Emotions, Energy And Healing

Eric Robins, MD

Tom. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, as you said, it’s been a couple of years to come to fruition and I was having a little burn out after being in a, you know, working in a COVID ward and happy to be here. Thank you so much.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. So the first question I wanna ask you, I’ve already described to people what you, you do a little bit, right? You are in an MD, you’re at a major medical center and you also on tougher cases that get referred to you and, and maybe some that come naturally to you. You’re using energy healing. How the heck did you make that transition? I’m sure they didn’t teach that to you at Baylor Medical School. So how did this happen? Tell us your story?

Eric Robins, MD

Sure. So as you mentioned, I’m a urologist, I’m in full time practice. I’m a regional referral specialist for chronic pelvic pain, but I see a lot of other stuff in addition to that, you know, folks sent me their chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia edges. And you know, there’s a subset of patients that frequent flyers in the hospital, they get these million dollar workups and the hospitals can’t figure out what’s going on. And so I kind of get all those folks sent to me. And, you know, I would say I kind of got good at this combination of things mainly to help myself. I had chronic fatigue syndrome for close to 35 years and a really severe brain fog. And I remember going to a bio energetic psychologist back in 1997.

And at that time, I just was collapsed, you know, in my, in my job and my relationship personally, my health and this bio energetic psychologist told me because Eric, you’re getting by on 3% and I can look back now and I’m quite sure that was accurate. And again, I was studying pranic healing and a whole bunch of other modalities trying to heal. And I was getting better to some extent. And then in 2014, I got admitted to hospital and what was going on with that for six months prior to that had these weird neurologic symptoms going on, had these weird twitches in my body and I couldn’t feel the hot water in my hands and got really bad was these cognitive symptoms and just trouble retaining information. 

And then other things were going on. Like if I’d eat, you know, if I’d eat dinner after seven p.m. I’d wake up the next morning and the food was undigested in my stomach. And then the thing that the story that broke the camel’s back was I was in the office one day and out of the blue bam, my heart started racing at 220 beats a minute is a super attack of cardiac. And I was getting dizzy and lightheaded and I got admitted to the hospital. And I mean, just leading up to that, I was felt so stressed, it’s just bad and this neurologic stuff and with, with all due respect, any neurologists that are out there listening, I don’t think they’re particularly good at treating, you know, some sort of chronic degenerative neurologic disease. 

So the hospitals came to see me one day and he said something and I can assure you it’s not really 110000 of the clarity that I now understand the stuff. But he said something and I got the idea, I’m stuck in this fight flight free stress physiology, like I’m stuck in it, you know, and then intuitively a second later, I said, you know, I realized, you know, even though we say the body tends to heal itself, it doesn’t heal very well when it’s stuck in a chronic stress state. I mean, Bruce Lipton used to talk about that. And so that’s when I began to really desperately look for ways, how do I heal this? Some of it was energetic summit was shifting physiology. Those two actually intertwined way more than people think. And maybe we’ll discuss some of that today. And yeah, so that’s kind of that story. And that show is really just to try and help myself. And then these principles work really well for pain, really chronically ill patients too.

Tom McCarthy

So that’s so cool. So your journey into the more holistic way of looking at health came from your own challenges, which I mean, I don’t want to say I’m glad you went through those challenges, but I’m really glad you made this transition because you’re helping so many more people through your journey, which is so beautiful. And by the way, I’ve gone through the same thing and in 2015, which I was just telling you earlier, like I was having all sorts of like the craziest symptoms you’ve ever can imagine like seeing double and you know, I would sleep 14 hours in a day and wake up at night and wake up totally exhausted because I was caught in that fight or flight. What percentage of people that are experiencing chronic illness do you think are, are, are caught in this fight or flight where their body just, it could heal if they got out of that, but it just can’t heal because it’s stuck in this hyper vigilant state. Is that a large percentage you think?

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, experience, that’s almost everybody, you know, it’s interesting. I may be a lot of your listeners have heard of the ace study a stands for adverse childhood experiences study that came out in 1997. And just if it was that depending on how many adverse childhood experiences someone had that translates into disease and early death and, you know, heart disease and lung disease and liver disease and substance abuse and depression, anxiety and cancer and all this kind of stuff. And it’s interesting because when Dr. Fhility first actually presented that information to the NIH I think it was around 1997 that the participants, there were actually incense to the guy like this is BS. There’s no way early childhood things affect people later on. But fortunately or unfortunately, you know, it was, it’s true. I think since then, there’s been about two or 3000 studies written about the Ace study. 

