Full Transcript Introduction to the summit interview 0:07 - Hey everyone, thanks for joining us back here at the next episode of the Medicine of Mindset 0:11 Summit. Now, what we have coming up for you is super 0:13 unique. It's your only interview this week that is 0:18 going to be structured like what you're about to see. 0:20 Dr. Anita Jackson, who is my co host, is going to be chatting with Dr. Hamel Patel from U C. 0:27 S. D. Who is working directly with Dr. Joe Dispenza 0:32 on the work of how meditation impacts your biology. 0:35 So that's the first part of the interview that you're gonna be watching in a second and then 0:40 immediately following that conversation, Dr. Anita is going to be talking with Evie Jennes 0:45 from the Inner Science Research Foundation. Evie is going to share her story 0:51 just around how this work has impacted her life in a really major way and then talk a
Dr. Patel's background and path into meditation research 0:58 little bit about the Inner Science Research Foundation. 1:02 So buckle up because this next session is going to be absolutely fantastic enjoy. 1:10 - [A] Hello! Hello, everybody, welcome back to another 1:13 episode of The Medicine of Mindset. I'm your co host, 1:17 Dr. Anita Jackson and I'm so honored that today we're gonna be talking to Dr. Hemal Patel who is 1:22 a researcher and who has some phenomenal information when it comes to understanding the 1:28 power of meditation from a science perspective. So Dr. Hamel, 1:32 Thank you for taking time out of your busy busy schedule to being here with me today. 1:37 - [H] Good to see you. - [A] Good to see you as well. 1:39 Okay, so I could read your whole entire uh bio and I'd probably be here for a while because 1:46 you've accomplished so much. But would you do us a huge favor and just kind 1:50 of share a little bit about who you are and how you show up in the world? 1:54 - [H] Yeah. So I grew up, I was born in India, grew up in 1:58 the midwest, went to college in the midwest at a liberal arts school. 2:02 I knew I wanted to do science right. And so I majored in biology, 2:07 but then it was a liberal arts school. So you had to explore other disciplines. 2:11 And so in that process, my freshman year I took a class on introduction to philosophy and 2:18 really enjoyed it. And then ended up double majoring in biology 2:21 and philosophy, religion and then also have a minor in classical studies. 2:25 So I've really been using both parts of my brain to create and invent stuff. 2:31 I went on to get my PhD in pharmacology and toxicology with a focus on cardiovascular 2:37 physiology and pharmacology At the medical college Wisconsin and then about 20 years ago 2:43 moved to San Diego to start my postdoctoral studies. 2:46 And it's one of these places that once you're here you just never leave. 2:50 And so I've never left. I'm a tenured faculty member now in the 2:54 department of anesthesiology and it's just been an amazing ride. 2:58 So for 20 years we've been focused on a single protein that that controls stress adaptations 3:04 and cells. And so we've looked at how this protein creates 3:08 signaling molecular biology, physiology all those things. 3:11 And we've gotten it from test tube all the way into hopefully humans in the next year for A. 3:17 L. S. And other neurodegenerative diseases. 3:20 About two years ago we started thinking and talking to others that we're looking at 3:25 alternative ways of managing health in their clinics. 3:28 And I shared an office with one of these guys for a number of years and so he came to me and 3:33 knew I could do all this molecular biology and said would you be interested in working with us 3:37 on trying to understand meditation at a much more deeper molecular level. 3:43 And so we started and then the ride has been absolutely amazing over the last 2.5 3 years 3:48 and what we've discovered. - [A] You know meditation has become a huge buzzword and 3:55 because so many of us are so stressed and overwhelmed and dealing with this global 4:01 pandemic still and now we're heading into this recession so we're just being bombarded with 4:07 all of these kinds of external pressures and meditation is one of the ways that we can 4:14 really ground ourselves. So could you do find what meditation is and 4:18 what are you finding what is your study about when it comes to using meditation for our well 4:22 being? - [H] Yeah so we use this term very loosely right 4:25 meditation but we're so we're mainly working with Dr. Joe Dispenza who does events all over 4:32 the world. He does these progressive workshops which is 4:35 sort of a taste of what the experience is, like two day events all over the world after you do
Defining meditation and the focus of the study 4:42 these progressives, you don't have to do the progressives. 4:44 But typically what people do is they get interested and then they do these week long 4:48 intensive experiences, these advanced workshops, this is where we do most of our studies and 4:54 then he does these advanced follow up which are 3, 4 days long and it's more of an intensive 4:59 experience. And as I've gotten to know his process and 5:04 the more we've dissected and studying it does not look and feel and taste and touch like 5:09 meditation, right? Something else. 5:11 But that's a word we use because everyone understands what that is. 5:15 And so to me meditation is focusing your mind on something that's 5:21 whether it's nothing or whether it's your breath or whether it's the tip of your nose, 5:26 it's using all of your mental energy and capacity to let everything else go except for 5:31 this singular focus, right? It's it's meditating on on some element and 5:36 there are components of this and what Dr. Joe does, but I think it really takes off to the 5:41 next level and this is what we're really studying is what is this evolution of this 5:45 process that then impacts the human body in just profound ways. 5:51 - [A] You know? And and so many of us are distracted that our 5:55 focus can, it's hard to find that one thing to focus that was literally having this 6:00 conversation with one of my best friends and she's struggling in her business and we were 6:04 talking about mindfulness practice and how do we stay focused? 