EFR 504: Your Mind is Not Your Brain and How to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking with Dr. Caroline Leaf, PhD

Chase: I guess my first question is, the title is, I think, at first glance, can maybe throw people off guard. It's kind of maybe insinuating. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but let me know, your mental mess. It kind of insinuates that it's something that we all have, right? We all have a mental mess and so it's a very universal approach to help people clean it up. Was that kind of your thought process in titling this?

Dr. Leaf: Yeah, absolutely. There isn't anyone who doesn't have a mental, if we deny them even more in a mental illness, because it's so humid, it's so normal, it's so okay, it'd be a mental mess. And it's the hope that is part of who we are. Being a being a human in life is not an easy thing to do. And we also can't predict everything we caught. We don't we can't control events, circumstances, people. So every moment of every day, we are like little scientists, hypothesizing and trying things out and responding and trying to deal with things. And it's very experimental. So in that process, sometimes we hit the mark, and sometimes you make a mess. And that's all okay. And that's what I'm trying to tell people, let's just level the playing fields. It's all pretending that some of us are okay. And some of us aren't, and that you're a mental mess, I'm not all that I've got to fix you. And we are all a mess and we all go through degrees of mess and cleaning up a mess. And if you don't have a mess, you can't repair and grow. So the whole philosophy I've been in this field 38 years now and the one of the real strong reasons why I titled the book and my podcast, which is very, very popular, it's called cleaning up your mental mess, the same thing deals with this concept of it's really, okay, we've got to give ourselves permission to recognize that we're going to make a mess, it's totally okay. It's a repairing process, it's a growth process. The thing is, is not to stay in the mess, the thing is, is to own it, recognize it, repair and grow from it. And that's kind of what I have tried to help people understand to the work that I do.

Chase: you have and you do. And one of the things that hit me very early on in the book, I think when it comes to understanding our mental mess, I think for most people, maybe I'm speaking for myself, we can we tend to know we have this thing in the back of our head or a gut feeling or a memory or an experience that we just can't shake. And you actually, you hit that very early on in the book I one of the first things I marked here was a better and healthier mindset to have when reading about health and wellness trends is to ask yourself, why is this one idea resonating with me? Can you walk us through? Like what is that really that thing that we probably know we want to work on that's in the back of our mind somewhere? Why does it just like hit home so much for us? but yet we kind of just glance over it sometimes?

Dr. Leaf: Well, that there's so many ways to answer it's such an excellent question Chase and I'm glad you phrased that. Basically what we need, it starts with the fact that our everything that we are thinking about is actually coming from a real place of a real thought inside our mind that is preceded by an actual mind experience. So if you have got, if you are reading something, and you're drawn to that, it's because we recognize a need inside of ourselves. Because there's something that we have gone through and going through that is has put us in a position where we recognize we need to fix it. And this comes to the messy part and the cleaning of the mental mess, because I talk a lot about the wise mind and the messy mind. And the whole point of being a human is to accept the messiness, because that's kind of how we do life as experimental process. But the wise, the messy mind needs to work with a wise mind, which is the instinct of knowing in order to repair and grow. So when you're drawn to something, see reading something in the wellness space, or you listen to a podcast or you choose to even listen to a podcast like this, he said that that's a wise man saying hey, okay, these things in your life, these patterns in your life This thing's going on in everyone's lives. And there's something's caught you about what you're hearing reading. And it's basically giving you you've kind of set your wise minds prompting you to seek the knowledge that you need in order to repair. So it's kind of like we become thought to take tips. So that's one reason. And when we got something in our life, you know, we can probably dive into this as we go along. But a thought is a real thing. And the way you show up is based on thoughts and thoughts are real things that you built into your brain and your body and your mind three places that come from the process of mind in action, which is your thinking, feeling and choosing which is how you experience the world. So how you've experienced the world is literally converted through your mind into brain is real, real structure that. I'm going to hold up a little tree and we can talk in depth and pack this in whichever way direction you want to go. But you'll see the trees in my book, he has a little tree. And this is what thoughts look like, literally look like trees. And when they are healthy, they use the green tree when they are toxic, or use the toxic tree. So anything that we have gone through, becomes these physical protein tree like structures in our brain. And they affect our DNA. And also in the gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields of the mind, which is literally the life force, the energy, the energy, electromagnetic energy, all that kind of stuff. And it's the and it's real. So we've got this kind of thing, this kind of toxic issue, it could be anything, it might be the experiences of COVID. And how that may be disrupted one's feeling of well-being and it is a recognition, I need to get my life back on track. So they this this this route would be the source that branches would be the interpretation of sort of how you uniquely think feel and choose about the experience. And this is created a three to one survival. So the brain and body are responding by sending you signals, like how you feel physically and just the sensations. And then your mind is responding by actually drawing you towards reading that book in that well, that in the world of space or listening to this podcast. So this is literally your mind, brain and body or second, your biology, wanting to repair this because this threatens survival, there's something here, and you'd been drawn to fix it the unit that your wise mind calling you to fix up the messy mind. So these are real science, actually a very, very nice scientific explanation for your great question.