And so if you understand that that actually is true, early traumas affect us later on. And then you kind of reverse engineer that you have to say, well, how do they affect us? So one way, just as you said, they kind of program how our physiology is gonna run really for the rest of our lives for many of us. And they can cause limbic system, dysfunction, limbic systems kind of emotional and fear center of the brain and it can program it. And of course, I’m simplifying it so that many folks are in this fight flight freeze autopilot and the physiology essentially does not turn off. And, you know, I mean, when we’re in a stress state, those stress hormones do a number of things. They, they sensitized nerve fibers and pain fibers, they mess them up. So in my case, with my cognitive stuff, and my heart conduction, my fast heart rate, I’m sure the nerve fibers were reacting to just being in a high fight flight state. Stress, you know, from my own, my chronic pain, folks, such a big part of chronic pain is nerve hypersensitivity and the stress hormones. I think our because of that there’s more inflammation in the body, the hollow viscera, you know, the bowel and the bladder don’t work like they should. Immune system doesn’t work. So there’s a lot of things that happen as a result of that.

Tom McCarthy

So just so we’re not scaring people. There is hope though, right? These are things that we can also help you can.

Eric Robins, MD

Yes, there’s absolutely ways to start shifting people out of a fight flight free stress state for sure. And I’d love to talk about that. I don’t, there’s not as much within the realm of standard medicine and I think that’s why people come to look at something like energy healing or, you know, I mean, as you know, billions of dollars are spent in this country alone for people seeking alternative, you know, healing modalities. Can I hear something else that came up? So some, some other mind body principles that I think are relevant here is this that when stuff happens to us that at the time feel stressful, terrifying, overwhelming, you know, a lot of times will freeze. And one of the things that happens is that the muscles in the fashion in our body lock up and get tense and tight to literally hold those emotions in the body. 

So they’re not coming up to conscious awareness to bother us. And I think actually these areas of tight constricted bio fascia, Wilhelm Reich, you know, used to call it Ricky and Armoring. I personally think that’s the biggest source of blocked energy in the body to begin with. Because so, for example, you know, as you know, I co authored a couple of books on energy healing. And if you go to almost any energy healer, whether it’s someone who does Reiki or Pranic healing or, and acupuncture to put the needles in the meridians, they’ll all say people are sick because the energy is not flowing, it’s blocked. 

But the higher level question to me was always, why is the energy blocked to begin with? You know, it’s like I’m pretty sure our creator didn’t just look down and say, I’m gonna take John and there’s a reason for it. And I think it’s normally where these early stressors, traumas are locked in the mile fascia. Now, one of the challenges is so one of the challenges is we can do things to loosen the bio fashion, get the energy flowing, that’s very good in a lot of instances. But also as you start to release these areas of constricted, my wife, Fasha, what may start coming up to conscious awareness is some of the things that were kind of these uncomfortable memories, sensations, emotions, and it’s important to learn how to deal with that. And there’s good strategies for doing that. Now, you know, I think if you just go do energy healing, just an energy heals someone that’s good. Sometimes I think that’s a little bit like that model. We’ve all heard, you know, you give a man a fish, he eats for a day and if you teach them to fish, he eats for a lifetime. So energy healing in that regard is good. I’d like to see people go deeper, do something to start releasing the myo fascia, let the energy. Well when that happens, there’s some emotional stuff. They’re gonna need to learn how to deal with. And again, happy to talk about some strategies from somatic psychotherapy that work well for that.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. No, I’d love to do that. And I, you’re so right. I was just thinking about this earlier, like so many people are looking for the healer to come, you know, almost like a miracle, you know, like from Jesus or something like that where they’re looking for this here, this miracle to happen. We’re just, you know, out something outside of them comes in and heals them. But the reality is, I mean, that can be helpful and it can happen and probably a small percentage of cases. But the larger percentage of cases we have to do the work, right? We’ve got to do some of this work because it’s shifting who we are. It’s shifting. It’s, it’s becoming a, let’s say, a different person like you’re not good enough right now, but it’s becoming a person that’s not responding the way that that old version of you is and that’s hard for someone just, you know, giving you energy to do. So I’d love to hear some of the ways you help people do that.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah. So a lot of what I do is just informed by the work of like, you know, guys like Peter Levine, he started somatic experiencing its form of somatic body based work. So I’ll take it as briefly kind of someone I saw in the office as a way of explaining this. So as I was working with this woman one time and she started feeling some very uncomfortable tension in her throat, in her chest and she goes, that’s my ex husband. People always do that. There’s an uncomfortable sensation that it’s that feeling that, you know, you’re trying to get rid of and we all do it in a millionth of a second. Bam. Her mind labeled it, made it a thing, a story, a metaphor. 

