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Sofa Series Redux | The Science of Change at a New Pace
74 Plays6 months ago
This week’s episode of The Ripple Affect Podcast features the re-edit and re-release of Episode 2, a Sofa Series conversation and interview with Neurobiologist Dr. Barbara Thayer, Ph.D. Co-host Isa “Nibby” sits down with one of her beloved professors from California State University, Channel Islands, for a detailed discussion on all things related to change, but this time you’ll hear it with some different editorial choices and at normal speed.
That’s right. The original Episode 2 was sped up to about 1.2x the normal speed! Let us explain...
Early in her editing journey, co-host Chiara “Cheech” wanted to pack as much value as she could from this raw ninety-minute interview into the target one-hour episode timeframe. Consequently, she simply increased the playback speed to fit within that ideal window, but this was not ideal for the average listener—an obvious insight in hindsight. This re-release brings the conversation back to normal speed and includes some new choice selections.
Just like in the original, this episode explores a diverse range of topics, including childhood brain development, deciphering the complexities of long-term potentiation (don’t worry, they discuss what this means in layman's terms), the neuroscience behind habit formation, and distinguishing between the mind, the brain, and consciousness. It delves into the realms of self-regulation, self-esteem, positive psychology, and much more.
Once again, if you listened to the early version in Episode 2, you’ll be taken on a journey that promises to unravel the fascinating world of neurobiology and its profound relationship with personal transformation. By the episode's conclusion, you'll have a deeper comprehension of how your brain helps or hinders the change you’re going through.
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Transcript
Introduction: The Ripple Effect and Hosts
00:00:04
Speaker
You're listening to The Ripple Effect with your hosts Cheech and Nippy, a podcast that explores how individual change has the capacity to affect the whole. From neuroscience to donuts, we're two sisters with a deep curiosity for ancient wisdom and modern knowledge. And we're obsessed with learning alongside you because we don't know. Let's dive in.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome back to the Ripple Effect podcast.
Revisiting an Episode with Dr. Barbara Thayer
00:00:29
Speaker
This is your co-host, Kiara, aka Cheech. I'm really excited to bring you today's episode, which is a re-edit and a re-release of our second ever episode with Dr. Barbara Thayer, a neuroscientist and one of ESA's beloved professors.
00:00:45
Speaker
You'll hear Isa and Dr. Thayer have a wonderful conversation that you might have heard before, but this week you get to hear the natural speed. That's right. This was early on in my editing journey and in order to pack in what I thought was a lot of value of an hour and a half interview, I just sped it up. Not ideal. So I wanted to re-release it now that I'm further along in my editing knowledge.
00:01:08
Speaker
and you'll get to hear the normal talking speed of both Isa and Dr Thayer. So I hope you enjoy and look for little differences from the first one if you've heard it before and if not, enjoy this one.
Meet Dr. Barbara Thayer: Background and Goals
00:01:23
Speaker
Welcome to the ripple effect pod. Isa here today with Dr. Thayer, one of my favorite professors ever. She is a professor of neurobiology and I had the pleasure of taking her class this past semester at CSUCI. And today we're going to be talking
00:01:42
Speaker
to her a little bit about herself. We mentioned in the pre-talk before we just started recording that you probably don't want a neurobiology lecture. So we're going to try and keep it layman's and also just kind of follow the path of the conversation. So without further ado, Dr. Thayer, welcome.
00:02:01
Speaker
Thanks, Isa. I'm really glad to be here today. This is really exciting. I've never done a podcast before, so this will be kind of entertaining. Yeah, me neither. So we're in it together. Before we jump into any of these questions that I've kind of prelaid for us, I would love to just hear a little bit about how you found your way to this
00:02:26
Speaker
career because I'm sure there was a lot of changes involved in that and I think I know a little bit of the story but I would love for you to share it.
Dr. Thayer's Educational Journey
00:02:36
Speaker
Sure, so I'm old. How far back do you want me to go? Should we talk a little bit about high school? Let's talk a little bit about high school because that was not a good fit for me. I didn't like it so I kind of stopped going
00:02:56
Speaker
Oh really? Yeah so you know I ended up talking to my counselor and she helped me put together sort of an exit strategy and as a result I'm one of the few people I know who has a PhD but no high school diploma. Wow I did not know that. Yeah but I don't like really advertise hey I didn't graduate from my school you know although I mean I suppose I could but um just on the idea that you know I don't know things happen the way that they happen and
00:03:25
Speaker
We make the best decisions we can at the time you know and at the time that was 100% the right decision for me like high school was just not a good fit on so many levels and At the time the UC system University of California system had some options for early admission So I was able to do well enough on my my SAT test scores and a couple other things that I got in a year early So it's great. So I got to start college a little a little bit early
00:03:51
Speaker
But unfortunately, there wasn't any money to pay for my
Shift from English to Biopsychology
00:03:54
Speaker
education. And it turns out that at 17, I wasn't very good at working full time and going to school and trying to pay my bills. And I bit off a little more than I could chew. So I left. I stopped going to school and I took about 10 years off.
00:04:11
Speaker
And then I went back to school and I was very anxious about it. So I thought, well, I'll be an English major because I liked reading and writing. So I kind of did a little bit of that for a while. I ended up taking a class in biopsychology. So I was very afraid of science. I thought I wasn't very good at science. And so I thought, well,
00:04:28
Speaker
This is like psychology and I like psychology, that's interesting. And it meets that whole science requirement that thought, okay, there's sort of like soft science, right? Like I can handle this. So I took that class and I fell in love. I just loved it. I couldn't get enough. I just thought this is the most interesting thing I've ever learned about in my whole life.
00:04:47
Speaker
So I finished the class and then I went to like every bookstore within 100 miles and bought everything I could possibly find and was reading all these things that I like didn't know like 90% of what was going on but I could get bits and pieces and I and one of my friends came over and he was like why is that not your major and it was like
00:05:04
Speaker
It's a major? Like I could do this all the time? Like I didn't even know, you know?
Research at UCSB and Dissertation Insights
00:05:10
Speaker
So I got on the internet and the internet at that time was like baby internet. It was not like it is now. And I found a couple of schools that actually offered biopsychology or physiological psychology as a major. And one of them was UCSB. One of the reasons why I wanted to go to UCSB was at that time they were ranked number one in the nation.
00:05:28
Speaker
for undergraduate research opportunities. I was really interested in research and this idea that I could spend my time asking questions and finding out the answers. Because my brain does that anyway, so what if I get paid? That would be amazing. Wait a minute. I can get paid to do what I'm already doing in my head all day long? Yes, exactly. I thought this is crazy.
00:05:52
Speaker
So it was great. I started with research as an undergrad. I finished my bachelor's degree. I got accepted to the doctoral program at UCSB. I really enjoyed all the different things that I got to learn. You know, I just love to learn and think about these sorts of questions. Yeah. And what did you do your thesis on?