Chase: I love the visual aids. I'm a visual learner. So I was great. I'll definitely have to anybody's curious, make sure check out the video podcast here as well. And you kind of touched on where I wanted to go next already in biology and you're talking about, you know, maybe someone's dealing with COVID. Or maybe someone's dealing with a chronic illness, a mental illness and physical illness, anything that's affecting our physiological state or biological state, you actually talk about how that can influence our mental state. And I think that's something that gets overlooked people maybe discredit or don't fully give the respect that it deserves, when we look at our physical well-being can have a direct influence and does directly influence our mental well-being? I know, that's kind of a loaded question. We could go a lot of different ways. But can you maybe give us a high level meaning of why our biology is so important? Our physiological state is so important when looking at our mental state?

Dr. Leaf: actually almost excellent question again but I would almost rephrase that, that your physiological state is dependent on your mind. And that's your mental state mind, mental state would be the same thing. So your mind has a weight, the easiest way to understand that is to understand that mind and brain are separate mind brain body are separate, but they're inseparable. So they work together, there's a very interesting relationship between the mind and the brain. So the brain and the body would be all physical, but the brain is not the mind. So that brain and body from the work I've done and feel that people in my field, we propose that the mind and the brain are around about one to 10% of who you are, if you did, the difference between you and I on a date person is that is on mind it a person is that nothing happening, nothing going on your body is disintegrating. But you and I are having a conversation listeners are listening these, we could put ECG on your head and see brain activity. And we could put an EKG on your heart with the activity and we could draw blood and you know, you can test the blood needed by electromagnetic properties. And in other words, because of the life of your mind, your mind is this energizing force that is moving through your brain in your body. And so it's kind of like the it's sort of between life experiences of life, and your physical. So there's your physical being an initial mind and your mind is on a psychological level, how you think, feel and choose about everything that's going on around you that you experience. And on a physics level, it's quantum fields, gravitational fields, electromagnetic Light forces, Einstein's work, it's stuff that we've known for years. But it's becoming a little clearer to understand now, with all the advances in, in science and technology, we can start seeing that it we know that we're not floating because of gravitational fields. But in addition, there is a unique gravitational field around you and around me and I contact yours and you contact mine; we're generating photons, and those photons have a unique pattern. And they are coming from the interrelationship between what you experiencing and what you bought into your brain in your body. And so it's a very, very intricate, complicated relationship. When someone dies, a whole aspect of that relationship is gone. The energizing force isn't there your way loose. I mean, you literally there's something like that literally, is not there anymore. And it's very obvious that a person's not doing anything, but you're doing a lot. So that's a great way of kind of visualizing mind. And then so we take that aspect of mind and brain as being separate but inseparable, the mind is useless without the brain, the brain is useless without the mind, the body and brain are useless without the mind and vice versa. So there's a very strong feedback loop between the two. So of course, if you've had a traumatic brain injury, which is why I began my work in very clinical applications as a therapist for nearly 30 years, working with people traumatic brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy is list of sports trauma and autism and Alzheimer's and learning disabilities and severe trauma, sexual trauma, war, trauma, that kind of stuff. So if I'm a very clinical setting, I work with people with mind brain, psycho neurobiology to help them to understand, okay, this is how I'm showing up. This is how I'm communicating. These are my emotions, this is my behavioral symptoms, how are those impacting negatively? And how can we reconceptualize those so that you can function at a higher level, socially, emotionally, cognitively, develop systems, research, etc., and apply those into everyday life? Because we will go to mind we've all got this relationship, brain body mind. So it's not just in a therapeutic sense that we need this, we need this every moment of every day, because you can go three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without your mind working. So we need so we need constant mind management. So that in essence, then what we have is, our mind is driving our brain and body, if we have a trauma, a brain trauma, or a brain trauma, or cancer, or body or diabetes, or something, the physiology it is it does affect us, you don't feel great. So when you don't feel physically great, obviously, that thing feeds back into your mind. And this whole thing goes and you don't feel as great especially if you know it is fitting or how you function. And you can't maybe be as efficient as before you can do as much as before, that certainly can logically feed back into your into your mind. But then there's the other side of the coin, where and I've worked with so many researchers and scientists and doctors, and there's much research out there showing that you can have two patients with the same type of problem. But one, it's really bad and life threatening and someone else it's not as bad. But the attitude, the way the person's managing their mind how they thinking, feeling. and choosing to deal with that stuff impacts the effectiveness of the medication, the course of treatment, the course of healing, you know, and I've got one friend who loves to talk about this, who's an endocrinologist. And she'll often say that she'll have two patients and one will be like literally life, the light, the life is on the line. And the other ones not so bad, but need they need treatment. At the one who's last in the line, they do better than the one who's not as bad because of the mindset because of how they're using their thinking, feeling and choosing and recognizing the importance of not just and I'm not just talking positive affirmations and wishful thinking and gratitude statements, I mean, those are all techniques that only work if you've, if you're actually dealing with your stuff that are work on their own. They're not, it's like putting a band aid on a bullet wound. So you've got to look at it both ways, you've got to understand the impact what our minds actually doing. So mind is the driving force. And you mentioned like mental illness, it's also we've got to be careful how we handle that because mental illness cannot be categorized in the same category as cancer and diabetes, etc. Because it's not one, it's not that it's not when you feel depressed, you don't have a mental illness, you're just having a, it's a response to an adverse circumstance. And someone and if you think of a scale from zero, starting at zero to 10, on one side, and then zero to minus 10. On the other side, most of us hover around the bell curve on any one day, which is moving between minus four and plus four. So the ups and downs of daily life and you know, a bit of anxiety, a bit of depression, bit a sadness, bit of happiness, and we kind of it all balances out and we get through the day. And but sometimes things really hit us and we have multiple things that really happen in our life. And we slide down that negative side of the scale, it doesn't mean we mentally ill, what it means is that we have extreme overload of adverse circumstances and me responding. Now because our mind is the thing that experiences whatever the trauma, the abuse, the it's our mind, and then into the brain. And then from the brain into the body. Because of that route, there is a neuro physiological response. And as I talk about that, in my book, and in my clinical trials, we looked at people's narrative, what they're going through the whole psychological, mind side, and they looked at the impact on the brain, what's going on in the brain, and you're totally depressed and your life's offline, and you can't work and you broken and this and this, and this, and all these things have happened, what's happening in your DNA, your telomeres, what's happening in your blood, you know what's happening, physiologically. So we see that over time when we don't manage our mind. And we don't manage this relationship between mind brain and body, we increase the vulnerability of our body to disease so it's not like I think bad thoughts, I'm going to get cancer or I do something bad I'm going to get sick. It's cumulative over time. Because if we cumulative begin to this habit of getting to the into the habit of being toxic in our thinking patterns, not dealing with suppressing our issues from the past, not facing those things, not listening to that wise mind, saying, hey, go listen to Chase's podcasts and let's like learn how to manage when we started sort of ignore that we'll be listening don't apply. We keep these issues. And when you keep those issues, you increase vulnerability in your body by 35 to 98%, which is phenomenal. You just do you basically to increase the vulnerability of brain and body to disease, so if there's a genetic weakness, which we all have, it's inevitable, it passes through the blood man is, and it's different for everyone. And we will respond differently. And by the whole combination of nature, nurture and effect to effect of being how I manage my mind, I'm going to then impact how the brain and body are functioning cumulatively over time. By the same token, I can reverse that, that's the beauty of this, it's not a hopeless, oh, I'm going down a negative line, it's a situation of I've got this amazing mind, my mind and my ability to think feel and choose, it's okay to make a mess. This is how I can self-regulate and manage my mind, this is how I can even improve the medication to appear in my body of the illness in my body, this is how I can manage etc., etc. That's the kind of knowledge that needs to be taught to people literally needs to be brought in, that's what I do is my work is to really help people to see that side that yes, this has happened to you. But you can try it you can manage with understanding this whole mind brain, rewiring the brain, the time it takes, et cetera, et cetera. You can actually then change what happens to your how your I mean, what happens in you, in other words, hard go is going to play out into your future and obviously, with the support of others, we need, we deep we need deep, meaningful relationships and support in that process. So that's a long answer. But it lays quite a nice foundation for everything you've asked already. And I'm sure that you're going to ask.

