The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Neuroplasticity: Dr. Sarah Young’s Healing Insights

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

Unlocking Neuroplasticity: Dr. Sarah Young's Healing Insights Neurosynergyhealth.com About the Guest(s): Dr. Sarah Young, PhD, is the founder of Neuro Synergy Integrative Health. With over a decade of experience as a licensed speech-language pathologist and advanced training in integrative health, neuroscience, and consciousness studies, Dr. Young has dedicated her career to helping adults overcome invisible complex health challenges. Through her innovative approach, she combines the principles of neuroplasticity with multidimensional healing processes, demonstrating that transformation is possible when the realms of science and soul intersect. Episode Summary: In this enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages with Dr. Sarah Young, the visionary behind Neuro Synergy Integrative Health. Delving into Dr. Young's personal journey and professional expertise, the conversation explores her inspiration for founding Neuro Synergy, following a traumatic brain injury before the pandemic. Dr. Young shares her unique methodologies that merge neuroscience and integrative health to address invisible health challenges such as brain fog, burnout, and chronic illnesses. This episode offers listeners insightful advice on maintaining physical and mental well-being through a holistic approach that harmonizes science and spirituality. Focusing on neuroplasticity and its real-life applications, Dr. Young discusses how the brain's capacity to rewire itself can aid in healing from brain injuries and improving mental pathways. She shares personal anecdotes from her journey of recovery and highlights the transformative power of persistence over perfection. The episode also addresses the critical importance of sleep as a strategy for mental and physical health, explaining its role in the brain's self-cleaning process. Designed for everyone from individuals with health challenges to entrepreneurs and leaders, this episode provides actionable insights and resources for achieving sustainable wellness. Key Takeaways: Neuroplasticity enables the brain’s ability to reroute and rewire, essential for healing injuries and optimizing mental pathways. Integrating neuroscience with holistic healing approaches can significantly improve conditions like brain fog, burnout, and chronic illnesses. Sleep plays a crucial role in the brain’s self-cleaning cycle, necessary for maintaining cognitive function and overall health. Persistence, rather than perfection, is key to personal transformation and health improvement. An individual’s sensitivity can be harnessed as a strength, particularly for empathetic and creative professionals, offering deeper insights into well-being and relationships. Notable Quotes: "Transformation is possible when science and the soul work together." "If we come into our healing with the idea that we've labeled ourselves as damaged or broken, then we've kind of given it up right then and there." "Sleep is not a luxury but a necessity… it's the foundation of our health and well-being." "The brain's ability to reroute itself gives us a lot of hope, it's about persistence rather than perfection." "Sensitivity is like an amplifier—viewing it as a strength offers deeper understanding and empathy."

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks, is Voss here from thecrisvoss Show.com. Ladies, gentlemen, the earliest things that makes official welcome to 16 going of 17 years with Chris Foss show, 2,500 episodes going on 2,600, and we're bringing you just the most amazing people all the time. But in the meantime, we need you to go to goodneries.com, Fortress, Chris Foss,

LinkedIn.com, for just Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok. and all those crazy places to the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, amazing lady on the show, we're going to be talking with Dr. Sarah Young, Ph.D.

She is the founder of Neurosynergy Integrative Health. We're going to find out how to be healthier, eh? Because, you know, I've been seeing the doctors lately for a hernia surgery, and it's tough out there in the marketplace, especially with hospitals and different things going on. You definitely want to keep your health up because the last time you can spend in the hospital, the better. With over a decade as a licensed speech-language pathologist

in advanced training in integrative health, neuroscience, and consciousness studies at Quantum University, she helps adults with invisible, complex health challenges and move from overwhelm to clarity. She blends the science of neuroplasticity with multidimensional healing processes, showing that transformation is possible when science and the soul work together. Welcome to the show, Sarah.

How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me, Chris. Dr. Sarah, give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Neurosinergyhealth.com. And so give us a 30,000 over you. What you guys do there?