And first of all, I said, I’m pretty sure your ex husband, boyfriends way too big to have his whole body, you know, right here. So, first of all, that’s not him. So let’s slow this down. There’s some uncomfortable sensations there you don’t like. And since they’re there right now in this session, can I invite you to just let them be there? Almost no one does that, by the way, they’re trying to push it away, get rid of it. I think it figured out just doing that. She like took a deep breath. So the first thing I do when I work with folks is I kind of get them out of their head because we’re also in our head and then our thinking and bring people down into their body. And then I want them to notice the emotions, the pain as just a raw, physical sensation and allow it to be there. Then what Levin has people do, which I think is brilliant is something called Pendulum Nation when you pencil eight. Like she was feeling this area here. She didn’t like it. I said, is there another part of your body that feels, you know, safe, relaxed, comfortable, good right now? And she said, like I like my, you know, my belly or something. And I just said, I’d like to invite you shift your awareness and attention to your belly and just feel that and then go back to the throat and chest and then go back. Now, the pendulum nation sounds deceivingly simple. But for people who are really stuck in their problems, they have these deeply ingrained neural pathways in their brain and they’re really good about, they’re really good at feeling bad and, and just introducing something simple like that is very powerful. 

So for example, I had this because I see so much chronic pain, I saw like a fibromyalgia patient. She said my whole body hurts and you were with that. And then I said, I’m wondering if there’s another part of your body that feels different, okay neutral right now. And she goes, there’s not any place in my body that feels that way. And I know that’s probably, there’s probably gonna be somewhere and with a little bit of coaching, she finally realized like her little so on her right foot felt neutral. So you have to start somewhere. So I invited her to shift your awareness and attention to that little toe and then go back and then shift your awareness and attention. 

And by the way, it’s for folks with chronic pain and longstanding emotional problems, it’s really challenging even to get their attention off that because again, there’s like a deep scratch in the record and also part of them is thinking like, how is this ever gonna get better unless I’m focused on it, unless I’m focused on like, right. But I told her the way to start feeling different and better is to start focusing on feeling different and better. So with time and proud, she was able to do that and then she suddenly realized, well, actually, like my whole foot feels okay and then we started opening up more real estate and that’s not necessarily one or two sessions thing, but those are just a few, a few simple but extremely powerful ways of working with these things. 

I love kissing emotional stuff, or pain as a raw physical sensation. Again with that, thinking about it, figuring out labeling it, adding meaning which we all want to do, allowing it to be there. People oftentimes just take a really deep breath that actually almost shifts at a fight or flight b with your truth here now. Okay. You can be with it as raw sensation. I’ll share with you something that every time I’ve ever written this in any forum or set it on a, like a webinar people, I get more, more comments about that. And the common is you can trust the truth of what you’re feeling as raw sensation without attributing a why, ah, trust the truth of what you’re feeling and sensation. Because, like, in my case, I have issues with my wife and I think it’s all her and then I’m like God, if it’s this bad and she’s causing this and that and we’re gonna split up. It was a big relief for me to say you can trust what’s coming up these very bad feelings, but you don’t necessarily have to attribute why but

Tom McCarthy

That’s such a great technique. I love that. So allowed to be there. Right? Feel it and then find another part of your body that feels neutral or feels good. And then you said pendulum back and forth, which like you said, it sounds easier than it probably is for people that are, that are caught in, in these chronic pain, chronic pain. Why? What, what do you think? What is your philosophy around chronic pain? Like what’s really going on? Because like you just said you’re able to take this fiber alge a patient that her whole body hurt and maybe the whole body wasn’t pain free, but you got her foot to be pain free after. So the pain didn’t have to be there. Why do we have so much pain? That’s a huge problem. It’s you know, the precursor to the whole opioid crisis that we’re having. Why do people have so much chronic pain? That’s an issue I’ve struggled with in the past two.

Eric Robins, MD

I mean, a few answers I would say again, I just go back to physiology so much. So I think that most folks with chronic pain. A lot of times there, folks whose physiology stuck in this fight, flight freeze stress autopilot. And so it’s important to shift folks out of that. I think that leads to healing. The other thing that, you know, as we talked about that leads to pain when, when folks, we store a lot of tension and spasm in our mild fashion, our muscles in our fashion and obviously, those muscles are locked up intense and spastic. You know, there’s less blood flow, there is less oxygen that causes a very real physical pain. Has anyone? And your webinar talked about the work of John Sarno or you?

