In this episode, I am speaking with Jason Prall – who is a health educator, practitioner, author, speaker, and filmmaker. In 2018 his independent research and experience led him to create The Human Longevity Project, which is a nine-part film series that uncovers the true nature of chronic disease in our modern world. We will talk about the psychospiritual aspects of health and longevity.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Jason and I will discuss:
- How childhood trauma affects health, behavior, and longevity
- The 21st-century Challenges that could harm our overall health
- The intergenerational effect of trauma
- The easy steps you can take to change your physiology today
- The critical role of connection in happiness and longevity
- How to use disease to become a better person The polyvagal theory and how it works
- The Attachment Theory – The four different attachment styles and how they affect your behavior
- How your belief system impacts your biology
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Transcript
Ari: Hey there, welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. Here with me now is my good friend Jason Prall who is a health educator, practitioner, author, speaker, and filmmaker. In 2018 his independent research and experience led him to create The Human Longevity Project, which is a nine-part film series that uncovers the true nature of chronic disease in our modern world. I have to say it is one of my personal favorites, maybe even my very favorite health documentary of all time.
Jason: It’s not just because you’re in it and featured so prominently is it?
Ari: It’s, well, I might be biased slightly in that regard, but nevertheless it was a great film.
Jason: Thank you.
Ari: You guys did a great job with that. And he’s currently finishing his book titled The Longevity Equation, as well as his next film series that explores ancient methods of healing, mind body and soul from indigenous cultures around the world. He’s also a personal friend of mine. We get together. We talk shop. We talk about health, personally were very much on the same wavelength on a lot of things. And he’s one of the smartest minds I know in the topic of Health Science. So, I know he’s got lots of good stuff to share in this presentation and let’s get into it, Jason. What do you got for us?
The Psychospiritual Aspect Of Energy
Jason: Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for that. And it’s always fun when we get together because I feel like we can teach each other. And we’re both open to learning and you point me to a few things over here, and I’ll point you to a few things over there and we kind of go around and around. So, it’s really cool. And I really do appreciate that about you as well.
Ari: Likewise.
Jason: One of the things I wanted to talk about today was how to sort of the psycho-spiritual aspect of energy, right and what that even looks like because I’ve been in some of the discussions in sort of the extreme woo woo nature of this conversation, and I find it interesting. But there’s a lack of actual hard science and even, I wouldn’t say hard, but even kind of this medium soft, it’s not even there. It’s just completely pulled out of thin air. And then there’s other discussions that are a lot more grounded and still would be maybe a little bit hard to believe, in a sense.
And so, it’s a very interesting topic and I think to sort of preface my discussion, I want to leave this open because there’s a lot of possibilities. There’s a lot of potentials. There’s a lot of unknowns. There’s a lot of how does it work? But we know it does work.
So, there’s a lot of play here and I want to sort of leave that open. And that what I’m presenting or offering may not be something so hard and fast yet, but it’s very interesting and there’s a lot of science to sort of support the ideas. So, I think it’s sort of a good primer to sort of open this discussion.
Ari: Yeah, you just made me think of that famous quote, something like the science of tomorrow appears like magic today.
Jason: Yes, absolutely. If that’s not the quote, it’s still a good quote. And that’s exactly right. I mean, if you look at a cell phone it’d be impossible to explain that and somebody 200 years ago would think you’re absolutely nuts. And actually, it’s the perfect opener because one of my favorite quotes is from a guy that was doing things long before his time Nikola Tesla. He was doing things that looked like magic and in fact he was exposing himself to these electrical currents that people thought he was nuts, and he was fine.
So, he was doing amazing things. And one of the quotes that he has it says “There is no energy in matter except that absorbed from the medium.” So, what does that mean? That means your body doesn’t contain any energy other than what it’s getting from the environment, from the medium.
So, that’s very interesting because we hear a lot about, we think about our body producing energy and that’s kind of correct and it’s kind of not correct.
It’s really about, is your body able to harness the energy that it’s, that it has available? And are you able to increase the availability or your ability to extract energy from the environment?
So, it’s about extracting energy from the environment and using it efficiently and effectively, right. That is really, I mean, that’s what you talk about. That is the energy sort of solution. It’s the ability to pull it out and use it effectively. And so, that’s such an important foundational concept to recognize.
The link between childhood experiences and disease
Ari: There’s lots of layers or possible interpretations of that. I mean, you could do a very straightforward like food is energy, and that energy you’re talking about. Or you could go a lot more sort of, you could, there’s many layers but you could end up in sort of a spiritual dimension.
Jason: Yeah, we… exactly we can go from basically material science to more of the etheric science, right. And really that’s where Nikola Tesla played. He played in the etheric sciences, things that didn’t exist. You couldn’t see. And that was interesting to him. And so, I think what’s interesting about the health sciences is, you’re exactly right, and I’m glad you sort of brought this up, because we can pull in food.
It’s a great example and of course this makes sense. We’re extracting energy from carbohydrates, from fats, from proteins, etcetera. And more from carbohydrates and fats. But the idea here is that if we sit out in the sun, I’m extracting energy directly from the sun light. And we have chromophores that do this for us, right. Melanin being the most commonly thought of. But we are directly extracting energy from the sun.
The other primary way that I can think of is through the breath, right. You don’t, just stop breathing for five minutes and that’ll prove what I’m talking about. So, somehow, we are extracting energy from the environment and we’re using it in certain ways. And one of the most fundamental aspects to this is how our psychospiritual or psycho-emotional component is affecting the utilization of the energy that we are extracting. So, that’s really what I want to focus on.
And if, I’m sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, so called the ACE study for short. And if you haven’t heard of it, really what it is a 10,000 people, Kaiser Permanente and the CDC looked at 10,000 people and did a little survey. That’s really all they did. They asked them a bunch of questions just about their childhood. And there was sort of 10 events that they highlighted that were major events that they could think of.
Things like divorce, right, or having a parent incarcerated, mental or emotional, physical abuse, sexual abuse, these type things, and there was 10 of them. And these are very sort of high level traumas or experiences and of these experiences when people noted that they had two, or three, or four, or five, the more experiences that they noted, the more they recognized that these adults had health challenges in their life.
So, this was very interesting. And it’s hard to draw a direct correlation between something that happened. Let’s say you were physically abused at 4 years old, how do we draw a direct correlation between that and getting diabetes when you’re 42? or heart disease at 51. But we notice that that was the case. The more adverse childhood experiences the more likelihood that somebody was to experience higher levels of disease.
And now there’s a couple of explanations here and I don’t think that they’re separate or inconsistent. One explanation is, is that the more things that happen to us in childhood the more likely we are to perhaps drink alcohol on a regular basis, or in excess, to smoke, to do illicit drugs, to have behavioral patterns that we know are unhealthy, right. Like that’s a very easy assumption to make, that the more that that was the case then the more likely we’re going to behave in a certain way.
And there’s these notable things from a lifestyle perspective that we can think of, that we know are bad for our health. But there’s other things that we don’t think of that aren’t traditionally good for our health either. And one of the things that we can look to is sort of this idea of the perfectionist, or somebody that is so hard-working, like think about like a Steve Jobs for example, right. Extremely brilliant mind, but he got cancer at an early age. He was Notorious for being sort of a hard ass and really criticizing people that he worked with.
So, that, the things in his childhood can create these patterns as we get older that are also detrimental, but we don’t think of as detrimental because we reward them in our society. So, these things create behavioral patterns that, like I said, may or may not be healthy and some of them are easy to identify. But the other thing that these things, these childhood experiences really do is they affect our whole system, right. They affect the way our nervous system behaves, they affect really our entire body, our entire mind and our entire belief system.
So, these childhood events can really form our personalities. They form these character structures of who we become. And that, in turn, in the long run, will affect various parts of the body or disease processes in the body. So, that’s, there’s sort of two main categories that we can think of and I believe they’re both accurate. They’re both happening.
One is a more subtle level of effect, and one is a more gross level effect. But what we notice is that as we get into like six and seven ACE’s, which is not that uncommon, we start to see very, very high levels of issues. Things like with zero ACE’s, so from zero to ten, zero ACE’s about 33 percent of American adult’s report zero ACE’s, right. And this again, this is only a 10-question questionnaire example from about fifty one percent of the population has reports from one to three ACE’s. And about 16% of the population reports four to eight cases.
So, again, these are just a very select number of ACE’s, of adverse childhood events, but when we get up to one to three ACE’s, we see that one in nine are alcoholic, one in forty-three uses IV drugs, and one in seven has heart disease. That’s double from somebody who reports no ACE’s. So, this is a massive impact and so there’s a lot of research actually on a lot of levels to determine what’s really happening here.
Either way, we know that this is a strong correlation to pay attention to and we’re starting to learn, I shouldn’t say we’re starting, we’ve been learning for quite some time the mechanisms that this is really undertaking when it comes to how these are affecting our physical health and our mental health.
So, really we need to recognize that it’s not just the bottom line number that says one in ninety-six attempts suicide with no ACE’s and one in ten attempt suicide with one to three ACE’s, that’s, these are obvious things. These suicides and the drug abuse and that’s obvious. What about the heart disease? What about the autoimmune conditions? What about the chronic fatigue syndrome? These things are very relevant when it comes to these childhood events and these traumas that we experience.
Now, the one thing I really want to highlight here is the ACE’s study was fantastic because it gave us something solid, something concrete to look at it. Gave us a good example of what to pay attention to you. But again, that was only 10 questions. Clearly there are more than ten things that can happen to us in childhood or even early adulthood that would be traumatic, right. So, losing somebody in a car accident, or there’s these little micro traumas right. That perhaps you were told something often enough when you were a child that created a belief system.