Chase: Thank you so much. A very, very well said I appreciate the long winded, the short winded all the wind, it's very helpful information, you actually hit on something that I had marked again, actually on page 74 of your book, you hit on telomeres and for maybe someone listening who isn't familiar with that. I mean, that is the key to understanding human aging, and how well are resilient or not so well, we age, longevity quality of life. And you talk about your actual on page 74. It's funny, I just flipped to when you're talking about it. In one of your studies, you're talking about how your control groups relative age percentile decreased over the course of the study, which means that they got biologically older, whereas the experimental groups percentiles, working on the mind management process, their biological age stayed the same. This means that if we don't manage our minds, the organs in our physical bodies will get older than our actual chronological age, that was so profound for me. And I think that leads into kind of my next statement slash question that you were also discussing of the mind the body, if we don't have dominion over if we don't manage our minds, manage our bodies by the work that you're talking about for the mental aspect, but also physical, if we don't eat well, if we don't move, if we don't exercise, if we don't get hydrated, if we don't get sunlight, we are not building a strong foundation so that not if but when we are faced with an external force, such as a virus that's been happening a lot this past year, such as, you know, some kind of other trauma, or just the common cold or allergy life in life. If we have these things in us, in our essence, our biology in our minds, then we are going to be so much more prepared for that storm. And that storm hits us in different ways that it affects our bodies and affects our minds. And so I think that's just, I don't even know what the question is in there. But I just think it's very, very profound. And I hope the listeners picking up on as much as we may be doing to take care of our wellness and our bodies, that mental aspect, mind management is so crucial for preparing us for that future storm as well.