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I’m a big fan of John Sarno. Actually, my son, he had a, he was a basketball player at Harvard. He had a concussion one year, didn’t play when you had an extra year to play at Rice University of fifth year. And he went into the new school and his hip was hurting. His knee was hurting and then all of a sudden his back went out. They brought him into one of the medical centers there in Houston. They did an MRI. The surgeon told him you’ve got one of the largest herniated discs we’ve ever seen and they said we gotta put you under and they put Cortisone or steroids or something like that and came out didn’t really help. And I told him about Sarno’s work and he just listened to the mind body prescription three times while he was in his apartment over a couple of days and his pain went away and never came back. He’s probably started a herniated disc, but he doesn’t have, he doesn’t have any pain. And also he had blemishes on his face. Even at 23 years old, he was trying to eat super clean after listening to that, not only does pain go away, but his blemishes went away and they’ve never, you know, come back since. So yeah, it was an amazing influence on the pain part of the world. Yeah.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, first of all, I’m so happy for your son. That is a great story. And I actually healed my own pretty severe chronic back pain, you know, 2025 years ago, strictly using Sarno’s methods and, you know, even even years or decades later, I’ll bend down to pick up something heavy. And my wife go Eric don’t pick that up. You got a bad back and I looked at her and say no, I don’t. Yeah. But as you know, you know what Sarno’s work he talked about. Yeah, the pain is real. It’s due to this chronic tension and muscles. But the higher level reason for that, he says that folks have these uncomfortable emotions they don’t want to feel. 

And so he says the brain will cause the muscles to clamp down to cause pain to take your mind off when you’re anxious about. It’s a kind of similar approach to this, these mild factional tensions. He, I think his explanation of the brain kind of purposely causing that might be a little different, but physiologically it’s all the same. And you’re right. You know, as, you know, you know, he, he doesn’t, he tells people when you’re having pain, you have to ask yourself, I wonder what you’re angry or anxious about. And then you don’t even have to like once you’re aware of that, you don’t even have to get rid of the emotions, just, just understanding and letting yourself kind of be with. What’s there is how he cured the pain, right?

Tom McCarthy

You just listen to the book and understood that concept. You just said his game went away and the surgeons wanted to bring him back in and you know, he goes, I’m fine. I don’t need that. So, yeah, that’s amazing. So cool. So this is really great stuff you’re helping people with. So with chronic fatigue. How did you, how did you heal that? How did you heal that for yourself?

Eric Robins, MD

Okay. So actually Tom, let me, I think I’d like to share a slide that I have incorporate. So let me go to share screen here. There we go. I want to talk about the poor Dorsal Vagal model and okay, and you can. Okay. So, this is a model developed by Stefan Porteous. And this is actually extremely pertinent. I know it looks like kind of a complex screen. But let’s just go over this briefly. It touches on emotions and traumas and energy and, and physiology and all that. So at the bottom here in the green, you see this as Ventral Vagal. So down here in the green is when people are in that rest, digest and restore physiology. And this is kind of where the body tends to heal itself the best. Okay. Now, it’s interesting that they use the word social engagement down here because when we’re in this physiology, we’re actually open to other people and the experiences of letting other folks in. And sometimes the emotions that are kind of associated with this or maybe like joy and being in the present moment and grounded nous and curiosity and compassionate mindfulness. And then if you look at this where I’ve got my arrow, this has arousal increases, you just change that word arousal of the stress. We say as the stress increases, folks might actually go into more of a fight or flight, sympathetic state. And I even think of fire flight maybe a little different. So for example, if I’m fighting, you know, I’m angry, I’m enraged, I’m moving towards the threat. And if I’m fleeing, it’s more of fear and anxiety, panic and I’m trying to get away from the threat. 

Okay, as the stress increases more though. And again, if you look at my area here, I’m stroking the word overwhelmed. If we get to the point where we’re overwhelmed. And I think people can imagine being like something’s happening to a little kid, they’re not really able to fight or flee or, you know, in a wartime thing or some sort of assault, then we’re going to freeze and freeze is actually another parasympathetic state where to go. It’s another parasympathetic state. But it’s where there’s a lot of kind of immobility, there’s disassociation or brain fog, we may feel dumb, depressed, helpless, hopeless, kind of shut down. 

So I think a lot of folks with chronic fatigue, their physiology is in this free state. Now, what’s interesting about freeze and like the somatic experiencing folks will talk about this even though we’re kind of collapsed. This is a high energy state. There’s a lot of energy in the bodies of these folks, they’re just not accessible, they’re not feeling it. It’s in there. It’s tamped down by the physiology. It’s probably I consider this, this physiology that’s going on. There’s probably also a lot of errors of the myo fascia that are locked up and that’s where the energy is. Now, the other important thing with the poly bagel curve again, I’m following this curve. It’s really bad to be in freeze. I know I spent 30 something years there and it would be nice to go from this blue area down to the green where bodies heal. 