Perhaps you, there was just a disappointment, a recurring disappointment from your caregivers that was so minor, but when you’re a child, when you’re so little and you don’t have a lot of resource, you don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand what’s happening, all you know is what you’re experiencing, which is pain.
And so, these things can happen on a micro level, these little micro traumas and as they build and create belief systems and create patterns, then that can take hold as well. And they can act just like these major traumas that they interviewed people about. So, it’s not just the ACE’s, it’s also a lot more of these big traumas and we have these, a ton of little micro traumas that are actually often very hard to identify. It’s not necessarily something you can pinpoint so easily.
Ari: Yeah, on the subject of micro traumas that are hard to identify, there’s one that I’m aware of because I know some people who this is the case for, it’s very counterintuitive and most people would not even think of it in the same sense of like a serious trauma. But if you are held to the standard of perfection throughout your child and you’re constantly told how perfect you are, and great you are in every way, and then at some point you don’t meet that standard of perfection.
You maybe get poor grades in a class, you fail a class or something, or you do poorly in a sport, or you are embarrassed because you said or did something that was kind of dumb, you now have, and then everybody so shocked that you’ve completely not held up to this standard of perfection. A seemingly minor thing that for maybe most people might be a very small thing, all of a sudden becomes this major trauma because you are now finding out for the first time that, and other people around here finding out that you’re not perfect.
Jason: Absolutely. Absolutely, and this is, you’re hitting it right on the head. And one I like to really highlight is the reward system that we often see in our culture. When somebody does something good, we give them praise. When they do something bad, we either don’t give them praise or we criticize, or judge. And if, and again as parents we do the best we can, and as school teachers and we’re doing the best we can, but sometimes without that awareness these little things that we don’t think are a big deal may end up creating patterns in a child who is still learning to adapt to the environment. So, if a parent is really praising the child for doing really good things and they get harshly criticized, or they get no love essentially, for maybe doing okay, they got fifth place in whatever, and they get criticized by the hard father, so to speak. Or when they get first place they get really, really strongly rewarded. What you’re doing is you’re creating this pattern that says to the child subconsciously, we love you when you do really well, but when you don’t do well, we don’t really love you, and there’s something wrong with you, and you need to do better.
Now, of course, we’re not saying this overtly but subconsciously, and emotionally that’s often the impact. And so, and this is more common than we think. I sort of grew up in this same, in this paradigm where I learned that I would get more love if I did things really well. So, I became sort of a perfectionist. I learned to excel at certain things because that’s when I would get more love, I would feel accepted and loved for who I am. If I failed or I didn’t participate, or whatever it was, there was a perception in my child mind that said, I’m not getting love, I’m not getting accepted at that stage for who I am.
So, this is very, very strong patterning that can take hold. And as we get into adulthood these patterns are there and they’re unhealthy patterns. But what’s really curious, and what’s really interesting about this stuff, no matter what traumas that we experience in childhood or whatever patterns we develop to adapt to those traumas, or these situations where we feel unsafe or unprotected, we develop these character styles, these skills and abilities. They’re kind of like, little superhuman gifts and abilities that we learn to develop in order to feel safe. Now we get to take those with us.
So, as we grow older and we learn to resolve these traumas and sort of integrate these things, these fractured aspects of ourselves, these personality patterns and personality structures, we get to keep the gifts and we don’t have to fall into the patterns anymore. So, now it’s like we have this little special thing in my toolbox, right. Where one of the things that I developed was the maladaptive pattern is that, the pattern was not to really be able to accept others help, and to be able to really get the support that I’m looking for.
Ari: Or ask for it.
Jason: Exactly. Well because if I, because I learned that if I ask for it or if I needed somebody else’s support, I wasn’t going to get it. I got let down, I got disappointed. That’s my perception anyway, right that was the story.
Ari: And I have the same thing and it’s like, oh it’s a weak to ask for anybody’s help. You should do it by yourself.
Jason: Exactly. So, that’s maladaptive as we get older. But the gift in that is that if for whatever reason you needed to do something by yourself and they’re literally was no support, no help, you know you can do it. So, it’s a really cool gift to step into if we need to, but it’s maladaptive if we continue to rely on it when we in fact, we do have support. We shut it down because we learned it’s not safe or it’s actually not there.
And so, these are the patterns and we all have them. So, it’s interesting to sort of reflect and look at yourself, and what is it that may personality has built in order to keep me safe as a child that is now carrying with me as an adult? So, this is important to recognize because this is, these maladaptive patterns are an inefficient use of energy. Again, we have a limited supply of energy, all of us, whether we’re six or whether we’re 92, whatever that supply of energy is that we have we want to use it effectively and not waste it, right.
So, it’s really about using this energy effectively. And that’s really what we’re looking at here when it comes to these patterns and these traumas. They set up a situation where we’re not using energy effectively. Now the interesting thing about these traumas that we experience now, we have these new challenges in the 21st century, right.
So, if we were to have if, you and I were to have the same traumas in childhood 250 years ago that does have a result on our behavior and our lifestyle, and for sure it’s going to have certain aspect to our biology. But now we live in an environment with toxic chemicals, and metals, artificial lighting, man made EMF, our food distributions kind of a mess, we’ve got over… too much tech, right. We have way too much tech in our in our life. We’re hyperstimulated. And everything’s…
Ari: I have 16 wearables on me right now.
Jason: Exactly. Right, and that’s to track.
Ari: So, I can track all my biometrics, I have an implantable blood glucose monitor.
Jason: Exactly. So, these 21st century health challenges really are coupled with those patterns that we develop from these traumas. So, we’re living in a, I don’t want to… I say this loosely, we’re living in an environment where you almost have to be perfect in order to be healthy, right. And again, I say that loosely but it kind of is that way, right. You can’t buy this, you got to do this, don’t use that, use this instead. How much does this happen now? You know, you got to use… I mean you have to be hyper aware.
So, as you have these traumas and these patterns that build up, they’re more likely to result in engaging with our environment in a poor way. So, this is the thing that we really need to concern ourselves with in this modern world, is they couple really nicely when it comes to disease. So, we really need to be mindful and cleaning up the traumas, and the patterns, and getting us back to a state where we can cope with things effectively, actually helps us avoid some of these 21st-century health challenges, right.
You, Ari, probably don’t have an issue with avoiding these poor food choices, right. And going to McDonald’s all the time and drinking soda non-stop, but some of us do, because we have traumas that are creating patterns and belief systems that make it very difficult for us to make the right choice with our food. You know what I mean?
So, it’s, I mean how many people out there know that eating broccoli, and celery, and grass-fed beef, and all these things is a healthier option. But so many of us don’t because we have these things blocking us, emotionally, belief system wise, or mentally. So, it’s a really, really interesting paradigm that we’re in and it’s really important that we address the core of some of these things. Because it’s not necessarily the 21st century challenges that we’re facing, it’s the motive behind them that is really engaging with that.
Ari: Yeah, wonderfully said and I think what you said about we almost have to be perfect in the modern world to be healthy, I think is so true. And there’s, historically it was the case that so many of the things that kept us healthy were just part of our lifestyle, for hunter gatherer populations, it’s part of your life to move your body. It’s part of your life to get sunlight.
It’s part of your life to be exposed to heat, and cold, and periods of fasting, and hormetic stress, and to have your circadian rhythm and sleep optimized, to eat whole foods instead of processed foods. All of these things are taken care of by default without you having to rely on any willpower to do any of them.
Jason: You had community supporting you. You weren’t stuck alone in your cubicle or in your office at home. It’s a different world, and you had more support I think in ways that required no effort.
Ari: Yeah, and in the modern world, it is a battle, like it is, it takes effort to go against the norm of what we have in the modern world to try to align ourselves with the forces, the environmental inputs that our body needs to be healthy, which itself for a lot of people is a stressor. It’s a stress.
It’s like, oh it’s so stressful. I have to put on these blue blocker glasses. I have to deprive myself of this food, and that food, and I have to exercise, and go to the gym, and I have to worry about doing my bright light exposure in the mornings and like all these different things that I have to worry about. It’s so much. There’s 50 different strategies I have to do every day. And like, it’s, I think for a lot of people they perceive all of that stuff as stress.
Jason: Right, exactly. And that’s why I was sort of cautious by saying you have to be perfect because in a sense it’s true, and in a sense it’s absolutely false. And what I mean by that is, that it’s interesting that person that you’re sort of hypothetically describing is probably somebody that has some trauma that is guiding this perception that I’ve got to do all this right or it’s not going to work, right.
That’s sort of this rigid style of behavior, that it’s like, okay give me the rules and give me exactly, and you’ve probably had these people that you either work with or gave advice to, it’s like, tell me exactly, how many minutes do I need to do?
So, it’s funny that we have these things, and these are structures that are built to keep us safe. And so, there is a truth to it and it’s also completely false. So, if we just relax a little bit and get back to our core essence then some of that stuff actually doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. So, it’s a perception thing. And just to show you how far this emotional trauma affects us, there is a study that looked at Holocaust exposure that induced intergenerational effects on methylation.
So, what does that mean? That means that people that went through the Holocaust obviously that was a traumatic experience, their children ended up having genetic modification so to speak, that predisposed them in a certain way to methylate differently than maybe somebody who hadn’t gone through the Holocaust. So, this is very interesting. We know that this can be passed down through the generations. Now this makes sense. It shouldn’t be so hard to believe.
There’s another study that was done, that was brilliant in the sense that it looked at mice and they sent them through a maze and at one part in the maze when they smelt cherry blossom, they would electrocute them. Actually, I don’t know if a maze was included, I could be completely wrong with the maze, doesn’t matter. They had cherry blossom, they introduced the cherry blossom scent and they electrocuted them, right. So, they learned, that original mouse learned that cherry blossom equals electricity, and danger, and it’s not safe.
