Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Alan Gordon: Stop Chronic Pain

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Alan Gordon (founder of the Pain Psychology Center and author of The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain) stops by to guide Mayim through somatic tracking in an effort to alleviate her severe, stress-induced chronic back pain. After detailing his own journey suffering years of sustained pain in almost every area of his body, Alan highlights the benefits of pain as a danger signal and the importance of understanding the source of physiological symptoms in order to identify neuroplastic pain. Mayim and Alan break down the neuroscience behind the use of Pain Reprocessing Therapy to deactivate pain, the benefits of body scan meditation, and the relation between sensitivity to physical stimuli and experiencing strong emotional connections. Mayim and Alan wrap the episode with another round of "You Might Need Help If..." Alan Gordon's Book: https://www.painpsychologycenter.com/the-way-out.html Pain Reprocessing Therapy Website: https://www.painreprocessingtherapy.com/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes the brain can make a mistake and actually interpret danger where there is none. And so we could actually feel pain even when there's nothing wrong with our bodies. And even in these cases, the pain is 100% real. You know, there's no such thing as imaginary pain, but it's being caused by our brains and not our bodies. I'm Miambiolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to. It's Miambiolic's breakdown. If you're going to break it down for you.

Because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down and break it down. If you're not watching this episode, if you're listening to it, you don't know that I'm standing. And I'm standing because I have chronic back pain that has decided to be acting up. And we happen to be doing an episode today with the author of a really, really incredible book called The Way Out. And his name is Alan Gordon. And he wrote this book with Alonzeev. And it is a revolutionary, scientifically proven approach to healing chronic pain.

Why am I having Alan on? I'll tell you in a second. But first, I would like to introduce you to the most painful person in my life, Jonathan Cohen. Hello, my name. Hi, everyone. I'm your top favorite pain. Jonathan, do you want to tell everyone what it's been like for the last two and a half weeks? Well, if people have been following us on the new.

MbB Instagram page At Bialik Breakdown You could see my back You could see My am crawling up a very steep driveway And that was That was like probably almost two weeks ago That was almost three weeks ago

We're almost at three weeks And this is the longest that this has gone on I've had this before What it is is there is nothing structurally wrong with my back I do not have any herniated discs I have a lot of symptoms of herniated discs There's nothing structural wrong with my back

I didn't have an injury. I didn't do something that made this happen. What is happening now, and we're at the end of it. What it is is that when I'm very stressed, my brain converts basically all sensation that I feel into pain that is unbearable. And I then clench up all of the muscles that, quote, support me and cannot walk and sometimes can't even crawl. I have pooped in a bowl, but that didn't happen this time because I couldn't even get to the bathroom. You know what? The face that you're making is completely accurate. But what I'm trying to communicate is that this, I am a strong woman.

I am a very strong person. I'm an athletic person. I've had two children with no drugs, one of them in this very house. I am not a person who can't deal with pain in general. But this kind of pain is incredibly debilitating to the point that even crawling to the bathroom can be impossible. You spent a whole week just literally lying on the ground. I literally spent a week barely hobbling around. I could barely sit up. When this happened years ago, I was in such a desperate state. It was worse than this.

It was worse than this. You were talking about your knees. You could barely bend your knees. Hold on a second. I literally was at a point where I had not only back pain. I had pain. This was after my father died, and I think we can all guess what kind of stress I was in. I had pain and still do get pain that moves around my body for which there is not a medical condition. There's nothing, quote, wrong. It is not that I'm imagining the pain and Alan's going to talk to us about it. It's that there are some systems that are wired to interpret sensation as pain. And this was a actually introduced to me by Chuck Lori, who was the creator and executive producer of the Big Bang Theory, among other shows, but he was my boss. And in the time that I was working on Big Bang

Theory, this happened, I think, twice. Literally going through work, I mean, barely standing up during rehearsal days and just praying that it got better for tape days. And he said, you have to read this book. And I was like, mm-hmm. And he said, this book's going to change your life. And I was like, mm-hmm. And I didn't read it because that's the kind of person. and I am, stubborn. And it happened again, and I finally read the book. And I read this book by John Sarno, who was really one of the early thinkers in this area,

and a really revolutionary thinker, who literally changed, he did. He has changed the face of medicine and pain treatment and back pain. We cover this a little bit in the Eliza episode, for anyone who hasn't heard it already. One of the biggest takeaways of this Sarnos' work is that you can have images. of a back

two different people and one could have damage, one could not, and you would not know... Yeah, one of the most revolutionary things that Dr. Sarno talked about, which Alan has continued research in and discusses in his book, The Way Out,

is that many people who have back pain, most people who have back pain, you do a scan and they tell you, you got a herniated disc, you got a ruptured disc, but what is true is that many people have herniations of their disc and do not report pain. You can follow that through with really any diagnosis. When I was having knee pain, when I was having ankle pain, I literally, I mean, you could have found a million reasons.

Like, oh, well, you only have two bones here and some people have three. And it's like you could find any reason why you might be having that pain. But ultimately, I worked with Alan for a year. this is not an advertisement for Alan. The only reason that he and I decided to have him on is that he's no longer my therapist. I work with someone else in his practice. But when I was working with Alan, yeah,

my pain was so bad that I could not exercise. And this was in my knees. I had knee pain. I had ankle pain. I couldn't even just sit down to go the bathroom, like just to pee without having a bar to hold on to. I mean, it was outrageous. And there was absolutely nothing structurally wrong with.

my knees. So there are real medical conditions, and Alan and the people who practice this kind of chronic pain, understanding this kind of therapy, they do not tell you there's nothing wrong with you. What they tell you is to rule out absolutely anything physiological. That's the first thing you do. Get all the scans you want. Do all the things. But the notion that when you're, let's say your back is out, what do people tell you? What are the things people tell you when your back's out? Rest? Rest. Stretch. Stretch. Use heat. Use ice. Take ibuprofen. Take my If it's really bad, get an epidural. You're told to do all these things. And I've tried a lot of things. And one of the most important things that I learned in my work with Alan and which is what he teaches was this notion that the answer is not always to lay down and do nothing. Because I grew up with a father of blessed memory who always had his back go out like this. Always. He was always on a heating pad. He always had to lay down. And when I read Dr. Sarno's book and Dr. Sarno described the type of people who are

typically plagued by these back issues, he described me and my dad. And what Dr. Sarno talked about was that there is a personality type. There's been a lot of research on this. This isn't just like a lone dude like thinking crazy thoughts and publishing them. But what there is is there is a personality type and we tend to have a lot of similar features and we hold tension in our back. So do you know anyone who gets an upset stomach when they're anxious? I know a lot of people like that. You know people who get migraines when they're stressed. I know a lot of people like that. Those are examples of what is generally referred to as mind-body syndrome or transient myostatic syndrome is what John Sarno called it. And I literally looked up the pain psychology center,

which just happens to be here. And this guy, Alan, the way that he practiced was he said, you have every right to speak to me and let me tell you if I think I can help you. And he asked me all these questions. And I was incredibly skeptical and I remained skeptical, you know, to a certain extent. And I ended up working with Alan for a year. And one of the other things I worked with Alan on was I was in a very significant car accident for which I've had two surgeries on my hand. And I have permanent damage in my hand.