Unfortunately, doesn’t work that way as we start to come out of freeze as you see and following my arrow, you come into this fight or flight state. So folks start to unfreeze and actually strong emotions come up that they may not be prepared for. They may notice this rage almost as murderous rage coming up, this anger and their, their piste off all the time or they’re anxious and fearful and they think my gosh, what’s going on? I was almost did better what I was, you know, numb. And it’s important to understand that this is a wonderful map. Fight or flight is actually a state where we’re gaining more energy. Again, it’s important to learn how to in a slow, safe way. Kind of come to be with those emotions. In fact, Peter Levine, the guy who started the somatic experiencing class, his famous quote is I think if you look at all his work and summarize that one line, he said, healing takes place when you’re able to uncouple fear from raw sensation, you uncouple fear, people come out of freeze, they start feeling powerful emotions. You can be with them in the ways we just described, then you come on down into social engagement. And so, you know, the poor just political model, it’s a map for folks to know where they are now again that, you know, as you can see our emotional states, correlate with our physiology, lots of energy is present in those frozen or collapse state, but it’s not available. And as we unfreeze release more energy, we may go into sympathetic fighter flight with strong emotions that come up and yeah, I just think that do in context.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I love that chart. You know, and my son said after his pain went away, he did have a lot of anxiety for awhile right now and this explains it what you just said. But that’s a sign of progress, right? That’s a good thing, which is, which is good. I love the way you’ve reframed this whole thing.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, it’s, I mean, every patient that walks into my office, literally, I more or less know where they are in that chart. The other thing is even, I’ve started doing some presentations at the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Almost even though every doctor obviously learns physiology. I don’t think most of them understand in this way. And this is obviously a very usable way. This is even though they called the Porches poly Vagal model or theory. My experience, which is now pretty extensive with this type thing. It explains a lot and it’s very clinically clinically applicable. It’s brilliant actually. And it just opens up doors to understanding how to work with these chronically sick folks. So chronic fatigue, it’s important to find ways to shift folks out of this fight flight freeze stress state, understanding that at the end freeze, you have to be able to deal with the emotions that come up. A couple of the best ways that I know how to do it is one is the tr ease the tension.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, that is actually what cured my chronic fatigue, my neurologic stuff, my GI shut down and a lot of other stuff.

Tom McCarthy

Can you talk briefly about that? What that is? And then we can let us know the website too because

Eric Robins, MD

Sure

Tom McCarthy

David’s website. Yeah.

Eric Robins, MD

Absolutely. So I’ll kind of, you don’t mind just sharing what I tell patients in office. And so the folks that I share this with in the office have chronic illness, chronic pain that has not responded to the standard medical, paranoid algorithms and stuff. So I’ll say first off, have you ever seen on TV, or youtube the lion chasing the gazelle? Most people have seen that and, you know, obviously that gazelle is running for its life, its body is in a high level of fight. What’s interesting though is that the gazelle escapes and gets to a safe place and it won’t do this unless it feels safe. Its body will shake and shiver and tremor a little bit. And all animals and all mammals and all of us have this built in shaking, shivering, trembling mechanism that seems to do two things.

First off, it seems to turn off the flight free stress switch. Now, we’ve already said that most folks are stuck at most, chronically ill folks are stuck in that. So that’s not just an incidental statement if you’re stuck in that. And there’s nothing that I’m aware of in standard medicine that does that to be able to do. That is huge in the animal kingdom. They do it all the time. That gazelle will literally a few minutes later go back, grace, take care of its young, hang out with the herd and social engagement.

Tom McCarthy

Like nothing happened.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah. Literally, literally, the second thing that I always tell the patients like if you imagine that one minute that gazelles grazing, you know, and then that cheat is creeping up and damn it. Half a second. It’s running 50 MPH zigzagging and there’s a lot of charge and survival energy coursing through its musculature. And the analogy I give, it’s like if you have a can of soda and you have vigorously shake that can up, then now there’s a lot of pressure in the can and obviously, we don’t want to rip the lid off, spray diet Coke all over our interview. But what do we do? We just start cracking that lid and just you start to slowly safely depressurize the can when there’s a lot of survival energy trapped in the musculature unless it’s released. It kind of is one of the things that leads to these mile fashionable constrictions. So the second thing the tremors seem to do over time is it releases the charge and survival energy from the musculature. Another way of saying that it seems to unwind these chronic tension embracing patterns. And again, that’s wonderful. I think a big part actually what keeps our limbic system stuck in the high alert, dysfunctional state is, it’s, you know, is interception, it’s checking in what’s going on in our body, the state of the musculature, you know, do I feel safe in my body and theories are, are wonderful for helping folks feel safe. And so I’ve taught probably 2000 patients how to do it. Obviously, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea just to be clear. But the folks that do it’s, it’s really wonderful. Hey, can I share a quick story about this that just shows

