Slowing, Stopping & Reversing Age With The Power Of Your Mind

Debra Poneman

Thank you. I am so excited. Thank you for that introduction. And likewise, I remember when I met you and I loved your privates, like the first person to buy your product Coach Paul. And anyway, I just, I just knew you had that it factor, you know that it quality. I just knew you were gonna go to the top and now you also impacted so many lives and just yeah, not even three years. So kudos to you.

Jana Danielson

Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so let’s dive in. So you’ve, you know, blown the world away with your yes to success seminars and now you have ageless. So these are kind of like your, you know, the two pronged model of Debra Poneman and I want to know this summit really is about helping people connect the dots between their mind and their health and their wellness. So talking about being this perfect topic, and so what’s the first thing you can share with us about the power of the mind to slow the aging process?

Debra Poneman

My favorite question, but first, I’m going to say that it said that the greatest gift that you can give to anyone is the gift of positive expectation. You know, like expecting them to succeed, expecting things to work out for them being their cheerleaders. You know, expecting them to find love and happiness. And the greatest gift you can give yourself is also the gift of positive expectation, expecting yourself to be well, expecting yourself to be happy. No, not expecting your life to fall apart in your body to fall apart when you’re in your fifties and sixties and don’t even, you know, talk about the seventies. So, you know, when people say, you know, sometimes it drives people crazy when people, oh, I’m 80 years young, like, you know, I roll right? You’re only as old as you feel. You know, sometimes you want to smack them? Sometimes you want to smack because you’re almost 80 and your knees hurt and your joints ache and your hair is falling out and you can never remember where you put anything or what you’re gonna say or when you get down to, you know, play with your grandchildren, you can’t get back up. But the truth is that that chirpy character, like, you know, I’m 80 and Grady or whatever the heck they say, if they keep it up according to science, they will and all probability live eight years longer than you and that’s the truth. 

Do you know? So excuse the expression, but the fact that your thoughts create your reality is no secret anymore. And I’m not just talking about your thoughts, creating a happier mindset. I’m talking about your thoughts, thoughts creating the condition of your body. There has been so much research that’s that’s shown that the way we think and the way we speak about our physical bodies cannot only increase our disease fighting white blood cells and lower the level of the hormone that raises blood pressure. But it can actually reverse heart disease. It could strengthen your bones. It can even regrow brain cells that we lost with age. I just want to cite one. Store one. A bit of research. I love citing science. You know, my partner in Teaching Ageless is a Harvard trained as you said, Mind body professor. She won’t let me say anything unless I have the science behind it. It’s like okay do you have the science behind that? So I’ve gotten very used to it. But one of my favorite studies at the university of California san Francisco, A study of 159 people who had been diagnosed with HIV. They were randomly assigned exercises intended to foster positive emotions. And then I have a quote here for you from the New York times. Listen to this one. 

People with new diagnosis of HIV infection who practice the skill of positive thinking carried a significantly lower virus load and were less likely to need antidepressants to help them cope with their illness. Nothing else was different. Obviously if positive thinking can reduce the impact of HIV it can most likely reduce the impact of other less serious ailments and I’m not going to read you the whole article but it went on to say that similar results just from having positive expectations. Just from having a positive mindset. It patients who suffered from advanced breast cancer, diabetes, dementia, all of them. Actually I do want to I want to quote one more thing and then I’ll let you get a word in edgewise. Okay here it is. Hold on I just moved away from my did you see how I like was close and then I got far I want to get close again. Okay there I am. Okay. But anyway, similar results. Hold on. In addition to health benefits, it was discovered that positive thinking can actually slow the aging process. A study of more than 4000 people, 50 years of age and older found that those who had a positive view of aging had lower levels of c reactive protein, which is a marker related to um stress-related inflammation associated with like heart disease. And they also lived significantly longer, just changing their mindset. So it’s not just you know, Debra and Jana saying, hey, think happy thoughts, kids. It is proven by science over and over and over.

