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Best Guests: Laura Berman, The New Way to Better Relationships
53 Plays8 years ago
Note: The best episodes week continues with the 5 best guests to come on Art of Authenticity!
Quantum Physics? Quantum Love?!? NYT best-selling author, relationship expert, and host of In The Bedroom on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), Dr. Laura Berman reveals how science can be used to have a better love life. Sound like a dream? It’s not. All this and more in this episode!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Dr. Laura Berman
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Art of Authenticity, a weekly podcast that explores what it really means to be authentic and build a life that's truly you, featuring in-depth interviews with successful business leaders, entrepreneurs, authors, and thinkers by sharing their stories, daily practices, and habits. They will help you find a life that is successful and authentic. I'm your host, Laura Ko, author, entrepreneur, and coach. Welcome to the show.
00:00:45
Speaker
Today we have on the show Laura Berman. She's a PhD, a world-renowned sex and relationship educator and therapist, a popular TV and radio and internet host, New York Times bestselling author of, I think, eight books, and assistant clinical professor of OB-GYN psychology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.
00:01:09
Speaker
Considered a thought leader in her field, Dr. Berman has helped countless couples build stronger relationships, improve their sex lives, and achieve a heightened level of intimacy through her TV and radio shows, books, columns, and websites, along with her private practice that's based here in Chicago. Dr. Berman is also a New York Times bestselling author of many books on sexual health and pleasure, a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun and Times
00:01:36
Speaker
And if that wasn't enough, the host of a radio program uncovered with Dr. Laura Berman, which I've had the pleasure of being on. She's appeared on the Fox News, CNN Today show, as well as the New York Times, US Today, every major women's magazine. She serves on the advisory board for Dr. Oz and is a regular guest on the Steve Harvey show. It is with so much pleasure that I have her on my friend, Dr. Laura Berman. We're going to talk about all sorts of things, so I can't wait to get started.
Dr. Berman's Journey to 'Quantum Love'
00:02:05
Speaker
Hi, Laura. Hi. Thanks for joining me. I'm happy to be with you. So I've known you for a while. We're friends. And I've watched you over the years. You've been on everything from Oprah to Dr. Oz and so many different shows, talking about sex and relationships. But I couldn't help notice this was a big transition to quantum love. Can you explain a little? This is a different kind of book than you've written before.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It is. It is still very much about love, for sure, which is my main passion and why I think we're here on the planet is to learn to love and be loved better. And, you know, I've certainly written a lot of books on the most intimate aspects of people's lives, their sex lives, their love lives. But this book, Quantum Love,
00:02:59
Speaker
in some ways feels even more intimate than the other eight ones I've written because it is really personal and it grew out of sort of the ashes of my own life kind of falling apart in many ways. I lost my mother, which happens to lots of people, but in my case, it was particularly a huge loss
00:03:26
Speaker
due to many factors, most of which has to do with how important she was in my life. But I lost my mother, then got diagnosed with breast cancer, a series of other events. I kind of call them AFGEs, another freaking growth experience, because what I've learned, as I think most people have, who've been through enough dark nights of the soul, is that as you go through these tough times, they often
00:03:51
Speaker
break you open to a new level of awareness. You can't hold on to your ego anymore when your world is falling apart. It's no longer important to put up a brave face or to be accepted by the people around you or to sustain an illusion of something that you maybe didn't even realize you were trying to sustain. And as everything falls apart and turns to mush, you know, you can kind of
00:04:18
Speaker
create accidentally for yourself an opportunity to gain new perspectives. And that's kind of what happened to me. I waded into an entirely new deep pool of wisdom as I was trying to heal my own life that has a lot of science in it, a lot of philosophy in it, a lot of physics, even metaphysics in it, but it really added a whole new layer to my work. And so as I started implementing the principles of quantum love,
00:04:47
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in my own life and then started to work with couples around it. I was astounded at the results and that was where
Understanding Love Beyond Attachment
00:04:55
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the book came from. But so much of my own story along with many cases and other people's stories is in there. But this is the most personally revealing book I've ever written for sure. Yeah, it is out of difficult dark times that we find these new truths within ourselves.
00:05:14
Speaker
And so if you maybe could explain a little bit more, you know, what is quantum love? Well, it's it's a love that is honestly more joyful exciting passionate than What most people think of as the best time of love, you know I spend my life talking to people about love and about their experience of relationships and you know most of the time I
00:05:40
Speaker
I think for most people, we associate the best of love as new love. When you're newly in love and you can't get enough of each other and you can't stop thinking about each other, that's what scientists call the infatuation stage for a reason because we're infatuated, right? And everything is great and you are, and I think a lot of that has to do with how glorious it is to see
00:06:10
Speaker
that version of yourself reflected in your partner's eyes, you know? That perfect, everything you do is adorable. Everything you do is sexy and gorgeous and fabulous. There's no criticism. There's no disconnect, right? And then we move. I love it. I love it that you're saying that the romantic love, that bubble, that haze, that incredible space,
00:06:40
Speaker
is on some level our own narcissistic need to feel perfect. I think the first person I heard say that that's, that's, I think that's true though. Totally is. And that's why it's so devastating.
00:06:55
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In some ways, when you have your first fight and when you start to be criticized and when that, you know, and eventually we're also putting our very best self forward in the beginning. And eventually that illusion kind of ends. We can't sustain that for too long. The familiarity sets in the security sets in.