Well, we blend integrative medicine with neuroscience. So we help adults heal from. invisible challenges, like brain fog and burnout and chronic illness. So we blend science and soul. We blend the east and the western sides of medicine. And how long have you been doing this? I just started Neurosynergy Integrative Health in April, so it is new. So what got you into it? Tell us what led you down this path of getting into this type of science, as it were. well actually chris i experienced a traumatic brain injury um right before the pandemic hit and when the pandemic hit i lost access to my health insurance and that put me in a place of desperation with

my health and my life and so i enrolled in my phd program to learn how to be a healthier person and how to help teach other people how to be healthy and live healthy lives. Would you say it's a mindset people need to have or maybe cleaning out their mental state so that they can, you know, sometimes what's a lot of toxic in the brain ends up manifesting itself in the body. Is that correct? That is absolutely true. And, you know, over the years, I've learned that transformation, it's not just, you know, one thing, it's many things, and one of the things is the stories that we tell ourselves

and the thought patterns that we have in the mindset. So if we come into our healing with the idea that we've labeled ourselves as damaged or we're broken in some way, then we've kind of given up, we've kind of given it up right then and there. But you can also come to the table with openness and a willingness to see alternate pathways, and really that's where healing takes place. Yeah, yeah. I mean, healing in the mind and body. And it's interesting how sometimes the body, you know, they say the body keeps the score.

And so many times, like we said, what's manifested in the mind ends up getting stored in the body. So tell us about your brain injury. I've had several people with brain injuries on the show, and I've got a personal friend who went through one. And he has the kind that's pretty long-term challenging where he has problems going out in public, noises, and bells and whistles overwhelm him. Tell us about what your experience was that and how that kind of changed your perspective on life. The last brain injury that I had was in 2019.

It was a cumulative brain injury for me, Chris. So that means that I've had multiple brain injuries throughout my life. Luckily, the last one was in 2019. And my experience with that brain injury turned my world upside down. At the time, I was actually working as a speech pathologist and helping people to work through recovery from a brain injury. But when I had my last brain injury, which was a car accident, and driving in the rain on my way to work, it really turned my world upside down. I wasn't able to remember and recall, organize my thoughts, put my words together. I essentially had to retrain my balance system, my memory pathways, my language pathways,

my knowledge base of the job that I had been doing. And I know that acquired brain injury, mine was a traumatic brain injury. There's a spectrum, so there's mild. deficits to, you know, very, very severe deficits. So I'm so sorry to hear about, you know, your friend. Yeah, we had another gal who wrote a book about her daughter who sat by a car and suffered severe brain injury. And she kind of, a lot of them seem to have the same similar thing.

They have trouble functioning after that where any sort of overwhelming noises, overwhelming input can really drain them. He had, he'd just been drinking some vodka. and I guess he was standing in his kitchen and he passed out and woke up with his, you cracked his head open and was bleeding all the floor. They had to go in and drain the blood out of his head. And the other gal, she had a car accident,

but some of the videos I watched of some of the folks that I trip across on like TikTok and different things, you know, there can be some different issues. Is that kind of what prompted you to start your venture here that you're doing? Absolutely. Because when I was recovering from my brain, injury as I was going through the PhD program and I was learning so many things along the way like

oh my goodness wow this can this can help this can help and as I built up that toolbox I really realized wow like there's so much that other people can learn and grow from in to what you said earlier Chris I will say that although you're hearing me now and I sound quite well right I look very good. I do have some of those long-term sensitivities that you mentioned earlier. So, for example, sunlight, I can't leave my home without a pair of sunglasses on my head because the light, when it hits my eyes, it causes a debilitating migraine. I don't go into certain crowded areas like a crowded mall.

It's just not a good place for me. The sounds, the movement, all of the, all of the, you know, the sensory stimulation, it can be a whole lot. I've learned a lot in the years of how to navigate those places better by learning how to navigate, how to regulate my nervous system and to breathe and bring myself into a state of balance and harmony and relaxation, but it's been a lot of work. Yeah, yeah. And so how do you, how do you work at your company What are some of the services programs that you take and utilize there? So people usually come to me for a few different reasons.