So, there’s an elevated stress response, of course when they would smell cherry blossom. So, they would take the electrocution away. They would just give them cherry blossom scent, and boom. Their nervous system would spike. Makes sense, right. That’s sort of an adaptive response to something that was associated. Well as those mice, they had pups, and they gave the cherry blossom scent to the pups who had never been electrocuted, and boom nervous system spike.
So, that was a passed down response from the parents. This makes sense because life wants to respond to the environment, it wants to adapt to the environment. So, of course we’re going to pass these things down through the generations. How does it work? We’re still figuring that out, but it definitely does work, and it definitely makes sense, right.
This is also why skin color can change, right. It’s not just the mixing of somebody that’s darker and somebody’s that’s lighter that creates skin color change. If somebody is in, If you and I moved to a warmer region and we had kids there, and they had kids there, and they had kids there, etcetera, then they’re going to become adapted to that environment. This is what humans do, we adapt over our lifetime and through generations.
So, of course the nervous system response is going to adapt as well. So, it’s interesting to recognize that something like a cherry blossom scent can have marketed difference on the genetic expression of children, right. So, and the question is how far does this extend? How far would the cherry blossom scent have to go, how many generations would that create a response? And it’s unknown, right.
But it’s, if we were to keep doing it to each pup, of course, it would sort of more likely ingrain. It would sort of set into this sort of, I guess it’s almost like blazing a trail, right if you keep walking the trail it’s going to be blazed. But if you stop walking it then the foliage is going to grow back. So, it’s sort of the same thing and it’s going to ingrain in the children, grandchildren, etcetera. So, this is intergenerational that we got to think about some of these things.
Ari: You remember a couple years ago I shared with you a really deep analysis of the literature around the idea of adrenal fatigue.
Jason: Yeah.
Ari: And really debunking the idea that chronic stress strains our adrenal glands, and causes fatigue of the adrenals, and low cortisol levels. The research really does not support that. But there are some factors that are genuinely associated with low levels of morning cortisol. Circadian rhythm and sleep disruption is a big one. I would say the most common one by far. There are a few others that factor into this, but one of the ones that has really consistent research to support a relationship with a lower rise in morning cortisol levels is PTSD.
And there’s a researcher named Rachel Yehuda who has done a lot of work on Holocaust Survivors, and their children and has found that this rewiring of the stress hormone system actually gets passed on to the next generation. And it’s not totally clear why they have this lower rise in morning cortisol, but it’s almost, I mean the way I interpret it is sort of like it’s kind of wiring you into more numbness, into maybe less engagement with life so that you don’t have to, I don’t know, something along those lines like to…
Jason: Yeah, for sure. No, I think you’re…
Ari: Numb ourselves to potential stressors.
Jason: I think you’re I think you’re 100% correct and what I was thinking was if that was a part of the environment, then we don’t want to expend unnecessary energy. So, let’s just sort of dial back the energy expenditure in the form of cortisol. Because that’s really what cortisol does. Cortisol and adrenaline spikes your sympathetic, right. So, it’s almost like let’s numb that down a little bit, so that we’re not wasting energy because that’s just naturally part of the environment.
So, it’s almost like you’re adapting. It’s like a Navy SEAL, right. Like they don’t stress out about certain things that you and I would stress out about, because they’ve been adapted. They’ve trained to sort of be in that environment. So, it’s very interesting. I think you’re dead on and it’s a great example of how, I mean, the ultimate thing that I think if I could just give one message to people in this short talk, humans are supremely adaptable. We are going to adapt to anything, like anything.
And that’s of course in our life, at least as much as we can. As long as we can recover from it, that hormetic side. But we are going to adapt and of course intergenerationally we are going to adapt. So, that’s just a very fundamental, we are the supreme adaptable creature on the planet, I think. And so, it’s just something to keep in mind that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a very, very good analogy in a sense, and it can be extended across many generations.
Be grateful for disease – a paradigm shift
Ari: The fact that we are living in a modern world that is wildly inappropriate for our biology and somehow, we live to eighty.
Jason: Here we are. It’s remarkable. It really is, you’re totally right. And so, that’s the upside, right. Like that’s the positive message in all this, is that we have such an ability to thrive and to adapt to environment. So, there’s a really, really positive thing there. And one of the things that I would actually tell the clients that I would work with, despite their condition that they would come in for, was as we uncovered some of these emotional traumas, and these belief systems, and these patterns that got locked in at an early age. I would slowly over time get them to understand that it’s better to be grateful for your symptoms that you’re experiencing.
So, that seems counterintuitive why you would want to be grateful for something that’s causing you so much pain, and suffering, and money, and everything, time. But really the way I’ve come to think of it is, that disease as we might think of it is sort of the soul’s way of grounding a psychospiritual imbalance. So, what does that mean?
That means that there’s something going on psycho-spiritually, this mental emotional kind of spiritual state. This, it’s sort of hard to put your finger on but there’s something going on that’s out of balance, and because that’s out of balance it’s creating patterns, thought patterns, belief systems, and behaviors that are not congruent with health.
So, it’s really as simple as that, right. So, if we can accept that reality, then what that’s doing, disease then becomes our teacher. It starts to show us through the mind-body, right, through the connection this mind-body that we have, it starts to show us what works and what doesn’t work, right.
It shows us how to be a better person to other people. How to not create more suffering around the world to others. It teaches us how to buy organic food, better food that is better for the environment, that’s better for us. It shows us how to avoid toxic chemicals and even purchasing things that are made with toxic chemicals, because that’s better for the environment and better for us.
So, the disease is actually showing you the way. So, if we just recognize that and we can allow this amazingly brilliant body-mind that we have to guide us, then it’s like it’s our guiding light. It shows us the way. And that will improve your life, improve your well-being. Your happiness. It’s the greatest teacher. And, Ari, I know your story lines up with that. Mine does, and it’s still teaching me, right.
Like this is the brilliance of it and talk to anybody that has moved through a disease process and they’re in a better place. They either met the love of their life, or they found a career path, or it taught them valuable lessons that ultimately emanated in them being better human. Like this is an important lesson.
So, if we can become grateful for them instead of trying to push them away, get rid of them, disown them, then we can start to find what it is that’s actually, what the lesson? What is the thing that’s out of balance?
Ari: There’s such an important paradigm shift here that I just want to emphasize for people because it’s so easy to miss this. There’s one paradigm, let’s use fatigue as the example, okay. So, you’ve got low energy. One paradigm approach to that is, I have low energy, let me go to the doctor and they can prescribe stimulants, or they can prescribe some other pill that fixes this biochemical, whatever biochemical imbalance randomly arose in me that’s causing me to be fatigued. Or I can just choose to drink a lot of coffee, and take Red Bull, and take other stimulant pills, and force myself to stay awake and I can combat this state of low energy.
And what you’re talking about is fundamental shift and say, and really asking the question. Why do I have low energy? What am I doing in my life, or what’s going on in my life, and in my environment that is leading to this low energy state and how can I resolve that at the root cause level? And those are, they’re two wildly different approaches that end up in totally different places. And I would argue one of those approaches is really counterproductive, and one of them is likely to point you in the right direction.
Jason: Absolutely, and it’s about taking personal responsibility for your situation, without taking personal fault or blame. It’s not about what you did or didn’t do, it’s about this is where I am and this is my life, it’s nobody else’s. And so, it may be because something happened to you before you even born. It may have been something that happened to you at such a young age that you have no recollection of it. That set the stage for all these things that happened after that. So, it’s not about blame. But ultimately in order to correct we have to take responsibility for where I’m at.
And so, that’s really what it is. And taking responsibility is a part of empowerment, self-empowerment. So, it’s taking back your power because if something else caused my problem, and I’m blaming and pointing the finger at that, then that has the power, not me, right.
So, yes, we can recognize something else played a role in where I’m at and I did things after that. I wasn’t able due to ignorance, or even perhaps knowing, but I was unable to make the shift, but I took these actions and I wasn’t able to sort of correct or integrate these things. And that’s okay. I mean, good Lord, I mean I can give you, talk for hours about the stupid shit that I’ve done, even knowingly.
And part of it was because I had undealt with traumas, and belief systems, and thought processes that were ingrained in me in such a young age that were protective, that were adaptive at that point that then became maladaptive. So, again, these things are gifts and there’s so many things that come from them, but the lessons and the tools that you gain are something you can take with you for the rest of your life. So, they are a guiding light and it’s just about taking responsibility.
So, I’m going to get back to sort of the more grounded approach here of how this stuff works, right. There is an amazing concept or term that was coined called neuroception. And really, I’ve sort of shortened it and it’s kind of the body’s ability to subconsciously read and respond to environmental cues. So, this is a quote from I believe Stephen Porges.
He says “It’s how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life-threatening. The detection of a person as safe or dangerous triggers neurobiologically determined pro-social or defensive behaviors. So, even though we may not be aware of a danger on a cognitive level, on a neurophysiological level our body has already started a sequence of neural processes that would facilitate adaptive defense behaviors, such as fight, flight, or freeze.”
So, what are we talking about? We’re talking about, I think the easiest example of this that everybody can relate to is that if I went up to the average person and I said “Hey Joe, I’m going to ask you in two weeks you’ve got to give a graduation ceremony address to Harvard, to the graduating class. And you’re going to be speaking to them and make it good.” This guy’s going to freak out, right. He’s got to deliver a public address and it’s got to be, it’s got to be pretty good to deliver to these Harvard graduating class.
Speaking publicly, this is a funny one, right. What’s happening? Most of us, even me to this day when I go up and speak publicly in certain instances especially, heart rate starts to increase, blood pressure increases, start getting hot, might sweat a little bit, armpits start to sweat, I actually lose a little bit of cognitive capacity, right.
So, I’m actually getting into this fight or flight, this more, this kind of sympathetic overdrive state, right. My hands might get a little clammy, mouth might get dry. This is what’s happening. It’s like I’m running from a bear but I’m really not. I’m just standing up there perhaps talking to a bunch of other humans.
