr. Shojai: I stumbled into the Eastern stuff. I was premed at UCLA interning in the corridors of the hospital. Dank, dark, morphine drips. Just kind of not vitality. It was just the stark contrast with this beautiful campus of UCLA, the sun’s always out, the trees are beautiful. I don’t know why I stumbled into this Tai Chi class and I started taking it once a week. It would be right after my rotation in the hospital.

I’d walk out of this disgusting place, if you will, deep in the innards of this sick care system and be doing these exercises and go, “Wait a minute, what is that? Why is my hand tingling, right?” The guy would be like, “That’s your Qi.” And I’m like, “Come on.” Like, “I’m a biology guy, come on.” The more I did it, the more I experienced it. It then became a function of experience, not belief, and I said, “I got to know.” I just jumped in and started studying Chinese medicine, Daoism, and became a senior student of a Kung Fu master.

I’m the kind of guy that when once I need to know something I don’t stop. It just became my study for decades. The study is a very interesting one because the workshop is right here. Your body is the workshop. You can’t talk about this stuff in the abstract. You got to breathe down to your lower abdomen. You got to do the exercises and all of a sudden go, “Whoa, hey, what was that?”

That experience of it then enters– You’re basically entering into this world where now there’s this thing called Qi. What is Qi the Chinese talk about? This energy, there’s spirit, there’s essence, and then there’s Qi. Qi, the metaphor would be if the candle, the wax would be in the candle, the essence. When you ignite that essence, the wax, the flame is the Qi. It’s burning off of the material essence and then the afterglow is the mind or the shin.

All of those have to be in a healthy balance in order to have a robust life that’s filled with meaning and also long and has that vitality and longevity. The way Qi comes is by burning food, mixing it with air, activating it with essence, and then either sending it to the nutritive side which is basically what I call the books, the libraries, the hospitals, repairing the roads and then the defense side, which is the border patrol in the army. You have these basic functions of protection and nourishment which Qi has to be able to allocate effectively towards so that you’re healthy.

Then you’re already like I can see the look in your face because when you get into the breakdown of how our cells went from prokaryotic to eukaryotic and the introduction of this thing called mitochondria and the electron transport chain, it was oxygen coming together with these complex carbohydrates, becoming simple carbohydrates that kick off this overflow of energy that led to our evolutionary path. The question became to me, how the hell these guys know this, as a biologist going in. That’s been my study ever since. It’s been so fun.

Ari: I’m overflowing with so many different questions and avenues we could go down here. I first want to maybe talk about the scientific validation for this aspect of things. I know there’ve been various ways that scientists have tried to study and validate some of the ideas around Qi and meridians and these kinds of things. They’ve looked at- I think it’s called transdermal electrical conductivity or something like that. They measure the electrical conductivity of skin surfaces.

They correspond with the meridians versus the skin next to it. I know that there have been some researchers that have looked at biophoton emissions from cells and how that corresponds to meditation, for example. How do you conceptualize the intersection of the Western scientific method with the realm of Qi and meridians and I don’t know if you want to broach the idea of chakras and things like that, but this more esoteric aspect of energy and Qi.

Dr. Shojai: Well, before, we had instruments to measure these things. We had our eyes and when we cultivated our eyes, we could perceive and see these things. We’ve externalized a lot of that to our devices and to our means outside. That’s a whole conversation about the plight of humanity and how we’re always looking outside of ourselves for answers. We get to that in a different conversation. Let’s talk about what energy is.

We are talking about energy coming down from a starlight. It just so happens that we have one pretty close called the sun. Billions of years ago, there was the first kingdom which was the fungus which was able to penetrate the rocks and break them up and create this thing called soil, so that the microbial elements could then create an environment for plants to arrive. What are these plants doing?

Miraculously, is taking photons from this star, pulling them in through photosynthesis creating complex or simple carbohydrate chains which is the roots shoots and stalks. All of a sudden, these animals combine and start eating them. Then, later on, there’s animals that eat those animals. They’re all just compounding this energy that’s being extracted from the sun.

The initial currency of life is the photon. It’s not too far of a stretch to realize that there is still some biophotonic photoemission happening. We know that it happens when DNA ravels and unravels. We know that there is almost like a fiber-optic network inside of our blood, inside of our fascia, inside of our connective tissue that has some component of electronic communication. Whether it’s through photic stimulation or guilt. We term it as the galvanic stimulus or the response is everything is functioning in these subtle gradients of electrical currents including the thresholds of nerves.