They might want to reset their nervous system. They might want to rewire their thought patterns. They might want to renew their physical health or remember who they are. And so when I'm working with people, we're multi-dimensional beings. We're not only just the parts that you and I can see. when we look at each other through the computer right now, right? But that would be what I consider form. So form is our physical body,

and it can also include things in your environment that might irritate your physical body. Like, for example, if you have an allergy to gluten or dust or mold, your form is going to react in a certain way. And so the environment being part of your ecosystem, you would want to bring that into balance. And there's also other areas on that quantum healing map, like flow, which would include your emotions and your energy flow and your movement.

It would include your field, which would include your energy and your connections to your family, to your community, to the world around you. It would include your essence. So the part of you, that's a spiritual being and it's a soul. And it's not only just a body, you know, with parts. So when I'm working with people, there's a continuum and it can be as wide and expansive as the individual and as unique as them too. Well, that's pretty awesome. Now, who are your prospective clients?

If people are out there in the audience listening, who are the best clients that you like to work with and you feel you can help the most? I think any individual that is seeking clarity and balance, maybe they're not sleeping, they're stress. they're burned out. They have tried so many different things and nothing's working. People that might struggle with concentration or memory issues or maybe they're not as healthy as they would like to be or they're sluggish, low energy. There's a lot of reasons that somebody might come to me, but mostly people that really want to say yes to their health and not just yes to their health, but a transformation in their health and in their whole life. Hmm.

There you go. The, let's see, what else do we have on deck here? What are some other things that you guys do there? Are you healing pathways I've got? You've got a reset offering, a rewire, renew, remember offering? Yeah, so those are the pathways that I was mentioning earlier. Those ways that people generally come and seek out my services and on my website, is neurosenergyhealth.com.

You can find some free downloadables that are like checklists and really good information of ways to help you reset your nervous system and rewire your mental pathways and all of those things. So there's some free gifts on my website for people if they want to explore them. And that can help them with burnout, brain fog, physical depletion or disconnection, which is pretty much every day for me. Now, so the quantum healing map, it's a navigational framework, and this can not only help people maybe that are suffering from maybe some mental condition,

or medical conditions, I can learn to talk, but also maybe for entrepreneurs and leaders. Talk to us about how that can help people maybe that are in CEO positions or entrepreneurs. Absolutely. So we like to think of, sometimes we think of health as a luxury, taking care of ourselves as a luxury, especially when we are, busy and we have a million things to do. We have employees to take care of. We have a lot on our plate, right? But we can't, we can't put that off for later. We can't ignore our bodies. When you

make sure that you tend to all levels of your being as a human being, your physical body, your emotional health, your your mindset, what you're wanting to do, who you are. When you, when you tend to all the multi-dimensional facets of who you are, then that is your rocket fuel for all the success because everything else follows when you are in alignment and you're in balance and you are charged toward the things that you want to get out of life. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, you talk about neuroplasticity and how to use it in real life.

What are some ways the ways that the brain rewires itself and how do you maybe utilize that in your practice? I love neuroplasticity. You know, neuroplasticity really offers us a whole lot of hope. And can you define that forestly? Yeah. So, you know, neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to reroute itself, rewire itself, if you will, and to forge new pathways where something maybe has occurred that has made that difficult.

So let me give you an example, Chris, because a lot of the clients I work with tell me this is really helpful as an example. So last fall, there was Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, and my sister lives out there, and that damaged the interstates, okay? All the interstates kind of got washed out, and all the people that lived in those areas, they had to reroute. They had to find new pathways to get to a lot of the places that they have gone for years and years and years. And now that they're having to reroute, it's taking them longer. They're having to go on unfamiliar pathways. Over time, they become more familiar. So neuroplasticity is kind of like that in terms of you're rerouting.