And it's my dominant hand. And I didn't even want to talk about it. I had worked in hand therapy for many years to try and and work on it. I didn't even want to talk about it. And he encouraged me to start working on that. And what I found out is that the pain in my hand was pretty much related to the pain everywhere in my body. Because the common denominator to all my pain was me. And I think it's important that we're doing this episode while I'm in discomfort and while I've been this way for almost three weeks. I'm able to sit. That's actually a huge point. You haven't been sitting that much. And

You've come in to sit for the, like, two hours it takes to record a podcast, and afterwards, it's really... No, I mean, and I, while we were talking, I had completely forgotten about my back. I mean, that's the thing. Like, you know, I have a brain that's really, really wired for fight or flight. It's very wired for that. And once it gets in that loop, it's very hard to get it out, and that is science. So the notion is not that your pain is not real.

The notion is not that your pain is, like, psychosomatic, I think, has a bad sound to it, you know? the idea is that there are absolutely cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, and they take time, and they take effort. But I'm actually really, I'm shocked that Alan has put them in this book because the fact is, like, this is all a lot of people need. I promise to learn about your body and the way you perceive pain. Let's welcome my astro twin, Alan. Break it down.

Alan Gordon, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. And it's not that we're taking over, but we're starting a little bit slow and a little bit meditative today. Can you tell us what we're going to be talking about? Sure. I like that you are contextualizing not what we're talking about, but how we're talking as well. Today, we're going to be talking about how chronic pain develops, how it perpetuates, and what you can do to actually overcome or eliminate chronic pain. Everyone who's listening can already tell that this episode is going to be filled with wisdom, peace, and meditative qualities as we learn to turn down the volume of our own pain. Let's get into it.

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Make sure to mention Myambiolics Breakdown to help support the show. I remember that the week of my birthday that I was working, with you. I was in your office and we were having a session. I was talking about just some stress related to my birthday coming up. And you were like, oh, my birthday's coming up too. And I was like, oh, really? And for some reason, I have a fondness for people who have December birthdays like me. And I was like, well, my birthday's December 12. When's your birthday? And you're like, December 12. And I was like, what year were you born? You were like 1975. And also, I was born in San Diego. And so we had this whole, I had a moment.

The first thing I thought was he's lying. Trying to... Just to make me, like, feel comfortable or something. There's this thing in psychotherapy known as matching, where you really kind of like, you know, take on the quality or really kind of like bond with the patient in a way to make them feel comfortable. I think that would probably be an extreme form of matching,

but it's funny that's where your mind went. Could the fact that her first instinct is almost always they're probably lying, indicative of her fight or flight reflex, which could be contributing to her chronic pain. Yeah, let's talk about those trust issues. That is really funny. Yeah, that was a pretty crazy coincidence.

It was very crazy. I still don't really believe it. We talked a little bit already before we welcomed you about this book, the way out. Oh, you got it. Oh, got it, read it, did the whole bit. Did you? Wow. Thank you. Look, the book contains so much of the wisdom that I had to pay a lot of money to get in the year.

Could it just wait a year? I could have just waited a year. $27. No, but I really do, you know, what I spoke about and what I really want to say to you is that this is a, it is a tremendously powerful book. It does contain so many of the core things that you taught me and that, you know, allowed me to move through. not only the year that I worked with you, but also the time since, and we've been in communication since as well. I let you know whenever anything hurts pretty much. That's true. But it is. It's really amazing for you to also put this in a book because this is information that should be available to everyone. And really the reason Jonathan and I started this podcast, or one of the reasons, is that we believe mental health information

is a human right. It should be completely available and free to people to know what their feelings are, know what their mental health status can and should be. What you've done with this book is you have made this information available to people in a way that's very understandable, very digestible, you know, all of the kind of anecdotes that you would use.

They're in here. Like it's really, it really is amazing. And there's a couple sections that I, specifically want to talk about, but there's a lot of terms for the kind of work that you work around, meaning when I looked you up, I had been given Dr. Sarno's book. And so I had this, you know, transient myestatic syndrome. TMS is what it was called at that time. And Dr. Sarno wrote many years ago. And since then, there's been a lot more research and you're literally kind of reporting on the cutting edge research in this field. You taught me the expression mind-body syndrome.

which is one of the things that I feel is most helpful when people see that I'm in pain or debilitated and they try and tell me all the things I'm supposed to do, saying to them, I don't need suggestions, thank you. This is actually an extension of mind-body syndrome. But it's also called neuroplastic pain. Is that? That's the term that we have settled on. You know, there are so many different terms for this. There's tension myocytis syndrome, like you said, with Dr. There's psychophysiologic disorders association. There's mind-body syndrome. In the academic community, it's known as centralized pain, but that isn't really necessarily

like user-friendly. So neuroplastic pain is essentially just a fancy way of saying learned pain. It's the brain's way of actually learning pain. And, you know, just to back up a sec for some of the listeners who are new to this. And, you know, I have heard you talk about it on previous podcast before. I didn't know my therapist listened to my podcast. That's weird. It was really great. You've actually talked a lot about this before. So, you know, this might be familiar to some of your listeners, but pain is a danger signal. You know, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain is your brain's way of letting you know that you have to move your hands so you don't cause more damage.

And that's necessary. We need that. Yeah, it's important for survival. I think there's actually like there's a disorder where someone is actually born without the ability to feel pain. And there's like 17 of these people in the world. and they have a really low survival rate. But, you know, it's really amazing because pain is a survival mechanism that has the goal of protecting us from injuring ourselves worse. Like many danger signals, it's there to help us. But sometimes the brain can make a mistake and actually interpret danger where there is none.