Jana Danielson

Okay, now I hear that you have a story about your mom that you want to share with us, is that right?

Debra Poneman

I do wait, can I just tell you one other story and then I’ll tell you my mom’s story. Okay. I Yes. Okay. One other story there’s a woman named Ellen Langer who is a friend of mine, she’s also Harvard professor. Listen to this. You’re gonna love this. She did a study called the counterclockwise study. It went like this. So in 1979 she was beginning her Harvard teaching career. She recruited a group of eight men in their seventies. Okay, picture this eight men in their seventies for a five day stay at a retreat. The men, they weren’t an exceptionally bad health but they weren’t, you know, specimens of perfection. You know, they’re just like age appropriate. They move slowly. They had aches and pains. They were easily fatigued. So these guys walked into the retreat center and which was actually a former monastery and when they walked, in Ellen and her team had created the place to look like it did in 1959, when they were in their fifties, like fathers knows best was like playing on the vintage tv and fifties, music was on a fifties style. Remember clock, you’re too young. Rest of you remember clock radios? 

And the men were treated like they were in their fifties. Nobody carried their bags for them. Nobody went to get them a blanket and they were instructed to keep the conversation to the topics they would have discussed in the fifties Eisenhower in the White House, 1959 was the Dodgers in the White sox Day in the World series. And they also put there were no mirrors. All of the mirrors were covered so they couldn’t see themselves. Okay, so at the beginning and the end of the five day span of course, they administered a series of physical and cognitive aptitude tests and the men and at the end of just five days, every single metric, the men’s performance dramatically include increased listen to this. Not only was their cognitive acuity back to what it was two decades before. Is that crazy. But they were also able to do things with their bodies that they hadn’t done in 20 years. So obviously the study spoke volumes to the potential we have in Europe plasticity, we can change our health and okay, one other reason I’m going to tell you about my mom. One other reason why I love this story is you don’t want to sit around and complain with your friends about your aches and pains, but rather about what’s exciting in life when I’m around groups of women who want to talk about their doctors appointments, you know and their spouses, doctor’s appointments and their medication and their cataracts and their knees and everything else and they say things to me like, oh just wait, you don’t have them yet, but just wait, I get up and leave. I mean I’m not mean, but I say, you know what, I have to go take care of something. 

Because I don’t want that stuff implanted in my brain that I’m gonna get cataracts and I’m gonna need knee replacement surgery, you know, and all of these other okay snow back to my mother when my mom was in her 90s, she never thought of herself as old. She just lived her life. She’s in her 90s, she’s teaching English as a second language to Russian immigrants. She’s teaching great books to fourth graders and this is my favorite part. She would deliver meals on wheels to old people. Ah and most of them were younger than her and when they installed new elevators in her building. It was an apartment complex for people over 50, everybody moved out, that was above the second floor. My mother lived on the fourth floor, you know what she did. She carried her groceries up four floors, she went up and down those four floors and she said no it’s good exercise. She did put a little folding chair on each of the landings just in case she needed to take a little breather, but she says she hardly ever sat down except when she had a lot of heavy groceries. So and even in her 90s, when somebody offered to carry her suitcase, she’d say let me carry yours and when she passed away she was not on one prescription medication and she died in her 90s mindset. There you go.

Jana Danielson

We’re told by society that it’s not right to ask someone their age, but we’re going to put those societal beliefs aside. And would you share with us just a secret? Just you and me and everybody on this summit? You how many birthday candles?

Debra Poneman

Well I just, just like the day that started, I turned 71.

Jana Danielson

What?

Debra Poneman

Happy Birthday to Me, January 24! 

Jana Danielson

Yeah. Amazing, Amazing. Debra.