6:07 And especially as a woman and we're being pulled to taking care of her husband's, 6:11 taking care of our partners, taking care of our Children, taking care of the dog. 6:15 We're just pulled in so many directions that we don't find the space and not even, 6:20 it's almost like we know we should do it, but then we don't do it at all until someone says 6:24 if you don't do it, this is how it's affecting your body and your study is beginning to go 6:29 into that kind of science, right? - [H] Yeah, yeah. 6:31 I mean it's it's hard to quiet the mind. I mean we're constantly bombarded by social 6:35 media, by television, by just the world around us and crazy weird things that happen, 6:42 right? And it grabs our attention. 6:44 One of the things I realized after I did, it took me a while to get to a first event, 6:48 you know, I'm a skeptical scientist, you're like, well, 6:50 I don't know, man. 6:52 People describe all these amazing things happening and you're always like, 6:56 well not to me. And then even after I've gone, 7:00 there's still a healthy skepticism that I approach all the science with because you have 7:04 to constantly judge and evaluate and test and and retest and do those sorts of things. 7:10 But one of the things I realized in my first week long event is I don't close my eyes other 7:16 than when I go to bed, right? The majority of us spend our waking moments of 7:20 the day with our eyes open constantly consuming, being bombarded by the outside world. 7:26 Sometimes all it takes is closing your eyes for 10 minutes to completely reset and and re 7:32 engage with the problem or the happy thing that you're dealing with. 7:36 And, and so that's the realization is it doesn't take a lot of time to quiet the mind, 7:41 but you've got to find the time to do it eventually, you know. 7:45 - [A] And as we learn how to or relearn, I'll say as we relearn how to allow ourselves to be 7:52 still to be quiet to close our eyes. Being that I am a very ambitious, 7:56 very a personality type. I'm very driven. 8:00 It's been the pandemic that's taught me how to close my eyes. 8:03 So I'm kind of giggling going, yeah, that's a hard one, 8:06 but I'm seeing the benefits of it. So one of the parameters around your studies 8:11 and how is it changing people's lives? 8:14 - [H] Yeah, so like I mentioned, we look mostly at these week long events, 8:18 we just finished a week long where we looked at 820 subjects or our studies have grown 8:23 dramatically. The initial study we did had about 32 8:27 individuals were recruited and we want to look at the different spectrum of meditators and 8:32 skepticism and experience that comes into it. So one of the things we struggled with early 8:37 was how do you define a control subject for all of these things? 8:40 And what we finally settled on was the vacation in control. 8:44 So someone, usually a spouse or partner of someone who is attending these week long events 8:48 that's not taking part in the event. So they're, 8:51 they're, they're exposed to the same environment, they're eating similar food, 8:54 but they're not engaged in the workshop. They're literally hanging out the pool or in 8:58 the room doing some light work but relaxing. And so those are our controls. 9:03 We also have a group of meditators that we call the novice meditators. 9:07 So this is a person that's never been to a week long event and they really haven't been doing
Measuring physiology, brain activity, and biomarkers 9:12 meditations in any other practice for any extended period of time and are cut off is 9:17 typically 3 to 6 months that you you started exploring, but you don't really know what 9:21 you're doing yet, right? So you're new and then we have a group of 9:24 experienced meditators. These are individuals that have been to 9:27 multiple week long events. This is a core part of who they are and the 9:32 majority of them meditate anywhere from 1 to 5 hours a day. 9:35 I met a woman who meditates five hours a day and she was absolutely amazing. 9:40 I mean her mind, the ability that she has to quiet and focus and to create is just 9:46 absolutely astounding. So it's, you know, 9:49 with spectrums of experience. 9:52 And so then what we wanted to do was take these three groups and expose them to all kinds of 9:57 endpoints that we could carry and and sort of measure. 10:00 So one of the things we did early on was put a garment device on every individual. 10:04 So it's a biometric device. You put it on, you essentially forget about it 10:08 other than to charge. It attracts your sleep activity, 10:12 stress level, heart rate, heart rate, variability, breathing. 10:15 I mean, you can if you can imagine it, it captures it right. As we want. 10:19 Something that's a 24/7 capture of of someone's physiology. 10:23 In addition to this, we were doing high end brain electrical mapping through these 10:28 quantitative electroencephalogram. A lot of the systems we've adapted now look 10:33 not only at the electrical activity in your head, on your on the surface of your head, 10:38 through all the networks that you have, but also on the heart at the same time. 10:41 And so we want to couple those two signals to see if there's some connection between what you 10:46 think. And we normally think what we feel is in our 10:50 heart. Right? 10:50 And so the emotion component is the heart and the thought is sort of in the brain and those 10:54 two things have to connect to get to this euphoric sort of creative state that you're in. 10:59 And so we're measuring the activity in those regions and then we basically take everything 11:05 that comes out of your stool samples, your urine, 11:08 your blood, your tears. We take everything and anything that we can 11:12 find information and the ultimate and even your words, right? 