And so we could actually feel pain even when there's nothing wrong with our bodies. And even in these cases, the pain is 100% real. You know, there's no such thing as imaginary pain, but it's being caused by our brains and not our bodies. And the amazing thing is more and more studies are actually showing that the majority of chronic pain is neuroplastic pain as opposed to structurally caused. What was extremely helpful, and when we talk about finding whatever kind of therapist that you match with, you have to feel connected and safe with that person. And you have a list of things that you experienced in your life. and I'm just going to, I'm going to read them.

Upper back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, heel pain, tongue pain. Then you write, who gets tongue pain? Eye pain, tooth pain, toe pain, three different toes. Hip pain, stomach pain, wrist pain, foot pain, leg pain, TMJ, heartburn, vertigo, tinnitus, itching, and fatigue. Yeah. And these were things that happened to you when you were a young, otherwise healthy man. This is, you know, one of the reasons that I think for me, I was able to kind of trust this process. Because when I would experience something, I didn't feel like you were saying like, oh, I had that.

You know, you were helping me understand on a deep level that you have lived in this, I called it like the pain of being in pain, you know. Like I was in so much pain over the pain. You get it and you've, you know, kind of been through it. So, you know, when things were happening, let's say to my ankles, I think that's about when I started working with you, I was repeatedly spraining my ankles. So that was true, meaning my ankles were swelling. Like my body was doing all the things. When my back goes out, you can feel and see that the muscles are locked in spasm. You can see them vibrating. Like, it's not good. So it's not that there are not physiological things going on. What you work with is trying to help understand the

source, right, of the processing of those sensations and then what we do with them. Does that feel accurate? Yeah, absolutely. And there's really two different processes that can go on. You know, the brain is actually capable of generating physiological changes in the body. You know, I had a friend who whenever she would get really stressed out, she would break out in hives. And the stress was responsible for the hives. But once they were there, it was clearly, you know, a physical thing that was manifesting that needed to be addressed. And the brain is also capable of misinterpreting signals from the body. So even if there are safe things going on, the brain can actually interpret those signals as if they're dangerous. So, you know, and I've had both of

those as well where I've had the things where, you know, I remember my neck was so locked up that I couldn't turn my head to the left. It literally felt like my head was not able to turn to the left. and that was something due to, you know, a muscular contraction. But I've also had the kind of pain where it was just these safe things that were going on in my body. And this is generally what we see is someone has back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain. And they'll go to the doctor and the doctor will do an MRI and they'll see they have discarniation, maybe a five millimeter discarniation. And they'll think that that is the cause for their pain.

And so then they'll do physical therapy and all. all this. And it turns out that, you know, 64% of people with no back pain have discarniations. And so, you know, for a lot of these patients, it's there's actually safe things that are going on in the body. And, you know, there's these nerve fibers in the body that are sending signals to the brain and their safe, neutral messages. And the brain is actually misinterpreting those signals as if they're dangerous in generating pain. And so I remember we worked on this specifically with the pain in my knees. And when I say knees, that's already a red flag because pain in both sides of your body typically is a strong indicator that this is neuroplastic pain. I see you read the appendix.

I did. Well, I'm actually, I have it open right now. So how to determine if you have neuroplastic pain? And these are kind of the headlines. Did if pain originated during a time of stress. And like for me, always. Pain originated without injury, meaning without like, oh, you know, I fell down or this. Symptoms are inconsistent. Large number of symptoms. Symptoms spread or move. Do I know about that? Literally, last night, sacrum, now middle back. Like, that's just kind of, and it's just kind of been like that. Symptoms triggered by stress, symmetrical symptoms. And then you get into kind of personality traits and obviously we'll talk about that. I think it's also important to point out, and I remember doing this with the knee pain in particular, and you would have me, one of the things that you teach, and it's in the book, is somatic tracking. And this is a really, it's a time-consuming process, meaning this is not like a quick fix.

Like, it takes time. And by time, I mean, a five-minute meditation can help. but it's something you have to put energy into and into learning it and practicing it. But I remember the day that it finally clicked for me, you said, everyone's knee hinges, meaning everybody's knees have to hinge. Like when you put pressure on your knees and you're going to, you know, go whatever, bend down, everyone's knee hinges. But you said to me, some brains have turned up the volume on that sensation.

so that the message of, oh, this is the knee hinging. There are cells and receptors that are responsible for that. My brain says that sensation, I think, is pain. And that's because the volume has been turned up. And that's kind of the way I describe this work. It's about turning down the volume on that interpretation of sensation as pain. That's exactly what it is. I remember.

Literally. No, neuroscientifically. like you hit the nail on the head. There was actually a paper that just came out, I think in 2018, with some neuroscientists at Harvard that actually they were able to identify the volume knob in the brain that actually, you know, could increase those pain signals. And that's what's going on. So when you were having pain, when you were sitting, so Jonathan, you're sitting right now and you don't have back pain? Not like she does.

Okay, just say, yeah, I mean. Not like she does. He doesn't like when I suffer and someone thinks he's not suffering as much. But that's a different story. Got it. So there's this phenomenon where so Jonathan, right now you're sitting and I imagine that if you were to pay attention, you feel a sensation in your lower back, just because you're sitting.

You're sitting, you're using those back muscles. And so what's happening is there are nerve fibers in your back. that are sending messages to your brain, up your spinal cord to your brain, and essentially these are safe, neutral messages. And those messages are, you know, there's a little sensation, maybe a slight feeling of pressure because you're using muscles, you're sitting against the chair, no cause for alarm. And your brain is processing those signals and you're feeling a sensation, but it's kind of neutral, probably like, you know, what we all feel when we sit in the sensation on the bottom of your feet, when you're sitting at the bottoms of your legs.

Just communicating where the body is in space. Exactly. Just feeling a normal safe sensation. So Myam... Myam is not feeling that nothing feels safe. It's because everyone's lying. Okay, go ahead. Tell me what I'm feeling, Alan.

So what you're sitting is it's actually the same thing that's going on in your body that's going on in Jonathan's body. Your brain is actually interpreting the signals as if they're dangerous in generating pain. And so that is essentially our goal is to teach your brain that these signals that it's interpreting as dangerous are actually safe. Turn down the volume now. And that's what somatic tracking does is it teaches the brain to reappraise these signals, reappraise these sensations as non-dangerous. So one of the things that I didn't like about working with you. I love that this is like a pro, this is turning into like a pros and cons of Allen's therapy. This is actually just a Yelp review.

that we're doing in a podcast. She doesn't need help. She's faking the back injury just so that she could bring you on here. One of the things that was hard was that you made me slow down. Oh, she hates that. And I remember this session where it was just kind of us getting to know each other. I mean, like, I already feel like, I feel very emotional just thinking about it. Because I haven't done the kind of processing that I did with you and I miss it.