Dr. Leaf: I love that you brought that up. And I always get so excited when someone reads the sort of research and the depth that you have, because it's the reason I put this kind of stuff into a laypersons book is because when you have knowledge, and you understand what that knowledge means, your attitude shifts, and then you will apply the skills and develop the skills and find the skills for people like yourself and myself that will then help you make the changes. But just to tell someone do these five steps or do you think that green juice or go meditate if you don't have all the understanding of what is actually going on? Who am I how do I function? you just won't have sustainability always going to be looking for the next quick fix. So that I just wanted to emphasize that in terms of the telomeres, it's a fascinating area of research field, a new area of research. And it has been very much linked to, as you say biological aging, and has been generally researched around food, around exercise and food. But there's a new body of research that's been coming through and my research as part of that has been inspired by research done by various different researchers in the field. And that's why I included it in my study. And that is that telomeres are a proxy for how you managing your mind they literally because your mind is the driving force behind how your genes are functioning. So telomere is the tip of a chromosome for those that don't know what I'm talking about. That or if you cross your fingers, you can look at your fingernails and those your telomere So the chromosome looks like a little x. So these two analogies, and they are absolutely critical in cellular health and your cells obviously make up your organs. So the telomeres are battling, your cells are battling, which means that your organs are battling, which means your whole body's battling. And so the research is the mind, including mind is part of this research body research I just found recently, which you just basically we are part of it is that if you are just like staying in the mental mess, and not managing it our bodies design, funnily enough our brain and body and mind the three can handle the mess if we managing it. So there's a big if the that's why I say let's clean up our mental mess. But if we just stay in the mess, we just go from mess to mess to mess, we are making a million new cells every second. And the more messy our mind, our mind is driving the genetic kit the ability of the telomere to actually be involved in cellular replication. And if because if you did, you're not going to have any telomere functioning, you're not going to have cell division, you're not going to have solid the inner cells may you make we make a million cells every second million plus every second, that's driven largely by the telomeres which is which has switched the whole genetic process is switched on by an external force that our mind. So if you did, there is no mind. That's why there's no cellular growth. So think of it like that. That's as simple as it is. So if my mind is messy, and unmanaged, that's the that is the kind of electromagnetic field that I'm sending through my body that then creates neurochemical chaos setting creates a whole confusion in how the gene code is activated. And that then affects the health of the telomeres and they get weakened, broken think of broken nails. So that means that the cells that you make are going to not be as healthy. And that's what we track through the study as well as that those in the experimental group all of them at the beginning of the study into the study that was a random control to know that neither knew who was getting the treatment, and it was double blind. So neither they nor myself and my team knew we had an external team that was running the on the ground research. So they couldn't biased. And the those that are that were in the experimental group got the treatment that all of them at the beginning, had pretty bad telomere length it was it was pretty bad. None of them were at the age that they should be. So what telomeres translate into to come back to your point earlier on is that we can see from the telomeres scoring and percentiles and all the fancy stuff is that you can almost you can tell the age of yourself equal the age of your body. So we call that biological age versus your actual age. So in in age chronologically, I don't know how old you are, how old are you? 