Tom McCarthy

And by the way, I love it, you introduced me to this and I absolutely love it. So this is really cool and let’s make sure we give the website where they can go find out more about this or resources. Yeah, please share a story though. Yeah.

Eric Robins, MD

Okay. So to understand how this works in real life. So I saw two different women kind of in the twenties and thirties with pelvic pain and both of them had very tight spastic pelvic floor muscles. One woman had vaginismus, which is the muscles in around her vagina would tense, tight spasm. A it would she, she couldn’t put anything in her vagina, whether it’s a tampon or, you know, of the sexually active, the second woman, her pelvic floor was so tight and that when she sat down to try and urinate, it would sometimes take 5, 10, 15 minutes for that muscle to relax and open up enough so she could urinate. 

You can imagine 5, 10, 15 minutes every time you have the rest of you. That was a big part of her day. Now because of the mind body. Dude, I asked both these women, you know, was there an event that happened that why these muscles would be tight? Ask them a few times. I’m pretty congruent when I ask it because I know that probably was something and neither of them could remember anything. No conscious recollection. So I taught them the theories and by the way, a big exponents of going slowly and safely because it unfreezes the physiology gets these heirs of locked up the fascia to release really well. Okay. 

So I did just a short period of tearing with both of them like a minute or two after during and Rachel Xander that quick session. Both of them all of a sudden remembered what it was that made them tense and spastic. One woman remembered she was date raped in college just mad. I remember that. And the other woman remembered something that, you know, that happened with her father. And but just amazing, that’s how fast it will work just like that. Bam, unfreeze the muscles immediately knew what it was. It can take some work to work through these memories, emotions, sensations. But that’s a real life example when you, and when you clear that we typically get long term relief of things like that.

Tom McCarthy

Beautiful. And what Eric is talking about is a technique where you can actually, you can get your body to start tremering. And once you learn how to do it, it’s, actually not that hard where you start to release this tension that he’s talking about in the maya fashion. So, and what’s the website again where

Eric Robins, MD

it’s traumaprevention.com.

Tom McCarthy

traumaprevention.com, which is not Eric site, but this is a friend of his that he introduced me to that does amazing work and, and was a social worker. Actually, he told me the story that he started, he noticed over in the Middle East, like a bomb blast would go off and, and you know, the Children would freeze and all of a sudden they start shaking and then they could walk away, but the adults would, you know, hold on to it. So really, really cool. That’s amazing. How open are you talking? You just said you’re lecturing now in medical school and how open our new MD’s to some of these techniques? I mean, I’m sure it’s not everybody but are they starting to be a little bit more open the way that you are or does it take them having to go through something where, you know, like the journey you had?

Eric Robins, MD

The answer is yes. I mean, you know, maybe a little bit of both. I’d say, you know, I was there a couple weeks ago, we’re actually talking about tapping, you know, EFT and these folks, I mean, I got to say that the staff that was in the room with us said everybody was in the edge of their seats and no one was on their phone. So they seem to like it. Yeah, I think especially if it’s presented the way I’m presenting it. It’s not woo and voodoo. 

And again, I’ve written books about chakras and I think there’s a role for that and there’s a role for oriental medicine and there’s a role for energy. I’m not disparaging it at all. I think there’s some purely energy based techniques that are fantastic that I still do regularly. But I think if you explain this in terms of physiology and you can slip in some of the energy stuff because I feel like it is, you know, I mean, the students, you know, when they wake up in the morning, you know, you don’t need a double blind university study to tell you how you’re feeling and how much energy you have, like kind of know that stuff. And know their sense of well being. It’s like if you just ask yourself, you know, am I okay? And, you know, kind of BS the answer and you really just kind of go inside that tells so much about the state of your physiology, your energy and your, and stuff. And so we just speak in these terms and I, from what I have the feedback I’ve gotten, it’s very palatable, so we’ll see, you know,

Tom McCarthy

It’s awesome. Yeah. Well, we had an interesting guest earlier in the week, Dr. Hemal Patel and he’s at UCSD and he’s actually doing research in conjunction with Joe Dispenza, so he’s a PhD is in pharmacology and, and, but a researcher and he’s got some really cool stuff. He’s doing a lot around people that meditate because they do a lot of meditation. And Joe Dispenza’s programs and the changes in their body and health and, and getting rid of disease and pain and they’ve got, you know, like, but they can look at the blood, how the blood changed and, you know, other fluids in the body, which is fascinating. 