Like there are things that I miss. And as I was talking, I was just talking like I normally do, you kept stopping me. Oh, yeah. And I remember it made me, you know, it hit my shame button. It hit my shame button. Not because you were shaming me. You were very calmly pointing out that my voice is a mirror of what's going on inside my body, with which I speak.

Oh, wow. Jonathan, for our listeners, Jonathan is holding up a sign like Wiley Coyote that says slow down. And what you pointed out was that my voice, my cadence, the rapidness with which I speak, the volume with which I speak was a reflection of my internal state. And I remember that was hard also because that's hard to hear as a woman. because women are often told to shut up. And I come from a very strong home where I was taught that women should speak up. And I did. Like it's part of my identity is my voice and, you know, and how forceful I can be. And I remember it was really, really hard.

And it was hard to be a grown adult and be told like something that you're doing is not working for you when I thought I was doing pretty well, you know. it's like if I was doing that well, I probably wouldn't be sitting in your office. So, you know, I remember that that was one of the first things that you taught me, even before somatic tracking, because that awareness of myself was just not, and I've been in therapy a million and a half years, but that's, it's a different kind of work. So you kept stopping me. And you would sometimes just like, ask me to like, you know, tell something that happened. And you would. you kept stopping me and it was so difficult. But in the year that I worked with you, that's kind of how I started speaking.

And I definitely like, it changed my baseline anxiety. And it's such a simple thing. But that was like one of the first tools, you know, that I remember being taught. And yeah, also, like for people like me who are very emotional and who do tend to get emotional and can can feel agitated, you know, being told. to slow down can hear like, I can hear it like calm down, which is something that people say to people when they're trying to, you know, not lose their minds. You know, first of all, I'm, I was listening to you while you were describing that and you were describing it in such a calm, easy way.

No, no, jumping back in the therapist mode here, we have a tendency to talk really fast. And the reason that I pointed that out to you is I used to do the same thing, where I would totally gallop and talk so fast. And, you know, what we do when we do that is we're neglecting our internal state. So we're kind of abandoning ourselves by, you know, calming our system down, keeping ourselves regulated when we do that. Can you repeat that? Yeah. We're talking really fast and we're singularly focused on getting our point across or connecting with someone or doing something like that. We are simultaneously neglecting our internal state. We're not regulating our anxiety. We're not attending to ourselves, we're abandoning ourselves. So I wasn't telling you to slow down.

What I was telling you was care about yourself as much as I care about you. You know, let's help you attend to your internal state and take care of your system out, keep your nervous system calm and regulated so that you can feel more okay in the moment. Does that make sense? That makes total sense. And when I just heard you describing that whole process, you were doing it in such a calm, regulated away. So it's really seemed to stick, which is great. Now we're not going to have a podcast anymore because I'm going to talk so slow. I'm going to put everybody to sleep. I'm changing my slowdown sign to attend to internal state sign. There you go. I love that. Care about yourself the way I care about you. I mean, that's actually, that's a, that's really, that's really lovely.

The other thing that happens when we're often at that level of speed is that we're repeating ourselves. We're more like a cyclone. By slowing down, we're able to often get into a much different flow than we are when we're like don't get me wrong sometimes it being animated is out of passion but there's a difference between passion and anxiety fueling someone speaking i am out of passion depends on the day yeah you know that's that's funny that you say that but you know i remember when i was trying to do that it was really hard because our instinct is to just to kind of fall into that pattern and so i just remember i've never said this out loud before but i remember i used to just say like the Pledge of Allegiance over and over for like 10 minutes every day.

Just something that I knew by heart. It wasn't like a patriotic thing or anything like that. But I just remember I would say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over practicing taking a breath every 10 words is a way to kind of get myself in the habit. Because it isn't just about recognizing these behaviors that we do. Recognition is great, but we need to practice engaging in these behaviors in order to develop the new neural pathways. This is where I was going to get to is practical ways of practicing slowing down because often we're so ingrained in whatever rhythm that we're normally in that we don't notice that we're moving fast.

When Maiam sat in your office, I'm sure that she had no concept of how fast she's moving or the tone or anything like that. So if people are listening and they're like, well, like, how do you begin to even start to slow down? Because my experience of somatic tracking is before you, can even start to do that. You need to slow down enough to give yourself space and time and attention in order to have that awareness. Absolutely. You know, it's a tough thing to do, and it does take practice and it takes attention and it takes discipline, but it is possible to change those patterns,

even if you're, you know, so used to existing in that way. And, you know, we don't even realize that we're suffering sometimes. You know, I had a patient once. who was constantly galloping and constantly rushing. And, you know, I slowed them down and they started attending themselves. And they said, you know, I didn't even realize that I was living in a black and white world until I saw color. You know, sometimes we don't even realize that it's a form of suffering until we're not feeling it anymore. It's very similar to what we talked about in terms of the clenching and holding from the Eliza episode. We mentioned you don't realize that you're clenching.

And for people who aren't watching, like my shoulders are up or, I'm having restriction in muscle groups until you relax those muscle groups. You're like, holy goodness, all that energy I was expending. Well, that's actually one of the more recent, you know, things that I've actually learned from you, Jonathan. One of the things I'm very grateful for. Jonathan is trained in Reiki and other kind of healing arts. And what I've learned from him about breath is incredibly powerful. And it ties, you know, all of this kind of ties in.

I think one of my fears about this episode is that people might be like, I can't learn something new. This is nothing new. This is wisdom that your body already has that now exists in this book. But what it is, it's teaching a specific kind of mindfulness about your body that then can impact your perception of pain and literally changes the quality of people's lives. I mean, sometimes just by learning these techniques, it changes people's lives. And that's absolutely profound. But one of the things that I started doing was trying to understand breath on an even deeper level and realizing that even when I would lay in bed and I thought, okay, I'm like getting ready to go to bed and I go.