Chase: I'm 35

Dr. Leaf: 35. Okay, so you 35 and we actually had a lot of millennials, we had a lot of our subjects that were sort of in that age group and older as well. But we had like a clinical test case study I gave him the book is over subject, he was 35, not 35 in his 30s but they that was the chronological age, but the biological age from the telomeres was a sickly 65 year old. So imagine Chase, imagine chase in your body was like sick. And I know it's not because I know you're into health and wellness. And I know you'd manage your mind and that kind of stuff. So it wouldn't be but imagine that you feel terrible. Imagine being in a body of a 65 year old that is sick but when you 30 when you're in your 30s, you know, so that's what we saw me. So within nine weeks, we saw that being reversed. Those that were in treatment, there was no medication involved, there was no dietary exercise or not that I'm anti dietary exercise, etc. Obviously pro that it's part of what I teach. But in this particular trial, we just looked at mind management as the primary factor to get right and then we can add all those other things on once your mind is right, because your mind influences the effectiveness of those anyway, I mean your mind if you're eating a healthy meal, and you have to sort of work out if you're if you did the workout and eat the healthy meal with a bad attitude, we haven't dealt with something or you're consumed by some toxic issue, you'll lose up to 86% of the nutrition and the workout. So let's say that you're going to do a workout but you're going into the workout worked up, you just had an argument to someone you didn't resolve then you're in then you're the fac med and whatever, and you're transferring it into the exercise. But because you're in this toxic state and you've been consumed, your DNA doesn't respond the same way. And you can drop off the effectiveness of your exercise routine, you'll lose about a up to 86-90% of the benefits. Then you go home and eat a really super healthy organic farm to table whatever it is that you do, but you still in that state you still mad you still consumed. You've just lost up to 80, 85, 90% of that nutrition. So it's in your body and it's good food but the benefit you're not because, for example, your pancreas won't secrete all the peptides needed for simulation because of the state of your mind. So the state of your mind influences all the cellular health, all the functionality of your digestive system, the functionality of your muscles, all of its been driven by your mind and we don't talk about this we just think, Okay, well, people say I'm going to eat well, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to sleep, and I'm going to manage stress and they manage stress meditation, they've missed the boat, that whole load is driven by I am going to that's mind. So it's mind first, and the mind, okay, how am I going to approach exercise? What's my mindset, before the routine? What's my mindset for why I'm going to, you know, that's what we that's, that's what we got to look at you, you got to look at what keeping you alive, your mind what's driving everything your mind. And that's why I bring it down to the telomeres. And we showed that reverse we showed that person, that particular person I put in the case study that was selected them, their biological age, when matched by the end of nine weeks was mentioned the chronological, you know, they were going, they went from I am depression, my life's a mess, I can't form a relationship, I'm pretty much done everything I'm giving up. I mean, that's a summary of it, it was very serious to within three weeks, that person was saying, I'm not depression, I'm depressed because of this massive, and in by nine weeks, which is the time it takes for behavioral change for time for automatization and behavioral change. That person was saying, okay, I have been experiencing depression, because of this has been a pattern in my life and anxiety because of this, this, this and this, this is all the routes. And this is how I'm going to manage it. This is how I plan on seeing, you're making this plan for the future. And because they've gone through the nine week system, they were the behaviors had changed. And there were changes in their behavior. So they were talking like that, and it was showing that they were back at work, they were sleeping again, relationships back et cetera, et cetera. And that is dramatic. And we the people that were in the control group, they never got the treatment, they got worse, because we did all this testing at different points, or the psychological and narrative. So they were very aware, they just got worse and worse. And it was pretty bad. I mean, at the end of the study, at the end of nine weeks, they went on to the treatment protocol. They didn't end yet they were on a theme, obviously, and obviously resolved that issue. But that so that's just to say, we can't just be aware of our stuff. We can't we have to go beyond that. And that's where mindfulness meditation are very important, but it's pure brain preparation. It's pure brain; body preparations, not enough. You can't just go do the work. I read many studies saying that go into aerobic exercise, and it does this in your banner does it releases all kinds of, but that's just the release. Now what are you going to do with it? Awareness and release a learner people will go and do yoga releases the trauma from the body, because it will because it's like EMDR, pulls it up the body through the movement into the brain, and then into the mind. And then now what you call just that you have to do a process. And that's, that's what I've been working on is what's next. What do I do now? Once I've done brain preparation? What's the beyond state? How do I not take this mind? The stuff that's come up? And how do I live with this? What do I do with this stuff? And these are very systematized way that we can direct our mind to direct the neuroplasticity changes in the brain and the flow in the body, and therefore the telomeres and all that stuff.

Chase: All the wind. Truly, truly, that's what we're talking about here. Before I get into my next question, I really want to I want to get to asking about, you know, really, what is the mess and we've been talking about a lot of different things. But I would love to hear your definition and just really break down what is the mental mess stuff. But what you're just talking about there reminded me of an analogy, or something just came to mind. Again, I want to make the analogy here of so many times we're trying to take care of our bodies improve our lives, right? Well, what do we do, you usually start with the body first, like we've been talking about focus on the physical, physical activity, exercise, nutrition, things like that. But think about the person who is actually adherence, long haul for a plan that they develop, or what I'm trying to say is the person who goes drags their butt to the gym or to avoid walk or run. And they hate it. It's so like, just, they don't want to do it. They don't enjoy it. But for whatever reason, they are that like, I'm supposed to do this, I have to do this. And then I this takes me back to my health coaching clinic days to where people would really plateau or not see hardly any success or any transformation or very nominal. And it's because they hated what they were doing. They hated the diet they were on. They hated the workout routine that they had. They hated how much time or how little time they had. But when we were able to kind of shift and like you were saying earlier the mindset towards it. Of what do I want to do? What do I want to eat? What do I want to look like? How do I want to feel and then build from that is the most beautiful, I call it the inception model, right? It has to come from their idea, their dream. And then they're in it for the long haul, right? Because I chose this, I enjoy this or maybe you don't fully enjoy it. But did you enjoy it way more because you're not just doing something because you think you have to. So that's just another little

Dr. Leaf: That's so good. I'm glad you brought that up just because I don't know if you saw in the book where I talk about empowerment and the pathway to empowerment. And that's this agency thing. Talking about and I showed very clearly across the study that people, most people feel very unempowered feel very, like a con control, especially when you, you know, if you use extreme states, you net minus four to 10 range, you feel like I've got no power, this is just too much for me. And I can't ever get out of this. And it's showing those people exactly what you've just said that hey, okay, I know, this is hard. But what do you want? What do you what do you need now? And starting from even though I can walk to the I can walk down the stairs once? That's fine, you start with it, I, I really want to eat all that. But I'll eat half the amount to 10% less or I will cut this much, what can you do? And that's where you so these changes, they being empowered, eventually you can then look at that toxic issue. Instead of being just push it down and run from it. You are not you don't use you language, you made a language you actually you okay, you What are you doing? What do you want to do? So you speak to self like that. And there's a whole neuro physiological response in the brain, mind and body when you do that. And then you start taking that that a that, you start seeing that as not as a barrier and an obstacle, but actually as an opportunity, and it shifts and then you start seeing the shift and the change happening. And that's empowerment, you know, that it starts with, it's always got to serve people. So how do you every person I've ever interviewed, and I'm sure you've gone through this, every patient I've ever worked with, every person I've ever helped every we reach millions and the is unbelievable amount of people that were saying they had to get to that point where they realized that they have to actually make that decision. So many of my patients used to say to me, I can't. And I said that's fine. And but realize that I can’t is actually still a decision you've still chosen. You know, you It's so let's break down that I can't maybe that I can't is I can't do that much. But what can I do? You know, that kind of thing is to get down to the point. And it's that thing starts to shift to empowerment, little cumulative baby steps. And that's the whole system of therapy that I've developed in the whole system of general education. Forget the therapy I've applied with the books not about therapy, the books about people helping themselves because you've got a mind, as already mentioned, you can't go to continue to go three seconds without your mind working. So it's how do I wake up at night, my mind's going crazy. I'm at work during the day my mind's ruminating, I'm sitting over a meal, and I'm just like, in a state, how, what do I do? How do I capture that? How do I manage that process? You know? So that's sort of where we're looking at to, to help people.