11:16 We're collecting words at this last event. We created a profile where we can get a video 11:21 capture and so we're capturing the words that come out of your mouth throughout the week and 11:25 whether they're transformative and whether this correlates to how your muscles are changing 11:30 over the week and and essentially how your sound is right, 11:34 the intonation you use and a lot of these things that you release from you are a 11:40 manifestation of your thoughts and your energy that you've created. 11:44 And so what we want to do at the end of the day is create this unique web pattern of what an 11:49 individual is based on this single intervention of a seven day intensive workshop and see how 11:55 that person evolves from sort of this disease that they're in to this really new 12:02 human potential that they create at the end of that week. 12:05 - [A] Are you seeing some the little knowledge that I have about neuroscience and the little and the 12:10 fascination that I have with that as well. Brain based learning, 12:13 are you seeing patterns you've got now enough people to work with and to do all this 12:20 amazing testing with what are the patterns that you're seeing. 12:24 - [H] I mean we we've done some FmRI studies as well. So Joe did an event in San Diego in April. 12:30 And so since we're close to campus we were able to bring 20 people onto campus and actually put 12:34 them in the functional M. R. I. Machine to look at which brain regions and 12:39 structures were being altered during a meditative state. 12:42 So we did this before and after the week and some of the data is just profound. 12:46 Right? This the default mode network the thing that 12:48 sort of creates this issue of the future based on your known past and all the decision things 12:54 you come up with. Like you know I gotta get this word out next. 12:58 I'm thinking about this thing coming up after our meeting all those things you fall into this 13:02 default network. One of the things we observed is during 13:06 these meditative experiences is that this network tends to fall apart so you're no longer 13:11 predicting your future based on your known past. 13:14 There's a couple of things I know that do this but they require you to go to Costa Rica 13:19 and take some drugs. And so the fact that Joe can Dr. Joe can do 13:24 this at a week long event by just teaching you how to focus your mind and get you into this 13:31 this state that he does is quite phenomenal and we can record this at the F. 13:36 M. R. I. Level. We're seeing some amazing changes in network 13:40 connectivity with electrical measurements that we're making in the brain there's specific 13:44 circuits of neurons and brain regions that start to activate together. 13:48 And then what's even more exciting is that that transformation in how the brain is behaving and 13:54 functioning leads to a completely different profile of blood markers and other things that 14:00 we're seeing. So it's amazing to think that your 14:03 thoughts really do recreate who you are from the ground up in terms of biology. 14:08 - [A] What about in the area of health and wellness? So if someone comes in let's say with a cold or 14:14 someone comes in dealing with an extreme illness like cancer, 14:18 are they seeing are you seeing results of when they participate in some sort of a meditative 14:24 state, like the one you're describing that they're being transformed because I want our 14:29 audience to hear that you get your power back by learning this type of technique. 14:35 - [H] Yeah. So that's one of the things that drew me to 14:37 this both as a skeptic and now as a scientist trying to solve what I see. 14:42 And so I've been to lots of events now and and one of the things I like to do is be a fly on 14:47 the wall and just sit and watch you know I'll do some of the meditations but it's almost 14:53 sometimes important to to keep my eyes open and see what everyone's doing and you notice these 14:58 certain things that then you want to break apart and study. 15:00 And so one of the things that I've noticed that a lot of these events is there are spontaneous 15:06 healings that happen from all sorts of diseases, right? 15:09 You can't walk and you're now walking, you have A. L. 15:11 S. And you were in mobile and now you're able to 15:13 move, you have cancer and that cancer is gone. The the human in me is amazed and empathetic at 15:20 this transformation that people have. The scientists in me, 15:24 there's this nagging thing in the back of my head that says, 15:27 there's no way that this is happening. Right. 15:29 And so we were really designing studies to suggest this. And we have very very 15:34 preliminary evidence to suggest that individuals with diseases are transforming to 15:40 look more and more like healthy individuals when you look at the gut microbiome or their 15:44 blood markers and those sorts of things. And so we think that eventually when we have 15:49 these mega studies with thousands of people that were studying over time. Done, 15:54 we'll be able to make larger claims about what this practice that that Dr. 15:59 Joe does is allowing transformationally to happen in individuals with cancer with anxiety 16:04 with depression and 50 other diseases that show up in our population at these events. 16:11 - [A] You could be a threat to the whole medical industry. 16:15 - [H] We hope not. I mean I hope not. 16:18 I see this is really something that is not antagonistic to Western medicine. 16:25 I think one of the things that we all fall into our it's either this way or that way and 16:30 there's no middle ground and and I think what most religious practices will teach you is that 16:35 the life of moderation is what leads to happiness, health and longevity. 16:41 And I think this happens with health care as well. 16:44 And and I have a religious background, you know, I'm a Christian in terms of how I how I see 16:50 faith and an evolution. And there's that joke in in Christianity where 16:55 you've got this guy who there's this severe rain and flood happening and he's waiting for 17:01 God to save him. And there's a guy who comes along on a dinghy 17:04 and he said no God's gonna save me. 17:07 And then there's like a helicopter and then there's this rescue team and ultimately this 17:12 guy drowns. And he's sitting at the pearly Gates and asking 17:16 Saint Peter, what what the hell happened? Why didn't God come? 17:19 And he's like, what are you talking about? We sent you a boat a helicopter and you didn't