And the great thing is it's all about persistence rather than perfection. So if you're going to train, so I'm going to give you an example of mine. So one of the problems I had after my brain injury is a loss of balance when I would turn my head. So if I was walking and I turned to look at something, I would start walking in the other direction. Like you see on Mario Kart, you know how when you turn the wheel, your whole body moves? Yeah. Well, my body was doing that when I was walking. So I had to retrain that on a treadmill, walking very slow speeds with my hands on the bars.

and I would slowly turn my head and track every pixel in the room. But I did that day after day after day for like 30-minute sessions for several months. And now I can walk down, you know, I can walk and turn my head and I don't fall over anymore. But it wasn't about just doing it one time, right? I spent a lot of time doing that over and over. So neuroplasticity, the brain needs hundreds or thousands of those repetitious. for things to get, you know, ingrained. And the same goes for weight training, right?

You don't go to the gym and lift a couple of weights and then be like, I'm done for the week. It's, I'm going to grow muscles now. It just doesn't work like that. You got to, right, you got to put in the work. You got to put in the time. You got to add extra weight. What?

Put in the work. I don't want to do it. Can I hire somebody to do that for me? I mean really good points and yeah it is interesting how you can remap the brain and of course daily repetition that's kind of the one of the ways we work on you know goals and mindset and manifestation you know you focus on what you want and the brain in the background will go to work on stuff you know I use my subconscious mind a lot I'm like hey man that's problem I see if you can fix it and then you know one day I wake up and like boom it gives me the answer you know the

Some guys just mine is pretty bored back there doing stuff. It's playing, you know, dreams where we're asleep. And, you know, it's running in the show. I mean, we don't, you don't sit there and think every day, I got to make sure my heartbeats. Let me focus on that. You know, it's back there running all sorts of shit. And it, some of it comes up with really good stuff. Like, I'll have these, I have this weird thing that's going on with me for the longest time lately where I have a lot of insomnia.

And I'll, and I'll have these, I'll have these dreams while I'm awake. And so I'm laying there in bed. and I'm kind of in like some sort of half state where I must be slipping into sleep but I and they've gotten worse since my surgery I think my body's really trying to heal because if I take like even an hour nap I go into like deep asleep

and I think my body's trying to heal from surgery but lately it's like some of the shit my brain comes up with in imagination and stuff I'm like geez that would have made a great horror movie like sometimes I find myself I'll kind of snap back conscious and I'll be like, where the fuck did that come from?

What's going on in there? Where do you go? I mean, I know you're imaginative, but geez, there's some dark shit coming out of there. It's scary. Or, you know, just weird stuff that you're just like, well, that would make a great. I mean, I've had so many dreams that I've woken out and been like, that would make a great fucking movie, like, just sometimes a bunch. And so the creative element that's back in there with the subconscious mind and, you know,

what it can focus on is pretty, is pretty amazing. I think they say we only use like five or ten percent of our brains. It depends on I think which area of the country you live in, but it might be less. The, I'm so I'm saying by George Carlin, 50% of whatever. Anyway, sleep. I guess I just segued into my next question for you. Sleep is a strategy. Why is the brain's self-cleaning cycle sleep?

Yeah. So this is a big one when you said I suffer with insomnia. I just thought, oh, we should talk about that one really quick, Chris, because that's troublesome, right? Because when you sleep, you have, you know, the glymphatic system, which we have recently, you know, neuroscience has seen that your brain cleans itself when you sleep and it gets rid of the plaques and toxins and the things in your brain that aren't going to serve you the next day. It kind of gets rid of them and gives them the boot. But if you're not sleeping or if you have chronic insomnia, it's kind of like putting the dishes in your dishwasher without rinsing them and leaving them overnight without turning it on. And then like taking them out and being like, let's have breakfast on these. Right?

We wouldn't want to do that. Right. So there's so many things that I might even recommend for you to try. I don't know if you've ever tried meditation, Chris. Have you tried meditation? Tried meditation, yeah. I mean, sometimes I just meditate in bed or try and relax. I don't really do it professionally.

Like, I'm not good at it. I don't want to make people think I'm good at it or anything. Well, I think it's a practice, right, Chris? Yeah. You got to build the neuroplasticity. Yeah. You got to do the thing. Let's see.

