Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - The Science of Messages From Your Soul: NASA Scientist on Telepathy, Mind Reading & What Astronauts Can Teach Us About High-Performance Intuition | Dr. Iya Whiteley

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

What if the world’s most elite pilots and astronauts aren’t just highly trained, but perceptive in ways science still struggles to explain? In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Dr. Iya Whiteley—Aviation & Space Psychologist and founder of Cosmic Baby Academy—reveals why the cognition of pilots and astronauts differs fundamentally, and what their mental wiring can teach us about intuition, creativity, consciousness, and extrasensory perception. We explore why they’re often driven more by curiosity and creativity than fear or ambition—and why so many are artists or musicians. Dr. Whiteley explains how safety-critical environments sharpen awareness, yet make experts reluctant to share the intuitive or “non-rational” roots of their decisions. From martial arts and embodied intelligence to the idea that intellect may live in the muscles (not just the brain), we unpack how heightened presence allows some to anticipate movement, energy, or events beyond the five senses. Could this explain why experts are studied to understand ESP, even when they can’t explain it? Dr. Iya Whiteley breaks down: - Reports of extrasensory perception in extreme situations - Spherical awareness, synesthesia, psi abilities, and other heightened perception - Why intuition becomes harder to access once we try to explain it - How rigid rules suppress expertise, isolate experts, and block knowledge transfer - Why fear of having our minds “read” may motivate us to clear negative thoughts (& what that says about thought’s power) - Whether mindsets create change, or environments respond to mindset - How internal organs & physiological responses differ in pilots & astronauts - Family Constellation Therapy: what it is & how it works - Childbirth visions & pre-birth communication during pregnancy & birth - Synchronicity & meaningful coincidences: how they form lifelong patterns The conversation extends into the UAP/extraterrestrial phenomenon, where Dr. Whiteley explains how her pilot and astronaut research applies to these encounters. Pilots report instruments switching on and off, unexplained objects in the sky, and real danger from distraction during critical flight moments—yet many fear reporting events due to stigma and professional risk. She shares a striking account of a helicopter pilot who encountered something mysterious while transporting a classified object, and introduces the “Astronaut’s Eye” phenomenon, showing why sharing anomalous experiences is essential to legitimizing them and advancing understanding. This episode challenges the boundaries between science, intuition, embodiment, and consciousness—and asks: What becomes possible when we stop dismissing experiences that don’t fit existing models? If you’re interested in pilots, astronauts, ESP, UAPs, intuition, consciousness, or the future of human perception, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss! Head to https://impact.ourritual.com/c/4792730/2005678/24744 , take a quick quiz, and use code BREAKER20 for 20% off your first month. If deep sleep has been on your upgrade list, this is it. Trust me. Go to https://bioptimizers.com/breaker and use my exclusive code BREAKER for 15% off. 2026 is the year you finally start sleeping great again. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/breakdown Get 20% off all IQ Bar products - plus free shipping by texting BREAKDOWN to 64000. Learn more about Dr. Iya Whiteley and her book series, retreats, and courses: https://linktr.ee/driyawhiteley Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When they realize that other people can read the mind, especially children, it's frightening. We're capable of much more than we even know. We have a power of thought. We can change our environment, affect other people, just by thinking or even breathing. Dr. Ia Whiteley, she has a PhD in cognitive engineering and 25 years spent exploring human performance at the edge of capability. She spent decades designing training for astronauts advising space agencies. How can Dr. Whiteley's wisdom inform how we see telepathy,

the possibility of aliens, the possibility of a field of consciousness, where every soul is reachable through a plane of, guess what, love? Extraordinary things happen. Are there experiences that astronauts are afraid to talk about? Astronauts were trying to understand what they were perceiving, ghost in the cockpit. That's what people were calling, things that were happening with the aircraft, I would ask them, why did you get that information?

And I knew they didn't get it in flight. They intuited the number. As soon as we let go, the opportunity opens, the perceptual capacity. Is there a set of skills that is innate to all of us that we simply need to hone? It's not far off to say that. Hi, I am Biallic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. What if the wisdom of astronauts, and cosmonauts could give us a window into the nature of consciousness, special abilities, perception, even what we might dismiss as coincidence. Is there a way of seeing the world that opens up the possibility for seeing the unseen in the world? Who better to answer these questions than Dr. Ia Whiteley?

She spent decades designing training for astronauts, advising space agencies. Dr. Whiteley has a PhD in cognitive engineering and 25 years spent exploring human performance at the edge of capability. But as Jonathan and I talk about at Miami Olympics breakdown all the time, we're capable of much more than we even know. How can Dr. Whiteley's wisdom about our capabilities inform how we see telepathy? the possibility of aliens? The possibility of a field of consciousness where every piece of information and every soul that has ever existed

and ever will exist is reachable through a plane of, guess what, love. All of this comes together in such a beautiful way. We're going to also talk about born knowing how children arrive as natural masters of presence. And she teaches a bunch of courses around this. But we're going to focus our conversation with Dr. Whiteley on extraterrestrial phenomenon, a consciousness field, and

150 kinds of synesthesia. We are capable of so much more than we realize Dr. Whiteley is going to break it all down. Dr. Ea Whiteley, welcome to the breakdown. Break it down. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. So we've introduced you using your bio and some of the incredible work that you do. But I wonder if you could explain, kind of in your own words, what role have you played? What role do you play in our understanding in particular of the boundaries of space and our capacity to exist in it? I'm interested in human performance. So I'm more interested in what our capacity and capability is. And that's what took me, I guess, from one task to another and eventually working with pilots and then developing technology and tools to support astronauts and developing training, something that would tap into our tools and that is my current and I guess ongoing interest on what kind of inner tools that we have.