00:06:08
Speaker
So my dissertation was actually an investigation of sexual motivation in the female rat. Oh, tantalizing. Well, yes and no. To be honest, when you look at people's dissertation work, most of it is pretty stupid, honestly.
00:06:28
Speaker
Well, you've done so much school and you really have to just get through and use all your skill sets and apply them. You're not always able to really get to the nitty gritty to find something and discover something that's going to change the common knowledge for everything. You're still exploring. Exactly. And I think it's more common not to than to actually have something that's really
00:06:51
Speaker
at that stage, especially with dissertation stuff. And it's really about sort of developing your research skills and developing your writing skills and developing your critical thinking skills and your analysis.
Lessons from Education: Critical Thinking and Self-belief
00:07:02
Speaker
And it's really about sort of changing the way you think. I think I noticed that when I finished my bachelor's degree.
00:07:09
Speaker
This is it's one of those funny things that sort of stuck in my head there was something going on with my computer and I had to replace one of the drives I'm I'm not like a tech person at all like that's not my thing and I thought huh Well, I have a bachelor's degree
00:07:26
Speaker
This can't be that hard. And I did it. I opened my computer. I figured out which drive wasn't working. I took it out. I got a new one, replaced it, and it worked. I thought, OK. So even though I don't, I mean, I never took a single computer science class. I don't know anything about it. I know how to turn things on and off and everything else. I just click around until it kind of works, like most of us, frankly.
00:07:52
Speaker
But this idea that, you know, what I learned from school was how to think. And what I learned from school was how to believe in myself.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, I was just gonna say self-confidence. It really does your self-esteem and your self-confidence because you work that ability. You know you are able. Every time you get through something, you're like, okay, I'm able, I'm able. Your competence increases and increases and increases until you kind of build up that self-esteem to go, yeah, I can take on some stuff. I can do this. Well, and just the willingness to fail too. Okay, if I can't do it, so what? I can put my computer back together, the world won't end.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's one of those things too that that we acquire as we get older. You know, it's that willingness to fail and that failure doesn't have the consequences that we often think it does. Yeah, and it's inevitable. I mean, like we were I was just talking to my sister about
00:08:49
Speaker
phases of change, the psychological phases of change. And the last phase is relapse. I mean, most of the time you're going to fail. And when you account for that and you go like, oh, that's just part of life and it's not wrapped in with shame and guilt and you're pulling, spiraling down your self-esteem because of that one thing that didn't quite go the way you foresaw it going.
00:09:11
Speaker
then you can kind of give yourself more grace and release and kind of untie all that other stuff and just be like, oh, well, that didn't work. Where, you know, what did I learn? How do I go forward? I'm not going to be crying on the floor or like, it's not going to ruin me. I'm not going to die, you know? Well, there might be a little crying on the floor.
00:09:30
Speaker
But that's okay. You're gonna get up. Yes, you are. You're gonna get up. There was definitely, there was one semester my grades were not what I wanted them to be and I cried hard. I thought I may have just kissed off my entire opportunity for grad school with that one.
00:09:44
Speaker
That's one thing about the education system that I'm not that jazzed on because it feels kind of constricted in that the grades do mean more opportunity. So you want to be loose with yourself and be like, well, I just didn't understand that. So I didn't understand that. But then there's that added pressure of like, well, if you don't get that grade and you don't get that GPA, then you're not going to have the same opportunities.
00:10:10
Speaker
that you may have for yourself. So there's not the, I don't know, the relaxed nature of learning for the pleasure is kind of robbed a little bit. I would say robbed a lot. Yeah. And that's tough because general ed's great to help you explore, but it's not always enough.
00:10:28
Speaker
It's not. But I had a really good counselor one time remind me that you can be a lifelong learner. You can go back to school at any point and take any class you want to take. You do not have to finish in a certain amount of time.
Early Brain Stimulation's Role in Development
00:10:41
Speaker
You do not have to kill yourself over something. You can literally take classes on the side just for pleasure. Nobody's stopping you from that. So it's a good reminder. And for anybody who's
00:10:52
Speaker
didn't go to college, that you can just enroll in a community college and take a few classes for yourself for no other reason than just expand what you're interested in. Well, and being that lifelong learner is only good for your brain, you know what I mean? Yeah. Brains are a use it or lose it kind of thing.
00:11:08
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about, I remember when we were learning about just like, um, the very early development of the brain and how we're born with a massive amount of potential essentially. And then it just gets pared down. Can you, can you kind of elaborate on that concept? Cause I remember thinking that that was very fascinating and also thinking like, wow, I just want to give my nieces and nephews like as much information as I can while they're little because they, they really can take it all.
00:11:34
Speaker
And stimulation is so important for the brain. So when we're born, your brain has way more neurons, which are the cells of the brain. You have way more neurons than you need. Your brain doesn't know, it's not pre-programmed to identify what's going to be needed in the developing or adult organism. So basically it's like, well,
00:11:55
Speaker
here's some possibilities, you know? And so you build this structure, you know, during sort of embryonic and fetal development, you build the structure that has the potential to go lots and lots of different ways, right? And so what we find then is that over time, the unnecessary parts get pruned away. Your brain is really energy expensive, like it uses up a lot of your, a lot of your body's energy sources, right? So
00:12:24
Speaker
your brain needs to become as streamlined as possible so that you're an efficient organism. We don't want to have this giant thing sucking up all the energy in your body, increasing your caloric requirements to do nothing when its output isn't valuable. So your brain tends to trim away all the stuff that isn't useful.
00:12:41
Speaker
Keeping that in mind then, what that means that sort of like during development then is that the more stimulus or stimulation that you're exposed to, the more your brain is likely to hang on to those connections. And I've recently seen some ads for First Five California. Talk to your baby, sing to your baby, read to your baby. Oh my gosh. Don't just look at your phone.
00:13:05
Speaker
That's literally the advertisement. Yeah. You might want to put your phone away. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is why. Because that early stimulation that you provide to your baby, the more you engage with your baby, the more your baby's brain goes, aha, I need this part. I need that part. I need this other part. I need more in my auditory stuff and my auditory cortex. It's the auditory part of my brain so I can hear and understand speech and more in the motor parts of my brain so I can do things and talk and
00:13:33
Speaker
and more sort of cortical, you know, that outer stuff of your brain. So I can remember things and learn things and, you know, your brain is actually going to keep more the more you interact with children. And then does that balance out at some point for most children where they get enough? And does that early childhood development of that part of your brain stay with you until you're old? And do you think it behooves people who have had more stimulus when they were little as adults?