So I hope more and more research is going to be coming to validate all the things you already know and are teaching everybody. So what does work you over 30 years of using mind body techniques? Some of the stuff I know is probably not as effective. What do you find most effective and you’ve shared some things already with us. But anything else beyond what you’ve shared with us that, that people should consider.

Eric Robins, MD

So kind of how I approach in the office, I think that if there’s someone has some past traumas that they’re consciously aware of that, when they think about them, there’s still a big emotional charge on them. It’s really good to kind of defuse the emotional charge out of that. And so I like tapping, you know, EFTI like T 80 tapas acupressure technique. I think both those are awesome. I may I just share one other metaphor that I use, that would be helpful here. So this metaphor, I’m gonna talk about something called the plate theory and I gotta give attribution to this. I was taught this by one of my mentors, Bill Harris. He started a company called Center Point. They make this Binaural Beat Technology called which I love. 

That was also life changing for me. But he talked about the plate theory. And so this is how this is how I explain it. You know, ever everyone’s probably heard that expression. People say my plate is full. And so I think what that means is that for all of us, our nervous system is like a plate or cup and there’s only so much stuff we can handle coming at us from life before the your plate gets too full when we get when it gets too full, when we get pushed over that neurologic stress threshold, it creates this generic stress or anxiety reaction in our body. And everyone reacts to that differently depending on how they learn to cope as kids. So some people isolate themselves and people are angry or anxious or depressed or engage in addictive behaviors. But all those things you can say are secondary to getting pushed over that threshold. Now, one of the things we know is that early life stressors or traumas including in the womb, by the way, those actually cause our nervous system and our energetic system to develop in such a way that we will have a small plate. So one of the reasons why I’m fairly good at this stuff is I had a lot of early developmental trauma and my plate was the size of a thimble. 

So I’ll tell you right now you can be a good person and smart, nice and big heart and blah, blah, blah. If that’s the size of your plate life is gonna push you over and you’re gonna feel bad most of the time. Okay. And by the way, just a quick caveat, everyone gets how you have a small plate, how the bad stuff can make you worse. But this teacher named Gay Hendricks, he’s another body Senate. Second therapy. Yeah, is a great guy. So he came up with something called the upper limits. The upper limits problem where he says that if you have a really small cup or plate, even seemingly good or positive things, you know, love, intimacy, great health, financial success can feel bad to your nervous system. 

And then we may unconsciously sabotage things to kind of, you know, limit the amount of energy. But you know, and you know, people go to therapy and I thank God for therapists. But if you walk into the therapist office and your cover plate is the size of a thimble and you talk to the therapist and dump that out, dump everything out of your thimble. And if you leave 50 minutes later and your plate still the size of a thimble, it’s gonna be hard to really get better. So the paradigm shift is what would happen if we could get a much bigger cupper plate. There’s a few things to do that again. Going back to,

Tom McCarthy

I’m glad you shared that though. That’s really cool. Now, share this way so we can expand the plate.

Eric Robins, MD

You can, you literally get a big literally time if you go, if you just imagine what it would be if you went from having a thimble to like before our big goal and then it’s like you don’t have to try and be positive and think differently. Just stuff just doesn’t hit you. One of my friends is a psychiatrist said, you know, Eric, some people life just hit some harder, you know, the same things. So Terry is a big one, in my opinion, that experience again, that’s why I like it. I’m a huge fan of this Binaural Beat technology. Hollow Sink is the one I listened to again. You know, you know, I have no affiliate links with anyone or any products. But that one, I would say you literally, you offered me a billion dollars with a B to go back today and somehow not have listened to Whole Sink. I would not take your money. It really expands the size of the stress threshold. That technology kind of gets us thinking more with life through a whole brain approach. It integrates the right and left sides of the brain. I think new neural pathways are developed. And again, I have folks just because of the nature of what I do, who, who hear about me or see a book I wrote the foreword to and they reach out and they tried everything and it’s not getting better and frequently a combination of either hollow sink or a teary for a lot of folks that nothing else has helped is are the answer I’ve got a few now that just, you know, so yeah, at the end of the day, those two are the biggest ones. A few other things you would ask me, what other kind of modalities do? I like the Donna Eden five minutes in the morning routine. Are you familiar with that one, by the way?