that we can take anywhere and, you know, without taking a backpack. I think of the work of Temple Grandin and how she intuitively understood things about, in her particular case, animals and an aspect of autism that allowed her to sort of increase capability and increase ability for an aspect that many people didn't understand. where does your particular interest, expertise, and intuition come into understanding these kinds of systems? I think it is self-discovery, and I would encourage everyone to tap in. And mostly it comes from putting ourselves into all sorts of precarious situations to discover what we're capable of. And that was my interest as well in diving into working with people who, for some reason, self-select to put themselves in challenging and difficult situations that they would just want to see, can I do it?

Or it's like, you know, the curiosity drove the cat, let's say, it's still alive. I wonder if you can give us some specific examples of some of the words. work that you've done to help us understand the exceptional situation that people who are tasked with traveling into space find themselves in? So what was interesting to me is when astronauts, you know, putting themselves into a situation, including pilots, you know, they go into places like lending in Antarctica and unprepared runways. And so it's not your typical commercial flight, but it's sort of taking off into space or a medium that we actually not prepared to survive. Should we not have something mechanical surrounding us or even a piece of cloth above our head to land afterwards?

And I was wondering, you know, how do they feel going into it? Is it scary? Is it exciting? is it, you know, why, why, you know, do we put ourselves through that? And when I asked that question and a number of astronauts and cosmonauts, they said, you know, we feel like superheroes when we, you know, go up to the rocket. And I said, why? And they said, well, actually, it's because of our instructors and all the support system that we have. So instructors do all sorts of scenarios that would potentially prepare them for, be prepared for unthinkable, you know, for the scenarios that will probably never, ever come up.

But because we went mentally through that, when we do come to the situation, we are not frozen, which is our first reaction to unexpected or somewhere where we can move. So they almost train over that surprise factor. And I thought that's amazing, you know, that you go in, you know, to be blasted off and, you know, mutually explode it into space or going into an aircraft that, you know, should something go wrong, it's not like you can land it everywhere. Even the helicopter, you know, it's not, although it will have the rotation to go down, that it still needs to be somewhere safe to land. So I wanted to understand what are they coming into.

And when I was working with pilots, when I just began, I understood that I actually need to think like they are in order to cognitively appreciate and design system for them. And this is a luxury to learn to fly. it's expensive but I thought I can't do it so in my graduate school I actually started learning

and part of that when you get to work with pilots they are very a curious bunch and one way to kind of learn to fly and actually have the experience I was in United Arab Emirates at the start

and there was a Russian Sukoy airplane, which is an aerobatic plane, they would, you know, it will go into positions that you wouldn't want to be flying if you aren't prepared. And I was. And so they said if you polish the cockpit with a glass, which gets blasted with sand because of the, you know, where it is, it gets scratched quite quickly. So I would polish it and the heat is like 40 degrees up to 50 Anyway, so because I polished it, I had a chance to go up. And I wanted to understand how, you know, why would they put an aircraft, you know, in unsupported, air unsupported positions.

So, for example, this particular pilot was a South African aerobatic team. And so, so let's say you're flying with your wings level. And then suddenly, literally, like, you can't even think of a split second, but suddenly it would be completely like that. You know, so you would think it would just drop down. But for some reason on this little blades that are right at the front, it kept propelling forward, and that will go completely inverted and then twist again. And I think it's, I don't know, I've asked, you know, what drives you. And there wasn't an answer of why would he do that? Why would he do that?

And that particular pilot, he was also a deep sea diver. So he would go commercial deep sea diver. So they will go for weeks at a time without coming up into a canister, you know, several, I think it's 100 meters of down. and they would breathe a specific gas that will make your voice sound funny. So they would not even talk to each other much because it will make them sound. And you can't really talk on topics and you also rotate. So people who are inside sleeping and those who are outside are working.

And it's kind of an interesting lifestyle. And then he would come back up right to the surface and he will. go up doing aerobatic flights. And that's the life of a person. And I thought that's such an interesting way of spend your time on earth, you know, exploring these dimensions of, I don't know, being in unusual situations where you can't really survive without the equipment. But so I was just interested on how they think.

And so I pursued flying to understand that. Did you complete a pilot's license? Yes, I've completed a private pilot license and gained a night flying license because that's also different type of perception and it feels like you've got the sky above and below. If you've got city lights, well, not city, but like more dispersed lighting, you can't quite...

Well, you can tell obviously where the ground and the sky is, but it feels like there is this space between. And only when I was able to fly, the pilots actually began opening up and talking. Otherwise, my work detangling what they're thinking and what, I would ask them, for example, how was your landing? How was your landing?

What were the difficulties? What were you thinking? Where are you looking? And none of those questions, I couldn't get any answers. And so the question I would have, Like, how did your landing go? And they say, fine.