I started realizing that if I pay more attention, I was still clenching my body. Like I still would have like an arm that was like totally kinked intention while I was supposedly trying to fall asleep. And so I've started doing this, and I've realized that like, and I learned it also through doing more body scan meditations, where they take you through your whole body. And I'm thinking, like, how many of us live our whole lives with that kind of tension? And we think we're relaxing, but we're not. And so then for a brain like mine that is really, like the volume is very, very, it's tuned up really, really high. Like, I'm ready to pick up anything and call it pain. anything. Sorry. That kind of tension over time, it accumulates. And that's science. Like,

every time you're clenching a muscle, it is sending a message. Like, that's how the nervous system works. So often when we're in a stressful situation, what the stressful component is, is that we stop attending to our breath. We stop regulating our anxiety. And, you know, we often think that it's like the external stress that's making us feel bad. But But what it really is is it's the fact that we are so wrapped up in what's going on, you know, for your listeners, for the first 10 minutes that we were on the Skype call, they were trying to talk me through these technological difficulties. It did great. I was so confident that I had it down before we started. My microphone, you know, wasn't working and the headphones weren't going on.

And everyone was telling me all these different things. And, you know, one of the things that I just was really conscious of is there's all this stressful stuff going. on around me. There's all this pressure to get it right. But I was really focused on just breathing in and out while that was going on. And it allowed me to actually get through the stressful situation while still feeling okay. Somatic tracking is a form of exposure. It's the fear and the preoccupation around the pain that keeps it going, right? So pain is a dangerous signal when you react to the pain with fear and preoccupation, which is a perfectly natural and understandable way to react to pain, it reinforces to your brain that it's dangerous and it keeps the cycle alive.

And people don't believe that. I mean, I believe it. But I'm saying a lot of people listening and be like, but you don't understand. I'm really in pain. Yeah, what a lot of people feel is like, but I really have a structural thing going on. And, you know, that's what I believed at first, too. You know, when my mom first gave me, you know, one of one of these books to potentially help overcome my pain, I was so angry. I was like, mom, I had. have a 5-millimeter disc herniation, I have dysdegeneration, I have chyphosis of the spine, and I have moderate arthritis. There's no way a book is going to help me. And, you know, so many of us, you know, believe that we have pain and our pain is structural. But, and, you know, the study that

I'm going to talk about in a little bit, we actually found that the majority of people who have chronic pain have neuroplastic pain. It's even if you have structural things going on in your body, that's not the cause of your pain. Alan, how old were you when you first got that book from your mother and you were like, wait a second, there might be something else here other than your structural pain? Probably 25 or 26, mid-20s. Your mother tells you, wait a second, there might be something else going on and you're like, list all the reasons why that isn't the case.

What's that process from like that you turn your life around and become in less pain? So when my mom first presented this to me, she said, my friend's son had back pain and he read this book and it helped him get out of pain. We hate those people. And I was so angry. I literally think I threw the book across the room. And then, you know, a year later, I, for an entire year, I did everything else. I did physical therapy. I did acupuncture.

I did acupressure. I did, you know, so many different modalities. I mean, I literally have a list. of my insurance records from like 2003 to 2005 or something. And it's like this dick. It's just, I must have gone to 150 to 200 doctor's appointments in a two-year span. And I tried everything else. So finally, I picked up the book.

I talked to my mom's friend's son on the phone. And eventually I realized, oh, I do have all these structural things in my body, but that's not what's causing the pain. It's the fear and the preoccupation around the pain that keeps your brain interpreting it is dangerous. So that's what we want to change. I just want to define preoccupation because one of the most difficult things, and again, the first thing Alan said to me is we rule out anything physiological first, meaning this is not some like wacky L.A. doctor who's like, I'm going to heal you. Like the first thing you do is you rule out by scan, by exam, whatever it is.

You rule that out first. In the absence of physical symptoms, then we start, we start. We start. of this work. But the preoccupation is the rumination. It's the sitting in the anxiety of it. You go to physical therapy. You go to a chiropractor. You go to this. You go to that. Like, oh, this work. Now it doesn't. So that's the rumination. And it can happen with pills. And especially when pills are addictive, you get stuck in that loop. Okay. I have two pieces that are quick. At what point, is there a cutoff? You're like, and I have no concept of herniations and their measurements. Is it like a 9mm? You're like, oh, that's actually really bad and you should be concerned. And I asked this because I had a lot of physical pain that I didn't think was

structural at all. And then I realized I need a hip replacement. The thing that was missing in your life was actually going to a doctor. No, I didn't have scans. And I just, because my approach has always been, I can kind of work my nervous system out of said pain. I didn't recognize that I had zero cartilage left. They're taking out his hip in two days. So as we're recording this, this will air after my hip replacement, but, you know, I went through 20 years of being fairly physically limited and having increasing amounts of pain, pain down the right leg that I really believe.

I may have told him it's TMS and given him your book. She told me to stop complaining about it, that I'm ruminating all this. And I have a, you know, structural abnormality in the hip that wore down all the cartilage and I've been to four doctors, and my instinct is not to trust them. But it turns out that... But all you have to do is trust me, and we're okay. I think everyone's lying. I don't think everyone's lying.

I just don't fully trust their perspective. That's just, okay. I actually, when I first started writing this book in 2014, and I was actually writing a section of the book on wrist pain specifically. And while I was writing that section, I pushed myself up, and I felt a lot of pain in my wrist. And I was like, okay, this has to be neuroplastic. You know, I was literally writing a section on overcoming wrist pain,

and I ended up rupturing a ligament in my wrist, and I needed surgery from it. And so, like, not all pain is neuroplastic. The majority of it certainly is, but you always want to make sure to rule out underlying physical causes, because you don't want to try to teach someone to reappraise signals that are actually dangerous as if they're safe, if they're actually dangerous.

So I guess the reason I'm asking and asked about the disc is because there is a huge section of the medical community that will deal with neuroplastic pain as though it's structural. And so there's a lot that you're like, well, I need some perspective. I need to educate myself. And while someone might tell me it's structural, maybe I should, you know, have a little bit of a background information to evaluate that with a grain of salt. So that's why I was like, well, if five millimeters, people can feel okay.

Is there a cutoff point? Like, how do you begin to evaluate if you're being told by a very traditional doctor or care provider that something needs medical... Surgery. They usually say you need surgery to repair this. Surgery or intervention. Like, when do you know how to... That is worth your time to approach this from a mind-body perspective.