Chase: Absolutely. So then, like I said, want to shift into the mess. I think when we say the word mess, when we say the phrase mental mess, it probably is going to mean different things to different people, in your experience with your studies and just, you know, professional opinion, as a whole. What is the mess? Is it? Is it just life in general? Is it a trauma? I mean to the person listening right now I want them to really be able to identify, yep, that is my mess, I have a mess, I can understand where to go and to begin to work on my own mental mess, to identify it and to work on it.

Dr. Leaf: Very, very good example. So very quickly to answer that in two parts. First part is that maybe your brain and body and mind are separated three things bring brain mind, brain body with mind dominating force, and this feedback loop going on to psycho neurobiology. With that in mind, it's we are our mind is that in mind, our mind is experiencing lives, you open your eyes in the morning, between the time you open your eyes, and you go to sleep, you're experiencing the events and circumstances through your mind. And those have been built into your brain in your body. That's what you do as a human. And that is how you build in industries, you’re thinking feeling and choosing which generates all those forces that I was speaking about an all the neurophysiology that happens. And if it's this, it creates a positive response to this, I mean, this is positive, this is going to be a negative response in the brain in the body. So if now you wake up, you read an email, and you get totally irritated because it was really nasty email you totally upset and frustrated, and you just absorb all of this. This the email in the roots, there is no interpretation of this. So as soon as you so this is a thought tree, it's made of memories, the memory is the data, the data of what the email said, the content. And this this is how you think, feel and choose about that content. So how do they say that they said this, it's all your interpretation, your feelings, your frustration, your anger, that is physically built in your brain as a protein tree like structure. And that then is going to be what you say in the how you mouth off when you get mad and you feeling awfully your heart's palpitating. Because it's that as soon as it's built in the brain, it goes into the body as well. So then your whole physiology starts functioning and responding. So that now that's the first event then you get up and you have an argument now with the loved one because you're in a bad mood from the email and then then you read another email to somebody and so the day goes on. So during the course of the day, we experience around about around about eight to 10,000 different events. Each event is built into the brain, the big stuff, the small stuff, sometimes it's similar stuff very often and you build onto one thought that's really built from the previous day and if it's toxic and you add more toxic stuff like maybe you hate your job. And, you know, so this pattern, it's, it's all boiled down to complex compounds and so that mess is in the brain in the form of these protein trees, it was real as the COVID virus. And I use it because everyone's familiar with that at the moment. And we know if COVID hits your body, your brain's immune system responds by sending our T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes and macrophages to fight it. While your brain does the same thing for this the threatened survival just as much as the COVID virus. Toxic thoughts toxic pests that build up over time are shortening lifespans read federal data was released, it was picked up between 96 and 2014, that people are living eight to 25 years are dying eight to 25 years sooner than they should from preventable lifestyle diseases. And that comes from us, not managing our mind, and therefore not managing what we eat or exercise or day to day stuff. That's the mess I'm talking about. And eventually, over time, your body will weaken. And that's the vulnerability I spoke about where you just you can't keep battling your body, your vulnerability constantly increases, then eventually, over time, you develop the cardiovascular issues, or you develop hypertension and have a stroke. And, you know, because your constant chronic environment of unmanaged stress, and that's the mess I'm talking about, in between and it isn’t bad all the time. For some people it is some people live in a war zone, they live in a in a family that's, that's tormenting them, they live in a war, they go to work in it. And they the only place they can work. And it's the only place that they can earn money, but it's a tormenting environment. So some people are in more chronic stress and others but we all battling in in in our own unique ways. And that's the mess I'm talking about. And then along with that, we have the extreme circumstances of someone who's raped or bullied or abused or lost a loved one or trauma has caused significant trauma. So in the book, I call them, you know, that it's terminology that's used often. But I talked about acute trauma, big T trauma, and small T trauma, or it's very significant. So I have a whole chapter dedicated to understanding what they are and how to manage them. And a whole chapter dedicated to understanding toxic habits, which are different, it's like getting into the habit of snapping at your loved one, because they irritate you're getting irritated in traffic, or we think these are non-consequential things, but the overtime, they are cumulative, and they like the dripping tap concept. And eventually, over time that chronic, that chronic change, these toxic things are creating this immune response to take your telomeres right down to the list of fixed telomeres. And we've spoken about that already. So I'm trying to show people that the mess is how we are doing life. Now here's the thing, here's the good news, it's going to happen. You can't get away from it. But there is something you can do. You can manage it. So you can recognize, okay, I got irritated, ten times today, in fact, I'm always getting irritated in this particular situation, why? get curious, start becoming looking look at the patterns in your life, own that don't judge yourself, be kind to yourself, it's okay, you're a human, if we see our behavioral patterns, as pretty much symptoms of an underlying reason is the way we show up our patterns of our life always have an underlying cause. And if we can give ourselves the grace to look at those as helpful messengers, which is very much a Eastern philosophy, how you are is because of something and if you can say okay, yes, I was lazy and gossiped and snapped and got irritated and got worked up and under that you don't have to say I am bad, I have a mental illness, that's not even science, the current narrative, as soon as you depressed, you've got a clinical depression. If you're depressed more than three days, you got clinical, you've got a mental disease, you don't have a mental disease, you have a mind that is responding to adverse circumstances. And it's got you in a place where you feel broken. And yes, it's because it's work, it's your brain, your body, your telomeres are affected, and whatever, you've got a physiological response, absolutely, that's making you feel even worse, and increasing your vulnerability, maybe it's been going on so long that now you have got a disease of some sort, or you have now got cardiovascular issues or whatever hypertension or something. But that doesn't mean it can't be reversed. That doesn't mean that your brain is broken, and that you're a broken person. And that you are now because of your broken brain, you have depression and that's the message people are getting. It's you feel broken because of what you're going through your life story, your narrative, not because you have a broken brain. And that's the difference. We've got to stop saying brain, brain, brain and look at brain as just basically the organ through which we are storing the stuff and which is bearing the impact. Therefore if we end because our brain is neuroplastic and our cells keep every second, we're making a million new cells, we have a lot of power to influence and change. That's why did the telomere research. I show that when you literally cortisol, we all know about cortisol, that's why I use it as one of my markers. But the cortisol ratio is a phenomenal way of looking at also how we managing our mental health. A lot of research done around that side, use that marker in my research and what we showed was that people had excessively high cortisol excessively low DHEA when they were in their toxic state, but as soon as they managed the mind that ratio closed, so their cortisol dropped, DHEA increased, which is what you want back to normal levels, and excellent levels in nine weeks. I mean, this is phenomenal. And this was not through any therapy for me, it was through people using an app I developed, all this stuff is in an app called neuro cycle.