But there’s something that was ingrained in me as a child that made this situation feel unsafe, right. Whether I was going to be judged, perhaps I wasn’t going to be perfect. I was going to be, you know usually it’s being judged, not feeling worthy your enough, right. So, this is a belief system. That’s all this is. And we all have, all of us, most of us have this. It’s a belief system that if I go up there, I’m going to make a fool of myself, and these people are not going to accept me, and I’m not going to be loved. And that’s a very, very powerful message subconsciously that we’re sort of experiencing.
So, just because I’m giving an address all of a sudden, my biology is responding, and my biology is responding to a belief that was ingrained at an early age. That’s it. So, this is something that happens all the time if a stressful situation happens. Maybe we lose a lot of money. If you go to a casino and watch somebody lose a ton of money, they’ll get pissed right. And it’s like there’s a fear response there because the lack of safety. The safety has just gone away in the money, and now there’s fear and anger.
So, these are things that are happening physiologically that we are not even aware of. And so, oftentimes when we go into these situations our body is going to respond. In either a way that’s safe or its going to be some sort of fear response. And this kind of ties into Porges’s work, the Polyvagal Theory. And again, this is theory, this is not based in fact necessarily, but it seems to be bearing out that this is the case and essentially…
The role of the vagus nerve in health and energy levels
Ari: I would say there’s a remarkable number of people that resonate with this and I think it’s a really good explanatory model for a lot of things we can observe.
Jason: I do too. It’s a model that whether or not it’s perfectly correct, it works to explain what’s happening. And so, I agree, I think for me it’s settled, but just putting it out there it’s still considered a theory. And it actually ties into Robert Naviaux’s work too, with the cell dangerous response. And essentially the idea here is that we have three modes of operation. You know before we used to think about two modes. The vagus nerve would fire and the sympathetic or parasympathetic. Sympathetic being this sort of fight or flight, and parasympathetic is this rest and digest.
But there’s another phase of the parasympathetic, which is supposedly the good side. Now we can’t think about it as the good side. There is no good or bad, it just responds. But the parasympathetic involves this freeze, right. It’s the dorsal side of the vagus nerve that is a freeze response. So, you see at the bottom we have social engagement. This is calmness, and connections, settled, groundedness, curiosity, openness, compassion, these are all beautiful, amazing emotions and states that we want to be in.
But it’s not like you can just flip a switch and decide to be in that state. Your body’s actually determining the state that you’re in, along with your mind, of course. The mind can lead the body and the body can lead the mind, but oftentimes we have a subconscious computer program running in the background that prevents us from getting into this social engagement. This relaxed parasympathetic rest and digest state.
So, that’s something, if you have a computer virus that’s running in the background you can’t run your programs very well, no matter what you do, until you get rid of the virus. It’s sort of the same thing, we got to get rid of this program, integrate it rather, so that we can run this social engagement relaxed state.
Otherwise, we’re going to go to sympathetic which is a great state to be in, right. This is fear, panic, rage, anger, this serves a role and your body’s physiology will respond. And then if that doesn’t shut off or it gets too intense, it’s going to move into this freeze. It’s like, okay, we don’t know what to do now, let’s stop, let’s reserve our energy because what we were using actually is not very useful.
It’s not getting us anywhere. So, let’s just pause, just shut down for now. And that is brilliant response by the body because what it’s saying is, I was trying this tactic of turning on all these sympathetic responses and it didn’t work. So, let’s just shut that down. Let’s Reserve our energy.
So, this is how it ties into the energy stuff, right. If we were in social engagement that is this restful state. We are preserving or holding on to our energy in a way that allows us to be creative, allows us to be useful in terms of what we would typically want to do with our life. And granted it also reserves energy for responding in case we need to, in this fight or flight state.
So, it’s a really great place to rest in, if we are expending energy in this fight or flight in a way that is useful, running from a bear, fantastic. Really, really good use of that resource, of that energy that you’ve reserved because you’ve typically been in the social engagement relaxed state.
But if you’re on stage giving a speech that’s a waste of energy. Turning on all these sympathetic systems just to give a speech, that is a maladaptive response that was created from an early state. So, it’s a really poor use of energy, right. So, we’re actually not using energy efficiently, especially if I can’t think very well, right because blood is going into different parts of the brain. So, this is really key because as we go throughout our day we might be triggering into this sympathetic response. Or we may be spending most of our day there, when we don’t need to be.
And it’s because we have this low-level anxiety of whatever situation in our life. Don’t like my boss, afraid of getting fired, whatever the case is. Husband-wife situation, kids, there’s all these things that can trigger us. The coronavirus. That’s one that triggers us, right. Even without getting this virus we can be triggered into a state where we are making really poor use of the energy that we have. So, we’re expending it on this sort of fight or flight response.
This is really, really important to recognize. And again, I said, I mentioned it ties into Naviaux’s work in the cell dangerous spots. He sees the same thing at the cellular level with the mitochondria. They will be in a social engagement type of phase, where it’s restful and they’re using energy efficiently and then boom a threat comes in and we’re expending all this ATP, we eject it outside the cell, we’re communicating, we’re like threat, threat, danger, danger, right. And that’s a really good use of that energy if we have a real threat. But if that doesn’t shut off, we’re screwed, right. We’re wasting energy.
And then what he’s also highlighting, is the other phase of this cell dangerous response, which is this freeze phase, which we can get stuck and that’s the chronic fatigue stuff. It’s like you’re stuck in this phase where you have the energy, but you can’t use it because your body’s stuck in this state. And so, we got to get back to this ability to rest in the social engagement state and then flip on the sympathetic side when we need it.
Ari: Yeah. So much I want to comment on there, so much great stuff in there. I will say one interesting piece that links Naviaux’s work with Porges’s polyvagal theory is, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Dr. Martin Picard’s work in mitochondrial psychobiology, but…
Jason: I’m not. See, this is what I mean. Ari teaches me stuff and he points me over here, and then I have to go research all this stuff. So, you gave me some homework, great.
Ari: He’s got some great research on there. I know you dig to just dive into the studies themselves. You’ll also have fun listening to the interview that I’ve done with him on the podcast.
Jason: Oh, beautiful.
Ari: Great guy, super smart guy but the just of it is basically they’ve determined that psychological stress, they measured the effect of psychological stress on mitochondrial function literally minutes later and shown that intense psychological stress leads to leakage of mitochondrial DNA into the bloodstream literally within a few minutes of some kind of psychological stress. And that mitochondrial DNA like the purinergic molecules, like ATP, ADP, act as cell danger signals to the rest of the body.
Jason: Interesting. So, this is what I mean, this is like we’re starting to map this stuff but it’s like, the question I have is how the heck does that happen?
Right? It’s like we have a thought or belief system and all of a sudden it’s turning on certain genes and cues to then eject the stuff that then communicates to other mitochondria to create this, I mean it’s magic. It’s almost magic. It’s really, really profound. That’s fascinating, I love that. And it’s a great explanation for what’s happening, right.
And let’s remember the vagus nerve or all of our nervous system is just made up of the same stuff that other cells are made of. It’s in fact more mitochondria in the nervous system than most of the places in our body. So, it’s really, it’s one in the same, right. This is what’s happening. It’s just on a cellular level and on a systems level, we can think about them in different ways if we want, but it’s the same stuff.
Ari: Yeah, the only other thing I wanted to say on this is I’ve had a couple near-death experiences in my life.
Jason: A couple?
Ari: A couple, yeah. Now, I have a brother, an older brother who’s my best friend. I’ve done a lot of traveling with him all over the world and he doesn’t have a strong sense of danger.
Jason: He pushes the limit.
Ari: Yeah, like he just kind of has a feeling like we should just go for it. Like whenever you’re in a dangerous situation. Like my brains wired to assess risk in every like facet possible and he’s just like his brain doesn’t do any of that. He’s just like let’s just go, what could go wrong? When’s the next time you’re going to be in Costa Rica and have an opportunity to surf 15-foot waves.
Jason: Convincing argument, that’s what it sounds like.
Ari: Yeah, and I always like a dummy, I’m always like I guess you’re right. I guess I won’t be in Costa Rica and have another opportunity to surf these waves. So, in one particular time, I almost drowned and I just won’t take you through the whole details of all the story, but basically got held down by a big, big wave. Got dragged underwater for a long period of time.
Just when you feel like you are not going to make it ,you finally make it to the surface you get a breath and then another wave comes right down on you and then that happens three or four times. And I’ve literally been underwater and had the feeling, and you become hyper aware of what you’re thinking, and you go from intense struggling I got to get up, I got to get up, I got to get up, I got to get a breath, and then at a certain point you actually just accept it.
You actually just accept, oh, okay, I guess this is the end, now I’m about to die. And I’ve actually been in that mental state which I kind of interpret as a shift from fight, or flight, to freeze, to just I’m accepting that I cannot do anything about this. But what’s, that was a moment in time, what’s interesting is that it seems to be possible, as you alluded to, to get kind of stuck in this freeze response and just kind of have apathy, and fatigue, and lack of vitality, and depression across the board and just kind of be stuck in that nervous system state.
Jason: Absolutely, and that’s, coming back to energy and thinking about energy and how we utilize it. It’s the extraction of energy from the environment, and it’s utilizing it effectively. And if we’re not using it then we’re actually making poor use of whatever energy we extract, right. So, it’s almost like this flow. We want to keep the flow of energy coming. We bring it in and we use it effectively, bring it in we use it effectively, and if we can’t, if it’s stuck, and we’re not using the energy that we have then it’s just a really bad use, and of course we end up with these symptoms and these things that we’re dealing with.