Jonathan, that actually is a great question. You know, you always want to be sure. It's not like a set number because everyone's spinal canals is going to be different widths and it depends, you know, which vertebrae and if there's nerve root compression. Generally speaking, though, we actually, the best thing that you can do is you can work with a physician who is specifically trained to make a distinction between neuroplastic pain and structural pain. We actually just put a list of that up at a pain reprocessing therapy.com. Painereprocessing therapy is the name of our treatment. And on pain reprocessing therapy,

There's a practitioner's directory specifically for physicians who are trained to diagnose this. You know, my am, you know, Howard Schubiner. He is the one who trained all of these physicians and this. And there's also a list of therapists who practiced panore processing therapy. So that may be, you know, one of the best things to do to make that determination. If your medical provider doesn't have this as an awareness in their treatment protocol, you might want to think twice if you should go under the knife before you figure out if there's a component of this in your condition?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, most physicians are well-meaning, but they come from a perspective of a biomedical model, and it's like pain is a function of there being a problem in the body. And mine, you were probably told that by dozens of doctors, and I was told the same thing. You know, I had some of the leading back specialists in Los Angeles telling me that there was a problem in my body, and there wasn't.

I mean, it is a radical paradigm shift. It's a radical paradigm shift to be able to say, what if everything I've been told about pain is not the whole truth. And that's the thing. This is not me trying to be like pain doesn't exist and it's all in your head. That's not the point. The point is to try and understand pain to the level of detail that, for example, Alan chooses to detail in this book, which is that it does not take a neurologist. to understand the way pain is processed in the brain. We can access that.

That's such an interesting thing about the paradigm shift or the idea that it's like such a huge shift psychologically. If you guys are familiar with the movie The Matrix, when Keanu Reeves actually feels like learns for the first time what the Matrix is and that everything that he thought was his life isn't. It's like he gets sick and then passes out. And I feel like that's what it's like is, you know, for two years, I thought I had this back pain because of a car accident.

I thought I had my head pain because I had high cerebral spinal fluid pressure. That's what I've been told. It made sense. It was intuitive. It's really psychologically jarring to learn, wow, this idea that I had for what was causing my pain isn't really what's going on. And also, that's not to say that people who have fibromyalgia, people who have, I mean, there's a lot of things that the work that you do can help.

meaning it doesn't cure IBS, but a lot of the pain associated with IBS can be lessen. It doesn't cure the fact that I get migraines, but my relationship to pain and to those sensations, even the things that I used to think hurt my back, you've allowed me to shift. I used to be afraid to do dishes. I would do them in small spurts because I knew if I stood too long, I'm going to get that burning sensation, and that means my back's going to go out. Like, that has gone away, you know? And that's not saying that people are not experiencing those things.

Like that's, I don't want people to feel that, that we're saying it's not real. It's all in your head. No, but everybody's head is different, you know. And being able to regulate those sensations is really important and can change your quality of life, even if you have a diagnosis that is, quote, legitimate or real. That's such a great point, my am. Are you guys familiar with the Harry Potter books? He is.

There's this exchange that Harry Potter has. with Professor Dumbledore toward the end of the seventh book. And Harry says to Dumbledore, is this all real or is it just happening in my head? And Dumbledore says, well, of course it's just happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it isn't real? All pain is real. And they've actually found that whether the pain is being caused by structural problems in the body or whether it's due to the brain misinterpreting signals incorrectly, it's

actually processed the same. way in both instances. So all pain is real. Do you want to do a little demo? That would be great. Okay. I'm ready to be tracked. So somatic tracking is really just a way of my, I'm trying to teach your brain to reappraise these signals that you're feeling right now through a lens of safety because they are safe signals. Your brain just doesn't know that. It's like a giant misunderstanding. It's like a three's company episode or something like that. like your brain is just like it's just a terrible misunderstanding and there's these safe signals but your brain doesn't know that so the first thing that i want you to do is to see if you could

calm your system down do some of that fancy breathing that jonathan has taught you feel like nothing is less entertaining for listeners of a podcast than someone leading someone else through a breathing exercise you just breathe you let me worry about entertaining the listeners while you do so i'll add some color comments Sometimes Jonathan just stops talking to her and breathes himself and then she has to catch on So just focus on your breath. We just want to calm your system down because like I was saying before In order to overcome any fear you need exposure to the fear if you You don't want to overcome a fear of heights you need to go up in tall buildings if you want to overcome a

You know if you're public speaking you need to talk in front of people And so what we want to do my aim is we want to help you pay attention into these physical sensations in your body, but in a new way through a lens of safety. So somatic tracking is a technique that involves three components. Mindfulness, which means just paying attention to the sensation with objective curiosity, without fear, without judgment. The second is safety reappraisal, really reinterpreting or reinforcing that these sensations that you're feeling are actually safe. And the third is positive affect induction, where it's just kind of like a way of trying to lighten the mood, either with humor or imagery

or something else like that, just to make it easier for you to attend through that positive lens. So describe for me what you're feeling in your back right now. It's already moved from when this podcast started. It was like, it was midback and now it's like around where the sacrum is. It feels like something's holding on, like the muscles are tight around it. It feels uncomfortable, meaning it's not like, it's a different sensation than like proper pain. It's not like an ouch. It's like a deep ache. So I want to first of all tell you that just because it feels like your muscles are clenched, that doesn't mean that your muscles are clenched.

That's really hard for me to understand. I mean, I hear you. They did a big study on these fibromyalgia patients who had feelings of musculoskeletal tension. in their body. And what they did is they actually asked these patients, where do you feel the tension in their body? And simultaneously, they measured the objective tension in their body with an EMG, and they found that there was zero correlation between perceived musculoskeletal tension and objective musculoskeletal tension. And I just want you to know that I've experienced that same thing where it feels like stiffness in the body, it feels like tension in the body. But what that does is it

reinforces that there's a problem in our body, it just keeps us in that state of fear, that keeps us in that state of preoccupation. So I want you to see if you can actually just pay attention to that sensation and not necessarily draw a conclusion of what's happening in your body right now, but just recognize, okay, this is what it feels like. And again, if it's moving from one place in your back to another, you know, that's your brain. So as you pay attention to this sensation and it's uncomfortable, what happens to it? Does it expand?