Debra Poneman

Yeah. And the thing is to me it’s a number, it has no meaning, but I would say be careful. Be careful everyone about telling people your age. I tell people all the time, but our society, as you said, it’s very ingrained in ages. A couple of years ago not to name drop but I just have to, in this case I went on Safari with Richard Branson and it was just 10 of us and his family and most of the people on the safari, we stated his beautiful private safari resort sa bits outside of Johannesburg and we’re just one big happy family and most of the people were in their thirties and forties, they were young entrepreneurs maybe I think actually I think one couple was in their fifties and for some reason my friend who I was with said something well Debra’s the same age as Richard because he’s actually one year older than I am which put me at like 66 at the time And I am telling you Jonah, everybody immediately started acting differently to me. They would like help me up into the Jeep, I’m telling you they would give me their seats like oh you can sit here, it’s easier to get in. I’m like what the so and I don’t want people thinking that about me that I need help getting into the jeep, you know I’m in perfect physical shape, I do everything that I need to to stay strong and to stay healthy and anyway it’s all mindset and you don’t need people thinking about you as old because you know thoughts are things we learn from what the bleep that when people think about something, that thing that matter changes by that person’s thoughts. So, I don’t mind telling people that I just turned 71 but don’t help me into the jeep.

Jana Danielson

I am. I think it’s fascinating how quickly someone’s perception can change when they find out information. Right? And we’ve been talking about reversing aging. And I want to ask besides mindset. So you’ve given us some really great examples and some really great stories that we can like hook onto for that education, inspiration and then the action, right? That’s what we hope. We hope that people are here on this summit, not just listening to the knowledge because knowledge listen to without the action is just simply knowledge. But when you can act on it, it becomes wisdom and you can be living it. And so besides mindset, what would you say, Debra, are some other factors or areas that we can be, you know, get on our radar to help us reverse that aging process.

Debra Poneman

You know, I have a whole list of suggestions, but I would, I’ll talk about one that I think is really important. That is meditation. I think that the reason why I can be in perfect health in 71. Again, I don’t think I’ve taken a prescription medication in decades. I mean literally decades, even if that probably 40 years, I don’t know. But I’ve been a meditation teacher for over 50 years. I became a teacher of transcendental meditation in May of 1972. So my 50 year anniversary was last year. And there are volumes of research that proved that meditation can slow age related decline of the gray matter in the brain. Actually I’m gonna share it. One piece of research with you. I know that I have all my research is over here. Okay. Here it is. Okay. This was published in February of 2019. U. C. L. A. They compared two groups of 50 people each. Okay two groups of 50 the groups ranged in age from 24 to 77. It’s a good demographic slice. Since the brain, By the way you know the do you know what age the brain begins to decline?

Jana Danielson

I’m gonna guess. I’m gonna guess 55.

Debra Poneman

Well you’re almost right. Because it’s half that it’s 26 What the brain reaches its peak at 26 and actually starts physically shrinking at 26 and it actually loses 5% of its volume per decade. So it’s 26. Yes. So one group, so there’s 50 people in each group. One group was made up of people who did not meditate. And the other group of people  were people who had been regular meditators for anywhere from 4 to 46 years. So all 100 subjects their brains were scanned with MRI’s magnetic resonance imaging. You know what M. R. I. S. And the results were absolutely unmistakable. The meditators showed significantly less brain volume loss in all different regions of the brain compared with the non meditators and Dr. Florian Kurt who was the co author of the study, said quote we expected small and distinct effects in some regions of the brain that had been associated with meditating. But instead what we actually observed was a widespread effective meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain. And by the way you want to hear something crazy. So the thing that I would recommend for people is do a meditation practice. 