00:07:15
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And we slowly start to reveal more of ourselves than our true ourselves and that includes the warts and the insecurities and the little idiosyncrasies and maybe some complacency and maybe some laziness. And and I think in the best of relationships you know we we get that we are supported and loved
00:07:37
Speaker
in spite of our flaws, right? We are accepted in spite of our flaws. And for so much of my therapeutic career, that was a big part of my work with people, helping them understand that you can't sustain the infatuation stage forever. It's an illusion. You're going to move into what scientists call the attachment phase.
00:07:55
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of their relationship, which is a softer, sweeter kind of love. It's a more sustainable kind of love. It's a love built around accepting each other's flaws and building a life together. But it also feels like a loss to people. I think if there's one thing that people long for in relationships and long-term relationships, ah, if only I could get back to that at the beginning. Just like you would in the beginning, right? It's like a high at the beginning, right? Literally, it is a high. The dopamine centers of your brain
00:08:24
Speaker
when you are newly in love, which is the same, it's basically the addiction centers of the brain, the part of the brain that lights up when we're on cocaine, those centers of the brain are lit up like crazy in the infatuation stage. So it is obviously- We're drug addicted and slightly narcissistic. Yes. And darn does it feel good, right? Right, but that's not love. That's just a phase. It's a phase, and it is a kind of love. It's all love, right?
00:08:52
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experience of love but that's what we associate with the best of love and what I'm here to tell you is that there is a very different kind of love that goes beyond infatuation that goes beyond attachment that really
00:09:12
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is more exciting, more joyful, more passionate than the infatuation stages. It's an ability to love and be loved, not in spite of your flaws and foibles and issues, but actually really and truly because of them. You are openhearted and vulnerable. You are loved and loved because of exactly who you are.
00:09:39
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And it is more certainly sustainable but it is more fulfilling when you experience that then new love ever could be because you're really living and loving from a purely authentic accepting and open hearted space.
Practicing Quantum Love
00:10:00
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Yeah, I mean this podcast is about authenticity and I love a lot of what you're saying because this whole question of who you are and how you show up and what that means, right? So what if somebody is showing up?
00:10:12
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regularly with some layer of anger, some layer of not being good enough. And you're struggling through that in your relationship. How do you get through it? So I guess my question to you is somebody is out there saying, yes, yes, yes, I want this. That sounds amazing. Well, but they think about my partner. They're never going to be down for this. That's just not on the table.
00:10:38
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Yeah. Okay. So first of all, I can tell you that your partner doesn't even have to know that you are practicing quantum love. They will feel it. They will respond to it. You don't need their buy-in. You don't need them to even know that you're doing it. And as soon as you start practicing the techniques, they feel the different and start naturally responding in kind. Or I have found
00:11:03
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even if they don't necessarily immediately start responding the way they want you to, you, when you're in the quantum love space, can see the possibilities, can find the solutions, can find and discover the crack in their armor that is going to allow what you want to communicate to them really resonate with them. And, you know, a lot of it is happening on a very different level than
00:11:32
Speaker
you know, our conscious mind is processing. So the basic, the reason is called quantum love. My book and the work that I'm doing now with couples is because a lot of it is based on some of the principles of quantum physics, which is basically the study of atomic energy at our core. We are all just pure energy. That's all anything is around us. That's all we are.
00:11:58
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And the research happening in the field of quantum physics now is demonstrating that not only are we made purely of energy, but that we are all connected energetically. And this is where it gets really interesting. Our emotional states that we hold in our body affects our energetic states, the energy that we're emanating from our bodies. And that energy, without us even consciously realizing it,
00:12:26
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intensely and immensely impacts our partner and our relationship. We all are doing this all the time, so some obvious ways that you'll probably recognize is like when you walk into the house before you even see your mate
00:12:41
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and you know what kind of mood they're in, you know what I'm talking about? Yep, you'll be at a party and everybody's having the best time and that one person walks in and there's that awkward discomfort, right? Yeah, the energy in the room changes, you'll hear that, or that person has really good vibe, or you know, that talk all comes from this intuitive feeling. See, what we have to understand is that our brains are taking in
00:13:08
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400 billion bits of information every millisecond, every millisecond, but we are only consciously able to process in our brains, consciously process 2000 of the 400 billion bits.
00:13:23
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So we're taking in all this information unconsciously. It's impacting the way we feel, the way we act, our physiologic and emotional responses. There's a whole unconscious conversation happening that we're not even aware of and couldn't even tell you what's happening consciously, but it's happening and it's impacting us. And you know that because we talk that way. We say like, you know,
00:13:46
Speaker
Oh my God, that person's energy was so amazing. I know this guy, he's just incredible. And his energy, honestly, just being around him, I'm in a better mood, right? But what is that? That doesn't make any sense. And we kind of speak that way and take for granted that that's logical. But I think quantum physics is telling us that there's more happening than we realize.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yes, there is much more happening. And so there's been a lot of people in the field of physics, everything from research going on, for instance, at the HeartMath Institute or the Institute of HeartMath in California, where they have found that the heart has an electromagnetic field that is greater than that of the brain, that emanates out of our bodies up to 15 to 30 feet and impacts
00:14:35
Speaker
the energy of people around us, so our heart rates will synchronize with our mates, for instance, automatically. There was even a really cute study about a dog and its owner, this young boy and its dog, his dog, and their heart rates would synchronize when they were in the room together. That's so cute. I know.