Brain network changes and evidence of healing 17:25 take it right? And it's all in our mindset of what we 17:28 expect and what we want that limits our ability to to take advantage of every resource that we 17:34 have at our disposal. 17:36 So what we really want to do with the science is think about how we can integrate this 17:41 approach for people who potentially don't want to do Western medicine, 17:46 but then the ones that are into Western medicine, how can we integrate those two paths 17:50 together to really create a synergistic effect so that the human has evolved and really gets 17:55 to that healed stage and they can empower and thrive. 17:59 - [A] Is there any technique or part of meditation that we, 18:03 the audience could take right now? Let's say someone can't get to you and to Joe 18:07 just Dr. Joe Dispenza this event. But they still feel this pull towards I've got 18:13 to slow down. I've got to, you know, find this place to be 18:16 still and to focus. So anything that you could teach us or tell us 18:21 that can maybe help us do that. - [H] Yeah, I do this with my students, 18:24 right? We're by by nature. 18:26 I'm a procrastinator. I put things off till the very last minute. 18:29 And my wife, who is way smarter than I am, has very good advice and I give this, 18:35 I dole this advice out, but don't take myself as well is we like to schedule things, 18:40 right? And so we're guided by our calendars. 18:43 I look at my calendar every day that tells me where I need to be, 18:46 what I need to do. 18:47 So why not use that as a tool to schedule time for yourself. 18:51 Right, Put in that half hour hour into that schedule and say, 18:55 this is my time to either meditate, this is my time to focus on this assignment, 19:00 this work, so that you're not consistently pushing it off? 19:03 And it's it's like what we just started talking about earlier on is it's you have to find time 19:08 to close your eyes, right and just find that 15 2030 minutes and and if you can an hour, 19:14 it's amazing what cumulative re relaxation focused time will do. 19:20 And we tend to waste a lot of our time. You know, 19:23 we were we were at some events a couple of years ago And this guy was describing how he 19:29 would just sort of, he was in Africa and he was part of some water project and he was observing 19:33 this kid every day, he would walk five miles from his house to this one spot that this 19:39 entire village could get water and he would fight to have to get to water and he would fill 19:44 up the buckets and then take them home. And that was his 7-8 hour a day. 19:49 And he's like go home tonight and ask yourself, how long does it take you to get to water? 19:54 I mean in my house I can get to 13 sources of water in under 20 seconds. 19:59 So what am I doing with the 24 hours and x minutes of my life that I'm not wasting getting 20:05 water, we tend to waste a lot of our time in the Western world and if we could focus this on 20:10 ourselves, our immediate community and the rest of the world around us, 20:15 we'd be living in a different world. 20:17 - [A] And in that order from my humble perspective. So what's next for the programs or the studies 20:24 that you're doing right now? What's coming up next? 20:27 How you continue to expand this? - [H] Yeah. So we have a freezer full of samples. 20:30 So what's next is trying to raise the funds to look at these samples? 20:34 Just from quantum 2.0, so we call these studies quantum the big studies that we do is 20:40 the quest to analyze 1000 humans meditating. 20:43 And so we started the quantum one study in January. 20:46 It went nine months. So we followed people nine months out with 20:49 their garments and surveys and things like that. And then quantum to just launched um last week, 20:55 the first week is done. So we have thousands of bio specimens in the 20:59 lab. I think the last math was we have about 17,000 21:04 tubes of samples that we've collected during that week and archived in our freezers. 21:09 It's gonna take a lot of resources to get through that time. 21:13 Money, people, all these things that we need to to get at and, 21:18 and the goal is really to use the amount of and and depth of samples that we created and 21:24 collected to create a unique signature of who the individual is when they meditate. 21:31 And as I mentioned, the advantage of these Quantum level studies is you're not only 21:35 looking at healthy individuals, there's usually about 100-150 people out of 1000 that have 21:40 nothing wrong with them. Right. They don't check any disease box. 21:43 So they become our sort of happy control set. But then we've got cancer, 21:48 anxiety, depression, PTSD, autoimmune disease, you name it, 21:53 it's represented in this. And now we can look to see how do those 21:57 individuals look before the event starts and they look very different than the healthy. 22:01 And then are they moving closer and closer to that healthy individual? 22:05 By building this large deep map of the healthy and the diseased individual evolving through 22:11 this one intervention we think that we'll be able to identify ways to help people move 22:16 closer and closer to that healthy. Right. And that's sort of the goal of all of this is 22:20 to take the massive amount of information that we're gonna generate over the next hopefully, 22:24 I mean it's time and resource intensive. So the more money we get, 22:28 the more people we get, the more time we get, the faster we can run through all the samples 22:32 and the faster we can create. But I would imagine that in the next five years 22:36 we're gonna have some real answers about how to use this to guide human health. 22:41 - [A] You know, it's interesting you kept saying evaluating the difference between a healthy 22:46 person and a diseased person. I have a background in psychology and like as I
