The Resilient Mind - From Fear to Gratitude - Dr. Joe Dispenza

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Dr. Joe Dispenza is a renowned author, speaker, and educator in the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics. He has spent over three decades studying the mind-body connection and the ways in which we can harness our thoughts and emotions to create positive change in our lives.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to from Fear to Gratitude with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. In our biology, it's hard to think that you have control over a fear response. Now, there's nothing wrong with having the fear response. It's nothing wrong with getting aroused. The question is, how long?

Like, how long is this going to go on for? So you have a reaction five days ago from something that's happened and you're still, you're still aroused by that event. You've got to agree that you're addicted, you're addicted to that emotion. Keep it going and it'll become more automatic. You'll, you'll constantly be thinking certain ways and doing certain things to reaffirm that addiction to fear. So for the short term, you know, have the fear response. If you can't shorten the refractory period of that emotional response, more than likely you're going to be in a program for the remainder of your day. So what we teach people is how to master the fear. So take anxiety as an example, right? Many people come to the work and they have a high amount of anxiety. CEOs, engineers,

doctors, nurses, dentists, people can't cross a bridge. And they've tried everything to try to change their anxiety. But what they haven't done is they haven't caught themselves feeling the feeling of fear and practicing with their eyes close first. Not in their life when they're feeling fear. But let's practice when you're sitting in the meditation and your body starts getting a little anxious,

starts getting a little worried, starts getting a little, aroused, what are you going to do in that moment? Can you become aware that the body's feeling, that emotion, and could you, like taming an animal, settling the body back down from that aroused state back into the present moment, okay? It goes, great, I'm going to do this for two seconds, and like a spoiled child, it starts getting aroused again. Now, most people think I'm never going to be able to overcome this. But the act of sitting with that and keep lowering the volume and not letting the body be the mind, but you actually executing being the mind. Do that enough times, and you'll condition the body to a new mind. And what happens is the brain stops firing those

same circuits. Okay, then the person says, but what if this happens, and what if that happens, and then what if this happens? And they catch themselves going to the worst case scenario or going to the memory of the past, and they keep bringing their attention back to the present moment. what we discovered is if you keep doing that, you get better at it. And when the body, as I said, finally surrenders into the present moment, it cannot be in fear any longer. So the person then that returns back into their life and has lowered the volume to the fear because they've been practicing it will respond less emotionally in their life because

they've overcome it, right? If they haven't overcome it, then the response is going to be the same. So first thing, eyes closed. You got to practice with your eyes closed, but get so good at doing it with your eyes closed that you can do it with your eyes open. And when it's the hardest, it matters the most. And so justified, valid or not, those chemicals are not good for you. They're not good at you. Whether you're right, whether you're justified, the only person that's hurting is you, right?

So then the person who says, okay, well, is this loving to me? Okay. So the fear is real. Okay. So what emotion could you change from fear into? Okay. So we teach people, okay, can you practice breathing and slowing your brainwaves down? Working with the animal, working with the body, slow your breath down, slow your brainwaves down. Yeah, but I don't want to. Okay. Do it anyway. Practice slowing your breath down, breathing a little bit slower. Your brainwaves start to change. Put your attention on your heart. We have great data to show where you place your attention is where you place your energy. You see a very low frequency of the heart starting to build in the person. So now the heart is getting energy and then parasympathetic nervous system starts coming up. The body starts moving into that state. Okay, that's really great. It keep doing it over and over again. Keep relaxing into your heart, energy moving into the heart. The heart informs the brain. The trauma's over. The event is over. What you're afraid of is over. And it resets the baseline in the amygdala for trauma.

And the side effect of that is the person now, when energy moves into their heart like that, they start getting very creative. The heart is a very creative center. Okay, what do I want to do now? What do I want to create now? So it's something that you can only talk around. But when you're in the work and you're practicing it,

it's first so important to face off with it with your eyes closed. And it's David against Goliath in the beginning because the program is so ingrained in our biology. and yet people who keep practicing, lowing the volume, lowering the volume, you see the brain scans. CEOs, as I said, all kinds of different athletes, you see the dramatic change in the brain. There's the anxiety. And now it's gone.

And there's just a significant change in a person's subjective view of the world as well. I think just it isn't enough to inhibit the thought and the feeling. I think it's practicing feeling something else. and then we use technology to actually tell you when you're doing it and when you're not. That's so important. So take a Navy SEAL, for example, who has done all the talk therapy, tried all the pharmaceuticals, tried all the antidepressants, tried all the pain relievers, tried the ayahuasca, tried the plant medicine, and they still can't function in their life, right?

And so why can't they function in their life? Because they haven't gotten beyond the emotion that's keeping them connected to the path. We have seen people come right up to the edge of their emotional belief, you know, where the pain, where the emotion is at its height, you know, and the hardest part of every war is the last battle. And they go one more time. You know, they just say, I'm going to go again. And when they go again, many times that's when they have their breakthrough.