And my task was to compare a cockpit with an analog display, which was a C-130, well, C-130 Hercules, which is like a massive cargo airplane. And it will have clock dials. So this is like year 2000. And there were, Australian Air Force was swapping for an completely new glass cockpit where all of the screens and computers are. And they were looking for C,

what would be difference in performance because the Lockhartton Martin was stating that they could have fewer people in the cockpit, which is of course reduces force, you know, people in the cockpit, but they were convinced that they don't need those extra minds, you know, or human wit in the cockpit as they do the operation. And so we were, I was the youngest on the team because I was a student, but we were collecting data. And I, I, I, just couldn't get much out of the pilots. They would say, how was the landing? And I would say, it was fine.

She's like, well, how fine? I didn't have the vocabulary. But as soon as I start flying, I was able to say, well, how did that feel? You know, how did you position? Why did you look? And it suddenly started making sense because I could see what they were processing. And that was my joy, I guess, to dive into the peculiarities on what sparks your intuition into the next action. MyNBialx Breakdown is supported by Superpower.

We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine. Drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan. This has happened to me many, many times. especially on the perimenopause journey. That's why we're fascinated by what superpower is doing.

They send a licensed professional to your home, or you can visit a nearby lab, one simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers. That's way more than you usually get. It unlocks a true understanding of your body. Their app has detailed information on heart, liver, thyroid hormones, metabolism, vitamin and mineral levels, even environmental toxins.

From disease prevention to treating that annoying brain fog or simply optimizing your gym game, superpower is the most common. comprehensive and advanced system out there. I've been super tired of constantly guessing or just trying to read articles online about what to do for health. Superpower gives you an actionable health plan based on personal results. It's a real game changer. Plus, they have an on-demand clinician team to answer questions. Supplement or prescription suggestions can be directly bought through superpower, so you don't have to go anywhere else. They also have nutritional guidance, tips for lifestyle and behavioral adjustments. You even get your true biological age that you can track over time. Superpower used to cost $499.99. Right now, it's $199 for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there.

Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention My Ambiotics Breakdown to help support the show. When I think about, for example, like competitive athletes, we know that there's something different about them. And often it's something different physiologically. It's a different distribution of, let's say, slower fast-twitch fibers. Or, you know, Michael Phelps has this kind of webbing, right, supposedly. He's got this, you know, ridiculous arm span. And there's all these very special things that make athletes in many cases, you know, particularly suited to what they do. What can you tell us about, in particular, people who go into space, people who dedicate their lives into that kind of travel? What is it about them spiritually or conceptually that makes them maybe more open to these experiences or more comfortable in the places that many of us would not be? That's, you know, a question, I guess, a lot of astronauts gets asked,

is that why did you choose it or what inspired you? And I think a beautiful example is Alexei Leonov, who was the first person to walk in space, so did the first space walk. And I happened to have a conversation with him, and I asked him, you know, why did you start flying? And he said, I wanted to see the clouds closer. because at that time there was no spaceflight when he began

and he's actually driven by art. So he's an artist at the start and he wanted to draw and I guess capture his fascination with what clouds are. And I guess there was not many, well there's I guess not much description of what the clouds were at the time when he was younger. So he wanted to just be a mind.

the clouds because he wanted to draw them. And that's how he became a pilot and then a pilot who was, you know, working on special planes. And then he got selected to go to space. And he was in space. He developed a method on how we to date, when the seasons change, the color change in agricultural settings. And so he was the first one to bring colored pencils into space and actually colored on how the changes were happening across, I guess, the fields of view that he could observe. And that's when the Earth observation direction became. And because he had special

color perception as an artist, he brought that in, I guess, that talent. And, and he was, he brought that talent. And I found when speaking with astronauts, a lot of them are multi-talented. Majority of them play an instrument. A lot of them, you know, would do different kinds of sports. They could be engineers, but they will have a flair for, you know, philosophy or arts. And if they, you know, sometimes they come from arts. Well, there are medical flow, right, people who are medical professionals, but also there are technical people. But no matter whom you cross, they are thriving to solve a challenge. There's no task small enough.

I guess the Soviet aspect of the cosmonauts, they would say that they have to repair all the equipment in the house before they go up. Because as soon as they leave the house, something will go wrong in the house. And so there is always like a backup family and they leave in Star City. And they look after each other because as soon as, well, there used to be a majority. Well, actually, until very, very recently, there were mostly men in the USSR and Russian Federation, the cosmonaut corps. And so something would go wrong. But they would always repair and do everything by hand because, of course, in space, you can't call a plumber. or somebody else.

But also what's interesting is they are equally really good at following instructions and being so clear on detail-oriented as also driving the situation or the problem-solving. So it's quite interesting to have this, in a sense, leadership and also humbleness and appreciation of the team. That's quite interesting too. I had a good friend who was a five-time world champion kickboxer. And she described that when she was fighting, she would lose sense of time and space. And there was a part of her brain that started to operate purely from instinct.

And when she thought back to the fight, some of them she couldn't remember. And it was only in the moment right before a knockout where she would snap to and have an awareness of whether or not she should strike or not. And I'm curious about the extrasensory perception that happens in high-pressure situations and what you've learned about people developing an extra sense or multiple senses to either be aware of incoming danger. What insight have you gleaned about additional senses for people in these situations?

This is usually not explored in kind of classic sense. science, but I have been always interested, and that was my interest grown from martial art because you rely on your spider sensors or extra sensors or your vision and perception behind you. And we did a lot of work with eyes closed and also having kind of contact where you don't lose contact, but you had to guess and work together in seeing, you know, determining the flow. without pushing or pulling. And that gave me an interest in understanding how do I know where, you know,

what this person is likely to do next. And also what is interesting in that perception, if we are worried, if we've got a sense of fear, then the perception narrows. And there is a gap in our spider sense or in our perceptual capacity, whatever we may call it, you know,

extrasensory perception, intuition, interception in some capacity. And so I found that, and similar with astronauts that we discussed before, like, you know, there is no fear, there is no, it's a healthy risk management.