I mean right now it’s good to do a meditation practice anyway because you know the great St. Amma the hugging saint, I love the quote from her, she said we must cling to our spiritual practices so that when the world shakes you remain unshakable. And so right now when the world is shaking a little bit our meditation practices are even more important. But what I would say is choose a meditation practice that has substantial scientific research behind it. Like transcendental meditation like the art of living foundation, they have a meditation called sahaj samadhi meditation which is sahaj mean simple samadi means that place of unbounding word. I’m a sahaj samadhi teacher, I used to teach D. M. Now I teach sahaj samadhi. But those are both. Those both have volumes of scientific research that says that it does release stress, that it does center you that it does expand your heart and that it does reverse stop slow and even reverse the aging of the brain and the body, but you want to hear something crazy. Is that what I said this whole time isn’t crazy enough? Another researcher, her name is Dr. Hilary Tindle. She’s a physician and an investigator at Vanderbilt University. She also produced a body of work on the connection between attitude and health. And when she said was that in all of her research and she researched meditation too. She said it was it blew her mind that a positive mental attitude. She called it the improbable power of just being optimistic. She said it just astounded her at how being optimistic actually changed the structure of the brain. 

Hold on, I have it here. Okay, in 2009 listen to this, she analyzed data from 97,000 women nine. This is not a small study, 97,000 women filled out questionnaires for the National Institutes of Health Women’s Health Initiative and they wanted to see if there was a correlation between optimism and mortality. Women who scored high on being hopeful about the future had significantly lower rates of heart disease, cancer and mortality than women who scored high on pessimism. She also studied cynicism. People who can be described as not only pessimistic but you know the eye rolling about everything you give them a hint about something they might be able to do to improve their life. And they’re like, yeah, right, okay. Also listen to this one. People who expected other people to be dangerous or untrustworthy also had higher disease rates and died younger than those who viewed other people with trust. Is that wild? And I hope this is interesting. I love research. Of course, my partner makes me love research, but also in 2012 Dr. Trendle compared more than 430 people who had undergone coronary bypass bypass surgery, 284 of whom were diagnosed with at least low levels of clinical depression. And the subjects took the same optimism survey before and after the surgery. Within eight months after the surgery, the depressed pessimists had more than twice as many complications and re hospitalizations than the people who expected to get better and expected to be healthy and talked about what was good in their lives instead of what was not.

Jana Danielson

It’s so astounding to me and you know what it made me think of. I had a client who was diagnosed with lung cancer. And he came to my Pilates classes all the time. All the time. All the time. And he ended up in palliative care. And his daughter told me that he was teaching the nurses diaphragmatic breathing from his hospital bed from what he had learned from me and Debra like I should you not. She came out of palliative care, they, the cancer, like, it stopped progressing at such a fast rate. They like the doctors were saying like, this is a big, they couldn’t explain it, they’re like, this is a miracle. And the research that you’re citing made me just think I haven’t thought about him in a while and whatever you want to package it as a miracle. You know, the universe. God, what do whatever package it, whatever kind of wrap up if you want to package it in The truth is like, this stuff is not just what we’re thinking or you know how people will start a sentence with this might be a little woo woo. 

And you’re like, no, it’s not like you said, the science is there and I’m sure you could cite study after study on your computer that you have there for us. And so, everyone watching, please understand that. And I use this metaphor in another one of the talks are going to hear this week. I believe that every person can take on characteristics, personality traits of characters from Winnie the pooh. And sometimes we have those ers in our life, right? And you’re like, oh my God bless his little soul. He’s so cute. The little donkeys got a bowl in his tail. But if you are an er and you’re listening to this. It’s time to maybe put you know put some of that pessimism or cynicism aside and really listen to what Debra is sharing with us because it’s there there’s these are hard and fast, scientific. You know you can’t really argue with them.

Debra Poneman

And I’ll tell you something else. That was so interesting that some research that I read recently there were some scientists thought well can people really change if they’ve been e or their whole life, can they become, you know, what’s the bouncy one?

Jana Danielson

Like tigger or piglet? Right. Yeah. 