So, yeah, I just love the CDR and polyvagal theory as a way to explain some of these things, because for so long we got it wrong, I think. We thought that it was fight or flight, or not. And if people were not in fight or flight then it was like, okay, well you’re good. But no, they’re literally not able to get out of that state, and that’s critical to do. So, it’s like not being able to get out of bed. It’s like just cause you’re in bed doesn’t mean that’s a good thing. It’s like sleeping is good and moving around, and going about your day is good, but not being able to get out of bed is not good thing. So, we got to be able to get out of that state effectively.
How to get yourself out of stress
Ari: Where do we go from here? How do we get ourselves out of that state?
Jason: Well, one of the things I want to mention before we get to that, because there’s a really important thing that is often missed and it relates to the work that we typically do with, in longevity. And one of the things that we talk about that’s so important is connection, right.
And it’s identified community or connection as a really important thing for all health. In fact, the Harvard Happiness Study identified community and connection as the number one thing. And that’s great, and it’s not wrong but there’s an important thing that gets in the way of this connection.
So, when we have these traumas and we have these things that happened to us in childhood we actually develop maladaptive behaviors when it comes to connection. And these are sort of attachment styles that have been described. When it’s healthy we have an attachment style that is secure, then we have relationships whether they be romantic, or with family, or with friends, that allows us to feel safe and allows us to welcome new connections in a safe and securely attached way.
But there are these other ones that are maladaptive responses. One has sort of been termed the anxious attachment style. And this is sort of, very sensitive to outside threats. You have a strong fear of being abandoned. You desire consistency and stability. You value closeness and intimacy in your relationships. And you can act out when that feels threatened. So, this is often the type of person that probably didn’t get these things in childhood. The parent typically or other figures were too inconsistent.
And so, there was a need to be sort of anxious about, oh my gosh this my loved one’s going to leave, and I need to hold you close. So, there’s a very anxious, you know in the in the rom-com movies, you might see this as the female lead typically that is chasing the male lead and she’s really excited, and when she gets him she can’t let him go and she’s overbearing, right. That’s kind of the typical.
And then the other lead, typically the male lead, would have some kind of avoidant attachment style. As soon as she comes too close it’s like pull back, right. So, we see this a lot in sort of the rom-com dynamics. But the dismissive avoidant, it kind of feels well-put-together, high sense of self, and they had to rely on themselves for their own soothing and comfort. So, they didn’t get soothed and comforted, at least perceived when they were young, so they had to learn to rely on themselves. And I think that the biggest one is that they tend to dismiss their needs in a relationship.
So, there’s a lack of sort of relying on somebody else in a relationship. So, they’re more guarded in relationships. And then the other one is a fearful avoidant. And this is, they can tend to feel used or exploited. So, they prematurely pull away. That’s the typical male lead is they pull away when things are getting too close because it’s not safe. So, the reason I bring these up is because we all have one of these.
We either have secure, or we have anxious, or some sort of avoidant type of strategies. And usually we have a mix, right. In most circumstances we might feel safe and then we use these strategies when we feel unsafe. And some of us have very, very strong dismissive avoidant, fearful avoidant, or anxious strategies. So, I just want to highlight this to point to some of the stuff that doesn’t get brought about much in our conversations.
Because again if relationships, and connection, and community is so important for our health, which it has been proven over and over again and allows us to feel comfortable, and safe, and in that sort of social engagement parasympathetic state. Literally it’s that connection that’s doing that and if we’re not able to connect, then we’re always in this sort of fight or flight state, in low level.
So, it’s poorly used energy because we’re unable to feel connected to others. So, these attachment styles are formed when we’re one years old, two years old, three years old. These are, it’s not our fault if we have these adaptive strategies. They’re adaptive because it’s saved us. We felt unsafe, unprotected.
And so, in order to feel safe, we had to develop these strategies to protect ourselves. So, these are brilliant strategies that we are developing that become part of our ego structure. They become part of our personality. And it’s just about identifying where you fit. Sometimes people use both, they’ll use a fearful avoidant and then they’ll flip over into anxious when that serves.
So, the more we can improve our ability to connect, then it allows us to get into that parasympathetic state even more. So, it’s really important to recognize this as a potential for keeping you out of the parasympathetic rest and digest state and triggered into this sympathetic overdrive, or even into that sort of chronic fatigue state where you can’t make use of the energy very well at all.
One of the, this is one of my favorite quotes from Orestis Portelos on our travels. He said, “When I was young the body was busy, and the mind was still. The problem today is that the mind is busy, and the body is still.” And this is critical right. So, not only does it show us we need to keep moving in our life, but it shows us that we’re overstimulated. We’re looking for solutions in the mind and we need to relax, and shut down, and get out of the mind a little bit.
And so, this gets into something that’s very interesting when we think about meditation. And in meditation, that’s something that’s sort of shutting down the stimuli. And of course our mind is still going but this is a tool that we can use and in one of the interesting studies that I love about meditation, was looking at the effect of meditation on the amount of light essentially that you’re losing from the skin. So, what are we talking about here? Well we know that mitochondria they’re turning substrates into, of course ATP, but they also produce heat and other forms of light. This is something that mitochondria produce, and uncoupling proteins are playing a role and all these things. They also produce reactive oxygen species, but we’re actually making light.
And if we meditate, we actually reduce the amount of light that were losing from our bodies. So, what that tells me is that we’re actually sort of slowing down or making the mitochondria more efficient. So, we’re actually losing less light from the mitochondria. So light is energy, we want to hold onto that. We want to make best use of the energy that we’re sort of processing.
And so, just by meditating it’s actually been shown now that we’re releasing less light from the body. We’re actually losing less. We’re holding on to it more and making better use of it in the body itself. So, it’s just a fascinating way to think about this. And again, it makes a lot of sense in are over stimulated environment that we find ourselves in.
Ari: I just want to mention in case somebody’s totally unfamiliar with biophotons and the emission of light from our cells. These are wavelengths of light that we cannot see with our eyes, that generally are outside of the range of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans can pick up with our visual system, but you can visualize it with certain technology that can see into the near infrared. And maybe, it’s probably somewhere in the near, mid, or far infrared range.
Jason: And UV, and UV.
Ari: Oh, interesting.
Jason: Yeah, so they’re actually measuring both. And what’s interesting too is that, look I mean this isn’t extremely significant. It’s not like when they did this study and they were measuring the light it was like tons of light that you’re losing, it’s sort of infinitesimally small. It’s like really, really tiny amount of energy that they’re measuring.
But the point is, is what they’re measuring is significant in terms of what it’s saying. It’s saying that if we do certain things, we’re actually saving our energy, we’re actually making more efficient use of the energy. We’re not losing it so much.
So, it’s just a demonstration of a concept that I think is very, very important to recognize, which is how we use our energy that we have. So, just by quieting the mind, by centering ourselves, by not getting lost in thought. I mean, for crying out loud thought uses how much of our, 30 or 40% of our energies is in the brain, right. So, we’re constantly using energy through thoughts and the various mechanisms that the brain is sort of primarily responsible for. But as we quiet that then we can save our energy.
This is, like the Buddhist monks, and the Zen Masters, and the Vedic’s, they’ve all been talking about this type of thing, right. It’s really a matter of centering ourselves and calming the system down overall, because right now in the West we are so, so over simulated we are constantly responding to the environment that were in. And another aspect to not only the energy utilization, and meditation and slowing things down, it actually has to do with belief systems.
So, a great quote by Mark Twain, who’s just a brilliant dude. He said, “The power which a man’s imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without.” So, he’s just talking about the placebo effect. This is your ability, the ability of the mind to directly impact your physiology. This is powerful.
It’s, you just talked about it before, it’s like the thoughts that we have, and the belief systems actually dictate our biology. Bruce Lipton talks a lot about this, he’s sort of famous for talking about the biology of belief. And it’s interesting to recognize that the thoughts and the beliefs that we have, and the emotions that we have, do interact with not only the nervous system, of course, but that’s a system, they actually get down to the cellular level.
And they’re impacting our entire physiology. They’re impacting the water, they’re impacting the intracellular space, they’re impacting every aspect of us. There’s not one thing that it’s not impacting. How does it work? We’re still trying to nail that down. It could be through non-material energy, whether that be light or something else that they might call Chi in some other cultures. Or it could be through the fascia, it could be electrical impulses through the fascia, through water, could be through the nervous system, or it could be some combination, but it’s definitely happening.
And so, the belief systems that we have impact us. Just like the the body can impact the thoughts and emotions, this is well studies. You can do the the power posture, where you stand with your hands on your hips, and your feet apart, and you smile strongly, and you stand up with your chest out. You do that for two minutes and your whole physiology changes. This has been measured, studied many times. So, that’s just your body impacting physiology. Your mind can impact the physiology as well. So, these things are interactive.
And so, I think it’s just important to recognize that whatever you’re believing about your story, about yourself, about your healing path, about your disease, about what you’re capable of, is actually going to dictate partially what you’re capable of. So, the sooner that we can start to change our beliefs, to change the things that are subconsciously operating, then the sooner our biology will respond.
And unfortunately, it’s not as easy to just believe something new. We can’t just think something, and it sticks. These beliefs are deep-rooted. And usually they have to do with self worth, and the value that you place on yourself. And again, these are ingrained in us at an early age. So, again it goes back to the traumas and the things that we experienced. Micro traumas and the belief systems that were ingrained in us.
They might not even be traumas. They might just be belief systems that are passed down to us. So, these are ingrained within us and they’re cultural, they are in the family, they come from the media, they come from doctors that tell you, you have cancer and you’re going to die in six months. That’s a belief system that’s given to you by a doctor, that’s not real. There’s plenty of people that don’t buy into that and they last way longer and the cancer doesn’t even really faze them. They just get right through it.