And as soon as we become worried, we seem to unable to almost like take that extra sensory perception. And I don't know, have you met Dean Rudin? We haven't, but we've spoken to a lot of people in extrasensory abilities and sci phenomenon and telepathy. Cool. So that bunch, you know, from ions. And they have done experiments about perception and that our body,

to different capacity can predict what would be the next event in milliseconds up front. And it's different from so our brain waves that we can measure, you know, encephalogram, cardiogram and also galvanic skin response. And so that was interesting to me also to understand on how can we extend that time perception, widen that gap of how can we do it? And I've actually did put a grant together, which I never thought will go through. But it did go through, but I felt pregnant. And it didn't.

I was unable, I had high expectation that, you know, I'll have the baby and, you know, do the contract and work perfectly well. But that was first time being a mom. And that was not realistic. So that did not happen. So there was a people who were dismantling dangerous equipment that could blow up or in the field. And they were clearly successful because they were doing it over and over. And they did not know how to teach that because also the training is so challenging that people who would come to come to train would with time will. leave the training because they would understand the seriousness and the problem of what they're getting into,

that they wanted to know for one, to find the capability of something that you can't predict, you know, that intuitive sense of what to do despite, I guess, the pressure, the circumstance and also reading the clues that you don't know what are the clues. And so the idea was to get into and maybe extend those tests that they did at ions and repeated across the globe on that millisecond prediction of doing it or not doing it. And how does this work? And so tapping into those sensations and allowing other people to scan for the clues. because part of our previous work was to do designing problem-solving tools for long-duration missions. And the idea was that people have to solve problems with minimum resources.

And what that entails is that we need to be systematic, but also be creative and be open to opportunity. and if we can do, if we can be systematic in creativity, which sounds awkward, right, how could you be systematic in creativity? But it's almost like you direct your attention to one field at a time and allow the time for creativity to unfold before you move on to the next thing. Because our mind has this capacity sort of once you've got the solution that's done. You know, I don't want to be working anymore on that. But in actual fact, if we can be.

systematic, we can work out the solutions and then find the more practical or the one that we have resources rather than just having one. So that was the idea. And part of that, I wanted to to merge the part of that inner innate sensing plus the systematic observation skills. So I wanted to see if they do have that scan intuitively so. And the idea is to use that pre-verbal. knowing, which I was using for designing aircraft cockpits, and allowing the people to articulate the intuition, so something that we deeply know, but don't know how to explain, or we don't even realize we know, but because, or we think everybody knows it, you know, it's a common sense, which often it isn't. Well, I think this is one of the most interesting and applicable areas,

is having a deep knowing or a sense of knowing or being able to anticipate something that may happen either milliseconds or further in the future. And how do we develop that? And I think people who are listening, there's a mix. Some people who are deep down the rabbit hole of developing their extra senses. And some people who are listening to this conversation for the first time and trying to make sense of, is this really possible? How does it work on a practical level? I hear people who talk about intuition, but I can't really figure it out. So I want to try and walk through this. And I think one way to do that would be to hear a little bit more about your personal experience. I've heard you talk about Aikido, which is a martial arts, but you can describe a little bit about

what it is and how you started to develop this, as you call it, spidey sense. And that will take us, I think, into how it progresses for people, like what's possible in practicing this martial arts and how it translates to our everyday lives. Good point. Everybody should do martial art, I think, and find their, you know, inspiration from the spirit of art, because it's foremost, it's about exploration of, you know, who we are and also collaborating with the environment. And what I loved about Aikido is that it was about, first of all, observation and then allowing things to happen without forcing. or intervening, and it was allowing to take what's coming and work with that. And I thought the whole concept of being kind of, it's not non-judgmental,

but allowing for whatever motion to happen and just join with that flow and work with that flow. And that not knowing of what will happen, despite having some, you know, I guess moves that we would learn. But the idea is that you then, once you practice them, you're watching where the energy would take you. And you would be intuitively following, especially if there is a weight difference, you know, whoever is coming onto you and allowing for that to circle. And the idea is that you look for where the energy would want to go, meaning the weight, for example, yeah, or speed or momentum and where you can carry it in such a way that it's deflecting. And if someone has not ever seen Aikido, I'll try to explain it to them and you can correct

me. It's unlike other martial arts, you're not like going through and practicing or demonstrating. My understanding of it is that you're in an interaction with someone. Someone comes towards you. So that's the motion coming towards you. And you transfer that. forward motion either into bypassing it or flipping or rolling together. So in, you know, a metaphor for life, life is coming at you. You don't get to decide what's coming at you and you have to then respond and react to that force to transmute it, keep yourself safe. Is that accurate? Yes. Yes. The idea is that you step away slightly or step back and allow for that momentum to come. And then you take that whatever is coming. If you can step away completely, that's ideal, right? But if you can,

then you just take it and you move across. So you almost like step away and let's say by pulling the hand, you then circle around you because that's how you can redirect the momentum and person gets out of balance. So it's about it's about spiraling and seeing where the weight will fall. So you're looking to create disbalance while yourself maintaining grounding. I think where I was leading so that people can understand it and a little bit I think about Neo from the Matrix with the bullets. He's like you know time slows down a little bit and this connects to what you are saying about fear. If you're in a feared state and someone is rushing towards you, you don't have an instinct, right? It's not a logical set of decisions that you need to make to say, oh, if this person is coming, then I see this angle.