Does it contract? Does it continue to move around? Does it intensify? Does it subside? It's just there now. It's just there and it kind of feels like a tight kind of pressurey feeling? Yeah, it feels achy, yeah. Right now as you're paying attention to this sensation, is it hard for you to pay attention

to this sensation without fear? A little bit. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes for some people, just straight somatic tracking is too hard. My favorite analogy is like in the movie The Wizard of Oz, you know, Dorothy and her friends are all standing before the great and powerful wizard. And it's this floating head and it's these, you know, booming voice and there's flames shooting in the background and they're terrified. And then Toto pulls the curtain back and they see it's just a man behind the curtain. And it's still this floating head and it's still this booming voice.

and silly shooting flames, but they're not afraid anymore because they know that it isn't dangerous. And so that's what we want to do. We want to kind of work to teach your brain that these signals are not actually dangerous. So if it's too painful right now, if you're too afraid of it, we don't want to do too much straight somatic tracking because that's just going to be, you know, if you get exposure to a fear and it goes well, that results in less fear. But if you get exposure to a fear and it goes poorly, that actually results in having more fear than you had before. I mean, I feel like I have enough evidence from the last 90 minutes, you know, that like, whatever I think is going on, that's not how I know, that's not how muscles work,

meaning I'm just like, I'm trying to, you know, it's a leap of faith. Yeah. You're a neuroscientist. You know anatomy. It's actually really funny. I saw this, even before we ever met, I saw some, like, interview that you were on on like the E-Channel or something like that. And the woman interviewing you said, so what does it like to play a neuroscientist on TV? And you said to her, I'm actually a neuroscientist in real life.

She had nothing. It was the funniest exchange I'd ever said. I think it was a man. She was not prepared for that. Yeah, there was a man and a woman, but I think he was the one who asked. But yes. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so first of all, what just happened was an example of positive affect induction. You know, you were paying attention to the sensation. Your face was scrunched. You know, your body was tight. I'm not feeling that discomfort now. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, even though it seemed like I was just kind of telling you a fun story, that's literally part of somatic tracking because the goal is to lighten the mood to help you kind of break that state of intensity. So even in just kind of laughing a little bit, it makes it easier for you to pay attention to this sensation through a lens of lightness. Yes, John. This is proof that laughter is the best medicine and I can be called doctor because I crack her up more than anyone. More positive affect induction. Look at that. Good. So, Ma'am, this is what we want. You know, your instinct is to want the pain to go away. To make another matrix analogy, you know, when Keanu Reeves is in the waiting room waiting to talk to the Oracle and, you know, he sees this 10-year-old kid bending a spoon with his mind and the kid gives Keanu Reeves the spoon and says, you try. All you need to do is realize the truth. Well, what's the truth? There is no spoon.

to get the pain to go away, Mayam, because there's nothing to get rid of. There's nothing to get to go away. All you need to do is realize the truth. There is no damage. We just need your brain to learn to reinterpret these signals through a different lens, through a lens of lightness, right? So you don't need this thing to go away. That's one of your biggest challenges is you feel something and you want to control it, you want to fix it, you want to get rid of it. But I want you to see if you can actually just pay attention to this sensation, knowing that it isn't dangerous, knowing that there is no spoon, knowing that it's just a man behind a curtain,

just referenced two different movies, 60 years apart over the span of one sentence. And just enjoy the show. You're just a passenger in the car along for the ride. You don't need to fix it. You don't need to get rid of it. Just let go. You don't need to grip the steering.

wheel so tight. You're just a passenger in the car. Just let go and watch, knowing that it isn't dangerous. Your ligaments are all fine and nothing is broken. You don't need to fix it. And just lean into it. Just breathe into it, knowing that it's safe, knowing that you're safe, and there is no danger. There's nothing wrong with your body. Even though it feels like there's something going on, your brain is just kind of freaking out. Your brain is being kind of overly dramatic. Oh, that probably is not a good analogy. I don't want to make you feel like you're being overdramatic. Your brain is just overreacting to these perfectly neutral, perfectly safe signals in your body and just breathe into it, sink into it knowing that you don't have to get rid of it. It's just a safe sensation that your brain

is interpreting through a lens of danger. And what do you notice as you pay attention? I'm not as uncomfortable. And the thing is, that doesn't matter. I can't win with you, Alan. I can't wait. The pain goes down and it's still not enough. So, you know, the thing is, whether it intensifies or whether it goes down, it doesn't matter either way. Okay. And that's the point. We want to be outcome independent. We want to let go of any ulterior mode of knowing that whatever happens is okay because it's not dangerous. I mean, that's such a metaphor. for for so many things in my life. Maybe they were following along at home. Maybe they have a pain similar to Mimes. And they're like, I'm doing this thing in order to have some relief. And when we say,

well, you did this thing and you could be, you could feel the same. And that's okay because we're outcome independent. Now, I get this, but I'm trying to articulate for the audience. Like, how do you reconcile? I'm going to do something with the attempt to calm my nervous system. and help me self change my perception of pain and yet be okay if it doesn't change my perception of pain. Such a good question, Jonathan. You know, I actually once brought this up to a patient of mine and he was a stockbroker. And he said, you know, the way you talk about it is exactly with stocks is he said,

if you follow what happens with the stock every single day, if it goes up or if it goes down and you invest so much on the day to day, that doesn't matter. What matters is what happens to the stock over the long term. And if you let go over being so consumed with what happens in the moment, it's going to kind of free you up. And it's the same thing with this chronic pain is if you do a somatic tracking exercise and the pain goes down or the pain goes up, that doesn't matter. What matters is if you let go of the outcome, knowing that it's okay either way, that frees you up to attend to the sensation without fear. It's a practice. And, you know, what's the percentage?

there are some people for whom having this kind of information drastically decreases their pain. But remember I'm the other percent that needs a little more work? Dr. Sarno had this amazing study of like, you know, where the vast, vast majority of people, simply by learning that this existed literally changed. I'm for Chuck Lurie, that's how he explained it to me, like, you know, reading the book.