So, these are really, really strong things to recognize because the belief system does impact the biology in a major way. And there’s even studies that are looking at this, the power of intention. Now, again I don’t want to proclaim that these are hard scientific studies that have no, that there’s nothing to prove that they’re wrong or they’re right.
There are some that say that it’s true and there’s some studies that show that it’s false. But the power of intention impacting something like a plant or other living organisms. There’s enough evidence now to say that there’s something there. There’s something there. We don’t know what it is. We don’t really know how it works.
But if you go into other cultures, I’ve been doing a lot of work with some of the shamanic and indigenous cultures, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, these cultures believe that all life is connected. And that we can absolutely talk to plants and plants can talk to us, and we can understand each other.
It’s the level of awareness and perception through which you’re able to communicate that is the key difference. And they have tools and things that they use to sort of get to the subtle level of communication that I can’t say that I’ve honestly experienced, but I’m open to that reality. Because I’ve seen enough evidence to suggest that it’s a possibility.
So, I just invite everybody to have this possibility, to hold this potential that we through our intention can impact not only ourselves but through other life, and this is very, very powerful if we recognize this potential, because that means that my intention matters to you. And my intention for humanity as a whole can even matter to you.
So, it’s very interesting when we look at these and sort of through that I want to invite the Maharishi Effect. And again, this is, it’s hard to determine scientifically as we like to think about it in the lab if this is correct, but there’s been a number of studies, so to speak that are looking at this. Where this idea that if enough people get together and they either meditate, or pray, or just hold an intention of let’s say love, compassion, forgiveness, etcetera, that that can have an impact on the greater whole.
And what the Maharishi Effect essentially is described, these groups that get together they will hold some intention, they will pray, they’ll meditate, whatever it is, and then we’re looking at statistics around the globe or in a specific city maybe, they’ve done it in Washington, DC, they’ve done it globally, and they find that the crime rate drops. Or they find that terrorism drops. And I’m not talking small things, we’re talking major, major effects.
And so, these are interesting things to look at, right. We see improved international relations in various places based on this sort of Maharishi Effect. And Heart Math has looked at this. There’s a number of organizations that are looking at this, how does the global consciousness or consciousness of a group affect others and affect the world? And it’s interesting, okay.
So, I just want to sort of put this out there that I’m not claiming this to be a hard fact, but there’s enough evidence that the Maharishi Effect is some phenomena that’s fairly real. And we know through quantum physics that everything is connected, that two things can be directly affected in very far away distances instantaneously, that is outside of the speed of light.
So, we have these things that we can’t explain and we have these phenomena, and if we just start going down this path it’s not a stretch when we recognize that our thoughts, and our beliefs, and our mental states can affect ourselves and affect others then how far does that, how far can we extend that?
So, I’m just sort of inviting that into the conversation here because it’s important to recognize that when we heal ourselves, we can actually heal others. When we help heal others that actually heals ourselves. So, we’re all connected in this sort of game that we’re playing. But it really comes down to the level of energy because if we’re all in this heightened state of fear or awareness, then perhaps we are actually getting triggered by the environment in ways that we don’t even recognize it.
So, in other words my energy is getting pulled into the sympathetic overdrive because I’m in an environment that is pulling me in there. So, this is really interesting and it’s something that I’ve personally experienced when we went down to Costa Rica to film for our project, I noticed that despite the fact that we had a ton of work to do and we had limited time, and we have to do all these things, it felt like time slowed down. It felt like the pressure wasn’t there because the environment that I was in is so slow, and calm, and peaceful. And then I noticed when I got back into the States, I landed in Houston, and it felt like I was late for something. Felt like I had a ton to do.
So, my perception of things shifted without the reality shifting other than just a perception of the location that I was in. So, it’s just an interesting effect and I would invite people to look at this in their own lives. Are there places where you feel triggered? You just walk into a place and it’s like, oh I feel different. Good or bad, hyper or calm.
And start to recognize this, because I think it’s a very real phenomenon and that’s the idea here, is that I don’t, I’m not trying to convince anybody of these things other than to say that perhaps your environment is impacting your energy levels. And your nervous system shifting you into different states without anything shifting about you per se.
Ari: It’s interesting I think to examine, and maybe this is straightforward for some people and maybe not for others, but this principle of intention and the placebo effect is active whether you are aware of it or not. And you can either be in a cycle of an unconscious vicious cycle of having all kinds of negative thoughts, and emotional states, and intentions passing through your head at any given time, and the results that you’re experiencing in your life would be the result of that.
Or you also have the capacity to consciously intervene to interrupt what’s going on psychologically or perhaps spiritually, and create a different intention, and create a different intention to heal, and create a different intention to tell yourself a different narrative about yourself, about the world around you, about others, and I think the realization that we have that power to intervene in that and create a different intention is an important one.
Jason: It is and it’s free, right. I mean we’re all looking for cheap ways to improve our health and certain things are very expensive and that’s an understanding, but this is free. When you look at the most successful people in any walk of life, they have a certain mentality that they, that they take with them into their endeavor. So, we can cultivate these things and some of them are like I said, they’re affected by the things we experience in childhood for sure, but we can cultivate these things too.
So, I think it’s just, what I’d like to point to is just the reality here. Understand that your beliefs matter. Understand that your thoughts matter. Understand that your emotions matter. And understand that a lot of these things are programmed from an early age and understand that we can change these things. So, as we shift and change these things now that starts to shift our biology in major, major ways.
So, I think a lot of times we just, we don’t give this enough credence as the reality that’s underlying whatever we’re going through. Why can’t I, I always meet the same guy and he always… well we tell ourselves these stories, and it’s like yeah, we’re doing the same things because we’re caught in the same patterns of mental, emotional, sort of psychospiritual states that if we can shift those then our reality shifts.
So, that’s just an important recognition. And I want to get to a few practical tools too, because I think this is important from an energetic perspective. And working with the breath is a fascinating tool that is so easy to utilize. And one of the tools that you can use in the morning, if you’re slow to get going, you can impact your energy just by doing the energizing breath, right.
And so, I’ve given some instruction here and I won’t go through this step by step but it’s there for you to look at and you can pause this and take a look at this. But essentially, you’re using a quick breath through the nose…
Ari: Well actually Jason…
Jason: Do you want me to go through it?
Ari: Yeah do go through it just because some people will be listening to this rather than…
Jason: Oh, okay. Yeah, so the energizing breath is very simple. You should use caution if you’re pregnant, or if you have hypertension, epilepsy, seizures, panic disorders, you don’t want to spike yourself in those instances, especially. So, just be cautious with this breath.
It is pretty powerful, especially for certain individuals. You essentially want to inhale and exhale rapidly through your nose and your mouth. Through your nose with your mouth closed, right. So, close your mouth, inhale really fast through the nose. Two to three breath cycles per second. Something like that and your belly should be moving in and out.
So, this shouldn’t be a chest breath it should be going through the belly. And if you do this non-stop for more than 15 seconds or so at first, we want to start with 15 seconds, see how you feel, and do a few cycles. So, take a take a breath after that just relax and then do a couple more rounds of that, then you can extend it, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute. No real need to go over minute, but just a few seconds of that type of breath and a few cycles of that, actually will spike your nervous system and get you going. It actually gets you going, it shifts you into a more sympathetic let’s go state.
And so, doing something like that and going outside walking, you can start to get your morning going in a really, really good way and this actually impacts your circadian rhythm, right. It’s going to start your system going. It’s like the body starts to recognize, okay, it’s time to get up, let’s roll. And the breath is triggering all that. So, that’s a simple one that we can use if we’re feeling sluggish.
It’s also something I believe that if, I don’t know if we can look at this, but I believe with referring to Naviaux’s work that we can actually use breath to get ourselves out of that CDR stuck phase. I think we can actually use it and there’s all kinds of pranayama’s, lots of different breath works.
They probably have looked at this thousands of years ago and had the experience, they just didn’t have the mechanisms to describe it, but I believe that that’s one of the easiest ways that we can probably induce people out of the state. And done over a long period of time may actually be able to get it to stick. Just a thought, but it’s something that I think is interesting, because breath is powerful.
Ari: I think things that, these inputs in the nervous system as well as hormetic stimuli, have the capacity to jolt the nervous system.
Jason: To kick start it, right?
Ari: When it’s in a particular stuck state and allow it to sense where it’s at, and then hopefully bring it back into better balance. Sometimes when you’re stuck in a particular state and you don’t have any environmental stimuli that are jolting it in any direction, it just stays stuck there.
Jason: That makes sense. That makes sense, yeah. It’s like you got to jar it out of there, get it unstuck and then it can sort of re-calibrate.
Ari: Yeah.
Jason: Yeah that makes a lot of sense, I totally agree. And then the other one that you can do is a relaxing breath. So, this is, you want to do this sort of in the evening or anytime you want to relax. Before meals, if you’re all jacked up for whatever reason, a work out, or you just got into a fight, or whatever the case is and you need to calm things down before you eat a meal, a relaxing breath can help you get into that parasympathetic state.
So, Ari, you and I talk a lot about this, where we talk about this sort of on-off. Like we want to be in these on-off states, we don’t want to be caught in the middle. It’s like you want to be totally on or totally off, that’s really a generally good sign. That’s not totally true, but you get the idea. I think this is what we’re doing with the breath.
Let’s jack ourselves up a little bit with the energizing breath in the morning or whenever we need to get going, and then using the breath in a different way to shut things down or slow things down to get us in this sort of rest and digest phase.
So, one way to do this is you just inhale through your nose or your mouth, sorry inhale through your nose with your mouth closed for four seconds. So, mouth closed, so its a longer breath in and then at the top you hold your breath for a count of seven. This is also called the four, seven, eight breath. So, you hold your breath for seven seconds at the top and then you exhale completely through your mouth for eight seconds.