Integrating meditation with Western medicine 22:50 heard that I'm like I never thought of depression, anxiety or overwhelmed or all of 22:57 those mental. I know that their disorder but I never thought 23:01 of them as a dis ease like a disease that's actually affecting your 23:08 brain and affecting your body and affecting your life. 23:11 And I think if more of us may be thought of it that way we would take more responsibility to I 23:18 don't want to live a disease life or a dis ease life. 23:22 So I got to take my power back to start changing this. 23:25 Yeah. - [H] I mean, it's to define what healthy is, 23:29 right? It is different in different settings. 23:31 One of the things we've I've tended to focus on is most of us will study disease to understand 23:37 disease. So a clear example of this as a diabetic, 23:40 right? So if you want to understand how to cure 23:42 diabetes, we tend to create diabetes in in animal models and human models and we study 23:48 them and we have these controls that aren't diabetic and don't have the same profiles. 23:53 The head scratcher for me has been to study diabetes and to find a cure. 23:59 Maybe we need to look at a human population that looks like they're diabetic but they're 24:04 not right. The ones that are slightly overweight or obese 24:09 but they've got some protective element inside them and this is what I think will eventually 24:14 sort out in this population of Quantum is there are healthy individuals and they define their 24:19 health as they don't check any of the disease boxes whatever those may be. 24:24 But they may not have the perfect physiology. They may not be slim. 24:29 They may not have the ideal B. M. I. They may you know smoke, 24:35 they may drink, they may do these other things. We're capturing all of that element but they're 24:39 doing something or they have some adaptive advantage that will help us understand how to 24:43 adapt those that don't have that advantage. 24:46 And that's where we're really after. I think at the end of the day. 24:50 - [A] Every time I talk to you I want to become a neuroscience. 24:53 Like I went down the wrong path. - [H] I should have become biologist. 24:58 I'm gonna have to become a neuroscientist in the next couple of years. 25:01 - [A] I'm like this is making me want to go back to school and get another degree. 25:05 So I want after everything that you've shared with us today. 25:09 Is there anything else you would love to share that you want to leave with us in regards to 25:13 what you're studying and what this is all about. 25:16 - [H] Yeah, I mean I think this is the movement forward, right? 25:19 We need to evolve as humans and I think that this is one of the ways to do it. 25:23 One of the recent thoughts I've had is I've I've always known I've had a brain, 25:27 right. One of the first things I read when I was in 25:30 my intro to philosophy class was Rene Descartes meditations on first Philosophy and so in this 25:37 small but dense book, he describes the existence of God and the way he ultimately 25:43 resolves that God exists is we are an intellectual being. 25:48 I think therefore I am comes from this meditation on first philosophy. 25:53 And so I've always thought of my brain as as not, I think therefore I am kind of mentality, 26:00 but it was something that I can use to solve problems and create and invent and I never 26:06 realized the power of turning it internally, right, That it's something that doesn't solve 26:11 something outside of you that can solve the problems that are within you. 26:15 And I think this is what I'm learning through this process, 26:18 is that the brain is a very powerful tool to fix who and what you are from the ground up in 26:24 terms of your molecular biology, to your biochemistry, to your proteins, 26:29 to the core of every organ that you have existing inside you. 26:33 And it's profound and I think if we can get more and more people to think about the
Practical advice for making time to meditate 26:38 potential and the power of the mind, it's gonna be a transformative world we're in. 26:43 - [A] I can't tell you how much that last statement means to me because that's why the revelation I 26:48 got through this whole entire pandemic is that we've got to get back to owning our own power, 26:53 whatever that looks like. And I like, you totally agree that we we've got 26:57 this beautiful, gorgeous powerful brain that God's or spirit, 27:00 whatever word you want to use has given us and when we start to get back to home, 27:05 get back to center, Get back to the power that's within us. 27:08 We truly can heal ourselves which eventually is gonna heal our relationships, 27:13 which means our family, which means the people we interact with and that means our communities 27:17 and that means our world and I am for it, I am so for it. 27:23 100%. So thank you so much for taking time out of 27:26 your business schedule. I know you have so much going on, 27:28 so I appreciate you with me today, phenomenal conversation as always, 27:32 I still appreciate you and thank you everybody for being here with us on this amazing 27:36 conversation for the medicine of mindset. Until our next episode, 27:41 take care of you. // - [Anita] Hello! 27:42 Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of the Medicine of Mindset. 27:47 I am your host, dr Anita Jackson and joining me today is heavy Jennings who is from 27:53 Inner Science Research Fund, right Inner Science Research Fund. 27:58 And I'm looking forward to having this conversation with her because she's going to 28:02 really help you understand this entire process of what they do to help you be well 28:08 holistically. So every thank you so much for being here with 28:11 me today and sharing a lot about what you do at an hour Science Research fund. 28:16 Thank you for having me. Alright, so my first question to you is tell 28:21 everybody a little bit about who you are and how you show up in the world and how you got 28:25 connected to enter science. Well, I'm a mom of three, 28:28 that's probably my most important job and I have a wonderful husband. 