00:14:56
Speaker
Or that the plant studies that have been shown that when you are in a positive, energetic, loving state around your plants that they actually grow better, which is crazy. Dr. Matsura Imocho was a Japanese scientist who did these beautiful photographs of frozen
Quantum Physics and Emotional Energy
00:15:18
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water crystals, ice crystals.
00:15:20
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But what he would do before he froze the water and magnified and photographed the water crystals is he would create and he had his students and fellow researchers doing this too. He would either write a word on a bottle of water before he froze it or he would
00:15:35
Speaker
Uh, they would feel a feeling and get into a feeling state and an intention state around the water. So if you look at the water that had a jealousy or rage around it versus the water that has, it's, it's this chaotic, weird, ugly looking crystal.
00:15:54
Speaker
When you look at the crystals of frozen water that had been around love, and you can find this online and I have the links in the descriptions of it in my book. When they were around the water crystal, when you looked at the photographs of the water crystals of love or compassion, even words like Hitler or Mother Teresa.
00:16:13
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The water crystals that had those more positive effects imbued into them were absolutely gorgeous and symmetrical and perfect. If you think about the fact that we're 99% water, there is even a study looking at human tears and frozen and found the same thing. All sorts of fascinating science and research leading us to this understanding
00:16:36
Speaker
that our energy impacts everything around us. And in quantum physics, that process is called, especially with regard to our relationships, is called entrainment. Because what happens when two atoms entrain with one another, they are permanently linked. So let's say we have two atoms that are spinning together. They're entraining together, and they're spinning at exactly the same velocity and direction. And I take one of those atoms from Chicago,
00:17:06
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And I go to Miami and they're still spinning in the same direction at the same rate. And then I take that Adam in Miami and I start spinning it in the opposite direction at that same millisecond. The Adam back in Chicago will start spinning.
00:17:24
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at the same velocity and the same direction as the new direction Miami atom is spinning. Once those atoms are entrained, they are entrained and we entrain with our partners automatically and unconsciously and what Quantum Love teaches you to do is to consciously harness your body's energy so that your partner can entrain to a more positive frequency that's going to create more of what you want in your relationship.
00:17:52
Speaker
Well, I mean, who wouldn't want to sign up for that, right? It's like Jedi mind tricks. It's amazing. And I've read a lot of this too. I mean, it blows your mind to think about because it's against everything we learned in our high school science classes. But at the same time, every instinct in my body tells me
00:18:13
Speaker
that this makes sense. It follows all of my common sense feelings. I was just thinking about you and the person calls. We talk this way all the time and it defies logic, but now there's actually science to prove it. Many people are saying, especially in the scientific field,
00:18:31
Speaker
that even Einstein talked about it before he died. He called it quantum physics and this whole entrainment thing. He called it spooky action at a distance. That was the scientific term for it because he could not wrap his head around it. The theory of relativity and cause and effect
00:18:48
Speaker
didn't really make sense. But if you think about it, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, we thought and absolutely learned and believed and understood that the Earth was flat, period. It was flat. We could not wrap our heads around the idea that it was round, because that was totally new understanding. Now it's commonplace. I think the same thing is true for quantum physics. And the thing about quantum physics, which I think is so cool,
00:19:16
Speaker
is that the key to all of this with quantum love, too, is what quantum physicists call the observer effect. Because what they found is that they absolutely cannot do a quantum physics experiment with the researcher in the room. Why? Because the researcher's expectations and intention for how he or she wants the results to be or what they expect the results to be will impact the results.
00:19:46
Speaker
Isn't that amazing? And so they have to go out of the room, out of the building, whatever, before the experiment is executed. And all the spiritual books and all the philosophy, I mean, right? That idea of holding too tightly to an expectation versus allowing things to naturally unfold. I mean, they've said this stuff forever. I love
The Quantum Love Map and Emotional Frequencies
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it. So if one were wanting to take the next step and say, OK, I'm in, I want to do this,
00:20:14
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forget my partner is resistant. I'm going in alone. You talk about a quantum love map. Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit? Well, so the quantum love map is like a visual model. And I explain it a lot in the book quantum love, but
00:20:29
Speaker
It's a visual model that I created from the work of a whole variety of coaches and personal empowerment writers and researchers. So really standing on their shoulders, I synthesized all their ideas together to create a model that's a reference point. Basically, there are two energetic states that we hold in our body and what I call them are ego frequency and home frequency.
00:20:58
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When you are in home frequency, you're in the quantum love zone. You are creating more of what you want in your relationship.
00:21:08
Speaker
When you are in ego frequency, which is where most of us unconsciously tend to go and habituate to and for many reasons based on the way we're raised in our culture and our insecurities and whatever else, when you're in ego frequency, you are going to be accidentally and unconsciously creating more of what you don't want in your relationship.
00:21:30
Speaker
So the key is to not only be able to hold those states of home frequency as much and as long and as often as possible.
00:21:39
Speaker
But unless you're living in a mountaintop and practicing Zen 24-7, you're not going to do that. None of us are. But of course, you want to be there as much as possible. But the key, key, key is in noticing when you're in ego frequency and learning how to shift up to home frequency, shift out of ego frequency to home frequency. So a lot of my books, not only helping you understand that, but helping you learn the shift moves. Because I've discovered that there are these
00:22:09
Speaker
kind of mind shifts and even body shifts that you can make that will help you move out of ego frequency into home frequency. So it turns out that from an ego frequency perspective, those are what we consider lower frequency states for your body. They're going to create less desirable results. So the feeling states that would typically be low frequency, right? There's a continuum.