So, inhale through the nose, hold, exhale completely through the mouth for 8 seconds. And as you exhale you make this sound, right. This whoosh sound and you’re fully exhaling the entire body, so your navel should draw in towards your spine. You’re literally trying to get rid of every last ounce of breath that’s in your body. So, you’re completely expelling that. And then you’re going to do that again for about five rounds.
So, and if you’re liking this, it’s interesting because it may be hard at first for some people to sort of inhale really deeply or hold or exhale, it may be tiring to actually do the breath, and that’s normal at the beginning. But as you start to do it more and more your body becomes adapted to what’s happening.
And you’re messing with the oxygen and CO2 cycle. So, your body is now becoming more efficient when it’s like out of breath, or it’s not getting that breath, it’s using the oxygen efficiently and it’s using the CO2 efficiently, all kinds of changes are happening at the cellular level.
So, it’s starting to, you’re starting to create a hormesis, right. It’s hormetic effect. Now your body becomes more adapted and it’s slowing things down. So, if you do this, you can do this breath up to 5 minutes, 10 minutes. You can do this breath for quite a long time, and it’s going to slowly calm the system.
And what I really like is that if you get good at this and it becomes a little bit easier, you don’t have to think about it so much, you can actually do visualization with this. You can actually put your awareness on the ground, or your butt, or your feet, and you can start to ground your energy.
And this is real. This is real, you’re actually using awareness to move the energy through your body. They talk about this and all kinds of Qigong, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, this is very real. And as you start playing with it you can feel it. You can feel the chi, or the energy, or the blood flow, moving through the body and even outside the body, it’s very fascinating. So, this is something you can do, you can start to play with your awareness with all this as well.
So, the relaxing breath is a great tool before bed, before you eat, or anytime you need to relax and it’s super, super easy. And those are just two breaths, there’s all kinds of breathworks that you can do. There’s pranayama, there’s dozens of techniques in the pranayama’s teachings, there’s box breath, there’s tons, right. There’s holotropic. There’s dozens and dozens and they can all be used differently, but these are two that are really, really good just by, just to jolt the energy around.
Ari: Yeah. One quick comment on the breathwork. I’ve been doing breathwork
for close to 20 years at this point, so I kind of take some of this for granted, but I recently taught my mom who’s in her mid-70s literally two weeks ago I taught her, actually the fire breath or the energizing breath. And it was really hard for her.
Jason: Yeah.
Ari: She’s never done any breathwork in her life and something that I thought was really simple and easy, was actually quite difficult for her. And so, I just want to, for everybody listening to this, if you try these different practices and you find that they’re difficult for you, or you have a hard time getting your belly going as you’re doing the in and out breath, be gentle on yourself.
Give yourself a few weeks to learn these, don’t make it a huge stressful thing and don’t force it and use a lot of effort. If you can’t hold your breath for 7 seconds on each breath, do four, do whatever you can do and try to just build up to these recommendations slowly over time with compassion for yourself…
Jason: Absolutely. Beautiful, I’m glad you said that. And it’s interesting because the energizing breath or the breath of fire, got a few names, people will say, “Oh it’s so hard. I start sweating.” And I’m like, yeah, that’s the point. You’re actually engaging the system and you’re pushing it. It’s like working out, you’re just working out the respiratory system and the whole system that’s, every system that’s tied to the respiratory system, you’re going to the gym.
So, of course at the beginning when you’re not, when you’ve never been to the gym, it’s hard work. And you feel like, boy this is tough. So, that actually is a good sign, right. That if there’s a little bit of struggle at the beginning that’s fantastic. Because as you continue to do it you realize how much easier it gets, and you realize how far you’ve come and that is telling you that there’s real impact. It’s not just that you got better at breathwork. No, there’s real physiological impact that you’re making.
It’s like I do a little yoga, I don’t, I wouldn’t say I, it’s not a consistent practice, but I’ll dabble. And my wife is like a yoga teacher and she can do these moves that looks so damn easy, and in fact they are easy for her, and I try them and it’s like so difficult. And it’s no other reason then that’s my edge. And so, wherever my edge is that’s great place to push. It’s a great place to continue to move that edge.
So, that sign of resistance is the beautiful point that you want to be at, you want to continue to push that. So, I’m glad you mentioned that. And more importantly as you said, find compassion for yourself, take it easy, it’s okay that the struggle is real and that’s a good thing to have. So, to honor that struggle, honor the process, and honor the progression that you will make. But if you do this consistently, I mean, Christ you’ve done it for 20 years, Ari, that’s… there’s real benefit there.
And the benefit almost becomes elusive when you’ve done it for that long, because it’s just a part of your life. And so, it’s impossible, in other words it’s impossible to measure the impact that you’ve made on your life through breathwork over 20 years, because it’s just so profound. So, these are just simple tools that if you haven’t done it, you’ll find it very fascinating and very useful and it’s amazing what can happen when you do these on a semi consistent basis.
Another one, shinrin-yoku, this is just forest bathing and you don’t have to be in a forest, you can be anywhere, just get out in nature. Calms the nervous system, changes your brain wave patterns, it just slows the system down. So, a very, very good tool and a reminder for us all if you’ve been listening to Ari for a while this is not a reminder at all, this is just another thing you hear him say all the time, just get outside, get out in nature, so.
Ari: I do it every day, I don’t say it nearly as much as I should, but yeah. I mean you and I went for a walk, I took you to a forest trail in our neck of the woods, a week or two ago. So, yeah, I’m a huge advocate of it, I think the research on it is amazing, but I perhaps don’t say it as often as I should.
Jason: It’s just apart of your everyday life. So, then here’s a reminder, get outside, go out in nature and just get, with nothing else, just go for a walk. A couple other things, using creativity and just creating something can be very beneficial to get us out of this sympathetic overdrive.
So, when you’re in this state of creativity expression, you know when you’re, if you’re dancing, if you’re playing or listening to music, if you’re singing, or just in some flow state, surfing is a great example, that immediately changes your physiology, right. There’s just no way around it. If you’re lost in your artwork, you’re not thinking about other things, and your body is actually responding in a different way too.
So, that actually changes the subconscious. So, just a reminder that playing, creating, dancing, singing, these are just easy things that we can engage with. Dogs, and pets, and kids, are great for this. So, just engage with that more and it will actually shift your energy in such profound ways and help you utilize the energy that you have in a much better way. And then, a couple more here to address trauma these are some tools. I don’t like to just point to all these traumas and not give people a way out.
So, I just want to point to some solutions that people can explore. One is neurofeedback that can be useful for certain things. EMDR which is, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. This is sort of a somatic experience it’s using the body with sort of a therapeutic sense regarding certain traumas. So, you’re actually engaging, you’re changing the neuroception in the body. EMDR is a is great for that, you’re using this rapid eye movement that’s changing the brain. So, it’s very interesting how EMDR works.
Emotional Freedom Technique is very beneficial. I find this typically great for managing these things. For a lot of traumas, and a lot of programs it doesn’t really correct it, I mean it can for some, but for some things it can’t, it’s more for managing. Holotropic breathwork is fantastic for some of this. Meditation.
Family constellation to help with some connection and family issues.
Gratitude, just having some sort of practice, whether it’s a forgiveness journal, gratitude journal, ho’oponopono is a great tool that the Hawaiians developed.
And it’s just a way of bringing a different sense, of different mindset back into your life of what you’re grateful for. Because we can all focus on things that we don’t have, and that we want, and that we need, but you inevitably have something, you’re blessed in so many ways. So, just recognizing those things changes your perception of the world. So, that’s a great practice.
Doing guided plant medicine ceremonies with I think, indigenous or licensed perhaps doctors that know how to do this. I prefer indigenous wisdom because they have different wisdoms, but this should be guided. I do not recommend doing plant medicines like Ayahuasca, or San Pedro, or mushrooms, without the proper understanding of how to use them. Because they can be great cooperative tools to engage, to figure new things out, and to resolve some of these things. But they can also create new issues if you don’t know how to use them effectively.
So, I say that with a big asterisk, be careful with that stuff, but they are great, great tools to use. And then one of my favorites for connection issues and attachment issues is adult attachment repair model. And I would say just look that up, but it’s a fantastic method, I’ve been using it myself and it’s amazing. His work is is fantastic, his name is Peter Levine and does great work there.
And then find a practitioner, find somebody who really understands how to resolve trauma and perhaps knows how to use a number of different methods to get to whatever you need. So, the traumas are hard work. It’s hard to get to some of these things, some things you can’t even see, they’re so blind, we’re blind to our own stuff sometimes. And so, digging in there and finding these things in the subconscious can be very challenging, but those are some tools. And I think you can explore a multitude of these things in order to get to different things.
Ari: Yeah, it’s worth mentioning also in case it’s not straightforward, you don’t need to do all of these things. You might want to dabble and see which one appeals to you, and experiment with some of them. I’ve experimented with almost all of these and some of them for me, didn’t really resonate with me, I didn’t see much benefit from. Like for example EFT, but something like meditation has been huge for me, plant medicines have been huge for me. So, people will, there’s other people for whom EFT works amazingly well for, and they love it, and it’s life-changing. So, you kind of got to…
Jason: Absolutely depending on what you got. Yeah, what you got and what you need to work with. And there could be an order of operation. Sometimes you might need to go, you tried this thing once and didn’t work and then you take care of all these other things, and then you go back to that thing and it’s like, it worked magic for whatever reason. So, it’s just complex stuff. But I totally agree with you, and I’m glad you said that.
So, it’s really about following your heart, follow your intuition, what do you feel like you need? And what’s showing up for you? Find some people that you really feel good with, working with, and go there. So, but definitely worth engaging with this stuff to deal with any sort of physical health ailments that you have. And then a couple other ones that, these are just tools if you have strong anxious attachment tendencies, just some guidance on how to work with that.