00:14:01
Speaker
That's a great question. I think that there's probably, and I don't know the literature on this, but I'm guessing there's a very weak correlation between sort of what happens to you as a child and how you end up as an adult. A lot of stuff happens in between. Neurobiologically.
00:14:21
Speaker
neurobiologically as well as like life stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think there's stronger evidence like psychologically on what happens to you when you're young versus and how that affects you in adulthood. Yeah, exactly. From the psychological standpoint, we kind of maybe have something of a better understanding than we necessarily do sort of the neurobiological standpoint that you can look at sort of like
00:14:43
Speaker
But see, and that's it. Your brain does keep growing and it does make new neurons in parts of the brain. The parts that are involved in sort of learning in memory throughout your life. Neuroplasticity,
Unraveling Brain Mysteries and Consciousness
00:14:53
Speaker
right? That's what the definition of neuroplasticity. Exactly. Which means you just, as you learn new things, your brain creates new synapses.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, it makes new connections. And even though you may have sort of a semi finite number of cells in parts of your brain, that doesn't mean the cells can't change the way they talk to each other. Right. So and that's why I think to your point why what we understand about brain development in the child is only weakly sort of correlated with what we see as an adult. You know, we know that the children who are more engaged
00:15:26
Speaker
before they start attending school tend to do better in school. And then doing better in school is associated with doing better in school and it's associated with other sorts of skills and reinforcers that appear throughout your life. And I think where we see sort of the strongest correlations would be in cases of sort of the most severe neglect.
00:15:47
Speaker
that we know that there are like windows that if Interaction it develop if we miss these developmental windows then parts of the brain get pruned away that maybe don't come back You know, so we might miss language and stuff like that. So Yeah, that's true. I've seen some heartbreaking Instances of that. Oh, yeah, I I try not to learn about that stuff. It's a little hard. I
00:16:13
Speaker
Right? It is. My heart can't take it. You know what I mean? I just can't. I can't with that. I understand. I think it's good to educate yourself, but it's marinating in it. Sometimes if you're a sensitive being, it can be really, really challenging.
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah, there are two things Dr Thayer that I keep coming to mind that just are so fascinating to me from your class that I really want to kind of explore. One is long term potentiation and I think that fits in very well to what we're talking about right now and the other is just the simple
00:16:45
Speaker
threshold of excitation and why what gets it to that negative 40 mark and and you know the the concept of consciousness and the fact that we haven't really agreed on a definition of it and Just the mystery of the brain because there's I mean I know very little about neurobiology now taking dr Thayer's class a lot more than I did when I first started
00:17:08
Speaker
But it's literally like infancy of, you know, neuroanatomy and the basics, basics, basics, whereas Dr. Thayer obviously is way more well-versed. But even with that said, we've had really wonderful post-lecture conversations about the mystery and what we don't know and where we can go once we do start to figure these things out.
00:17:28
Speaker
I just love the mystery of the things we don't know about the brain and what the potential that those things hold. So can we start with long-term potentiation? Can you explain what that is? Sure. So LTP really, from sort of a student standpoint, probably a good way to think about it is the way that memories get encoded into your brain.
Memory Encoding and Long-term Potentiation Explained
00:17:56
Speaker
Right. So when you wake up tomorrow, you're going to be thinking about, oh, that podcast was so fabulous. I loved it. So when you have a memory, what is that? Right. Like how do we, what is a memory exactly? And what we think is, is that there are changes in the ways that neurons, the cells of the brain, the way they communicate with each other.
00:18:20
Speaker
So when you think about it, and my example is one of my best friends, I've known her since I was 17, and we had some wild times, man. Yeah, we had a lot of wild times. And so there are jokes that we have, like these inside jokes, right? One of which is faun-eye. I'm not even gonna tell you what it means. She knows, maybe if she listens to this, she's gonna be like,
00:18:47
Speaker
if she brought up fawn eye. Exactly. I'm going to be like, so you got to listen to this because, you know, there's, there's, there's a couple of these inside jokes, right? These things that all I have to say is fawn eye and she will literally fall over laughing, right? Because we share that memory and we have this like really hypersensitive communication. That's what happens in your brain.
00:19:08
Speaker
We think that that's what makes a memory in your brain. It's like this hypersensitive communication, right? That neurons get used to being activated in a certain pattern, like neuron A, neuron B, neuron D. And maybe ABD represents your birthday party. Or in my case, PQS, neurons P talking to Q talking to S, maybe that represents the whole faun eye scenario thing.
00:19:34
Speaker
You just have to know, oh, there's so many good ones we have, Pub. You can't even know. Anyway, so when neurons get activated in certain patterns, we think that that's maybe what represents a memory. And that you could take three neurons, P, Q, and R, and maybe if you activate them, P, Q, R, that's one memory. And maybe if you activate them as R, P, Q,
00:19:55
Speaker
That's a different memory. So you can see that by having all these neurons with, you know, a hundred trillion connections, you can record so much information. Yes. And then also in the creation process of that. So there's like that, the memory has to be encoded, right? It has to be, it has to be done over a period of time to where it means something. And then the amygdala, did the amygdala take it? And no, who takes it? Hippocampus. Hippocampus, thank you. Sorry.
00:20:25
Speaker
The hippocampus takes that and it turns it to long-term memory and then it's stored elsewhere. The hippocampus is what drives the two neurons to talk to each other.
00:20:33
Speaker
Right. And so when we're actively creating a new habit, for example, we're just kind of doing that neurons that fire together, wire together.
Brain-Body Connection and Behavior
00:20:44
Speaker
So you're firing that same set of neurons, that QPR over and over and over, and it actually strengthens that circuit, correct? Yeah, exactly. It uses extra calcium, and then it just kind of creates this feedback loop in itself where it strengthens that connection.
00:21:02
Speaker
Habits are interesting because other parts of the brain are involved as well. It's not just the memory portion, but there's a feedback loop between your prefrontal cortex and other parts of your brain, including a region called the caudate nucleus. And we know that these two guys talk to each other. And the caudate is part of the group of subcortical structures in your brain that are involved in movement.
00:21:32
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah, so here's I mean, here's the thing. And this one actually this one's for you, Suzanne, too, just in case you're listening to this one. It's easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.
00:21:53
Speaker
Right? That if you want something to be different, if you want something to change, do something different. It's a lot easier to change the thinking. It's a lot easier to change the thinking if you have a new action than it is to try and think your way into a new way of acting. This is a bi-directional relationship between your brain and your body and that's really hard to
00:22:16
Speaker
sort of grasp, right? That it's easy to think about your brain determines what happens in your body, right? We tend to think of that as a unidirectional flow of information, right? From the brain to the movement or to the body. And the truth is that the body gives the brain feedback. So here's my example. Have you ever done hot yoga? Yes. Okay. So do you know you never have to open your mouth when you breathe?