What else do we have on deck? Sleep is so important. You know, if I don't get my sleep, if I don't, get at least seven hours to eight hours, preferably eight hours. I mean, I joke, people die. Like, I just, I just, I become a bear in real life that's very angry about who knows what. And if you come close to me and irritate me, especially before my coffee, you're probably going to lose a limb. And so, at girlfriends over the years, they're like, you're a bear in the morning. You are not a morning person. I'm like, duh. Now, get away from me. I have to make

coffee. Otherwise, people will die. And in fact, there's a. sign on my express a machine that says no coffee, no talkie. Oh. Yeah. But I don't feel like I function well. And at my age, I'm starting to really notice if I don't get my sleep, I'm not hitting on all cylinders, especially if I go a couple days with five or six hours of sleep. I'm not hitting on all cylinders.

And I don't even feel safe sometimes going out in the car. I'm like, I don't know, man. I can tell him just slightly off. And that's, you know, that's all you need. I remember one time I did a. and out to Vegas run within 24 hours and I was going to stop and sleep overnight and I just decided I felt really good and I was like I'll just go back it'll be fine within two hours of the drive I was like this was a mistake and yeah I remember I almost had a car accident because I wasn't

fully aware there was a you know I looked both ways and seen there was a car coming I waited for the car and then I pulled out but I didn't look to see if there's a car behind the car and I think somebody pulled out of something close by me and jumped into the lane. But somehow I was tapping the gas to move forward after waiting, and this car zoomed, like right in front of the hood. And I just went, oh, this is why you need to be on point. And so sleep is so important. If you get your sleep, your body heals. You know, I've lost a lot of weight over the years by eating well and intermittent fasting. And I just found that if I get hours of sleep, I wake up and I'll lose weight. And if I consistently

sleep, well, usually consistently lose weight. But if I get my sleep, basically my cortisol, you know, goes through the roof and I put on weight. I'll put on two or three, four, five pounds maybe over a couple days. And a lot of probably water, maybe, I don't know, but

it's, you know, it's the cortisol acting up going, hey man, we've got to keep your dumb ass alive because you haven't gotten rest. And so, you know, I just feel, if I go for several days without proper good sleep, I start feeling like I'm losing it. Like, I just feel off.

And so it's really important people get their sleep. I think that's the number one priority. I think there's a speech from Jeff Bezos where he said, you know, what are my success things? Number one, get eight hours of sleep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's definitely a foundational rule for me in my life. It comes first.

It comes before food. If I don't sleep, if I don't get at least eight hours of sleep, then. And especially with my history of brain injury, my brain is not optimal if I don't sleep. And in order to do the work that I do, and I rely on my brain, right? I rely on my brain for everything that I do. And so, yeah, I have a strict schedule about the lighting in my house. And when it gets, you know, dim and more red than white, I have different temperatures at different times to support your circadian rhythms um when i get up i make sure that i get you know bright white light in the first 30

minutes which really kicks off the signals and gets that rhythm going yeah that circadian rhythm you can definitely use your biology and those circadian rhythms to your advantage and help you repair some of those um difficulty with sleep you know it's that's it's everywhere you're right yeah now Another thing you talk about, let me ask you this. You mentioned several brain injuries maybe that you've experienced. Do you have a medical condition of having the potential to have these? Do you work with a lot of people that maybe also have the same sort of conditions? I do work with, yes, I work with people that have brain injury.

That could be a stroke. It could be a traumatic brain injury. I also work with a lot of like dementia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. all of those kind of neuro areas in what I do. Can you work with the people on Twitter? It seems like there's a lot of brain injuries over there. I'm kidding. I'm not making light of brain injuries in any way, shape, or form.

But we do pull a joke or two in the show. To answer your other question, Chris, I think if you ask Dr. Daniel Amon, he would probably say that most people have had more brain injuries than they probably realize. Because when you start looking at, When I was in high school, I was in football and I got knocked out or I was on go-kart track and we had a go-kart wreck and I got knocked out or I was on a trampoline and I went up

too high and cracked my head on the way down and got knocked out or a car accident. There's so many ways that people could potentially think of brain injuries. And I'll tell you, Chris, when I had them as a kid, I didn't even tell my parents. I mean, I had instances of being knocked out unconscious, and I just didn't want to get in trouble because, you know, I was jumping on the trampoline with another person, and we probably weren't supposed to do that, and I didn't want to get in trouble, and I went higher than the house, and I cracked my head on the way down and bit through my tongue, and had no idea why I couldn't learn for a while after that. Oh, wow. Because I was a kid. I didn't know about brain and training. Yeah, like no one had you.