00:22:38
Speaker
that that is on the quantum love map from hopelessness and despair would be sort of at the at the far bottom end of ego frequency or even shame and humiliation right all the way up to enlightenment and bliss.
00:22:57
Speaker
And that's like the way up there in home frequency. Most of us don't really get that high, right? Maybe Mother Teresa or Gandhi were living in those places. But we can have moments of that and glimpses of that. But we tend to have
00:23:14
Speaker
There's a continuum that I list on the quantum love map and each of them kind of has a calibration and those calibrations have been quantified not by me but by this amazing scientist and kinesiologist named David Hawkins who wrote a great book called Power versus Force. But he was able through 20 years of research and thousands and thousands of people from all different walks of life
00:23:37
Speaker
been able to basically quantify the energy of different emotional states or calibrate them. And that's what is part of the quantum love map. So they're kind of a frequency. And when you're at a frequency above 200, you're in home frequency. And that really starts at hopeful, trusting, willing, accepting, understanding, empathy, forgiveness,
00:24:06
Speaker
Surrender, love, peace, joy. Those are all in the home frequency zone where shame, guilt, despair, even apathy, grief, anxiety, fear, disappointment, anger, hate, scorn, entitlement, those are all vibrating below 200. Those are in the ego frequency.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Laura, you know, I'm obsessed with this idea of emotional obesity and home frequency being in your authentic state, right? This state where you feel at peace, at ease, you know, hopeful and all those positive emotional states, you know, and I love that you have steps for people because I think
00:24:53
Speaker
that although these things are desirable, a lot of people say, you know, I get it, but but how am I ever going to achieve this stuff? Yeah, and it's not that hard. So when we're talking, there's ways to achieve it. And your book, I think emotional obesity is another way to kind of live from a home frequency place in your day to day life, right? Because that's a lot of what you're teaching, too. And what I'm focusing on is how does that play out?
00:25:21
Speaker
in your relationship, right? How do you recognize when you've now gotten triggered by something your partner has said and done or maybe something outside your relationship that has brought you into that ego frequency state? How do you recognize when you're there and how do you shift up and
Intentions and Patterns in Relationships
00:25:38
Speaker
How do you create what I call quantum love intentions? Because one of the things that I try to help do in my book is really get clear on what do you want out of love? Because we all want something different. And you can actually create that consciously in your relationship by getting really clear in what your intentions are and by creating that home frequency energy around it.
00:26:02
Speaker
And so the quantum love map helps you recognize kind of where you are in different aspects of your relationship on the quantum love map. Are you more in home frequency or more in ego frequency? And track yourself. Track your patterns, your energetic patterns, and track how you can move up the scale. I love it. And you know, you're focused on the science behind it, right? That this is proven.
00:26:32
Speaker
This isn't something that we just feel. I believe these are the things that have been said for thousands and thousands of years and science is now proving it. It's just a question of whether you're going to take action into your life. What does it mean as far as taking action that my partner is my greatest teacher? If I'm looking to get started, is that my first step? Well, seeing your partner as your greatest teacher,
00:27:00
Speaker
is to me one of the quantum love truths. There are four main quantum love truths, I would say. There are many more elements to this than before, but number one, and getting back to what's the difference between quantum love and new love, or one of the main differences, is that you're not loving your partner in spite of that thing that drives you crazy about them. You are loving them.
00:27:27
Speaker
because of that thing that drives you crazy. Because your partner, and this is one of the most fascinating things of my 20 plus years as a couples therapist. Because I'm someone that definitely sees patterns. I love patterns in the work that I do. And one of the patterns that I find so intriguing and really intellectually and emotionally exciting in the work that I do, is that for every single couple that comes to sit on my couch,
00:27:56
Speaker
That point of conflict, that irritating habit, that thing that triggers you is actually
00:28:06
Speaker
the reason that you fell in love with them in the first place. Can you explain that more for everybody, including myself, who's saying right now, like, Come on, Laura, it's actually really annoying. It is it is totally unconscious. Yeah. But for each of us, those roughest edges of our love relationship, always, always, always reflect
00:28:29
Speaker
the learning edges and in our deepest areas for personal growth that we may not consciously want to, you know, be exploring because Lord knows it's a pain in the butt and it's not comfortable, but that we want to. So I'll use an example for my own life and I give lots of cases. I can share it, you know, in the book and lots of examples of this, but you know, my husband is really good at anger.
00:28:54
Speaker
It's his most comfortable place when he's scared or sad. He has no problem expressing it. He has no problem letting anyone. He doesn't have to please. He doesn't have to soften it. He'll just let you know how he feels, right? And that is not true for me. I grew up a pleaser. I grew up with a lot of anger around me. I would get extremely scared and shut down around anger.