00:22:44
Speaker
Have you? Wait, what? You can do an entire 90 minute hot yoga class, only breathing through your nose. That would be very challenging.
00:22:58
Speaker
It is, but here's the thing. When you start, when you open your mouth and start sucking in air, right? Because you think that you are doing all these hard physical activities and your heart is pounding, right? And you're thinking, oh, I'm short of breath. I need to, basically what you're doing when you start breathing through your mouth like that is you're allowing your sympathetic nervous system to take over.
00:23:21
Speaker
And your sympathetic nervous system says, oh my God, we need more air, right? And so the increased respiration, right? And that's sending feedback to your brain that you're not getting enough air. And that's why breath work is so amazing. That's why breath work is so amazing. If you can force yourself to keep your mouth closed,
00:23:38
Speaker
Right? Keep breathing through your nose, right? Smooth breathing is smooth yoga. At this point, at that point, you can keep your sympathetic nervous system. That's your fight or flight stuff, right? If you can keep that offline, right, you get sort of that benefit of exercise without the tension, right? Without that sort of fear-based reaction. How do you do that? Well, you keep your mouth shut. That's an action. By forcing yourself to keep breathing through your nose, right? You tell your brain, yeah, no, we got this.
00:24:09
Speaker
We're fine. There's no panic. Gosh, we are such complex, amazing, like we're such an interesting species. All the stuff we have going on is so, and the lack of knowledge about self, I can only speak for myself, but I think it's pretty widespread. Like when I started studying nutrition, I remember learning stuff and being like, Oh my God.
00:24:31
Speaker
My body is amazing. Right? If more people knew what was happening when they ate a freaking cracker, I think they would be, they would choose themselves better. You know what I mean? If you knew how efficient your body was being and where it was sending things and how it was utilizing whatever you put in your mouth,
00:24:49
Speaker
to the best of its abilities, you would want to give it better things to be able to use more efficiently to fuel yourself, you know? And it's the same learning neuroanatomy, neurobiology. I think the more we learn about ourselves, the easier it is to kind of be fascinated with ourselves and be curious about ourselves. And just the interest is like, are you kidding? It really works like that. That's how I felt like when I learned about reproduction, you're not told any of this stuff. As women, we have no idea. Like you get your period every month.
00:25:19
Speaker
Here's your tampon, here's your pad, blah, blah, blah. Do you have no idea why this is happening? Oh, it's puberty. Okay, but what does that mean? And looking at sort of how the signaling shifts and the fact that, oh my God, this kills me. We still don't know why. When the estrogen switches to a positive feedback mechanism and starts driving the sort of the accumulation of the endometrial lining, we don't know why that happens. Still got no answer. We don't know.
00:25:47
Speaker
Really? Yeah. I think we don't study this stuff because there's like not, I mean, I could be wrong. This could be very biased, but I think that there's not a lot of interest in like the female's body when it comes to like pharmacology and just in general. Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
I don't think you're wrong. I know I read a study that a lot of drugs are not tested on fertile women. They'll test drugs on menopausal women because we have so many more hormones going on in our systems. There will be a higher risk at causing issues in the FDA's process of approving drugs.
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah. And as a result, most of the dosages are wrong for women. Just saying. So frustrating. So you take a creature with a different symbolic composition in their body. They have more body fat, less body muscle, smaller body size, different concentrations of enzymes. Oh, let's just give them the same drug. It doesn't matter. They're just women, right? Dr. Thayer is putting chopstick on right now as she said that. And it was just such a moment.
00:26:52
Speaker
Sorry, that was pretty heavy in the snark. I can't help myself, though. You don't have to apologize. I think it's appropriate snark. I read this book called, I think it's called In the Flow, and that book blew my mind about the female system and what is happening during those phases and what you can do to support yourself during those different phases with food or activity. There was so much in that book that I read that I went, how come no one taught us this? Why didn't no one teach me this?
00:27:20
Speaker
And I asked my mom, she's like, I didn't know that. Nobody taught me that. Exactly. And that's assuming your mom can talk to you about that stuff at all. Right. There's that whole thing as well. Yeah. I mean, it was such a... We've been convinced that how our bodies do things is somehow another shameful. Okay.
00:27:43
Speaker
But again, like the more you learn about your body, the more it changes your perspective because you realize, oh no, I'm just a human. And this is a human thing happening. And then when you learn about the complexities and how awesome it is, like when they learned about the, what are they, the kinesins, is that what they are? Oh yeah, the kinesin proteins. Yeah, the kinesin proteins.
00:28:02
Speaker
I think everybody should Google them. They are adorable. Aren't they cute? They are super cute. Like literally I was in her class and she showed like a video on the big screen of them and they look like these little, one of them looked like they have little feet that walk down the axon in the brain. And then the other one looks like a drunken like chicken leg and he just like hobbles down the axon of the neuron. I'm so cute. I literally said out loud in class like, Oh my God, we are adorable. All of us. Like look what's happening in our system.
00:28:32
Speaker
So I think it's easier to be nice to yourself when you know more about your body. Then the little blemish on your cheek or the cellulite you're obsessing over, you can be like, no, actually, the body's fucking amazing. I can give it a little grace, you know? I made a person. Yeah, that's next level. There's a new person on the planet, and I did that. You did it.
00:28:56
Speaker
It only took about three minutes, but that's another story. Just saying. There's this really cool human that I have like this super interesting connection with, you know? And I feel like that's one of the, boy, I mean, I hope that at the end of the day, when students finish my class, they walk out with that sense of awe, you know? I know I did.
00:29:19
Speaker
all of this exists and it can do all of these things and it's just mind boggling, you know? I was reading this interesting article the other day. What was it? It was NPR. It was having an out-of-body experience. Blame this sausage-shaped piece of your brain. Okay. Right? So they've got people who are working on identifying parts of the brain that allow us to have out-of-body experiences.
00:29:47
Speaker
What? Wow. Have you ever had an out of body experience?
00:29:55
Speaker
Mmm, nothing comes to mind per se. So probably not. How about you? No, not in the way that I've read about it or heard about it. I've had some like experiences deep in meditation or relaxation where there were some things that were kind of not of this, like clearly something else going on, but out, out of body? No.
00:30:24
Speaker
You know, it's funny, I read this article just a few days after I was having this conversation with my husband's nephew about a couple of out-of-body experiences that he'd had. And I thought that was really sort of interesting, just because it suggests that this little piece of your brain may be more active or connected differently in different people. So maybe it facilitates out-of-body experiences more often or more frequently in some people other than others, you know? Interesting.