There's something happening very, very quickly in our processing to know where to move. And it's almost beyond the rational mind. Can we learn to anticipate things that we previously thought we could not. Is there a set of skills that is innate to all of us that we simply need to hone? I mean, what you're describing is any complicated conversation, right? If someone is coming at you and you receive that with an equal and opposite force, that actually is not the way towards harmony. That's the way towards conflict. So what you're talking about is really, it sounds like, you know, a metaphor for human interaction. Where do I? I step out of the way and let this person's momentum pass me by, what does it mean about me being

able to hone the ability to understand energetic movement? Yes. So it's about expectation, right, and seeing what we can, how can we anticipate? So I guess if we're taking an analogy of Ikido is we are looking at being open to whatever is coming, having. no expectation and also being open to the environmental signals. So, and then whatever comes, you're allowing it to be, which is very much a lot of Eastern, you know, Taoism and Buddhism, it's allowing for the flow to take its place and you find the place where you belong and in your qualities. So, and so it always observation first.

And so when we are coming with an agenda to a conversation or, you know, wanting a particular outcome, then we are almost like not allowing the field to unfold. When we have concern or fear or stress, we call it tunnel vision in a pilot kind of sense or people working in extreme environments, or sports people as well. And then when we're in a tunnel vision, it specifically narrows us to survive, really. So to actually put our most critical tasks to the muscles, but not to the brain. So what we want to do is to stay open and relaxed. And that only happens when we feel comfortable in ourselves or comfortable in the situation

or comfortable for things to change. Yeah, that also sounds eerily similar to the way we are instructed to learn to drop into a meditative state or a state of altered consciousness, right? These are the same kind of things. I mean, tunnel vision also happens in trauma, right? And learning to kind of expand that out. So it seems that, you know, you do so many different things, but there is this thread, right, of kind of our state of awareness, consciousness and perception. Yes, beautiful. In Aikido also and in other martial arts,

we can begin to sense even behind us what isn't there. So we're not even using our eyes in a way. And other athletes, you know, I've had this experience. You're just in the right spot at the right time, not even realizing how you got there. You didn't make a plan to move four feet to the right, but that's exactly where you need to be in order to do the next move. Can you talk a little bit about what intellect is,

living in the muscle that's allowing us to be there where we need to be or sensing behind us. You know, I wish I knew the answer. But the only way that I was tapping into that is through doing this method, which is called Ivy Expert or what I learned from two brilliant scientists, Dr. Mary Omity and Dr. Jim McLennan in Australia, where they were studying, decision-making in firefighters. Well, they were faced with a problem where the Australian fires, that, you know, bushfires, like you do have also in California, they spread very quickly and you need to anticipate and know what to do or when to pull people out, especially for touches living structures.

Some of them were really good firefighters and some would just, you know, literally seconds before or pull the entire crew out of the building before it lose its structural capacity. And how do they know that? You know, how do they know that? Because, you know, they could have stayed there literally a second later and not only not being able to get what they were, I guess, looking for, but they will also lose the crew. So and when they were doing retrospective interview,

which is what we had for a long time in studying decision-making, and understanding how to teach others is that we, when we're faced with other people, we start putting on filters. So I'm speaking with you and I have my understanding, you know, who's sitting in front of me, maybe what you know or what I think you might be interested in, or who will be watching this, you know, me not going too far out of what I know, you know, all of this little things that I don't filter, but they are actually veils that are happening. But if I was, for example, describing me, I don't know, cooking, let's say, something very simple. And it's something I do fast and some pancakes or something like that.

And, you know, you don't measure afterwards. And you just anticipate the texture and anticipate how it should flow and want to flip the and when you can actually flip it and when you don't want to try it and things like that. So then in that flow, when I'm describing it to, let's say, children or to a friend, it would be very different. Or if I am, let's say, deciding to doing teaching video or describing it to someone who doesn't speak the same language. And that would completely kind of change what I say.

So in firefighters, when they were describing it, they were filtering it by the researcher who was in front of them. So they're not firefighters. They have no idea what it is to be in that environment. They have no idea the terminology they use. And they have no idea, well, they don't appreciate the danger, if it makes sense. It's not that necessarily, you know, that person would elevate themselves that they are, you know, superior in any capacity. But in, so they're being gentle, careful in how they describe. And hence, we lost loads of information because they just can't articulate it.

So what they've come up with is that to use a footage from their head-mounted camera that will be on the eye level, and they would put it under all of their equipment, which is heat protection, and of course eye protection and they would record everything that was happening and as soon as they came out and that would be usually training scenarios they will debrief them by watching the video and when the person is watching from their own point of view

it's like first well observer's point of view and when there is no external view imposed on us we suddenly remove a lot of filters So we don't feel that we're being watched. And we're literally describing what we're looking at. And suddenly all these veils fall off in terms of, and they're just saying what they're seeing,

and we don't need to cue them, because our capacity to ask is limited by what we think we need to know. But the whole idea is that we find out what we don't know, but we can't ask the right question. So by having those cues, but also by then learning their terminology and the more you talk, and that's why I learned to be a pilot, so I have that kind of inner perception of what else I'm looking at and what else I'm, they don't need to filter that I don't understand the terminology or I don't understand where they are, what they're doing and what they're going to do next. And that allowed to find out in this firefighter's situation is that they actually live in. the protection,

the heat protection from the ears and they listen to the sound and the wind, the temperature that they sense with their ear.