But because I'm terminally unique, I ended up finding myself in that other category, of people who, I mean, I could do this forever, you know. We've been doing this treatment for a long time. You know, for 10 years, we've been seeing people come in and having, you know, pain for years or decades and we're able to teach them this new way of looking at their pain and their pain completely goes away. And it was so frustrating because you see right now there's 50 million people in chronic pain in America. And probably 40 million of them don't have to be. And 39 million of them

don't even know that they don't have to be. So really that is our goal to reach these other people. And we're really excited because, you know, it's kind of hard to make a dent in the scientific community, in the medical community, without evidence. And so we got an opportunity to do this amazing study in Boulder where there was 150 patients. They all had chronic back pain. There were three different groups. There was a placebo group, a treatment group, a no treatment group, and everyone got fMRIs of their brains before and after and it was finally an opportunity to put this approach to the test and it was so amazing because you know these are patients who had chronic back pain on average for 11 years and they were given every diagnosis under the sun disc herniation

dysdegeneration and the amazing thing is at the end of treatment which was eight sessions over four weeks, 66% of them were pain-free or nearly pain-free. And a year after the study ended, the majority of them were still pain-free. So we're so excited because the study is coming out in a few weeks, and we think that we're optimistic that this could be the early stages of a paradigm shift in the way the chronic pain is treated and understood. Alan, thank you so, so much. This was really, really incredible. And, you know, I, again, I don't want people to think that, like, oh, all people in L.A. or all celebrities get to, like, chit-chat with their therapist. We had a very professional relationship. Like, you know, this is really, you know, outside of the bounds of anything I ever imagined. And it's really incredible, though, to be able to share this in such a meaningful way with our audience, who I know will appreciate it. And, you know, I'd love to be open to having you back. I think people would probably love to ask questions and do some more of this kind of learning. The book is, you know, The Way Out by Alan Zeev, a revolutionary scientifically proven approach to healing chronic pain. Please tell everyone where you like them to go, to either buy the book, go to the website.

Tell us where we can find your stuff, is how Jonathan likes to ask it. Yeah, basically, I mean, you can get it wherever books are sold. You know, you can get it on Amazon. If you do get it on Amazon, make sure not to accidentally get a way out, which is a video game about two brothers breaking out of prison. Which Alan also designed, and he'll come back and talk about his video games another time. Yeah, I'm all about that title. But yeah, you can get the way out wherever books are sold,

and it really kind of provides a step-by-step guide on how to address and overcome chronic pain using pain reprocessing therapy. Alan, we do a little thing, some episodes that's called You Might Need Help If. And so if someone is concerned or questioning if their pain is neuroplastic or if it's structural, you might need help if... You might have neuroplastic pain if your pain arose in a stressful situation. If there was no accident or injury preceding the onset of the pain. You might have neuroplastic pain if the pain spreads or it's inconsistent in other ways. You might have neuroplastic pain if, you know, you have a tendency to gravitate toward fear.

or hypervigilance or anxiety if you have a history of depression, really, you might have neuroplastic pain if you have chronic pain. Yeah, because the majority of people who have chronic pain have neuroplastic pain. Even in the study that I talked about, there were 50 patients, they all had chronic back pain. Every single one of them had been given diagnoses by physicians, and every single one of them, all 50, ended up having neuroplastic pain. There was a former football player with a 9-millimeter disc herniation with nerve root compression. He was out of in three weeks. There was a woman who had scoliosis at a 76 degree angle, her spine looked like the letter S, you know, out of pain in four weeks. So you might have neuroplastic pain if you have

chronic pain, period. And, you know, I can tell you that for me, I was presented with this information and I turned it away for a year. I was given this book, I was given this information, and I said, no, my pain is structural. And so I would just say to all of you out there, if you're thinking I have chronic pain or if you know someone with chronic pain and you think it's structural. I'm not saying by the book. I'm just saying be open to the possibility that this could be going on because I don't want any of you to lose a year of your life in the way that I did by turning away from this sooner rather than later. Thank you so much, Alan. This has been really, really unbelievable and we're so grateful for your time. Yeah, this is really fun. Thank you. I think we've talked about it

in the past that my sister had pain from the time she was 11 until she was in her early 20s. She went to see every single specialist she possibly could. She has a very similar story to Allen except for extended timelines, physios and chiropractors and surgery on her back and nothing worked and eventually began to understand the relationship between her emotional experience and her physical and that a lot of her pain, again, it's not psychosomatic, but there was an enormous amount of somatic. experience that needed to be processed in order for her to feel okay. And it was also not long after that when, as you've talked about, your brother had a significant

and life-altering traumatic brain injury related to a car accident. When you started also being kind of part of his care and his rehabilitation, even though you were just a teenager, and a lot of that was about learning about sort of how your emotional environment impacts your body and recovery. And like, it's, yeah, it's really, it's unbelievable. It's completely all connected. And what we saw with my brother is that he was able to make certain physical gains, but then his emotional progression began to be an impediment in him progressing physically.

And what was also fascinating is that the intensity of the emotional environment of the home impacted my sister worse. And she was in a wheelchair a couple of years after his accident, likely precipitated by the increase of stress, anxiety. Well, and I think what's important to remember is, is that, you know, I mean, it sounds so trite. Every body is different. So you could have the same slash similar, you know, experiences. You can have two kids raised in the same house and treated, you know, witnessing the same things and one turns out not traumatized and the other experience

is trauma. And that has to do with the variability in our bodies and in our brains. And that is, it's genetics, meaning it's how. how you are coded by the amino acids that make up all the proteins in your body that form the receptors that, you know, make up the surface of cells that receive neurotransmitter. I mean, like, that's literally there are those kinds of subtle differences. And, and I'm not going to say this is always true, but it's been my experience that a lot of people that I've met, and there's a small sample set, that's completely anecdotal.

A lot of the people I've met who are exceptionally and in some cases debilitatingly sensitive to physical stimuli and pain are also exceptionally intuitive and often in touch with other realms of healing and understanding and emotional connection. And I don't believe that it is unrelated because if the volume is turned up like that, in some cases it may be a global system. that is more sensitive. And I've seen this in my own kids, my younger son, he's very sensitive to physical stimuli, to auditory stimuli. He's also incredibly sensitive to emotional stimulus. And there's no such thing as emotions independent of the neurochemistry of your brain. That's it. Love, believe me, I can explain love. Like, I can explain all those things. Those things are scientific. There's no psychological process that does not have a physiological component. What I really loved, and people won't have seen this because we were recording the intro and I got stuck on a word and a line.

And I was like, oh, wait a second. I kind of lost my words for a second. And what he said is, there's no rush. Just take a breath and relax. You want me to say that to you more? And he created such an opening. He's amazing. That it allowed me to relax myself, be calm, and sort of recenter.

and I found my words. And what can happen is that we can feel rushed. We can say, oh, there's no time for that. Or, oh, someone else is just going to take over and do it or whatever it is. And that can lead to a... That was a direct, direct shot at me. It can lead to a contraction. And I think we all underestimate how significant it can be to feel that there is space

to relax, unwind, and find ourselves. We hope you've enjoyed this final episode of My L.A.'s breakdown. As Timber Hawkeye says, just rubbing the edges. Rounding. Don't you take Timber Hawkeye's name in vain. Don't you accuse him of rubbing the edges from our incredibly bizarre breakdown to the one we hope you now. never have. We'll see you next time.