00:29:23
Speaker
I didn't like anger, I had a father who had big anger, and yet I chose to fall in love with someone who, you know, is very comfortable with his anger. And in the beginning of our relationship, when he would get angry,
00:29:42
Speaker
once we got out of the infatuation stage, of course, because he was never angry then. But once he would get angry, I would shut down or I would get really big and angry back or, you know, like almost like, you know, you're not going to make me you know, and I'd get into these battles of well with him. And it became this big issue in our relationship until I realized that his anger was a huge gift to me because
00:30:11
Speaker
It taught me, it gave me the opportunity to learn how to hold my own power in the face of someone else's anger. How to decipher what's authentic anger and not authentic anger. How to take in what he's upset about and think about, okay, there's some truth to this. I did do something that maybe was insensitive or unkind or upsetting or whatever.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I can hold that piece, but I can also stand for myself. He also taught me how to be angry more effectively, how to express anger more effectively. And I think in many ways I've taught him
00:30:50
Speaker
other ways of expressing fear or sadness than going straight to anger like so many men do. Would you say, Laura, that also you having maybe a little different take on anger might have shown him also how to think about anger in a less explosive way? Yeah, absolutely. And how to access those other feelings that the anger might be covering up. Yeah. Yeah. So that you maybe came from a childhood where it was repressed and uncomfortable or, you know, what have you.
00:31:20
Speaker
and he taught you his side, but on the other side. So is it possible that we need to maybe inventory the things about the person we're with and say all the stuff that drives us crazy and what lessons in there? Absolutely, always and forever. Because you're, I mean, that to me, the reason that we are on this planet is to learn to love and be loved better. And our relationships, especially our deepest love relationship,
00:31:50
Speaker
is always and forever a mirror of how we feel about ourselves.
00:31:56
Speaker
It's really making me think, you know, my partner is extremely good at just incredibly, you know, what I would say selfish, right, behavior. She just does what she wants, when she wants, unapologetically. And if it's time to leave a dinner party, she's like, I want to go home now. Yeah, that's like my husband. I'm horrified. I'm like, oh my God. You're the feather smoother over and the pleaser.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, and she's mirroring this one. And so what that's about is acceptance. Will I be liked? Will people talk negatively about me? Am I being rude? Are people not gonna like me? And she is holding up a mirror and saying, oh look, there's this other way of being. Yeah, her view is people like me, I don't even have to think about that one. She just moves right on. She's like, if a dinner party is gonna dictate if you like me, then you probably didn't like me very much. Right. And on the other hand, I think I've softened up the
00:32:51
Speaker
Well, sometimes it might come across as slightly, you know, harsh. But our relationships call us to get into integrity with whatever earlier wounds or negative life patterns or whatever it is, our partner is going to trigger, always. So our triggers are our lessons. Yeah, and our triggers are our lessons. So if you struggle with your partner, you know, maybe they're really unaffectionate.
00:33:21
Speaker
Well, the quantum truth is that your partner's lacking in that hugging and kissing arena is probably serving you in some way. Maybe you're now being called on to address those earlier wounds of abandonment or unworthiness, or maybe it's inviting you the situation to really step into your power and ask for more physical affection. Ask for what you want in a way that you haven't before, you know?
00:33:47
Speaker
So whatever it is that irritates you or is upsetting you or is disconnecting you, it's there for a reason. It's a red flag saying, there's something you can
Transforming Dynamics Through Energy Change
00:33:57
Speaker
learn. There's something to discover here. And when you open your heart to it and you get into home frequency around it, it's amazing what there is to discover. And what happens when, your example, you know, you wanting more affection and
00:34:12
Speaker
You realize that that's maybe your own fear and you've picked this person who's unaffected because you actually have a fear of affection or something like that. But you dive into it, you recognize your fear, you come to the other side, you're ready, and the person you're with still is just not that affectionate. What do you do at that point?
00:34:32
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because I find that what I, you know, I've worked and there's some cases in the book about similar to this or along these lines, but like in a case like this, what I would find when I start implementing with this person, even if they're alone and I'm not working with both of them, some of the principles of quantum love is that a couple of things start happening. One, it becomes apparent
00:34:56
Speaker
that the energetic frequency that this person has been holding around the area of affection in her life is really low. It's hopelessness, sometimes apathy, right? Sometimes despair.
00:35:11
Speaker
But they're vibrating, so to speak, at a really low frequency. And what does that mean? That means they're gonna be creating more of what they don't want. So if what you don't want is the lack of affection, if you are in that low energetic state around the lack of affection, you will experience more lack of affection. So if it's still happening, there's still more to be investigated. Well, what happens when she's, so then what I would do with her
00:35:39
Speaker
is help her get really clear on what she does want. And there's a system in the book, sort of this art of manifesting that I help lay out in a kind of quantum physics and quantum love scale, is you get really clear on what would it be like to have this affection? Let's imagine a time in my life, even in this relationship or earlier in life, where I really felt affection and being held
00:36:08
Speaker
what that meant and the feelings that created in me. Let me get into that feeling state as if it were happening now. Let me shift things in my energy. Okay. That's where I am right now. Now I'm going to go to my partner in this energetic state and try to hold their hand. I see. Or tell them how I'm feeling and they will take it in in a totally different way than when you come at them from a place of scarcity.
00:36:34
Speaker
The other thing that will start to happen is as she starts vibrating at a higher frequency in general on the quantum love map in her day-to-day life, not only is her partner going to be aware of her in a different way and tuned into her to a different way, because when you're in home frequency, you're like a freaking magnet. It's like that guy you were talking about earlier. Yeah. She keeps operating in home frequency a lot, which is why you always want to be around him and he puts you in a good mood and he makes you feel good.
