TrueLife - Dr. Thomas Verny is Awesome!

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is setting up to be amazing. I hope that you have something to do, something to look forward to. and someone to love. Today we're going to talk about a recent book that I've read,

and I think you should read as well. I found it very informative, very interesting. And I also found it fits a new trend that I've been seeing throughout the world of literature, the world of science, and the world of learning. And that trend is a synthesis, across disciplinary, across disciplinary, across disciplinary.

I got it. a cross-disciplinary thread that is weaving things together. And that's what I see in this book by Dr. Thomas Verney. The book is called The Embodied Mind. I want to start off by reading a little blurb about the book, and then I'm going to get into my thoughts about the book. So let's begin at the beginning. The book is called The Embodied Mind by Dr. Thomas Verney.

Here's a little blurb about it. We understand the workings of the human body as a series of independent physiological relationships. Muscles interact with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain. In the embodied mind,

internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verney sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind's ties to every part of the body. The embodied mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting, evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes, all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Vernie shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact

that will shift our understanding of memory. Vernie describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. I just wanted to pause for a moment. I found it a little bit comical, and I wanted just to tell everybody that not all French men have a brain the fraction of a normal size, although it seems common for French people to think that Americans have a brain, a fraction of the normal size. The embodied mind shows how intelligence and consciousness traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone also permeate our entire being.

Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imagined. Sounds pretty interesting, right? I thought it was. I want to talk a little bit about the structure of the book. Each chapter is like its own individual book, its own individual story. It starts off with an intro, backed up with stories and facts that are easily accessible for you to do your own research on, and then it follows up with a summary. I found it a very appealing way to write a book that allows the reader to become sort of like a researcher as well. well as a viewer or as well as a consumer of the information. So I got to give it five stars

for that particular setup. I like the way when I like the way that setup is. I like how it allows you to be the judge and gives you the facts, but also gives you the narrative. On the topic of the information inside the book, I found it incredibly thought-provoking. I think it ties together this new trend that I was talking about earlier in my book review. I have seen this trend of economics beginning to tie itself together with sociology, beginning to tie itself together with philosophy, beginning to tie itself together with history. Let's talk a little bit about some of the ideas inside this book. I found them not only exciting and interesting, but potentially ground. groundbreaking. If his ideas about the way in which our memories, our consciousness, and I know that's

kind of a word that throws people off. So let's just go with the way in which our reality is structured. I think that's a good way to put it. Dr. Varney, he really illustrates. And I think it's important to say that he documents all of his ideas really well. they're really well researched and it gives you as the reader an opportunity to dig down deeper so that you can better understand what he's saying and make your own opinion. However, he really gets into the way ideas and memory are structured. And I don't want to give away too much of the book. However, I think it's fair to say that his ideas of memory and knowledge, being stored not only in the brain, but in all cells of your body.

I think it really lends credence and it ties together the ideas of Eastern mysticism with the Western's analytical ideas of thought. Does that kind of make sense? And that's what I mean when I say he's following this path. of tying together different disciplines. The idea that your memory could potentially come from that gut feeling or the idea that your memory, your actions, and your behavior could be the result of a traumatic event that happened to your grandfather.

I think this lends a lot of credence. to the world we see today. There's been multiple books written about the gut instinct. There's been books written about neurotransmitters in your gut, and every one of us has had a gut feeling. Dr. Varney takes this a step further, and he says that not only do you have the feeling in your gut, but the cells around you,

the cells that were given to you by your mind, mother, these particular cells have a memory in them. And not only that, but everything around us, if what he's saying is true and that the cells that were transmuted to you from generations ago infect or influence your behavior, then I think it's safe to say that the cells of everything around us, also influence our behavior. And that's what he gets into when he begins talking about epigenetics.

What I find really fascinating is what does this mean for the world of not only psychiatry, but what about the world of medicine from here on out? Doesn't it allow for a more holistic approach? Does not this particular theory of epigenetics and this book about the embodied mind? Doesn't it fundamentally shift our ideas of what medicine is, what medicine can be, and how we treat not only psychosis, but the body as a whole from here forward?

I think if Dr. Thomas Varney's ideas are accurate, it could open the door for doctors to quit practicing and actually start healing. I think that it also gets a lot of pushback. I think that there's a lot of people that would not want to see his ideas be considered mainstream. If his ideas are accurate and the ideas of epigenetics follow and continue to be backed up by science, I think that you're going to see a lot of gatekeepers be pretty upset about it because it means that the majority of textbooks would have to be rewritten

it means that the world of medicine as we know it has been being practiced in a very one-dimensional manner in a very one-dimensional way and the more that I think about this book the more I think he's right we don't really treat we don't really treat people for for solutions we treat people for symptoms What does it mean for the future of pharmacology? What does it mean for the future of psychopharmacology if we're only using these certain types of plants or, you know, SSRIs? We're only trying to treat stuff in the brain. That's the only place we look.

If we are not looking to cure people by, addressing the problems in all their cells instead of just the brain, then we're only treating the symptoms. Does that kind of make sense? I really like this book, and I think if you take some time to read this book, it'll blow your mind. It's fascinating in a lot of ways, and I think it opens the door to practicing medicine in a total different way.

Not only practicing medicine, but seeing the world. around us, seeing the individuals next to us, and seeing ourselves in the mirror as different. I also really enjoyed the fact that not only does it connect different disciplines, but I think it connects us as a whole. It connects us as people. It connects us as a species. The same way that mycelium connects the roots and ecosystem of different plants around us, so does this theory of epigenetics and the embodied mind connect us as individuals to our own modern day ecosystem. It allows us to see each other not only as individuals, but it allows us or at least begins to show us the interconnectedness of the embodied mind. It's almost like we have a body as individuals, but we're part of a body.

a world body, a body of a species, a body of the planet. We're this embodied planet. Like, there's so many questions. I'm really looking forward to speaking with him and asking him these ideas. I hope that you take a moment to listen to this book review and not take my word for it, but I hope it inspires you to pick up this book and read it. The book is called The Embodied Mind by Dr. Thomas Verney. It's fascinating.

You'll learn a lot not only about yourself. in medicine and the future. But he gives you plenty of resources to go and look at for yourself so you can make up your own mind. Well worth the read, well worth the time, and well worth questioning what's happening today. Again, the book is The Embodied Mind by Thomas Verny. Do yourself a favor. Pick it up. I think you'll enjoy it.

It'll keep you thinking. It'll keep your brain young. And most importantly, it'll keep you questioning the nature of our reality. That's what we got for today. Look forward to Dr. Thomas Verney, the Embodied Mind on the True Life podcast coming up on Wednesday. Aloha.