So as soon as there's change in temperature and wind flow, they do a certain action. And that's something they should not do and they don't, of course, teach newbies

if you wish, because that's dangerous because that's removing protection. So they would never share that, but they experienced people would do that. And that's something they don't even think about saying. So the idea is, and this is that professional intuition that the people don't even realize that they're doing it. And they only remembered doing that by, let's say, they would see the flip of their hand

and they'd say, well, what did you do? And they would say, well, I did. and how did you know, well, I felt. And so how did you feel? And it's that non-judgmental questions that allow just descriptive language and encouragement. And what I found out, that people will talk for five minutes with a five-second footage of what actually went through their head.

So this opens up, you know, kind of a different set of questions that you're also, you know, really competent to speak to. You know, what you're describing is things that we may not even realize that we're doing that change the perception, really, of the world. So one of the things you talk about with pilots, you know, this notion of spherical awareness, right? That pilots are experiencing space and effectively time, right, in a different way than we are. They're not just sort of thinking forward-facing, right?

They're seeing and sensing in all these different dimensions. You know, Jonathan and I are particularly interested in different kinds of perception. And what does it mean also to try and put words to some of these kind of phenomenal differences in perception? I wonder if you can use synesthesia as a good way in for us. You know, we've talked about synesthesia as we've had many interesting conversations about acquired synesthesia after a near-death experience. Elizabeth Crohn is someone who had a near-death experience, and one of the abilities she came back with was synesthesia. But you've talked about synesthesia as a model for kind of expanded perception.

Can you talk about really what it is and what the varieties are and what it can tell us sort of about the human capacity, right, for perceiving things that many of us think are much simpler than they are? Yes. So synesthesia is extraordinary ability to perceive like a cross-modal sensory perception where it allows you to hear things, but let's say recognize them as color or see things and fill them in your stomach. And like there was a beautiful example of somebody cooking a chicken. and I think they put something pointy into the chicken and they said, what, it's five points and says, what does that mean?

You know, that needs another two points to cook. But for them, it's that sensation of putting it through the chicken and also the aroma that came out as they were doing that. And I don't know, all other perception that it says that he could feel inside the body of that it's ready or not. And that's all I've got. So like I couldn't pick up of and the chicken was perfect every time. But it wasn't, I tried, you know, you tried to repeat, but because you don't have that experience.

But you're trying, like I'm interested to perceive to see if I can get. into it, but I clearly don't have that cross-sensory perception like the do. Most people think of synesthesia as sort of also, you know, with LSD, you get this, this sort of crossing of modalities. But what you're saying is that synesthesia is any crossed modality. So it could be that sensation. Is this similar to, you know, when people get an ick feeling, when they look at certain things? Is that also a form of a difference in perception? You and your neuroscience background, we classically have. so many perceptions that are listed in the book, you know, that we're teaching biology and in psychology.

But actually, we can sense, you know, temperature, we can sense humidity. We've got, you know, kinesthetic sense. We've got the, you know, with our inner ear variety of sensory perceptions. And so all of that, for some reason, we discount as sensors. But there, I mean, we navigate with them, especially in martial art or in any sports that we do. And, you know, when you're struggling to children as well. Well, I was just going to say, you know, these are all times also of, you know, kind of heightened hormonal and endorphin situations, right? A lot of the behavior of new mothers can look very, very much like certain kinds of obsessive

compulsive disorder because there's this extreme focus, right? So, and these are all physiologically regulated. So I guess my sort of follow-up question is, what can you all? offer us regarding abilities that we don't experience with our five senses. You know, synesthesia obviously is based in, in many of the modalities that many of us acknowledge are concrete or discrete. But there are people who report incredible ability to receive information, to intuit things. We've recently been discussing, you know, not just clairvoyance, but, you know, clear audience and Claire sentience and all the Clare's, as I call them. You know, these are

opening us up into a conversation of there are things that exist that we may not even be able to measure yet, but that strongly influence our behavior and our perception of the world. What can you sort of offer us to understand that kind of perception? So I am interested in that perception, in that cross modality as cues that we pick up. But what I was trying to do in the research is I was trying for people to articulate what they sense and where that information comes from. And a lot of the times the problem that we have is that the people I work with work in safety critical environment. So they are cautious to say that I've intuit that. I knew that.

So that's the filter, that they would try to justify to appear scientific or safe or appropriate. And, you know, we're working through that in the field. But what it feels like, it's a logic coming in rather than what is actually been happening. And when it comes to saving people's lives, then, you know, there is this tension that we have. Like I've worked with surgeons and people who, who do very critical diagnostics in a medical field. And, you know, they equally, they could make a mistake, but equally they could save people's lives.