Debra Poneman

Right. And the answer is absolutely because of neural plasticity, we can’t go into it but our brains the cells renew constantly so we can always replace them with healthy new cells. But what they found you’re gonna love this, what they found was that it was easier for people to change their mindset. This is really a fine point who also maintained a healthy lifestyle. So the people who meditated eight, well you know, they didn’t eat things like red meat because then you ingest the sad hormones of the cow that is about to be killed. We won’t even go into you know, bovine growth hormones and all of the other ho antibiotics they feed the cows and then you’re eating these things but they ate no, they ate lower on the food chain, they greens and they ate alive foods and they exercise well and they got adequate rejuvenating sleep. These are all of the things that I teach in my ageless course. 

Like how to get adequate rejuvenating sleep. I mean I’ll throw in a little, little side benefit here. I learned this from my business partner who’s a college professor. I never knew that melatonin isn’t manufactured unless you are in pitch darkness, the more light that goes into your eyes, the less melatonin can be produced. And anyway, so sleep with an eye mask or you know, blackout curtains or just through a black t-shirt over your eyes. You will not even believe the change in your sleep. But anyway, the people who got good exercise, adequate sleep, great diet meditated. They were much more likely to easily become positive and optimistic. And then when they were positive and optimistic it was easier for them to eat well, exercise meditate and sleep deeply. So all of those things, that’s, you know, what one, what do you call it leg of the table? You know, they all come together.

Jana Danielson

So you’re sharing so much juicy, delicious information with us today. I want to ask you and if you want to teeter on you know, on a fine line here, that’s kind of what this question is meant to do. So based on your years of education and experience and expertise, what do you think is not being talked about enough from that area that you, you’re like, why are we talking about this or why are we still talking about it this way.

Debra Poneman

I got it. I know I just got goosebumps when you asked me that question. I don’t think it’s so much about what we’re not talking about. But I think that whenever anybody says something that we disagree with, you have to you have to take a beat, you have to pause and not be so married to what you think. I mean I’m not married to the medical model, although I am quoting this research. I remember, you know, when C0V!D began its people who were not vaccinated, they were like pariahs. I mean their families turned against them, but did their families take the time to read the research that was done by people who you know, were like the former directors of the National Institutes of Health, People who were you know, decorated, awarded scientists with, you know, 2, 3 PhDs who you know, were anti vax. No, it was like a knee jerk reaction. And I think that what people have to do is maybe go back and apologize to your friends who you rejected and look at both sides and in the other way to, you know, the people who are not big on vaccinations, maybe look at some of the research on the other side as well. But those of us who are not happy with the direction that the world is going in, No, we’re upset about our politicians not listening to each other, well, we’re not listening to each other, well we’re making each other wrong and that example just popped into my mind because it’s just been so present the last few years. I mean really, I know people intimately that were excluded from their family weddings because they weren’t vaccinated and yet I think that people should be honored for their truth and really, look at the research on both sides. So I think that’s the, what’s it called? The elephant in the corner for me, that’s it, 

Jana Danielson

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, thank you for that. What I’ve been asking all of the amazing speakers this whole week is in a, in an attempt for our audience to be building their own jewelry box or toolkit of mindset hints and tips and tricks and hacks do you have, do you have something that you could share with us? Something that, you know, you have come to, you know, depend on or something, a strategy that has become a real go to for you in this area of ensuring your mindset stays, you know, loved and nurtured? 

Debra Poneman

Oh my gosh, I have so many, you know, I just want to tell you the reason why I started teaching why I started my yes to success seminar in 1980 is because I had been already meditation teacher for almost a decade and what I realized I went to a seminar one time and this guy was saying that excuse me that were like tuning forks and he said if an F. Sharp is vibrating and a B. Flat comes towards it, the F. Sharp repels that B. Flat. It can only vibrate into its field, another F sharp. And what the guy was saying is that when we’re always talking, complaining about how poor we are, we’re never going to get out of debt. And you know, then some wonderful opportunity could come in to make a lot of money could come into your energy field, but you repel it if you’re vibrating with prosperity, if you’re going down the street in Beverly Hills. I lived in L. A. At the time and you look at the houses and you say that’s for me, then you raise your vibration and that house could vibrate to you. 