00:30:54
Speaker
I think the stories are super fascinating. Right? When people die and then they like, you know, all this stuff that was happening, they could, they knew who the people were that were working on them to resuscitate and all this stuff. That's pretty fascinating. And that leads me to think about like consciousness, you know? Yeah. That, that is like, what is it? The definition of it, you know, if you look it up as being awake. Right. But like,
00:31:21
Speaker
But that's heavy weed. Yeah. Yeah. So from your perspective, what, you know, what are your thoughts and feelings on consciousness?
Exploring Consciousness and Language
00:31:33
Speaker
So I don't know. I guess consciousness has to do with, with, I don't know. Cause like, I mean, okay. What about when you're sleeping? That's what I asked. Are you conscious?
00:31:47
Speaker
I mean, if the definition is consciousness is just being awake, then what's happening when you're sleeping? And if you're asleep and I walk into your room and I say, Isa, Isa, you'll wake up. So you can't be unconscious because you are still monitoring the environment. So, but what about something like locked in syndrome, you know, where people have consciousness, but they can't respond?
00:32:07
Speaker
Okay, so what do I think consciousness is? I know that consciousness is related to language and communication in some way, and I think that there are different kinds of consciousness. I think that my dog was clearly conscious. You would never think that, oh, your dog is not conscious because he's sort of aware and responding to stimuli, you know? But I don't think his consciousness was quite like mine. I think it was a little different.
00:32:33
Speaker
And I think that difference has to do with language. Animals have varying kinds of consciousness. If I had to say levels or steps, you know? And I think as humans we're really arrogant and we think that we're at the top level and I think we're wrong.
00:32:50
Speaker
don't think we are. I would agree with that statement. So I think varying degrees of consciousness happens in animals and in in humans within species. I think there's varying degrees of consciousness. But where do you make the distinction between perception and consciousness? How do you relate those two?
00:33:10
Speaker
I think that perception at its maybe most fundamental is sort of the ability to identify stimuli in your external environment. So perception becomes a tool to feed consciousness about what's happening in the exterior environment.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yes, I agree. And then we also are amazing because we have the ability to pull our perspectives back and make up the story that we want to believe around what is happening.
00:33:42
Speaker
Right, and this is sort of that weird, so we were talking about sort of that bidirectional thing between your physiology and your brain, to take feedback from your body to your brain as well as from your brain to your body and respecting that. And I think that's the other thing too, is that we know, let's see, Mike Gazzaniga, he's at UCSB now, has done a lot of work around what he calls the interpreter, right? And the interpreter is closely related to the language generative portion of your brain.
00:34:09
Speaker
and that it makes up the stories, it runs the narrative of your day, it runs the narrative of your life. You know that part of your brain that says, oh my God, oh shoot, I forgot to write down a birdseed. I've gotta get a birdseed. This is really important. What is that? What makes my brain do that?
00:34:26
Speaker
Yeah, and the fact that if you can hear that, then you're not that. If you hear that voice saying that, someone's listening to that. So you're that thing behind that thing. Right. I am both things. How can that be? Right? The fact that we exist sort of in both of those formats. I actually really do have to get birdseed, by the way. I'm going to write that down. Birdseed.
00:34:46
Speaker
I know, isn't that crazy? So you have like this weird little narrative mechanism, and Kazanaga calls it the interpreter, and it's generative, but it's also receptive. It's the part of your brain that makes up the stories and the reasoning and the rationale for why we do the things that we do. It helps drive that sort of understanding of our emotional state, right? And I think that's one of those things that distinguishes our consciousness from that of what we call lower, and here's my air quotes again, lower animals. That being said, I do think
00:35:17
Speaker
Okay, and this is pretty far out there and I might get fired for admitting to this, but I think plants have some sort of consciousness as well.
00:35:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Right? Like, I don't think that they're not receptive to perceptual changes, to changes in their environment. You know, they are, they clearly are. So there's some form of consciousness there. I don't think it ends with us. I think there are other forms of consciousness beyond ours as well. I would agree. And I think that our willingness to open that up and then to try and bridge that gap of
00:35:51
Speaker
I mean, essentially like science to spirituality, you know, where do you, how do you bridge those gaps? Because consciousness, I think is the perfect entry point because it's like, you know, we haven't agreed on it. We know that there, that it is this thing for all we know.
00:36:09
Speaker
I mean, there could be a collective consciousness. We all could be connected to some, like we said, server in the sky. I love that. Or it could be some thread that we're just tuned off of. We really don't have that. But if we can start to explore that, it's just really hard to quantify.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's really hard to bring that down and ground it out and try and test models against it. And that's part of what I love about the mystery of it. But it's also really frustrating to me because it can't be quantified. And then you get this woo woo information that pushes people to do weird things that are not really based in any truth or substance and get really wigged out.
00:36:59
Speaker
It's kind of a heart. You know, I love it. And I think I do believe there is a lot of power and a lot of medicine, a lot of healing in perspective and consciousness shifts and the potential for changing the world. Really, you know, I think that is part we ought to all get on board with something and that that's when you get people together and you I mean, I grew up in the Native American church where
00:37:22
Speaker
There were prayer ceremonies and teepees and you would sit in a circle and there is a common intention and there is a plant-based medicine involved. And there has been amazing things that I've seen in my life and miracle stories, you know, like that are unfathomable where there's no explanation to how that happened. You know, so I can wholeheartedly say I do believe there's something working that we're not aware of that we have the ability to tune into and utilize for good.
00:37:52
Speaker
Oh yeah. And that's, even Stephen Hawking said at the end of it, we're probably going to go, yeah, God. It's God. I know. Like whatever, however we might come to understand God and all the different routes there are to come to understand God. When Stephen Hawking, who is arguably one of the greatest scientific minds of any time, especially our time, says, yeah, at the end, we're probably going to go God, you know.
00:38:15
Speaker
Well, that gives you some hope that, you know, spiritual pursuits aren't maybe as woo-woo as we might think they are, you know what I mean? Yeah. And because how does consciousness fit into spirituality? What is the role of belief in belief systems? And those are so powerful.
00:38:32
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Don't run your life. I won't speak firsthand. Like that's like, I realized certain ones I've just been running the show. I have been backseat and they have been driving. Oh, it's not interesting. Yeah. You're like, Oh geez. Okay. You know, it's been so intriguing to me to watch sort of how belief systems,
00:38:56
Speaker
change our consciousness, you know? And they do that in ways that do and do not serve us. Why would we adopt a set of beliefs that doesn't serve us? Well, coping. I think it's a coping mechanism. I think we do things out of coping at a certain point in time, and then our systems relate to that thing and go, oh, this helped us get through this. And so we keep running that program thinking it's the only way to get through it.