And the breakthrough isn't, as I said, just like a little breakthrough. It's an immediate relief for the person. And so that's the moment then when they look back at their past, they see it through a whole different lens. Yeah, I think childhood trauma is, I think probably the biggest trauma for many people to overcome because children, their brain waves, are very slow. I mean, in alpha, in theta, and information goes in very quickly right into their subconscious. And I think that we figure out adaptive ways to not have to feel those emotions or not have to look at that past. But we're always aware of it.

it's always there, right? But we don't really have a moment where we fully allow ourselves to experience it. And I think he had a moment where, by association, he let himself be vulnerable, which I think is great. And I think uncertainty and I think that moment of vulnerability needs space. I think it needs space and it needs time for the person to say. sit in that and allow themselves to fully feel it, right? And that's how it's how it, you sit in it long enough, it goes away. All people really want to do is feel safe and feel loved, you know, so again, I think he played that really, really well. And that is just let that person know that

you're there for them and give them the room to go as far as they want to go. And some people feel really safe when that happens. And I think they, they release. it. Yeah, you got to sit with yourself. You're going to take your device and set it in the other room. You're going to shut it off and feel without that thing. And you've got a thing for yourself. And I think that kind of art of contemplation has been lost because I think that process of self-reflection kind of is a building process neurologically in our brains. And so to, you know, we joke all the time with people who go through a week-long event, I say to them, when's the last time you sat with you this long until you finally like you?

You have you sit with yourself long enough. Those feelings are going to come up. They will come up because you have nothing to do. You have nothing to do your inner world and how you're thinking and how your feeling is going to become very obvious to you. And so I think people ask all the time, well, Well, why is my health condition like this? What are the thoughts?

What are the feelings that I need to change? It's really simple. Sit with yourself and you'll know exactly what it is that you need to change. So I think you've got to create the time to invest in yourself. One of the things that I've discovered with many people that tell us stories of transformation is that they kind of have this kind of belief like, I believe this stuff works. I just never believed it could work for me. I mean, that's a really, really fundamentally key moment in a person's evolution because

that means they actually have to change the relief. And that's sometimes, that means I've got to come out of the resting state and they've got to choose themselves every day. So that person then who's arguing for some limitation just doesn't believe that they can change their life. they don't believe that their thoughts have something to do with their destiny. They don't believe in possibility because they don't believe in themselves. You cannot believe in possibility without believing in yourself.

And if you believe in yourself, that means you got to believe in possibility. And that means then that means you got to do something. You got to get off the couch. You know, you got to get up and you got to get engaged in your world. And you got to be a creator in your life and instead of a victim in your life. Now, that's an easy thing to say. but it means that means you have to carve out some time for you. I mean, and if you invest in yourself, invest in yourself, and invest in your future.

Do it and get uncomfortable and know that that's normal. That's natural. That's the unknown. Okay. If I keep making the same choices, I'm going to keep having the same health condition. If I keep doing the same things, I'm going to still have the same level of abundance. Okay, so I got to start making changes. It's not that hard to do it if you really want to do it.

I mean, if you really want to do it, then you'll invest in yourself. Now, for me, I think everybody to some degree, Chris, believes that they have a hand in creating their life, unless they've had a really, really horrible childhood in past. But on some level, people believe it, right? So people say, well, yeah, okay, so I believe that I can get the car, I can get the vacation, I can get the new home, I can get the relationship, I can get the second home, I don't know, whatever it is that people. people want. But the way they're going to do it is, okay, I'm going to work really hard, I'm going to study a lot. There's nothing wrong with this, by the way. I'm going to be trained. I'm going to learn. I'm going to make a bunch of wrong choices. I'm going to learn from my mistakes. And then I'm going to get really good at gathering a lot of things and doing these

things. Okay, I've created a certain degree in my life. But people who really, really start shortening the distance between the thought of what they want and experience of having it, something changes. They may say, oh, I have the belief that I create my life in some way, but is it possible that it's more than the synchronicity, you know, more than the parking space, more than thinking of a friend and they call you, like, everybody kind of accepts that as kind of, oh, that's possible. Well, why don't I take it to the next level? I mean, what if you could actually do more of that? Like, is that a belief that you can begin to embrace? So that means if you believe that on some level that you can create something greater of greater magnitude, of greater amplitude, that means

then you'd have to get involved in the experience a little bit more. That means I'd have to believe, how could I possibly do that? Like, what would it take for me to do that? And so people evolve their belief around creation when they start seeing bigger synchronicities happen in their life, like the opportunity, the job, the phone call, the synchronicity, the coincidence that's bigger than the parking space because they're investing in themselves. Now, here's the cool part. The moment they have that synchronicity and it has something to do with what they're doing inside of them, they're going to pay attention to what they did inside of them. We're going to do it again. They're going to believe now, oh, I actually am the creator of my life. I'm no longer the victim