But if you go down the street and you’re like, I wonder what some jerk, you know, hurt other people to make the money. You know, I mean all these stories that we have, we’re just repelling that. So what I say, there are two things. One is that what I say is that when you have to watch your thoughts and cancel those thoughts that are needlessly negative. So I have another example when you forget when you come, what you came into the room for, You have to realize that 12 year olds also forget what they come in the room for only when they say when they come in the room they just look around and they walk out, we go, oh my God, I’m getting dementia, I’m losing my mind. I know it’s early onset Alzheimer’s, I mean right guys, Hello? So that is not those are not the words that you want to vibrate. I’m getting Alzheimer’s, this is early onset dementia. You know, I’m losing my mind. No cancel when you hear yourself saying those words replace them with words of what you want in your life. I’m sure I’ll remember it in a minute. I got a great brain right? So I would say that cancel negative thoughts because here’s the thing when you get tense because you can’t remember something then what happens is that your neurotransmitters, you know, they curl up in stress. But when you say, I’m sure I’ll remember later when you relax from the stress, the brain again returns to its more optimal state and releases what’s called court of control and releasing hormone. Okay. Which is those neurotransmitters that allow your neurons to communicate with each other. So and again this is not Debra’s view on the world, but it is the every metaphysical master from Napoleon Hill to Wallace wattles to Emmet Fox to Catherine. Ponder all say speak positively about everyone and everything. And that is an absolute prerequisite to health and happiness. but also the science brain neurotransmitters and I can drive time for one more. 

Yeah, okay, so one more you know this is a whole another discussion and we won’t go deeply into it because it might be a little bit shocking but it’s about judgment. My I have two Children, my daughter is a chiropractor up in outside of Seattle and my son is a sports agent, he owns a sports agency. But both of them were very intrigued with Plant medicine. My daughter started studying it, she’s like the consummate scientist and my son started studying it because they’re using plant medicine for people with PTSD and a lot of his athletes suffer from PTSD. They go from you know the hood in Chicago to making eight figures and the level and professional sports that they are, it’s stressful, let’s just put it that way. I know the kids right? And they are kids and they’re using plant medicine now for a lot of people with PTSD and they even have ketamine clinics in Chicago that are paid for by Medicare. So it’s becoming very, very mainstream. Harvard has a course Columbia has a course anyway, so using plant medicine. So my kids like come on mom, you know you used to use plant medicine in the sixties, why can’t you do it now. So I thought alright I’ll do some, you know micro dosing, which is very small amounts. I didn’t want to just like drink down the ayahuasca, you know? 

No, I wanted to take it slowly because I really protect my brain. But if you look at the research, it actually increases the communication between the neurotransmitters, it doesn’t cause them to retract. And I could, I know a lot about the science of plant medicine. But anyway, so I went on one plant medicine journey and the thing that’s really incredible about it is you see how your mind works and you know what I saw Janet you’re gonna love this. I haven’t told you this. I saw that I was a little judgment machine. I saw that I would look, oh well that person is you know, needs to put on a little weight. Well that person needs to lose a little weight in there. But you know, I was like but I saw my brain you know. Well that shelf is too cluttered. Well you know that complex should stop we going over each other in public. I didn’t know that. I did that all the time. But I saw the mechanics of my mind because you kind of are separate and you could observe yourself at least that was my experience. And then I saw that when I judged people that I created a barrier between me and them is a protective mechanism if you judge people, you don’t have to get too close to them, right? You create that barrier between you and them. 