28:32 I also, I'm part owner of a software company, so I've always been on in the business world, 28:37 so to say at a particular juncture, about three years ago I was diagnosed with stage four 28:44 breast cancer after having it in 2016, which was never supposed to come back. 28:50 I had such a great response to all the treatment that I did and all the holistic stuff 28:54 I did. So that sent me on a journey of okay, 28:57 well you know, clearly I got to do something here because this wasn't supposed to come back 29:01 and I felt as though I was contributing it to coming back And within 24 hours 29:08 I was introduced by, I live in Europe, although American because you hear the accent uh to Dr. 29:15 Joe dispenser both from American friends and European friends. 29:19 So I took that as a sign. Okay, I need to check this guy out, 29:22 went online, looked at podcasts and so forth. I was totally sold and I decided that I was 29:27 going to go all in on this and combine that with the east and east west for me, 29:32 I'm a believer in the east meets west, there's gaps in both. 29:35 And so I like to have a complementary approach and it has been extremely successful for me. 29:42 The prognosis was pretty lousy and uh I came from some pretty dark places to being healthy 29:49 as you can see it's not a straight line. Uh you know you have your your bumps and new 29:55 lessons that you have to learn. 29:57 And through this journey I met Dr Hammel Patel who you're gonna interview, 30:02 I think tomorrow who is a PhD at U. C. S. D. 30:07 And they were so intrigued by the success of the dr joe dispenser meditation method 30:14 that there was seed money found by a donor to actually clinically, 30:20 I should say clinically. I'll let him say that to research this on the 30:24 cellular level. So really understand how meditation not just
Quantum studies and future research goals 30:28 affects heart rate variability and blood pressure, but really how does it change biology 30:33 and physiology? 30:35 So, coming out of this, uh there was a nonprofit set up called the Inner Science 30:41 Research Fund and I was asked to be one of the founding board members along with two other 30:46 people. And that was last summer we launched in january 30:51 of this year. We have a stellar team. 30:53 And what our mission is is to fund this research on again how 30:59 meditation changes your biology and physiology. And it's stunning when you see the 31:05 response rate within this community that meditates and it's not like, 31:11 you know, five minutes a day. I mean this is a commitment. 31:13 You know the the bigger problem you have, the more you need to meditate. 31:16 But there's a particular method of how you're taught to meditate. 31:20 It's not just kind of sitting in zen mode with uh you know thoughts coming by. 31:24 It's really about manifestation. It's a combination of um uh epic genetics, 31:30 neuroscience, quantum physics. And again I am not the expert on explaining 31:36 this dr joe is but what we have been able to do is generate some pretty 31:43 stunning early results on what meditation does to cancer. 31:47 What meditation does to viruses the microbiome. Uh And the objective here 31:54 is to write a peer reviewed paper. And again we're partnered with Dr Hammel Patel 31:59 who is with U. C. S. D. And then there's other institutions that are 32:02 also involved in the research so that we can have this evidence published in one of the big 32:09 journals like New England or Nature or whatever so that we have the credibility and the 32:14 evidence to make this part of the health care system and people's daily lives. 32:18 So really, you know the overall objectives is to have people meditate. 32:23 Like they brush their teeth. It's just something they do every day and for 32:27 people to have the um option that they're offered this by their physician. 32:33 So that's what we do and it's been an incredible experience I've met. 32:39 You know just all inspiring people of what they have done with their being and their body 32:46 through this work. 32:48 I'm sitting here listening to how you're describing what inner science does and I've got 32:54 chills going through my body because what I hear is you're giving people the option to 33:01 heal themselves without medication to to take their power back in. 33:07 Really changing the physiology of the Now. I I know a lot about meditation and I 33:12 understand the neuroscience of how the brain works and all that kind of fancy fantastic 33:16 stuff, even though I'm not licensed down that level, I get it and I have a background in 33:20 psychology, I'm just like I'm giddy right now, like who who knew that learning 33:27 how to be still in a world that constantly pushing us to be busy, 33:32 especially women to be busy and to be taking care of everybody else that we get to learn 33:37 this powerful um simple, can I say that simple kind, it's not 33:43 difficult, but there is a recipe of how to do it. 33:47 Okay, okay. Um you know, and again, I don't want to go down 33:52 the road of explaining it, but I'll do kind of kind of highlights. 33:55 I mean the key thing is one is you have to determine what it is that you're trying to 33:59 achieve. The second thing is is what are you possibly 34:04 doing that is blocking that. 34:07 And then the third thing is changing that behavior. 34:11 And the fourth thing is is when you're meditating, learning how to go into the quantum 34:15 field, you know, kind of no space, no time and then manifesting and pulling what you want 34:21 towards you. But it's not just thinking it, 34:23 it's feeling it. So the feeling is the most important. 34:26 So if you want to feel healthy or strong or you know happy in a new relationship, 34:32 it doesn't all have to be health related. Although a lot of it is you have to literally 34:37 feel that and you can come up with pictures in your head to do that. 34:41 So to just give you one quick example of myself to kind of put it in, 34:46 you know a way that people can understand it is, I was addicted to stress many people are,