You have electrical pulses that will run and activate nerves to flip polarity and send a message up and down from periphery to the spine. You have this with hydroelectric formation of bone tissue and what it means to lay down more bone. What it means to send healing factors to the body is there will be a current of some mild electrical capacity that will signal the body to send agents there.

We talk about electricity, it’s like electromagnetism. What is involved in every single hemoglobin molecule in our body, it’s iron. There’s this subtle current of electromagnetism that is the language of the body in saying, “Send some healing factors here, grow some bone over here, send this signal from the toe to the brain,” that’s always been there.

Yet we just became very mechanistic in our understanding of the body. We had antibiotics, we had steroids, and we had surgery. It was surgery, we had antiseptics that cleaned off our scalpels in our infinite wisdom that God got us to this heyday of battlefield medicine. Then we just overlooked all this stuff.

There’s all these guys that have been trained in their fraternities to poopoo things that they don’t believe in, without looking at the evidence that’s coming in from every country, in so many different disciplines saying, “Whoa, whoa, there’s something happening here.” I think that there’s just too little research. I’d started a brain lab 15 years ago to look at e.g stimulation of the brain with meditators. We had very definitive data showing what was happening at the prefrontal cortex with people just chilling out for a minute. That’s 15 years ago.

Now there’s functional MRI. There’s all kinds of stuff showing the subtle currents of electricity, energy, going to where our focus is, whether it’s our immune system or our conscious focus, to do specific things in the body like heal or wiggle a toe. We just haven’t looked down that paradigm, therefore, everyone still scratches their head saying, “I don’t know if that’s true.” It’s insane.

Ari: It feels to me almost like the proverbial blind men and the elephant scenario where Western science is trying to feel that they’re blind as to the big picture of things, but they’re trying to feel some of this stuff and trying to do their best to measure some of the stuff that Chinese medicine is talking about with Qi and what Eastern traditions talk about with chakras, and meridians and all these things.

They get little pieces of it like, “Oh, here’s a little bit of a tail here. I think I feel something. You know, here’s a foot, here’s a hoof, and here’s a trunk.” We still don’t really understand the big picture. There isn’t a really great connection between Western science and understanding all of that what seems to be mystical stuff in the Eastern traditions. Yet, there’s also this body of evidence that’s probably more practically meaningful about like, “Does doing Qigong, or does doing yoga, or pranayama breathing exercises, does that have benefits?”

Then there’s this large body of evidence showing very clearly, “Yes. It clearly does have health benefits.” It’s the unseen mystical stuff as to why those things have benefits that’s still in question and debated with the Eastern traditions explaining it one way and the Western traditions are trying to say, “Well, maybe it’s because the breathing is bringing oxygenation in.” It’s interesting how they explain it in different terms, but it’s unquestionable that it has benefits. You know what I mean?

Dr. Shojai: The challenge is there’s a word around it that I’ve really gotten comfortable understanding. We’re shame. I’ve been around a lot of these people, and I can’t tell you how abusive they are to each other. They will browbeat you if you step out of line. They go, “What are you doing? Are you going to ruin your career doing all that woo-woo stuff?”

You’re like, “Dude, there’s a body of evidence saying it works,” but I’m not allowed to look at it and the institutional shame. It’s a cabal in a lot of ways where they’re just not allowed, even if they’re interested in it. I’ve had a lot of late-night discussions. I’ve gone through, you know, bottles of wine with some of these amazing researchers who won’t publicly mention some of the things that they’ve found to be true because [crosstalk].

Ari: Whether they personally believe they won’t discuss openly.

Dr. Shojai: Not at all. Literally they are closet, energy believers, and they have plenty of evidence to substantiate a lot of this stuff, but the institution will not allow it because you are committing career suicide.

Ari: On a personal note speaking to that, I’ll actually say that I’m almost one of those people to some extent. I don’t shame others but I’ve established this reputation of a super-hardcore evidence-based guy bringing science and evidence to energy and the topic of fatigue. I privately have practiced Qigong and yoga for at least 20 years now.

I have beliefs around that but I rarely ever talk about any of that stuff because I don’t want to be categorized by anybody as like, “He’s into that mystical new-age nonsense that’s not scientific. Here, look how unscientific Ari is. He believes in Qi and whatever.” That stuff is real, that peer pressure to conform and not talk about anything that’s outside of the Western medicine paradigm is a huge factor even for someone like me.