00:37:00
Speaker
So that's what you're like when you're vibrating in that spot. So her partner is now coming toward her more than he ever did. And because she's in that home frequency state, the act of physical affection she no longer needs in the same way to feel good about herself because she feels really good. And then that ironically is even more attractive to her partner. Living in a state of abundance attracts more abundance, right? Yes.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yes. So you had mentioned four quantum truths. Um, we spoke of one. What are the, what are the others? Um, well, okay. So your partners are going to teachers. One another is that your emotions have an energetic frequency that affects your relationship. We've talked about that, right? That the energetic frequency you hold affects your partner. The third one is that the lens through which you view your partner is everything.
00:37:55
Speaker
So where your attention goes, energy flows. And if you are seeing your partner as grumpy or selfish or unaffectionate, that is going to put you in ego frequency.
00:38:06
Speaker
And you will find, whatever your lens is that you're viewing your partner through, you are gonna find evidence for it, guaranteed. If I decide my partner is selfish, I will find 20 things today to support the fact that he's selfish. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to that. Yeah, absolutely. I think everything is happening at all times. So if it's what you focus on. Yeah.
00:38:29
Speaker
And that couldn't be more true in your relationship. So if you start focusing, and let's go back to the idea of a woman or a man, but since we're calling it a woman who wants more affection. So I am going to choose to view my partner as a loving mate. So I'm going to find evidence all around me for the ways that he or she is expressing affection or consideration or awareness of me.
00:38:58
Speaker
And that's where I'm going to put my attention. So it's really important to be aware of the lens through which you're viewing your partner. If you've decided your partner is unaffected, Lord knows you're going to find a lot of evidence for that. These identity structures, these labels we place, and I don't know how you feel about it, but I would think this really applies to how we treat our children as well.
00:39:19
Speaker
everything. Yeah. Yes. I want to write a quantum parenting book next. Practice that I did early on that led to the ideas behind this book were not only the practice that I did in my relationship with my husband, but oh my gosh, my kids have been my biggest skinny pigs. And the way I mean, I can get them to go to sleep, I can get them to shift,
00:39:43
Speaker
just by changing my energetic frequency inside my body, everything changes with them. And the lens as well is really important. So when I choose to see them as, you know, slackasses with their homework or everything else, I'm going to find a lot of evidence. They're going to feel that energy coming off of me, not only in a logistical sense in my tone and body language,
00:40:07
Speaker
but in an energetic sense without me having to say a word absolutely and i mean they're there the most you know pure forms even forks so you're right if you if you need their parents to say my child is so x right in it either.
00:40:24
Speaker
difficult or, you know, doesn't get along or, you know, troubles in school, whatever the label is. And I feel like the child rises to that label, right? Absolutely. And it's so important. And the labels come out of fear, right?
00:40:39
Speaker
I am a big one. That's a big struggle for me because I'm such a worry mama. That's a default position for me to worry, oh my gosh, they're going to be drug addicts. They're going to be slack in school. I'll go all the way down the spiral to them being homeless in the street just because they won't share a toy. I could go all the way there. It's all coming from a place of love, so getting really clear in what I want for them, what I want,
00:41:08
Speaker
is for them to feel alive, for them to feel happy and free and in flow in their life and to feel love in their life and to feel, you know, connected to the people around them and a sense of social responsibility. So that is the stuff that I put my attention on, that I look for the evidence of and celebrate
00:41:35
Speaker
that I try to model and foster in them. It's really a practice to not allow myself to jump to conclusions when they don't feel like going the extra mile on their homework or they just said something heart wrenchingly mean to their brother or whatever else.
00:41:57
Speaker
To practice these ideas on a child, you can see the shift really quickly. Sometimes it's a little harder with adults.
Real-Life Applications of Quantum Love
00:42:04
Speaker
They have more defense mechanisms. It works in all relationships. I was in a business meeting recently, and this woman comes into the room, and I had a visceral reaction to her. She was so hard-nosed and tight, and she sat down and started eating her lunch.
00:42:26
Speaker
basically kind of shut me down before we even started. Like this thing we're meeting about, I think she said it's as likely to happen as you launching a rocket to the moon, I think is what she said. And I just immediately started to constrict to anger and was like, screw you. I'm like, what the hell? Getting all mad at her in my mind and just being like, ugh, why am I even here? Writing her off.
00:42:54
Speaker
Whatever and then i just made you know caught myself and said okay let's try a little quantum love here let's see what happens so without saying a word or changing my affect you know i was sitting there listening to her continue to sit there and listen to her.
00:43:08
Speaker
And she was going on and on. I don't even know what she was saying. And I just shifted my energy. And I decided to see her as someone who was overburdened, overwhelmed. There are a million reasons why she could be rude right now that have nothing to do with me. I'm not gonna personalize this. I'm gonna decide to see the essence of her, which is another human being who's energetically connected to me, who's clearly suffering in some way for her to be acting this way. So I'm just gonna send her love.
00:43:35
Speaker
I'm gonna move to a place of acceptance and love and, you know, just try to envision a different kind of exchange with her and see what happens. I can't lose anything because Lord knows the meeting's not going so well. So I'm thinking that and all of a sudden she stops midstream, mid-bite in fact, of her lunch and looks at me and says, kind of got curious for a minute and said, well,
00:43:58
Speaker
Just tell me about yourself. And I just, you know, said a few senses. I didn't even say that much about myself, but I was kind of holding this energetic state. And, um, and then she was just quiet and looking at me and I just was quiet and looking back, you know, waiting to see what she was going to say next. And she said, I think my husband and I need to come and see you.