You want to be willing to acknowledge your childhood pain. Bring compassion towards yourself. Gently question, challenge your fears, when you become triggered. Practice expressing your needs more directly. Learn to slowly share your abandonment fears with people who earn your trust. So, there’s some tools, right. And then if you have dismissive avoidant tendencies, again, willing to acknowledge your childhood pain, remember that that’s there. Bring compassion to yourself, because some parts of you had to shut down and that was a safety mechanism, so bring compassion to that.
Start paying attention to and scanning your subtle feelings a few times a day. So, just bringing more awareness to those subtle feelings. And then lean towards connection in small doses. So, it’s just about sort of slowly pushing that edge and understanding where you’re at with that. So, just a couple things that you can do there.
If you have strong fearful avoidant tendencies, again, acknowledge your childhood pain, remember that it’s there, and that that’s the reason that you’ve adapted this tendency. Bring compassion to yourself. That the parts of you, and this is not the full you, right. These are parts of you that can feel used or exploited by people. So, there’s just parts that are defensive.
And then work with a professional to help you manage your anxiety or to help you slowly build a safer relational template. And then practice setting firmer boundaries with people when you begin to give too much, and this will help you better manage your resentment as well. So, there’s just, there’s a few tools for you, and there’s a couple more if you’re seeing the slides.
But we’re running long here, and I just want to wrap up with kind of a quote that I think really brought me a lot of healing personally, and it describes what healing is. And the quote is, “Healing is the instantaneous real time process of transforming pain into love.” And this is a, again, this is not based in biology necessarily, although it has biological impacts, but it’s the recognition that healing is instantaneous.
So many times, we’re told that something’s going to take a long time to heal, and yet there’s these miraculous stories out there that can’t be explained. They can’t be explained by science, they can’t be explained by any doctor, any study. It’s like it’s just a miracle. And I don’t know, I don’t know how or why, but there’s enough of them out there for me to listen. And I think this quote actually came from a shaman and it’s something that for me is so powerful because it’s just a reminder that things can happen so fast, and as we heal it can take a little while, it can take a long time, or it can be instantaneous.
And in doing so, that is transforming that pain into love and when we’re in that state that is how we use our energy efficiently. That is when we have this ability to drive coherence in the body, which that is the ultimate efficiency of energy. And so, it’s really getting back to that state, which is a state of alignment, state of balance, a state of rest, and a state of well-being. And as we operate from that state, we can use our energy efficiently no matter if we’re running from a bear, or if we’re in a social environment, of if I got to give a speech at Harvard.
Ari: Beautiful. Speaking of speeches at Harvard, this is totally random note, but have you seen the the Ali G speech at Harvard from Sacha Baron Cohen?
Jason: No, I haven’t.
Ari: Very, very random but it’s hilarious. If you get a chance to watch it on YouTube. He did a full speech in his Ali G character and it’s just…
Jason: Oh, I love it.
Ari: Mind-blowingly funny in some parts.
Jason: And by the way laughter is a fantastic medicine, so.
Ari: On that note, actually this quote kind of reminded me of something. The people that I like the most in the world are, they have a certain relationship to the parts of themselves. And I’m sure my formulation of this, my model of it is incomplete, but the way I kind of think of things is some people hide from the parts of themselves that they’re ashamed of or they don’t like, or they numb themselves to it, or they pretend like it’s not there, and they try to run away and escape from it.
Some people feel them really intensely, all the time and they just are mired in pain, and depression, and sadness, and embarrassment, and guilt, and shame, and all these kinds of negative emotions about these parts. And then some people, the people that I like the most and find the most interesting, and find the most spiritually mature, are the ones who can openly and honestly recognize and talk about all of their flaws, and quirks, and idiosyncrasies, and laugh about them.
Jason: Yes.
Ari: And I’m so glad you said exactly what you just said that laughter is a potent medicine. I really think it is. I think there’s something magical about this way of relating to ourselves where we’re capable of bringing love and playfulness, and laughter is like the true test of full-blown acceptance, right. Not only do you…
Jason: It’s like this levity.
Ari: And just tolerate it, but you, yeah, you have this lightness about it such that you can laugh about it. And it’s hard work to get there, and I don’t want to minimize the fact that some people go through very serious traumas that maybe they never get there with certain things, but I think it’s something to aspire towards and work towards.
Jason: Absolutely. When I was working with a shaman in Peru, there’s a lot of condors in Peru. And the condor represents, it’s like a very, it’s got a lot of meaning for the shamanic world down there. And apparently the condor flies higher than any bird, altitude wise. Of all the birds it flies highest. And the shaman said, “It flies highest because it has the lightest heart.” And I was like, wow that is actually so profound. Whether or not that’s true physiologically, there’s just a realness to that energy that when you have a light heart you can fly high.
And to me these parts that you’re describing is so important, it’s such a key concept to recognize, that we as individuals are not flawed on a soul level or an essence level, we just have fractured parts and pieces in our human world, in this sort of humanness. We develop these parts and pieces of us, that are not us. They’re not the full us, they’re just parts and pieces. So, some of us, and this is the trauma. These are the things, the belief systems, the traumas, whatever happens to us in our journey we get these little parts of us that fracture off.
And this is the energy. Energy is going off in this sort of fractured piece. And this might be a three-year-old that believe something because that got ingrained at 3 years old or got stuck. So, they’re sort of parts of me that are stuck at three years old. There’s parts of me that are stuck at nine years old. There’s parts of me that are… and there’s parts all over the place. And some of these parts are protecting other parts.
So, the people that aren’t able to sort of recognize their flaws and sort of have some levity around them, that’s a part that’s protecting other parts. No, I don’t have these, I’m perfect. That not me. That’s a part that that is there to create safety because that part needs to. So, these are survival strategies, these parts and pieces and as we can recognize these parts and we can start to integrate them back into alignment, and sort of digest them so to speak, then it’s not getting rid of them, it’s not that at all.
It’s like people want to get rid of their ego. And it’s like no, no, no, you don’t want to get rid of it, you want to integrate your ego. You want to understand it and basically develop a truce with your ego. Your egos part of your humanness.
So, these are ego structures, these parts, and as we can sort of recognize them, honor them because they saved us at some point in our life, and really remind ourselves to have compassion for that part of us. Because there’s a four-year-old that is hurt or there’s something that that four-year-old didn’t get, that it still needs.
And so that’s how we work through these traumas is that we give that part of us what it needed, it didn’t get. And there’s lots of things, these are missed experiences, these are things that were belief systems that were portrayed upon us, there’s all kinds of stuff. And so, we give that part of us what it needs and then it becomes whole. The fractured elements of ourselves actually can become whole again.
So, this is really the work I think that we all do. And I think for some people they don’t have that part that is so afraid of admitting these things, and some of us have that part that is like really, really holding tight, because it had to.
And so, as we clean these things up I can tell you my own experience, as I’ve cleaned myself up and I’ve worked some of these parts and gave them what they needed, then the real me can emerge and go yeah shit, I’m pretty flawed. I’m pretty broken. I have all these parts, but the real understanding is I’m not flawed, and I’m not broken, these are just parts and pieces.
And it’s cool when you can recognize them, because then you’re just like ah cool, they’re just parts. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just stuff that happened to me, I developed belief systems and things that saved me. So, in other words I was really damn good at being human, because I developed all these strategies to be safe.
Ari: Yeah.
Jason: And so, I can honor that.
Ari: And getting to that place, again just to connect the dots, getting to that place creates lightness that allows you to start to operate at your full potential and not be mired down by so much negativity that arises from lack of acceptance, or trying to run away from all of these unwanted parts of yourself. I love that, the quote from, about the condors that’s great.
Jason: Beautiful, right? Yeah so…
Ari: Say it one more time.
Jason: Yeah, so the condor flies the highest because it has the lightest heart.
Ari: Love it.
Jason: So, bringing this, wrapping this all around, wrapping it up and bringing it back around to energy, as we create this more whole sense, this more integrated sense of ourselves, instead of being fractured, we’re now able to actually draw more energy from the environment.
This is sort of the Kundalini energy or the prana, this is what all those spiritual traditions and indigenous traditions were doing. They were trying to extract more energy from the environment to basically pull from the Ether so to speak, pull energy and use it more effectively and that’s all this was.
So, they were, their Kundalini energy, their Prana, their Chi, they were really working with this energy and utilizing it more effectively. And so, cleaning up and healing some of these traumas actually allows us to do that, to extract more energy from the environment.
And believe me this is extracting more energy from bananas too. You’re able to digest food better, you’re able to extract that energy, get rid of the waste. So, it’s not just this woo woo spiritual stuff, it’s very, very real. It allows you to sleep better. So, this is all coming back around to the idea of being able to get into that well-being state, extract energy from the environment, and utilize it more effectively.
Jason: So, you’re just triggering parts now, there’s parts of me that are like oh no I screwed up, I didn’t do it right.
Ari: It would be a problem if it were not good content. So, it’s great content, this was a blast man. Brilliant as always, thank you so much for the wonderful conversation. This really was a lot of fun and such good stuff. I’m sure people are going to love it when they hear this. And last thing of course is, if people want to follow your work or work with you, get in touch with you where’s the best place to do that?
Jason: Yeah, they can go to humanlongevityfilm.com, that’s where all our work is. They can find us on social media as well. So, we’re in the traditional spots, Facebook, Instagram, we’re all there.
Ari: Cool. Awesome brother. Well thank you so much and I look forward to our next walk.
Jason: Thanks. You, too, man.
Show Notes
The Psychospiritual Aspect Of Energy (3:30)
The link between childhood experiences and disease (6:25)
Be grateful for disease – a paradigm shift (31:15)
The role of the vagus nerve in health and energy levels (34:24)
How to get yourself out of stress (51:26)
Links
Recommended Podcasts