Dr. Shojai: You’re in this space, you’re talking about this space, whether it’s you or some multiple PhD, high mucca mucca Harvard guy. It’s the same top-down whack a mole that will happen to your career as soon as you look at anything outside of this place where you’re told is okay. This is kosher, everything outside these lines, you will be annihilated. I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s mind control. There are things that we’re allowed to know and there are things that we’re allowed to talk about. There’s just zero research dollars or anything.

What about placebo? The best drugs out there. There’s drugs out there that perform just over a toe over the line of placebo and they’re like, “Okay, it’s accepted,” but if you start looking at the research behind who the low placebo responders are. These people, in order to beat placebo, need to basically do all kinds of surveys to find the biggest losers that are low placebo responders to be like, “Look, this person doesn’t believe that anything is going to get them better. Great, throw them in our study.” Those are the people that their drugs barely beat.

For years, I’m like, “Why the hell aren’t we studying what placebo is and how to impact people’s ability to leverage that thing that’s actually getting so many people better?” How is that unscientific? We know it’s one of the best forms of medicine out there, why can’t we study it better? Nobody’s writing that check.

Ari: I think it depends a bit on the specific topic being studied but there’s often– I think like with antidepressants or something like that, placebo cures people of depression 30 some percent of the time. Like taking a sugar pill. To your point, it’s like, “Why are we not studying that phenomenon?”

Dr. Shojai: “Oh, That’s just placebo.” “Oh, his is just Tai Chi.” I can’t tell you how many oncologists I’ve encountered who’ve had people come up and be like, “Hey, Doc, I did all this stuff, and I feel better,” and they’re like, “Wow, you’re in complete remission. Tell me what you’ve been doing.” They’re like, “I changed my diet. I’ve been taking some herbs and doing Qigong,” and they’re like, “Stop, stop talking. Sorry, good for you but I can’t even hear you now.” It’s just like, “What? I thought you were in the business of healing cancer. Doesn’t that sound like an interesting data point?” They can’t even go there because they’ll be ostracized for being the guy that looks at that. What is that?

Ari: How do you connect the dots? How do you explain it between these practices, let’s say, Qigong? How does that connect to our physical energy and vitality? Let’s say in the context speaking very practically, in terms of the modern Westerner who’s overstressed, who’s burnt out from work, who’s physically tired and physically exhausted, who doesn’t don’t give a crap about whatever mystical voodoo, they don’t care about enlightenment, they just want to fill in with vitality and energy and not be exhausted and burnt out all the time. What’s the connection there?

Dr. Shojai: Let’s just talk about a very important switch. Some genetic gateways and some genetic modulation, some epigenetic expression that will either turn you off or turn you on. We’ll segue into mitochondria and the stuff that you talk about because this becomes a very interesting segue, obviously, is when I’m in the parasympathetic nervous system, I’m in rest and digest.

How do I stimulate that? Tongue touching the roof of the mouth, take the pressure off the gastroc muscle, elongate the gastroc muscle, do low diaphragmatic breathing. We understand that somehow that will switch you into Parasympathetic Nervous System Dominance, out of that sympathetic fight or flight which is basically drawing the blood out of the parts of your brain that are responsible for better decisions, negation of impulses, higher moral reasoning. All these things that make us human. And enlightened just so happens.

That gateway is either sending the troops running off to the borders or saying, “Come on home, let’s build some bridges and some roads and fund some schools in the arts.” That’s just the undercurrent of our nervous system. Then we have this stuff that we’ve learned about. There’s a ton of studies coming out on this, on the NF-kappaB and Nrf2 gateways. Where we know definitively that doing mind-body practices like Qigong and meditation specifically will help suppress the NF-kappaB pathway which would lead to synthesis cytokine storm.

Basically, everyone’s hearing about cytokines now with the virus out there, but we’re talking about information being the root of all evil in chronic disease. We have found the holy grail of what will switch off inflammation on a master switch level which is suppressing this NF-KappaB gateway. Yet we haven’t figured out a way to make a drug out of it. We have a body of evidence saying, “Look, all you need to do is meditate and do some mind-body practice, and you’ve gotten it.” You can’t bottle that. It’s like—