00:44:21
Speaker
For therapy, you know, and it was just all of a sudden everything shifted. I did it in a parent-teacher conference with a really ornery obnoxious teacher who was, you know, in my opinion, mistreating my son. And her energy totally changed during the meeting. So you can use it in all areas of your life, but it definitely impacts your relationship. I love that. So the final quantum truth, it is always possible to shift to quantum love is pretty much what you're talking about, right?
00:44:50
Speaker
Always, it's always, no matter how triggered you are, once you learn the principles and make the commitments that I sort of asked you to make in the book, it gets easier and easier. And it's just like anything else. Your book talks about this so beautifully, the practice of eliminating emotional obesity in your language. It's very similar, this idea of practice and that it becomes second nature.
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's why I talk about emotional fitness. I'm coming out with a book on emotional workouts because this stuff doesn't happen in theory. And you know, you have to be willing to practice it. So I love all the examples you're giving. And I think they're just right on and it doesn't take a lot. You don't have to leave your job, go to a mountaintop in India, meditate for 10 hours a day.
00:45:37
Speaker
You can just get in tune with what's happening with you, be responsible for those emotional states, and then do something about it. And I call them junk food thoughts and replace it with nutrition. You're talking about it in a different way, which I love, but it's all about taking action and being responsible for yourself.
00:45:54
Speaker
Mm hmm. Absolutely. So Laura, I mean, you've got this book you've done, is it eight books? Yeah. Yeah, you've, you've been on so many television shows, you've just had this incredible life, you have family, career, good health. From the outside, everybody would say this is a very successful life. But this podcast is really about this idea of success and authenticity. And so what does it mean to you to have an authentic life?
00:46:23
Speaker
Ah, well, what it means to me is that you are true to yourself and that you are honest and true with other people. And part of that, especially for someone like me, who's in the public eye a lot, is in not being perfect and not being afraid to show your weaknesses, show your vulnerability.
00:46:50
Speaker
and to be open hearted toward people even when you're afraid. That to me is authenticity and I believe that that's more important than anything else because for someone like me you know who was raised by a surgeon father who came of age into medicine during a time where doctors were pretty close to God.
00:47:16
Speaker
And in the 50s and even into the 60s and 70s, I would say that we really, in 80s and 90s, we really kind of were stuck in this idea of the guru, the doctor, the expert.
The Journey of Authenticity
00:47:33
Speaker
And what's been really the key to authenticity for me is, yeah, I mean, I guess I am an expert in that I spend a lot of time thinking about
00:47:42
Speaker
and focusing on love and relationships. And it is a gift I have. I have always been able to just get right to the core of a relationship issue, see it, understand it, feel it, and be able to address it. That is just, we all have these little gifts that we are, these little strains of gifts. That's my gift. So I know that, but I also know I'm no more of an expert than you are. I'm just a catalyst. I'm just a guide.
00:48:11
Speaker
And to me in my life and in my professional life, that's the key to authenticity is that I'm not your guru. I'm not your expert. I'm not I'm not even your teacher. I am just the catalyst that is offering you these tools. You have all of them inside you. I'm just helping you access them. I love that and was I'm assuming because of your
00:48:34
Speaker
little acronym, another fucking growth experience. Your path was not just a straight line, but I will ask, did you have a turning point moment? Has it been just a series of them, which it sounds like? I think there was a big chunk of AFGEs in my, you know, you were witnessing me through them, I know.
00:48:56
Speaker
I would say four or five years ago they can and typically that's how things tend to go for people i found you have you know that dark night of the solar that perfect storm that i feel like the universe is always giving us invitations to wake up to this.
00:49:13
Speaker
And you either accept the invitation or not. And if you don't accept, the knocking is just going to get louder and louder. Isn't that true? So you're literally knocked over. And in my case, I had to be knocked over and really have to stop. I was forced to stop my life.
00:49:30
Speaker
And it wasn't until I was forced to stop my life that the wheels came off so they could stop turning and could start kind of moving in a different direction. And that's for whatever reason, that's what I required. But I don't think it's necessary in order to release the fear that holds you back from finding your true authentic expression.
00:49:59
Speaker
And that's the next question because I do think fear and taking action from fear slowly creates this authentic space where inauthentic space where then you, like you said, you know, either have to make changes or, you know, it keeps reminding you. So now that you've found more authenticity, when you're stressed and you're facing fear, what do you do to stop yourself from making, you know, more inauthentic decisions and ending up in the same spot?
00:50:27
Speaker
Well, you know, I talk a lot in my book about the opposite, you know, of home frequency is what I call FMC mode, fixed managed control mode. So anytime I feel myself, like my mantra is no decision made from fear is a good one. So if I'm aware that I'm an ego frequency, if I'm aware that I'm in a fearful place or that I'm being drawn to fix something or to manage something or to control something or someone,
00:50:56
Speaker
then that's my alarm bell, you know, that's my red flag. And so I use different techniques on a daily basis, but also on an in the moment basis to shift out of fear and into some of those higher frequency emotional states. And it's a constant practice and a constant state of self-awareness. And a lot of it honestly has to do with surrender and just being willing to trust.