00:39:22
Speaker
And you see it in trauma a lot. Oh, I react this way because I thought it was unsafe to be loved. For example, when there was love involved, I was abused. So I learned that it's unsafe to be loved. And then you get into a healthy relationship and you start to feel love and you're going, this is unsafe. And you push that person away and you're sabotaging yourself, but it's just based off of your coping mechanism. And what you knew was what you believed as a younger brain was the truth.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah. And it was the truth at that time. But then how do you, how do you change that? How do you update that file? That was true then, but it is not true now. And that's conscious, like being consciously aware. Like a lot of the old sages say, there's nothing to do. You just bring it up and look at it. And then you go, Oh, that's that. And then, and then that's enough. Just, just being simply consciously aware that that was a program you were running.
00:40:15
Speaker
can be enough to catch yourself and change it, but sometimes it's deeper, I think too. Yeah. And I mean, that's a really good question is, I mean, ultimately that's kind of what you're exploring here is how do we produce change? How do we create change? And, you know, and, and they're, they're all small ways, which I think is really interesting that it's small things that create big change consistently. At least that's what I've observed, you know,
00:40:43
Speaker
I would 100% agree. I don't think it's ever this big wave. I think it's tiny, tiny, tiny steps, baby steps. And then eventually the thing starts to turn. Yeah. And it's repeated effort too. And that's sort of that motivational component, you know, is effort reward, effort reward until you start to generate that sort of behavior independently. What are you most intrigued about when it comes to change in humans? I'm curious about
00:41:13
Speaker
why we psychologically resist change. So here's the thing. I see this as particularly problematic. So many of us are resistant to change. We don't want to do anything different.
00:41:29
Speaker
Even though when the thing that we're doing isn't necessarily working for us, we're still afraid of change and we perceive change as negative and we see that a lot of us see that whatever is sort of currently happening for us, even if it's bad, it's better than the unknown.
00:41:45
Speaker
Right? And what I find really intriguing about that is that the human body is designed as a change system. Your sensory systems are change detectors. Their whole purpose is to detect change in the environment.
00:42:03
Speaker
For example, I mean, imagine the first time you started wearing your ring, right? And you noticed it, and you could feel it, and you were aware of it for a while, and then after probably a couple hours, you stopped noticing it, right? And every so often, your attention would go back to it. Oh yeah, is it still there? Right? Until eventually, you stop being aware of it almost entirely, because literally, the receptors in your skin begin to adapt to the presence of that object. It's like, well, this isn't anything new, so we can stop sending signals to the brain.
00:42:30
Speaker
Same thing is true with your eyes, right? Same thing is true with your nose. You know, when you go into like the monkey house at the zoo and you're like, I'm going to die, right? It smells so bad. I'm probably going to die. And then after a little while you're like, what smell? Because the olfactory receptors in your nose adapt to the presence of those molecules and it stops sending signals to your brain. It tells your brain there's nothing to worry about here. We're not, we're not even going to bother sending this on because it's irrelevant.
00:42:57
Speaker
So if your body is designed to detect change, why do we resist it so much? Why are we so entrenched in repeating the same behaviors and the same attitudes? When our bodies literally thrive off of change, that's our whole purpose is to detect change in the environment. But we're also such, we're so efficient with our energy though.
00:43:21
Speaker
you know, like all of our systems are so efficient at running our energy and sometimes do you think it's just an energetic thing that it would cost energy to change and our body goes like maintain that energy, don't spend it? Maybe, and maybe that's it. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just sort of evolutionary conservation of energy. I don't know, but I would like to know.
00:43:44
Speaker
They're sort of the psychological thing that, why do we fear the unknown so much? And the misnomers in that, they're people that are really good at change. The people that do have those fears but consistently work through them and go into, out of their comfort zones. Do you know anybody that comes to mind when you think about someone who's good at change, quote unquote?
00:44:10
Speaker
You know, that's interesting because I don't know, what do you think it would mean to be good at change? That's also an interesting question. I think for me when I asked you that question, the first thing it kind of popped into my mind was,
00:44:26
Speaker
people who are more accepting, I think, just of what is, as opposed to trying to change or control outcomes seem to have more ease around change. I don't know if it's easier for them, but maybe they have more ease. Oh, I like how you said that. Because I think too, I was thinking about, this is really interesting, the person that popped into my head was my advisor, my dissertation advisor, Aaron Attenberg, because he was somebody that
00:44:54
Speaker
He had a lot of confidence and a good deal of self-esteem. And so I didn't perceive him as being afraid. Do you know what I mean? Things would change and he would do different things and he'd be like, I think I'm going to try this.
00:45:10
Speaker
know, Oh, I think I might like to do that. Well, we'll see what happens. I remember him just saying that a lot. Well, we'll see what happens. And I thought and so part of it is that acceptance, you know, and that knowing that no matter what the outcome was, he was going to be okay. This wasn't life threatening. This wasn't, you know, and maybe that's part of one of the other components is being able to sort of recognize
00:45:36
Speaker
how much of this is really life-threatening or how much of it is just like, I'll figure out something else after. It's that saber-toothed tiger thing. We don't have the same threats we used to have, so now the little things feel like big things, but the people that can have the perspective enough to know they're going to be okay regardless. I guess it's that self-assurance that you're going to survive.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, and some of it is, yeah, downscaling the fear, you know, that maybe I don't really need to be that afraid of this. And it was, you know, what we talked about earlier about fear of failure. Failure doesn't really mean that much most of the time. It just means you have to try again or try something different. But it's really not the end of the world. If you try it and you fail, then what happens?
00:46:20
Speaker
Most of the time, nothing. Yeah, like tears on the floor. That's what happens. Yeah. You cry, you're sad. But that's also like having the security that your emotions aren't going to overtake you. That goes back to mental health of like sometimes failure really does take such a strong emotional hold that it feels the emotional feelings of the failure are what are really...
00:46:46
Speaker
challenge to move through more so than the conceptual okay I can build my business I'll make the money again whatever the scenario the emotions of it can be the the hard one but that's like having that emotional strength I don't know if that's the right word but to self-regulation
00:47:03
Speaker
Yeah, to be able to know I'm going to be able to be okay emotionally. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. And I do that. That's funny. You say, I'll be okay no matter what. I do that meditation sometimes where I just put my hand on my heart and I take deep breaths and I just say, I'm okay no matter what happens. Everyone is okay no matter what happens because sometimes my mind tells me that I'm not gonna be okay or something awful is gonna happen. And it's like,
00:47:32
Speaker
Well, I don't have control over that. But that feels like a real sort of, you know, CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy type thing. You know what I mean? To walk through the fear, what really happens at the end? I mean, you can, I feel like a person can choose to embrace change.