And what is interesting in the outcomes is that there was a study, I believe, in Boston, where the surgeons who attended regular art exhibits, they had a better patient outcome overall, which is interesting. But I don't believe that there was a conclusion whether it was just, let's say, you know, relaxation or interest in art, let's say, you know, having a time to be off or the link that was being made that they were more observant and more abstract field of view. Or not field of view. Like when they're doing surgery, they are studying surgical field and for clues to come up. And of course, well, not of course, but I didn't. didn't realize how different we all are inside, you know, how actually, you know, the liver,

the, our internal organs are not quite the same and they are very different inside. It's, it's like, you know, looking at a completely different terrain when you're going in. And so for them to detect a minor change, even in the corner of their eye, whether it's anesthesia or not, they would not put it to that, when they will be describing it to a student. And that's why it's not helpful to study their intuitive decision making or transfer expertise if it's a teaching scenario. But if they're doing it themselves and they are feeling that this is a discovery journey, and of course they will only be comfortable doing that on a successful outcome.

because otherwise, you know, you don't know they're opening themselves up for problems as experts. So I feel like I keep diverting from your question about this extrasensory perception, but I guess I was trying to tap into it as the science would allow. And my best understanding was that people try the all experts that, I work with, they tried to justify it, they would not give it out to intuition. And I thought that was interesting that I could see that they were just like pilots, for example, they said, I would ask them, where did you get that information? And I knew they didn't get it in flight. They intuitively the number. That literally intuited the number. That was not in flight. And they were

convinced they did that because they had to justify of how they knew that information. But when we both looked back, we all were surprised, you know, that they actually knew the data that wasn't there. And nobody had an answer to that and no explanation. And so, but I couldn't touch it in my, you know, in my scientific approach, I couldn't touch that with a scientific method, apart from allowing to articulate people something that they, do, they didn't realize they do. And using that footage then to transfer that expertise to another experts who have done that operation, but never done it like that. And what we found is that the surgeons were doing things that were not, not, would say not permitted, but were typically not a procedure. And they almost didn't realize they didn't, they done it that way,

but it was like a new shortcut that they've developed to allow them to either have a better outcome or quicker outcome or a new trick, which we know that the outliers, you know, that are the way that you don't do become, you know, like a new procedure and a new innovation. But I found that they work in such a tight frame where, in a sense, we want innovation, but we don't allow the intuitive. knowing to percolate because it's not safe and they have to do all sorts of procedures which occupy your intuitive mind. Do you remember like if you worry about things, you don't have that field of view and perception that allows it for you to create and to intuit it through your other perceptual sensors? I mean, very hard to not be worried when you're navigating someone's internal cavity and messing with their organs. Well, that's their day-to-day thing. I mean, it's extraordinary, you know, what they do and then, you know, go on to their regular day. I mean,

I found this very humbling. Something that's come to a lot of people's attention, this notion of telepathy and communicating on, you know, I guess a non-localized plane of consciousness. Many of us were, you know, kind of captivated by the telepathy tapes and, you know, arguably a lot of anecdotal reports and a lot of, you know, questions as well. about the use of facilitated communication, which I usually like to set aside, since there's a lot of complexity and controversy surrounding facilitated communication. But suffice it to say, there are many ways that people who are non-speaking can communicate at various levels of cognitive functioning. And so we know that that exists. But what is your take on this notion that one of the

untapped abilities that many of us have involve accessing information that exists in a plane that apparently we can learn to access, but most of us don't on a daily basis. Well, I think it's also something that we believe, grow up, starting to believe that it's not possible. For example, I have that, you know, with children and friends, and that with, you know, you text them and they know, right? That he said, well, I was just thinking of you or they will call you and you were thinking of them. And Rupert Shadrake, you know, popularized that in his book. I think it's, was it seven experiments that will change the world or something like that

where he talks about the common knowing that you know who will call you and the pets know when you're coming home. And, you know, we all come. across that phenomenon, we cannot deny it, or when somebody is looking at you directly, or even through the camera, through the surveillance camera, and you would know. So that's why they put a person in surveillance room in some places, because there is an eye perception rather than just cameras that are capturing everything anyway and now can be detected automatically. So I personally experienced that. I cannot deny it. I have that, you know,

intuition and knowing so many times that is just impossible to, you know, to not look. I have not work with people who are non-speakers, but I'm delighted that, you know, Kai Dickens has, I love her quote that she put on the website is assume competence. And I think it's such a strong thing to come in, like to have it in our vocabulary, that wherever you go in, like when you go in to talk to children, assume competence, you know, or you go into the shop, you know, you are talking to anyone, just assume competence. You just have no idea where people come from, what their work of life is. And you just don't know, maybe they are telepathic, equally so.

And what I found very interesting that people's response, when they realize that other people can read the mind, especially children and adults like non-speakers, it's frightening for some people, that they feel that, you know, that they would be, that our mind will be read. And I think that's such a beautiful wake-up, call for all of us to start clearing that space, you know, of, you know, whatever comes into our

perception. I grew up with almost becoming, I wanted to level with the ground if I would think a bad thought because I would feel as if somebody ever heard what I think right now. I just don't want to exist at all. So for me, I don't know where that come from, but for me, a culture of thought, that's how I termed it for me, was so important. And I knew somewhere inside that if I think bad, I would never have any abilities whatsoever. Because if I with my mind can imagine something and it could come true. And if that's what Eastern masters are thinking and they're able to make it true, what if I think something bad, you know? And I inflicted on somebody else. So somewhere a very early one in this very preteen, you know, martial art, it really dawned on me that we have a

power of thought and that we can change our environment, affect other people, just by thinking or even breathing. You know, if we breathe a certain way, we can puncture somebody's, you know, internal organs by, you know, directing this chi in certain way and throwing them across the room, no matter what your size is. And I just thought, you know, if we've got this capacity, we have to harness it. So I grew up with that awareness that it's possible. And I wanted to go to science to pursue that. But I was not allowed to touch it if you wish.