And then I saw in that space that how quickly I could change my life and change the world by changing my judgments. So I started noticing when I was in that space of the plant medicine that when I saw my mind judging, I would stop, I would have compassion for myself, for doing that because I wasn’t doing it on purpose and then I would instead send that person or that couple or whenever I was judging love, I called it a love bomb because that was and I saw that the judgment dissolved, the boundary dissolved and they were engulfed with light and the light spread out, spread out to all of creation and how powerful are we and I’ll tell you one other little addendum to the story. When I was driving home, I was in Henderson, Nevada and after the journey I was driving home through nowhere Nevada and I was with my friend and we stopped at a little Mexican restaurant and I saw myself judging again like you know I had judgments about the guy who was in the army and I judge him about the woman who you know obviously got her eyebrows tattooed and I and when I would catch myself and instead I would just send them love, I was sitting in this this little Mexican restaurant weeping because I love those people so much. So that’s it. 

Jana Danielson

You’ve shown us from so many different ways, directions, the true power of the mind. And it brings me back to the vision that I had for this week with everyone that I’ve invited. And everyone that has said yes, is to remind us that before the word medicine was positioned to us as something that came in a bottle that was manufactured in a lab. Like medicine predated all of that. And it came from mother earth. It came from our own ability to go within. And I feel like your conversation today Debra with me is exactly dialed into. You know what I was hoping would be presented to our audience this week. So I just want to thank you so much. Now. I know there’s gonna be people and I want to tell everyone I did. Debra’s yes to success 2.0, it probably would have been like without a summer of 2020? 

Debra Poneman

Probably, yes.

Jana Danielson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know when she was teaching you that little skill about leave. canceling the negative, the negative feelings, negative thoughts. Did you call that a digital detox?

Debra Poneman

No, it was a mental I actually, but it was a seven day mental diet that I got from Emmet Fox in the 1930s. Almost 100 years ago. Seven day mental diet. And just days watch your thoughts, cancel them, replace them with something you do want in your vibration. Yeah. That’s a mental diet.

Jana Danielson

It was very powerful. And so Debra gave us this, you know this homework during that. I think it was a 10 week experience. And I was like, well that’s no problem. And she said, and if you catch yourself in those thoughts, you have to start again. You guys, I think I got up to 42 starts and then I was like, screw this, I’m just gonna try and do it for an hour, not seven days, I’m gonna try and do it for one hour. And then I did it and then I was like, Okay, now I’m gonna do it for two hours and then I did it right? So we are so conditioned. And I think so many of us, like I have friends that will say, oh, I try and meditate so hard. I like sit there and I, you know, I think, well it’s not like having a bowel movement or like you can’t force these things, right? And your I mean our conscious mind that CEO of the brain is going to be on guard all the time, but it’s learning how to get beyond that and almost like surrendering to it is probably so you’ve given us so much to think about. And I know so much resonated with me.

Debra Poneman

I have one more thing I’m gonna say, okay, one more thing is, and for everybody out there who is judging me for having taken plant medicine, what I want you to do is have compassion for yourself because I know that it’s not like you, it’s just that we have been conditioned that medicine, but like you say, these are medicines that ancient people used, you know ancient for thousands and thousands of years. So I would say watch the movie fantastic fungi, you could get on Netflix and that shows you a little bit about our amazing world and what it offers and and I would say maybe for this week during the week that we’re with Janna and we’re doing this incredible work. Maybe do the when you notice you’re judging have compassion for yourself and send a love bomb. And if enough of us did that, imagine how much we could fill the world up with light.

Jana Danielson

Alright, so now I know there’s people that are gonna be chomping at the bit to know how do I get more Debra, where’s the best place for them to connect with you, learn more about your work?

Debra Poneman

Just my website YestoSuccess.com and both my Ageless course and my Yes to Success course are always hanging out on my website.

Jana Danielson

Amazing. Debra, it was so great to catch up with you. We’re going to have to not let it be so long because yeah, I just I get so much beauty enjoy when I connect with you in my life. So thank you for saying yes to me this week, thank you for showing up the way you did and gang. I want to remind you that the best thing to do in between these amazing in interviews is to move your body a little bit, get outside. If you can run to the washroom, fill your water bottle, and I will see you back here for another amazing episode with a world class speaker at the Medicine of Mindset Summit. See you soon.