00:47:48
Speaker
You know and and because there are pieces of me that I to be honest. I like change. I like it a lot It just it just I get a little kick off of it. It's like a cheap thrill like I hate And it doesn't make much but anything new like I'm I'm really sort of like that seeking new experiences and one of the things I love about being in academia is the variability that I get and
00:48:15
Speaker
because every semester there's something new. I have a new schedule. I have a new class. I have new students. I can do new things. I can, you know, try this. I can try that, you know, and doing all of this from a fairly sort of, you know, safe and relatively consistent sort of center. Maybe that's kind of the question is how do we balance those things, you know? And how do you have that origin point that is safe and centered to be able to go off from and come back and that stability is really
00:48:43
Speaker
I think an important piece of change too, because yes, change, we think of it as like fluidity of like moving through something to something else, but there also is an element of it, like where you start from is a pushing off point. You keep moving that tab of that pushing off point to different places, but you yourself are that stable point that will go into those different facets. So that's interesting to explore the stability of change. Some part of it that's like, you got to have your stable feet to be able to go, okay, now I'm going to jump.
00:49:12
Speaker
You can't, you know, jumping from your knees is a hard thing. Yeah. It's so much easier to embrace change when you know that you can count on this or that, or these pieces are consistent, you know, whether you find that consistency within yourself, within your spiritual religious practices or, you know, some sort of, you know, something like that that can be really grounding and orienting, but, but always, you know, having sort of both. And I guess maybe, I don't know. I mean, the older I get, the more I think everything is a paradox. Elaborate.
00:49:43
Speaker
I can embrace change because I have consistency. It's always both, you know what I mean? Our brains love things to be yes, no, off, on, right, left. I mean, brains just really like to do that. Mind yours, you know? Like me, not like me. And when you start to look at sort of how brains kind of do these things, our minds do these sorts of things, how we organize things,
00:50:07
Speaker
It really starts to explain sort of a lot of the tensions that we experience, you know? And then when you see things as not like me, I wouldn't go there because those people aren't like me. How are they not like you? You know, and starting to see, okay, so whatever their skin color is different, for example, right? But what else is different?
00:50:25
Speaker
They still have the same number of arms and legs and eyes. And most of them have, you know, a single spouse or maybe no spouse. And they might have some kids or maybe not. And they probably live in a dwelling like yours and, you know, they have food like yours sort of. And if you start to, to really force your brain to think outside those boxes, literally, how alike are we really? And it's easier, I think, to embrace those sorts of things when you have sort of, I don't know,
00:50:56
Speaker
that groundedness. And how have you nurtured and facilitated that groundedness in yourself? That's a big question. Therapy. I agree. Therapy. I'll definitely do a PSA for therapy. I think that it's so valuable.
00:51:17
Speaker
Yeah, plug through therapy here. It's just, it's such a great experience to have somebody who's really, their only interest is you. You know what I mean? So their suggestions, advice, insights comes through their filter, but it's really focused on what you might do for yourself or what I might do for myself as far as sort of change. Intention is one piece.
00:51:47
Speaker
And practice is another piece. And we talked about that. And then you fail, right? And then you're a puddle on the floor. And you try again. You know what I mean?
00:51:57
Speaker
Let's, let's put it this way. So I like to date men and a number of my relationships with men, my twenties, uh, we're not productive and healthy. I think a lot of us have that same story. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much, you know, it's kind of what you do in your twenties. You kind of sort those things out and you know, through the process of therapy, you know, I learned a lot about insights and I, I had a therapist who would suggest different things to me.
00:52:25
Speaker
Why don't you try this? Why don't you think about it this way? Why don't you take these sorts of actions? Why don't you write about this? So there's lots of ways to sort of engage with that stuff.
00:52:35
Speaker
And I mean, it wasn't like I went to therapy five times and the next guy I dated was Mr. Wonderful, you know? Oh, it doesn't work like that. Gosh, wouldn't that be nice? We could just take a pill and then it's like, Oh, yeah. It took a long time for me to learn that, um, that feeling that I got when I saw a guy that didn't mean approach. It meant run.
00:53:13
Speaker
You're like, why? My body tells me yes, you know? And then it's like, oh. Back to the idea that changes what you do. And then it's easier to act yourself
Embracing Change Through Action
00:53:22
Speaker
Run far, run fast.
00:53:22
Speaker
into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting. I'm going to let go of this. I don't want to be in those kinds of relationships anymore, you know?
00:53:32
Speaker
They're not, not healthy for me. Yeah. And it takes that, it takes that time to be able to feel out the difference of those things and then make it, it just, once it gets clear, it's clear. And you're like, Oh no, I don't, I'm choosing not to do that anymore. That's not part of my identity anymore. You know, I'm not going to engage with that. That's not where I'm at. You know, it's like, Oh, and then it's simple. Whereas, you know, fat rewind a year and it's like you're in the turmoil and there's nothing simple about it. It is that practiced.
00:54:02
Speaker
thing. It does take definitely its practice. Well, being willing, you know, you talked about acceptance, and that's part of it, you know, in terms of sort of like, embracing change, but also sort of being willing to see what happens on the other side if I do something different than what happens.
00:54:18
Speaker
And the curiosity. Like, I think curiosity is such a big part of that. Right? Yeah. When you're curious, it's really hard to be stressed. Having that just curiosity turned on and try and see what can happen, it just opens you to a different experience of whatever the change you're going through is going to be, you know? That openness, I think, is just so important and being willing to sort of see what happens on the other side. It's fun. Yeah, it can be. It can be.
00:54:48
Speaker
I'm gonna go with yes, you know, that even when it's disastrous at the end, it's still amazing. And the thing is like, when you start doing things differently, you rewire your brain. That's like, I mean, if there's like, it's that bi-directional relationship, you know what I mean? We think it comes from our brain to our bodies, but our bodies are providing feedback to our brain about how it's working, you know what I mean? And when you, for example, start dating somebody new and you're in sort of a healthy relationship,
00:55:16
Speaker
You start getting reinforcement from different aspects. It's not that push-pull kind of thing that drives the reinforcers. It's more like, oh, I made him dinner and he said thank you. Oh, he took me out to dinner and we had a nice time. And you start getting reinforced in different ways and those actually produce the changes in the brain.
00:55:35
Speaker
so that your brain actually starts responding to relationships and other things differently, which helps sort of reinforce the behaviors. And now we're starting to see that change. I have a quick question. Do you distinguish between the brain and the mind? Yes. How do you draw that line?
00:55:54
Speaker
The brain is a structure. It is an organism built of cells, an organ technically built of cells and cells that behave in reasonably predictive ways, predictable ways. The mind is an emergent property of the brain. So I, and I don't know, and this is, I mean, this is the $50 million question, right? What is the relationship between the brain and the mind? And how do we connect that? Because we know that we have cells and we have thresholds of
00:56:23
Speaker
and we have action potentials and neurons talk to each other and they build relationships and that's LTP. How does that make a mind? No clue. So we... There's a gap. There's a gap. A huge gap. There's this huge gap that we don't know how these patterns of cortical activity produce consciousness.