of my life. Keep practicing that over time. Keep getting better at it. You don't have to go anywhere and do anything to get things. Somehow they seem to come to you. Somehow the opportunity's coming to you and you're not having to do it. Now, that's another way to create. And that we're all creators. So taking time to be a creator, taking time to invest in yourself, taking time to get involved in the experiment. This is an experiment to measure the effects of you at cost, right? So do it really good one way and then find out a way if there's a way to flow. If there's a way to change, that it all of a sudden allows your environment to change around you when you change. That's when the experiment gets exciting.

If you think about it when you receive something favorable or just receive something favorable, if something wonderful is happening to you or something wonderful just happened to you, the feeling that's created from that experience is called gratitude. So the emotional signature of gratitude means something wonderful is happening to you. or something wonderful has just happened to you. And gratitude is the ultimate state of receiving. That's, it's the ultimate state. So, yeah, you can, you can practice with a gratitude journal and write down the things in your life

that you're grateful for. And I think that has a really great reminder to manage your attention and to manage your energy. But by the same means, can you be grateful for things? that you haven't had yet, but you believe enough that you can have. Now, we only accept believe and surrender to thoughts that are equal to our emotional state. We'll never accept believe and surrender to thoughts that are not equal to our emotional state. So if you're feeling really unhappy and you're feeling really negatively and you're thinking positively, the thought of thinking positively never makes it past the brainstem to get to the body because

the body is feeling miserable. Positive thought never changes the biology. Okay. So people accept, believe in surrender information equals of their emotional state. You watch something on a program and you get fear. The information that comes in after that fear, you're going to accept. You get a diagnosis. The doctor says you got this amount of time to live and you're in that state.

that information is going to go right into your subconscious mind because that information is equal to the emotional state that you're in. Make sense? So you can't think positively. I'm healthy. I'm wealthy. I'm free. I'm unlimited.

And your body's going, no, you're not, dude. You're miserable. So the thought never makes it to the body. Okay. So that means then we would have to change the emotional state of the body. And we're doing research on this, really fascinating research on this now. So the person then wants to accept, believe, and surrender to thoughts of their future, and they want to reprogram their subconscious mind to a new future,

if they're feeling gratitude, and gratitude is the ultimate state of receiving, they will actually accept, believe, and surrender to the thoughts that they're thinking equal to that emotional state. And that's exactly what programs the autonomic nervous system to begin to, make a pharmacy of chemicals that causes the body to move into restoration, growth, and repair, and a lot of immune function. So we took a group of people in a study, and we measured their cortisol levels, and we measured an immunoglobulum called IgA, Immunoglobulin A. It's your body's natural defense. It's the body's flu shot. In fact, it works better than any flu shot. And so as cortisol

levels go up, IGA levels go down. Because if you're an emergency, your immune system's compromised. If all your energy is going to the outer world and you have no energy in your inner world, you're going to be unhealthy and the internal protection system kind of closes down. Okay, so four days of changing their emotions from resentment and judgment and frustration and in patience to gratitude and appreciation, four days. And we measure. their hearts because when you're frustrated and you're impatient and you're judgmental, your heart beats very differently and when you're grateful. Well, when you're grateful, your heart starts to beat in a more rhythmic way. And there's a couple pathways where oxytocin

signals nitric oxide and nitric oxide signals another chemical that causes the arteries in your heart literally to swell, to open up. And so when you actually feel gratitude, there's a physiological component that takes place where your heart feels full. And when energy or blood makes it to the heart, and energy makes it to the heart, it's a different consciousness, right? It's a different level of awareness than when you're feeling resentful or you're feeling impatient. So feel the emotion of gratitude and open your heart, keep activating that center. We discovered that when a person feels that emotion, and they do it for four days, their IGA levels went up 50% just in four days.

So there's a robust amusement response that takes place by just changing from those limited emotions to more elevated emotions. So we saw that when a person's feeling gratitude and their heart goes from kind of a very incoherent state to a more regulated and organized state, that once energy makes it to the heart, as I said earlier, somehow it begins to move. to the brain. And if you would imagine like grabbing a big sheet and going like this, it's almost like the heart is causing this beautiful pattern of energy moving to the brain, causes the brain to move in these beautiful alpha brainwave states. That is that state of imagination. So I think when

we're grateful, those social networks turn on where we want to connect. I think we have more appreciation for the moment. And I think we're more prone to give, which actually really more oxytocin, which releases more nitric oxide, and causes us to feel even better. So we teach people then to feel grateful for things that they haven't had yet, as well as the things that they have in their life, and it tends to produce profound changes in their biology. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.