Rethinking disease, health, and human potential 34:51 I love the the adrenaline, I like the high of it. 34:55 I knew it was bad for me. I have no idea why I was addicted to it. 34:58 Why are you addicted? Something that's so bad for you? 35:00 I was so I knew that I had to change that and so what I did is 35:07 I, and it's exhausting is I micromanaged every thought and every feeling that I had and as 35:13 soon as I would feel arise the pajamas thrown across the kitchen table, 35:19 right the the wet boots to the door that you trip over, 35:23 you know the customer who is completely unreasonable, whatever the case may be, 35:28 I had it immediately, I would turn my head and I would immediately go to a lagoon in Thailand 35:34 which is this my happy place and I would say stop. 35:38 And I would call myself down. And this went on for a couple of months. 35:44 Uh until I really realized that I I I changed when one of my daughters did something that I 35:50 normally would have pretty much flipped out about and I was completely chill and she said I 35:55 have four words. I love joe dispenser that they were like, 36:01 okay, your new mom now, right? It wasn't that I was a horrible mom, 36:05 but I was an uptight mom, right? And I was not anymore. 36:09 So that's the part of the behavioral change and then you have the part of learning how to 36:13 meditate and that's that really is practice. So many people say I can't meditate. 36:17 All the thoughts come in blah blah, blah, blah, blah. 36:19 Well it it's also like when you learn PowerPoint or excel or whatever else. 36:23 I mean it's it's difficult, right? So it's all about practice. 36:26 Practice practice. And even though I've been doing it for three 36:29 years every single day, twice a day, I still have, oh I forgot that email. 36:34 Oh gosh! The laundry is still on the drive. 36:35 And then the key thing is, is how quickly you can rebound from that and go back to where you 36:40 need to be and not go down the rabbit hole. So there's very few people that I know that 36:45 don't have thoughts come in that are very proficient. 36:47 So it shouldn't be a barrier for people to try. 36:50 Well I want people to know from a brain based psychology perspective you have you know men 36:55 have about 25 30,000 thoughts a day. Women have double that so you can't you can't 37:01 really control it but you can narrow in on what you're choosing to focus on it. 37:06 Obviously with meditation this is powerful. So how does meditation and what you do at inter 37:10 science impacts the mindset. So like what would mindset really mean to you? 37:15 And how does learning how to meditate, empower that? 37:18 So when you when you say mindset can you give me a so great question in a general sense 37:24 mindset is your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions and then those things affecting your 37:29 behavior or the habits that you develop. So there's a mindset about how you feel of 37:33 living well the relationships you're in, how you deal with money on the value have to 37:38 yourself, you've got a pattern of mind or thoughts in you. 37:43 I totally get it. My suggestion always is to people that ask me 37:47 is pick one thing, if you try to pick five different things, 37:52 you're going nowhere. So for me, the first thing I had to pick was 37:56 stress and you really master that and once you've mastered that then you go on to the next 38:03 thing and I'm a big believer in continuing to peel the onion so that you continue to grow
Closing reflections on the power of the mind 38:10 and go deeper and have more life lessons and you only do that by reflecting and really 38:17 understanding um being honest with yourself of what more you can do to change the behavior 38:23 that you think is blocking you from getting from where you want to be now. 38:29 I also know that with Muar with Inner Science, you have something called Moonshot, 38:34 What's that? Can you explain that a little bit for us? 38:36 What is that? Well, the you know, the Moonshot is um there's 38:42 you know, there's been we had a lot of debate around the moon shot how much money we would 38:46 raise. That was the big one, you know, as far as, 38:49 you know, billions of dollars to be able to really put this out globally. 38:53 So the idea is is that meditation becomes accessible to every human on the planet so 39:00 that there can be empowered, heal and thrive. 39:05 I love that. So I I like the idea of we're shooting for the 39:09 moon, we're actually going after making this huge intention to heal our planet one 39:16 person at a time through this process of learning how to do meditation right? 39:21 Because there are so many teachers and leaders and speakers who are out there and thank God 39:25 that they're there. But this is going to show that's what I love. 39:29 There's science behind it. You're changing someone sells like you're 39:34 changing your D N. A to to align for success. 39:38 That's exactly correct. And so there's been a lot of research on 39:41 meditation, but it's mostly been um you know, heart rate variability, 39:46 you know, um stress levels blood pressure, it's really has not been 39:53 so much on the cellular level, really not at all. 39:55 So we were the first one to really dive into this when we started,