00:56:43
Speaker
We know that we're consciousness. We know that consciousness has different forms, but we still don't know how the brain produces the mind. I do know that the mind is a product of the brain. Do you know that? I believe that. I don't think that you can have a mind in the way that we understand a mind without a brain. I'm not saying that there isn't anything like a soul or some sort of eternal or infinite energy in there.
00:57:13
Speaker
that we think of as sort of the person that may be in there as well. But I do think that you can't have a mind the way that we understand minds without having a brain. Right. But you can have a brain without a mind. Absolutely. And that's a powerful point that the mind really is so much of how we experience one another.
00:57:39
Speaker
Right. And that's, I mean, that mind is intimately related to our consciousness. And the distinction between consciousness and the mind? I would say that the, well, that's a good question. I'm not sure that there is one. That's where I think that it might be more fuzzy. That most things that happened in, that happened in the mind are related to consciousness. Fascinating, right? Oh, you know me. Questions with no answers. Those are my favorites. I like them.
00:58:10
Speaker
Those are the best kinds because then you can just keep the door open and just let whatever is going to come in keep coming in. And it's, you know, opportunities to learn and be curious, you know. So what is, what is something that you know or feel about change that you think could benefit others from knowing? Um, it takes courage. And if you don't have any, you can borrow some.
00:58:38
Speaker
What are your suggestions for borrowing courage? Find someone who believes in you and what you're about to change. You know, even if you don't think you can do it, if you find someone who does, then you can do it. You just believe what they believe. But I think that
00:58:57
Speaker
Change is a gift. And it's so funny to me that most of us in whatever our spiritual journey looks like, most of us resist change. It's really hard to make ourselves embrace it. And yet the reality is that everything changes every day. Nothing's ever the same. When I wake up, I'm a day older. So something's different. I'm that much closer to death. I try not to think of it that way, but sometimes my brain helps me out.
00:59:28
Speaker
But the idea that anything is static is an illusion anyway, so why not tell yourself the truth? And that even if it's fearful, then you find those things that anchor you. They tell you that no matter what happens, you'll be okay. Yeah, and that is embracing change. Welcome it. I mean, at the end of the day, I remember agonizing when time over quitting this job. I was like, if I quit this job, what will this mean? And my therapist goes,
00:59:55
Speaker
Come on, you have to quit things. It's important. It's a skill. Quit. Change. You can do this. She goes, look, you quit sucking your thumb. I was like, I never sucked my thumb. She goes, OK. The idea is that we change a lot. I mean, our whole development is changed. Where do we ever get this idea that we could keep things the same?
01:00:15
Speaker
well also like that's a good point too like the reinforcement because i i do this in my coaching oh no we'll go off data we don't go off of what we maybe willingly think let's go off data what has been happening and i think if we go back in our lives and we look at how much change we've
01:00:30
Speaker
gone through and persevered and built that muscle that I think sometimes just looking back and being like, oh no, I've done this probably a million times. I can do it again. Just looking at the data of it to be able to go, no, I got this. So you've done hot yoga at the end of the pose. What do they tell you? Change.
01:00:52
Speaker
And I remember my time listening to that going, why is that so hard for me in the rest of my life? You know, I'm sitting there in my yoga, I'm not sitting there, I'm in my yoga class doing the thing and you know, blah, blah, blah, pose, change. And what do I do? I change. But in my real life, I'm like, no, I'm going to hold on. I'm never going to change. I can keep it the same if I just try hard enough. Like, come on.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah. And that's where the suffering is. It's just that whole thing. Cause like, if you were to stay in that yoga pose in that hot room and be like, Nope, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. You're going to pause yourself a lot more suffering than simply just shifting into a new pose. You know, it's like, but that's the paradox, the simplicity of just do it. And then you're okay. So what about for like the bigger picture, Dr. Thayer, if you were getting serious and you were sitting with four of your best friends and you're like, all right, how do we change the world?
01:01:43
Speaker
How do we change the world? That's a big question. So when my sister and I explored that question, we came to the realization like, well, you don't change the world. You change yourself. Right. Then we started explaining how do you change yourself? And that's where this podcast was born. So if you were, you know, using that framework of changing the world by changing yourself, what would you explore first?
01:02:10
Speaker
The answer that keeps pushing up is love. So whether it's loving myself and being kind to myself and honoring where I am today in whatever journey that is, but love is also at the root of my work. When I teach, I am loving my students. One, I'm sharing something that I find fascinating and interesting, but I'm also a piece of their educational journey, you know?
01:02:39
Speaker
I get to play a small role in their change. It's that students, I take my class and I get to know them a little bit and I get to share with them a little bit and I get to be with them as they work through this part of their education. And for me, that's an expression of love.
01:02:57
Speaker
and it's a way that I get to change their world just a little bit. If they walk out of my class a little bit better prepared, a little bit more grounded and able to sort of deal with some of the challenges that the world presents them, then I have loved them as best as I can. It can be a little dicey talking about love in a classroom.
01:03:16
Speaker
I think you did it beautifully. I think that that will never be not received in the way that it was intended to be received. I hope so because it is from my heart completely. And that's it. Thank you so much, Dr. Thayer, for your time today and your information and your willingness to share on such a candid level. I really, really appreciate you and your support in this project.
01:03:40
Speaker
I just adore you and I definitely felt that love in your class and also the excitement and thank you for the access to so much information. You really did change my mind. Okay, so there's a few things we didn't get to. And so if you're open to it in the future of coming back on the podcast, I would love to explore more with you. I would be happy to. Anything, anytime, I would always be happy to. I love Dr. Thayer.
01:04:09
Speaker
Oh, I love her too. Her quote, it's a lot easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting. Ugh, that hit me. If you want something to be different, do something different. It's just sublime. If you agree with that sentiment and want to hear more from her,
01:04:33
Speaker
and you enjoyed that interview, let me know so I can contact her and bring her back to the show to dive into more information. She is just well of knowledge. I love that woman, and I could talk to her forever. Okay, I think we did it. Listen.
01:04:54
Speaker
I don't know what we did, but we did it. Look, unattainable ideals are overrated. We're way more connected and deserving than society's false sense of separation dictates us to be. You're not just one person, you're enough. Your effort is enough and change is possible. Question the standard that says otherwise, because what if almost is good enough? Just by tuning in, you're a part of our clan.
01:05:23
Speaker
Not in a cult way though. We don't know how far this ripple can go, but we're going to keep showing up and we'll never get to perfection, but we're all going to be okay if we let the process be the solution and we see the value in the attempt. Thanks for listening to another episode of the ripple affect. We're looking forward to exploring a different facet of change with you next Tuesday. Same time, same place next week.