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, Donna is a friend and we’ve had her on here too. Yeah.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah. Her five minute in the morning. You folks can find it on youtube. I like a lot. The, something else that I just love is called the Five Tibetan Rites of rejuvenation. Are you familiar with those as well, or

Tom McCarthy

Is that the one? Yeah, I think it was an old book. Right from book.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, Peter Killed among made me

Tom McCarthy

Start with a spinning.

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah. Exactly right. So these are five yoga exercises and they’re very simple. By the way, it sounds like you’ve done putting your foot behind your head. So they’re relatively simple. And for a lot of people, they’ll double or triple their energy levels and it’s not like drinking a cup of coffee where you get a buzz for now to a lot of folks this last, all day long, they, I think they recharge the batteries, which is usually the kidneys, the kidney energy and the Chinese medicine system. They can dramatically increase people’s libido that I used to joke with my patients. They can increase your libido so much. It can almost get you in trouble. So, be careful. But we’ve got in Keller’s book, as you mentioned, there’s, there are five exercises he recommends doing 21 repetitions of each one. My teacher, Master Cho was able to simplify them. They’re much easier physically and you only do nine repetitions of each one. And they’re at least as powerful. So find the variation. Yeah, his version is in the book that I co authored called Your Hands Can Heal You.

Tom McCarthy

Awesome. How can people get that book, Eric?

Eric Robins, MD

That’s just, that’s on Amazon and I think, you know, most bookstores. But yeah, the five Tibetans in that book, in my opinion are the crown jewel. They really do work. Yeah, and this modified set is really way different. You know, I’ve had some friends of mine who are, you know, really lean and super fit and some of them were even having a little trouble with the original version. So this is a lot of,

Tom McCarthy

I had, I was teaching it to a friend and he was spinning and he went, almost crashed into my wallet, my pool. So I was like after 21 spin,

Eric Robins, MD

He probably shouldn’t take a figure skating where they’re spinning for like, you know.

Tom McCarthy

No. Yeah. Last question. Why do techniques that just pump energy into the body sometimes make problems worse before they get better?

Eric Robins, MD

Yeah, exactly. I think just because if it were again, going back to my getting by and 3% if everything’s locked up and it’s locked up for a reason and you force too much energy through, I just think that that can make folks a lot worse. It can either bring up too much repressed material. You can just kind of, you know, generally feel bad. I mean, I think like, you know, like maybe that’s what Kundalini syndrome is like, people, you know, a spiritual teacher of someone awaken way too much energy. And it’s just too much, too fast. I gotta say I’ve done a variety of forms of Qi Gong. I think for someone with trauma, it’s important to maybe watch, be very cautious with some of these techniques like awakening the microcosmic orbit or doing a small universe type thing that I just think you need to use a little bit of caution. If you have someone with a lot of trauma and stuff like that.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, great. Hey, I’m so glad we finally got you on our summit. You’re amazing. I know everyone wants you to be their doctor. Well, that can’t happen. But your book, I hope that your hands can heal, right? Would be a great way to connect with you and any other ways to connect with you. Do you write or anything on the internet or anything where people can follow any?

Eric Robins, MD

I’ve written actually folks like what we just discussed today a beautiful summer. I wrote the foreword to a book called Flowing Zen. It’s a Qi Gong book that’s actually my favorite school, but it’s really a very good forward. You think you need to go to Amazon and look inside the book for free, but it’s a great book and a really good forward. Honestly, I mean, I just, I actually my, as my spare time, I like to like to proof read and edit books. I’ve done eight books by a spiritual teacher named Santato Gomanna and he just wrote his autobiography, which I gotta say is just, it’s mind blowing. I mean, I feel like I’m editing for like a, someone like a Roman, a Mahar she type level just, yeah, it’s called Liberation. 

That will probably be out in March or April. I’ve never met him. He’s always written under a pseudonym and but I just don’t think you can write like this about these levels of consciousness without actually having attain them yourself. So, yeah, that’s what I’m working on and yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t really, you know, I don’t have any project services. I’m just kind of in the trenches doing the work and maybe someday that’ll, that’ll change, you know. Yeah, I’d say at the end of the day, you know, learn the TRS if you can got some youtube videos on my, on my youtube channel. It’s called TRE and me which tells a little more just Dr. Eric Robbins. There’s some really good videos they’re actually and yeah, that’s it.

Tom McCarthy

Fantastic. Well, you are a gift to the world, Eric. Thank you so much for being on and amazing job today. Thank you so much.

Eric Robins, MD

Thank you, I really appreciate it.