Evie Jennes introduces Inner Science Research Fund 39:59 they started before the nonprofit was set up. So you know, 40:03 I guess about two years or so ago and we need to have this evidence 40:09 in order to convince physicians that this stuff works And that is not woo 40:16 woo. And so that's why there is a massive effort and 40:20 we have incredible donors. We have people that give us hundreds of 40:24 thousands of dollars. We have people that give us $10 a month. 40:27 And we are so appreciative for whatever anyone can contribute. 40:32 And we have made this community called the catalyst community where we all meditate 40:39 together once a month. There's probably 3200 people now in the 40:43 community. Not everybody's on every week of course or 40:45 every month. That would be a little crazy. 40:47 But there's probably 10 to 15% of the community on every month and it's growing. 40:53 So we only started this a few months ago. Um we have different benefits, 40:57 you know, for for monthly donors where you get a chance to win a week long retreat at one of 41:02 dr joe dispenses events. You get a meditation um that is specifically 41:07 made for our catalyst community, that sort of thing. 41:10 Uh because we really want our donors to feel part of this right? 41:16 So you know the plan, it's pretty out of balance right now. 41:19 I think we all can agree on that and all of these people feel that and know that and they 41:24 want to help in changing that. Yeah. Um two things I want to kind of allude to or 41:30 bring light to I guess is gallup research gallup because the research company, 41:36 what they do is they assess what's happening on the planet, 41:38 if you will from a um analytical research, human workforce 41:44 perspective. So they just released a report in august 41:48 stating at the very top and big bold letters, the world is suffering, 41:53 the world is suffering. So based on their analysis over the past three 41:57 years, their research is proving that the world around the world is suffering. 42:04 The second thing is in 19 I think it was 84, if I remember correctly Washington state that this
Her cancer journey and discovery of Dr. Joe Dispenza 42:10 huge prayer and meditation initiative for their state and it was like thousands. 42:15 It started with 100 people and then it grew to thousands of people. 42:18 And within a year's time crime had dropped dramatically. 42:22 Like 21-24%. 42:25 They were having the beautification, that's the word they used for the city changed completely. 42:31 Like people were taking more um value and pride in their city and the way it looked, 42:37 relationships were improving just because they were coming together and like you and like what 42:42 you're doing with the catalyst having different people spend time in prayer and meditation to 42:46 heal energetically. So if it can do that in a huge state that had a 42:51 huge high crime rate and change it. I think they're even still they could be still 42:55 doing it now. I know that they did it for a while. 42:58 Imagine learning how to meditate that it changes your whole entire physiological being. 43:05 So that's gonna change your energy, that's gonna change your frequency, 43:08 that's gonna change your vibration. That's going to change how you relate to your 43:11 family, how you relate to. I just like I'm literally on fire right now, 43:15 I feel like I need to take off the clothes cause I'm so excited. 43:23 Example of this is that we uh I should say we dr joe dispenser and 43:31 company, they do these events around the world and during towards the end of the pandemic. 43:36 Was mostly in the U. S. Was often in marco Island at the jw Marriott. 43:40 They were amazing. They are just amazing the way they accommodate. 43:44 I walked in and I checked in he said are you part of the you know in Cephalon? 43:48 The Dr. Joker? 43:49 I said well not really in with winter science but you know there's a collaboration and 43:53 partnership and he said we love when all you guys come for two weeks, 43:59 we're waiting for the 1500 people that go to these retreats to come. 44:03 And he said, the energy of the whole place changes. 44:06 And I was so taken back by that the manager literally came out to tell me that.
How meditation changes mindset and behavior 44:11 And I thought now just to your point, what if we had pockets of this around the world? 44:18 How would that impact all the things that you just said? 44:23 I I'm just giddy. Like, okay, I I'm in, you don't have to tell me 44:27 twice. I love this. 44:29 Um, is there anything else that you think you need to share in regards to what you do and how 44:36 this impacts the medicine of mindset that you want everyone to know, 44:42 last piece of wisdom you want to share. Um, I think we've covered all of the high 44:48 points. Uh, you know, now I'm gonna do a little call to 44:51 action. Right? 44:52 So this is part of it. And I'm being completely transparent here 44:56 because I don't want to come off as like a used car salesman because that's not at all. 45:01 We, we are about, we're very much a soft sell. We would love people to join us on this. 45:07 Uh, again, it's Inner Science Research fund dot org. 45:11 You can see us look us up on the website, check out what we do, 45:16 how it feels to you. If it resonates please join us in any way that 45:21 you would like to. 45:23 And uh, again, we are so thankful for all the support that we have, 45:28 not only in the US we have, we have donors from. 45:32 I'm going to venture to say more than 40 countries. 45:36 So this is a global thing now. It could be one person in one country,
Moonshot mission and community support 45:40 so I want to be open and honest about that and most is in the US because this is where we 45:45 spend the most time. So our arms are open to anyone who would like 45:49 us to help us bring meditation into people's daily lives and into the healthcare system 45:56 where it really impacts uh people's health and empowers them to heal and thrive. 46:02 I think this interview and the interviewer I get to have tomorrow with Dr Hammel is going to 46:07 be amazing and I'm sure many people are going to say yes, 46:12 I'm interested in learning how to really, really transform myself from the inside out and 46:18 from the outside in. Thank you so much for being here with me today. 46:22 So thank you everybody. Thank you. 46:26 We'll see you next time. Take care
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