Chase: Nothing really, in the pan of life that's profound. It's nothing like getting a short period of time.

Dr. Leaf: exactly Chase, and they work for 15 to 45 minutes a day, on their toxic stuff. And then once they had got most of the system, in that time, it naturally carried over, there's a carryover effect. And what that means is that you'll use it automatically during the day. So here you're using it for your fixed period of time to work on the toxic issue. But then use a pattern of how you manage your mind becomes it's a system, it's like an Amazon delivery system, Amazon's the most phenomenal system, it has a system that works and delivers anything, the neuro cycle is an Amazon system, it's literally a system of delivery, that when you apply those five steps, you will make your brain and body work like they should. And then you'll create a feedback loop you're getting to a wise mind. And then you'll manage the messy mind. And that is in essence what it is. So the messy mind is all the stuff going on. But we actually designed to have the mess and to be managing it. We were not designed to mess and I can't do anything I give up. It's terrible. I'm depressed, I'm bad. I'm broken. I'm shame. I'm awful. Because this stigma, I'm embarrassed to share with anyone you get even worse and you crash. That's over, be mindful. What we mean for me to live as is. Yes, I'm a mess, be honest about all of us are, I'm a mess, I'm battling, I feel depressed, this is going on my life with overwhelming, get it out. If you don't get it out, it goes in and you're going to transmit and you're going to blow up like a volcano. By acknowledging and talking about it, it has to come out. But by acknowledging the missing the mess the hopeful mess, seeing the emotions, the behaviors that perspective, the body symptoms as mess, helpful mess, we are going to then be able to manage them. And you change, you literally change 1400 neuro physiological responses in your brain in your body, increase your resilience and give yourself the capability of the managing, fixing that issue. So instead of just, I can't do this, you say I've got the mess, I'm going to manage the mess, this is how I do it. Here's the system, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do this meticulously over 63 days. If a trauma is huge, you may not finish in one cycle. I've had patients that had to do two years of trauma work 63 days cycles. And then when they found more, it's a lifelong process. But you'll get the basics, it's layers, its layers, but then as I said, it translates over. So let's say now that you do a lot of podcasting, let's say now that you're in the system and just before you interview someone, you get it, you get an email or someone says something to you that really throws you off that I could do to keep that totally was blindsided you. And now you've got to get yourself together to get into an interview. And I'm sure that this has happened to you, it's happened to me with things like that have happened. You can use the neuro psycho for that too because it's simply a delivery system for Okay, this has happened to this, this, this, this, this, I'm back on track going to the podcast, do what it is that you have to do come out and then carry on resolving it. So it helps you keep your mind self-regulated. That's mind management. It's managing the mental mess.