But what I'm seeing is that people who do work in extreme environments and people who I come across who work in, in the military, they thrive with that ability. And they're known for that people will respect and follow their advice because there is no other intuitive perception. Or like I know now several, you know, cases from mothers that intuited something and they heard the baby say something and they would run and then find it that the dog, you know, which was safe, but drug the baby where the baby didn't want to be.

to be on the carpet, for example. And, you know, so these, like, little intuition, so when you wake up in the night and, you know, you come to the baby and you came just on time or, you know, having that urge in the night and you would wake up at the same time when the baby, you know, needed assistance or something like that. I don't know where that comes from, but I've experienced that. So I think it's beautiful that we're touching that. But what I'm hoping that this telepathy tapes is actually changing us as human beings

and making us consider what we think in the first place, you know, what we think every day. And, you know, let us go down with embarrassment of what we do think, you know. And let that be our, you know, morning thought. You know, what if somebody is reading my thoughts? You know, what if, you know, somebody can act or something will change, given my thoughts? Yeah, I think a follow-up question is, what can change, right? If we're paying attention to those kinds of thoughts, we've, you know, spoken to Bruce Lipton and Joe Dispenza. And, you know, people who really believe that, you know, manifesting, right, positive affirmations,

that those things are not just lip service, that they can actually change the feelings. physiology, right, of our bodies. So by the same token, if we can imagine ourselves into more health, more openness, more positivity, it would absolutely follow that thinking negatively can spiral us into pain, discomfort, suffering, and maybe even disease. Yeah, so Dr. Lipton talking about the environment, you know, affecting the cells. And I think that's a beautiful example. And I think everyone can imagine when we are in a setting, you know, when we're in a meeting and somebody comes in and there's an ear about them. And the room either like goes into silence because it's, you feel, I don't know, the tremor that something, you know, will happen. Or somebody comes in and it's just like a light,

you know, like the mood lifts and suddenly people exhale and really, you know, relax. And we know the Heart Math Institute as well. They look into heart brain coherence. And by breathing and also aligning with, which is in a way like biofeedback, they say that they could measure how far the field extends and that we bounce almost into each other and cross this bubbles of our electromagnetic field, which we do know because in medicine we use electrowe. you know, magnetic measuring of, you know, our brain and heart. So it's not far off to say that how we feel affects other people. And it's just like when you come in and the pet meets you, you know, or a child runs into

your arms or a partner or somebody you deeply respect smiles. And, you know, your day has changes. And suddenly everything goes well. So, you know, where does that come from? is that because of our state or is that the environment responding to us? And I certainly know that, you know, when I come in and if I don't change my attitude, the day will go very differently. So, you know, whatever that may be, whether it's, you know, an energetic effect or my, you know, human doing and being an attitude in terms of our perception. So even on physiology level, we understand if we worry, we can't perceive things, which means we want see, we won't notice nice things or good things that could change us.

And also we have something called selective perception, which is, you know, kind of the science touches all of this, right? We can almost like circle around it, but we can't explain it. And our selective attention, you know, that famous experiment of the person in the monkey suit, a gorilla suit coming across the screen. And people are playing, you know, passing basketball in white t-shirts. And if we are focusing on how many times the ball was passed between people in white T-shirts, nobody sees somebody coming to the middle of the screen and, you know, and then walking past. And that is selective attention. So what else are we not seeing? And that's also interesting.

So I think I'm not trying to trail back from our extra sensory perception and intuition. I'm just saying that we are only starting to pick up with science and we should maintain curiosity to keep going. And like, you know, Dispenser, Joe Dispenser, you know, has thousands of examples, you know, happening right there, you know, in a regular, I don't know, regular intervals if you were during the events when people, they needed that moment of belief and that moment of clarity and relaxation. And we know if we just go for a walk, the problem solves in our head. If as soon as we let go, the opportunity opens, the perceptual capacity, be it intuition, better logic, I don't know, our better oxygenation and clarity.

But to me, it's dropping that state, whatever that is, to allow the perception to be better, be it physiological or intuitive, doesn't matter. The whole point is fine-tuning. Why do you feel it? And the idea is to notice, to sort of almost be realistic in the expectation, so not in our own exploration and investigation, to say, oh, I actually knew that a split second before. So let me write it down. so that my brain that's been trained scientifically not to consider this as a possibility,

I actually did know. It didn't happen after. It happened before. And by extending that time and allowing our brain to walk that path, or our mind, rather, our mind to be convinced more often, we allow that possibility that we have that ability. We're going to hit pause on our conversation with Dr. Eia Whiteley, but there is so much more in part two. We're going to talk about how to frame coincidence as a much larger pattern of noticing and engaging in the world. We're also going to do a deep dive into family constellation therapy. What is it, how it works, and some of the very powerful transformations people can get when they break an intergenerational cycle.

through the power of love and acceptance. Jonathan's also going to share some of his personal experience with Family Constellation Therapy, which you do not want to miss. And we're also going to talk about why astronauts are afraid to report what they actually might be seeing when they are floating about in space. That's all in part two of our conversation with Dr. Ea Whiteley. As you wait for part two of this episode,

find us on Substack, Mind Bialx Breakdown, on Substack, where we're continuing the conversation. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time. It's my and be all X breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.

It's a breakdown.