Embracing Surrender and Maintaining Emotional Coherence
00:51:24
Speaker
that whatever hell breaks loose, I'm going to be fine. Whatever thing I'm trying to fix, manage and control away or want to fix, manage and control away isn't going to destroy me. And there it may uncover a path that's going to take me to an even better place. And so I've just it's really about surrendering to the unfolding of life and trusting that
00:51:51
Speaker
Even if it's not exactly as I envisioned that I wanted it to be, it may turn out even better. Surrender was a big one for me. And I always thought it meant to give up. Yeah, me too. And I never, right? It's so Western, I thought, oh, God, surrender. That means just lay down. It's like complacency, we think. No, it's just that when, like you said, you're trying to control, manage, fix, you're basically becoming completely unraveled.
00:52:21
Speaker
letting go, giving some space, allows you to get back to the mindset that you need to make a good decision. Otherwise, you're going to, out of that space, create a life that you don't want to. So it's not surrendering to give up, it's actually making space to do the best you can. Making space and getting curious. Yeah. Getting curious about what, you know, I'll sometimes say to myself, this is interesting, this kind of sucks, but
00:52:47
Speaker
Why is this showing up in my life right now? Yeah, there's a reason that because I believe now that we create everything that's and in fact quantum physics, there's a lot in my book about demonstrating this some of the science behind it. It's pretty wild. But we're basically creating our own realities, whether we intend to or not. So when something shows up in my life that
00:53:09
Speaker
I'm not too excited about or that I want to fix managing control away I think you know I wonder why is this showing up for me right now like what is I just get curious and I kind of surrender to it and I have faith that if I just can breathe into it and let it sit for a little bit and move myself to a higher frequency emotion that and almost always
00:53:31
Speaker
the answer becomes clear or the path becomes clear or the opportunity becomes clear. But in the end, everything in life, even those things that absolutely feel like they stink and are so hard, everything is for us.
00:53:46
Speaker
And I think some of us have to get to that understanding through our more difficult, rocky path than others. But in the end, it's all for us. It's all good. It's all going to be okay. And when you can really connect to that understanding and that truth and hold your faith in it, then, you know, to me, that's the epitome of success.
00:54:10
Speaker
And what are your practices to do that? Do you have daily habits? Do you have, you know, so the time I have, well, they shift and change, right? So I'm constantly developing them. But my mainstays are meditation and yoga. I also do a lot of what I talk about in my book, the sort of the I move myself into energetic coherence. And there's a system for doing that. It's basically when you're the energy, the frequency,
00:54:39
Speaker
atomic energy of your heart and your mind, your brain are synchronized. And when you can put yourself into those states, your physical body into that state, that's when the magic happens. And I have a meditation on my website that shows you how to do this. It's not hard. And I've gotten, I even have a kind of biofeedback system. You can train yourself to move yourself into coherence, you know, so you
00:55:08
Speaker
you first move yourself, you know, you start thinking about that thing that triggers you and then you move into coherence and then you think about it again and you move in coherence. So I can now just move into it without thinking. I can move my body to coherence. It's a habit that I've created. Um, so I use that a lot. I'll use visualizations sometimes like, um, recently I was really upset. I was struggling a lot. Um,
00:55:33
Speaker
and really upset with some grief around. My grandmother died this summer and it brought up all this grief around my mother. She was my mother's mother and there were like no women left in my family and I live in a family of men. I was struggling.
00:55:51
Speaker
I had a friend who's really good at this kind of take me through a visualization and what I saw was this kind of when I sort of scanned my body for what I was physically feeling. I saw this really tightly coiled bright yellowy orange dense almost snake right in my chest. This heaviness in my chest kind of visualized in my mind is that.
00:56:17
Speaker
When she took me through this process of this meditation, of seeing what that snake wanted to do, it suddenly diffused into this brilliant light that spread out and filled out my whole torso that felt exactly like coherence feels. It's this beautiful, peaceful, physical, open-hearted feeling.
00:56:42
Speaker
So now when I can't necessarily move into coherence automatically because I'm just getting too triggered or things are too stressful I use that visualization you know where I imagine the light kind of spreading out and spreading open so.
00:56:57
Speaker
I think you kind of continue to foster and develop little tools and tips and things that work for you and everyone's different but certainly I have a ton in quantum love. You have a ton in your books. There's a ton of them online on my website and it's really about playing with them and seeing this you know as a journey. And if you just stay in home frequency 51 percent of the time
00:57:25
Speaker
your entire life will change. Well that's attainable. Yeah.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:57:31
Speaker
Laura I could talk to you all day. Thank you so much. We've got Laura Berman on the show today.
00:57:37
Speaker
Quantum Love, using your body's atomic energy to create the relationship you desire. I love everything you're talking about. For people out there who want more, where can they find you, the book, more information? You get the book right now on Amazon and any place that sells books, but it's called Quantum Love.
00:57:59
Speaker
And you can also go to my website, which is drlauraberman.com backslash quantum love. That will take you to the quantum love page, which has all sorts of meditations. It has the quantum love map on there. It has blogs. So you can check out all of that there too.
00:58:20
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and I love chatting with you. It's always great chatting with you, my friend. Talk to you soon. Thank you.
00:58:31
Speaker
Hey, thanks so much for listening. I hope you found some value in this interview. If so, it would mean the world to me if you hit subscribe, completed an iTunes review, or shared it with a friend. Every little bit counts. I'm super grateful for every single one of you, and I couldn't be more excited to be here. Signing off, I'm Laura Ko, and I'll see you guys next week.