Right. Exactly. They don't teach that in kindergarten. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe they should. Because that's what I think was in the brain damage in kindergarten. You know, at least in my age, you know, my age, they had all those jungle gym bars over asphalt.

So if you fell off them, you just crack your head open and stuff. And, yeah. Sensitivity of strength. Talk to us about what that is. how impasse creatives and innovators can harness sensitivity while managing overwhelm. I love that because for me, sensitivity used to really feel like a weakness. I really, really struggled with feeling everything so intensely and so deeply. And we can also recognize that everything that we experience in our life is a signal,

is a communication of some kind. And if we view that sensitivity as a signal, as an amplifier, right, then we can use that kind of like a microscope almost to understand ourselves better, to understand the world better, to have more empathy, to be more kind, and to take better care of ourselves if we choose to honor our sensitivity instead of what I used to do, which was, I don't want to be sensitive. I don't want to be sensitive. Yeah. It's crazy that's out there. You know, you can, in today's world, between the phones, the social media, between going out in public, there's a lot of overwhelm. There's a lot of

input that's coming into. And for some people, like you say, they're impasse or creatives or maybe they're, what's that? I'm an extrovert, introverts. Maybe introverts. It can be really hard for them as well. Persistence over perfection. Why progress, not perfection, is the ultimate measure. Now, is that in regards to the neuroplasticity doing daily repetition in life? And for me, that is like one of the underlying guidelines for everything. So, you know, when I choose, I'll just say it like this, I'm always choosing how to upgrade

my life, okay? So I'm always choosing, hey, what can we improve a little bit today? And maybe that's, I'm going to have a sip of water every hour because I didn't drink enough water yesterday. Yeah. And that can be a game changer because your brain requires water to also function properly, right? There you go. Yeah. Or it could be I'm going to make sure that I get 30 minutes of exercise, however many days, feels doable for me, right?

So the American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes a week, but that's not always doable, especially when you are doing many things, wearing many hats and responsible for many things. But instead of saying, oh, I can't do that, I can say, oh, but what can we do? How can we enhance our whatever that might be, right, and make it better? So that persistence over perfection for me is really about every day I compare myself to who I was yesterday. And I think about how can I level up for tomorrow? Yeah. How can you level up and go to the next level?

So on your website, I see people can book with you for a call or for help, book a session. Talk to us about how people can book with you and reach out to you and learn. and more. Yeah, so there's a free 30-minute console available to you on my website. You just have to click the link and schedule at a time that works for you. Just remember that you're not broken. You're becoming and healing isn't a quick fix. It's a process of co-creation that you choose into. Yeah, it can take time. And so they can reach out to you on the website. They can click the book of Synergy Check-in for a one-on-one call. And then you have a free 30-minute clarity call, too.

Yep. To explore stuff. Tell us a little bit that if you want. Yeah, so I would book a free 30-minute clarity call directly from my website, and then we can chat from there and see what works for people. Well, thank you very much, Doctor, for coming the show. We really appreciate it. Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me. Chris, I hope you have a blessed and beautiful evening and many blessings to all of you and all of your families. Give us your dot coms one more time as we go out to. Yeah, Neurosinergyhealth.com, N-E-U-R-O-H-E-A-L-T-H-E-A-L-T-H-E-A-L-T-H. I skip the Synergy there. I'm sorry. Right. N-E-U-R-O-S-Y-N-E-R-G-Y-H-E-A-L-T-H-E-A-L-T-H-E-H-A-L-T-H-O-M-T-H-E-A-L-T-H-E-R-M. Thank you very much, Sarah. Thanks, RONUS for tuning in.

go to goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, and all those crazy places you can find us on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.