Chase: I think that's just so helpful for somebody listening to kind of really tap into this other area of their overall wellness that maybe needs improvement. Or maybe you haven't even started yet, but it's just like what any good, you know, trainer or coach will tell you, oh, you know, hey, yesterday, I really got off my meal plan or I went crazy on the weekend, they're not going to tell you to try to just undo again, a good coach of a good friend here. It's not going to try to have you undo all of that. It's just not possible. Just like with this mental mess. It's not possible just to like undo it or to unexperience a trauma or to just know it's just a story and you have to just get back on track with what you know, works. Go back to your system, and go back to the processes, the people, the safe place, the mindfulness, the stillness, whatever you need to do just to get back on track. So knowing what you can do is first is step number one. It's not I don't have any idea on how to fix this. It's just you got to figure out this is where I am. I have a system or these I'm going to create awareness to create a system. Then you have your fallbacks.

Dr. Leaf: Absolutely. Absolutely. So good.

Chase: Dr. Leaf before getting to my final question here. Again, thank you so much for your time and your work. And, again, for anybody in the ever for book club. You guys definitely really, really enjoyed this one. Hopefully for the month of May. I'm so glad to have you here to be the icing on the cake for the interview. Thank you. I think what you just described in our conversation can be kind of summed up here and this other passage from your book on page one of six actually. So this is what the science means for you. You can transition from just being aware of your chaotic and toxic thoughts to being empowered to catch these thoughts in the early stages, manage them and improve your overall peace and well-being. I think that's just so well said and exactly what you were just talking about. Absolutely. We're not all hot messes and lost causes. Well, we are all hot messes because we're human, but you know, we can just, we can come together and we can understand the system, which is what separates humans from every other animal in the world, right? This thought of awareness. 

Dr. Leaf: and hot mess is okay, as long as it's being managed. We don't want to stay in the hot mess except the hot mess because that's tapping into the wise mind, messy mind wise mind. So except the hot mess, because as soon as you accepted, we have a fantastic search interrupt you. But this is very interesting, we have a wonderful neuroscientific principle. And for those of you that are listening, I'm putting the toxic tree under the table, and I'm bringing it up, as soon as you are aware, soon as you Okay, I'm in a mess, I've got this hot mess. What is that? Let's look at the signals. Let's look at the whole process. You immediately as soon as you consciously aware and start the process of digging into that awareness. And then going beyond, you weaken these branches, you weaken the protein branches, you it becomes malleable, so you could control you shift the power balance, the minute that you take that level of control. That's really cool. That's where the empowerment will start. 

Chase: I think that's a perfect segue into my final question. And living a life ever forward, the name of the show, this is the mantra we're trying to bring awareness into these key areas of our life, our fitness and nutrition, our mindset, to help us just take at least one step forward. And no matter what mess we're in, whether that's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, whatever, just to gather ourselves, have a sense of awareness about it, and to develop a plan to take a step forward instead of just staying in the most. So I always ask my guests, what does that mean to you, Doctor Leaf? How would you say that you live a life ever forward? How does that fall on you today?

Dr. Leaf: Well, I definitely answer by saying mind management's absolutely key because it's the driving force. So with as I keep saying, without mind you are nothing, I mean, your mind is to enliven us. So if my mind's always working, the philosophy that I've adopted is that, then I want to manage it, I want to make sure tap into to my wisdom, my wide full love mode, my survival mode, and that's the optimism bias. So for example, we're not drawn to the negative to because we wanted the negative, we don't have the negative because it's an imbalance and a threatened survival. We drawn to clean up our mental mess and a huge part of my mental wellness is understanding that it's okay, I give myself permission, I make a mistake. I don't beat myself up like I used to. I understand from all the research I've done, I've really in whatever I said, if I literally love what I teach, that I don't beat myself up, I actually will accept that the guilt, the shame, the condemnation, whatever, I'll take that. And I'll say, okay, what does this mean? What why am I feeling like this? What, how can I reconceptualize this to make this work for me and not against me to make me a better person. And that's helped me get, as I say, my own in my research has given me an 81% plus sort of power over the over the over negativity, toxic thoughts, depression, anxiety, etc. So that sort of shows in the research is that when you recognize that you can clean up your mental mess, that it's okay that it's a helpful messenger, you feel empowered to manage it by effective 81% and improved factor. So I love like that I love what I teach, it really does help me move forward.

Chase: Amazing. Well, everyone, if you haven't already, make sure to check out cleaning up your mental mess, I'll make sure to link that down in the show notes for everybody, you can tap that link and go get your copy. This has been an amazing read. And I also have your information there to connect more with your work and you on the website and social. So it doesn't end here, everybody. So Dr. Leaf thank you again.

Dr. Leaf: Thank you so much. I've enjoyed talking to you.