In this live conversation, Angie welcomes Jason Wasser, LMFT, a licensed marriage‑and‑family therapist and certified Neuro‑Emotional Technique (NDT) practitioner. Jason provides a concise crash‑course on the neuroscience behind NDT, distinguishing between "big‑T" (conscious) and "little‑t" (sub‑conscious, ancestral) traumas and describing how these create "emotional allergies"—neuro‑emotional complexes that block the nervous system. He explains the triune brain model (neocortex, mammalian brain, reptilian brain) and how mis‑alignment among these parts leads to chronic stress, anxiety, and other somatic symptoms. Jason then outlines the core NDT tools: applied kinesiology muscle testing, which uses the client’s arm as a real‑time indicator of brain‑state congruence, and Chinese‑medicine meridian mapping that links specific emotions to organ systems and elemental pathways. He shares vivid case examples—panic attacks unresponsive to conventional therapy, a locked‑shoulder that regained full range after a single NDT session, and chronic pain—all illustrating how NDT bypasses the rational brain to re‑process stored trauma at the physiological level. The conversation moves to scientific validation: a study at Jefferson University using functional MRI showed that repeated NDT sessions eliminated trauma‑related brain activation in participants with PTSD from cancer diagnoses. This research has helped NDT become a graduate‑level, credit‑bearing course at a major medical university. Jason emphasizes that NDT complements other evidence‑based nervous‑system regulation practices such as ice‑baths, sound healing, breathwork, and meditation, positioning it as an integrative mind‑body modality. The session concludes with an invitation for a live demonstration and audience questions, highlighting community engagement and the practical application of NDT.
Chapters
¡Gracias! So at this time, I wanted to graciously welcome one of my own teachers. This is Jason Wasser. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist. He is a Neuro-Emotional Technique practitioner. He is also a certified entrepreneur coach, and he has a podcast called You Winning Life. And so, as I said, he is one of my personal teachers. I've been seeing him now for about 2 years. And he has helped me immensely in resolving some of the issues within my nervous system and the traumas that I carried there. So I could talk all night, but I'm going to let him talk a little bit more about what it is that he does.
Okay, first, thank you, Angie. These conversations about this happening has been to see it in fruition. It's incredibly powerful to be here. Welcome to everybody. So everything that you said with the astrology is spot on. Lots of anger in the world right now. Can everybody hear me okay? Yeah. So there's a few different ways we can get into this tonight, and I don't want it to be about me. I want I'm doing. I want it to be about the healing that we're all doing. And the beautiful thing about this community that's being created is that you are tapping into the psychology, the neurology, physiology, spirituality. And you can't really connect on the deepest level unless you're playing with all those parts and healing all those parts. So for a few minutes, I want to give kind of like a crash course of neuroscience and what a little bit of this is all about. I'll share a little bit about what neuro-emotional technique is, and then I'll save a few minutes for questions because I think that's— whenever I speak, that's where the most magic happens, is that when you're bringing something, kind of like if you've seen Esther Hicks and the person in the hot seat, the law of attraction, right? It's always pretty spot-on from that perspective. So Big T, little t trauma is really what we're trying to figure out, what we're trying to heal, right? We have these micro traumas, stuff that we don't even realize is in there, stuff that's ancestral, stuff that's from our family of origin, stuff that's being passed on, stuff that we go through the world and we pick up and not even realize our nervous system is being exposed to. And that can come in a few different ways. That can come in an experience that can come from environment, right? Our foods, our chemicals, our electromagnetic frequencies, something we ate, something we drank, right? We have our nutritional deficiencies, and we have our structural stuff, right? Gravity still exists on this planet, and we have that impact every day. So we have these little lowercase t traumas, and then we have our big T traumas, the stuff we know the stuff that we, you know, do this for, the stuff that we're aware of, the stuff that happened to us when we were kids, or stuff that, you know, we know happened to our families, we know happened to our generations, we know what happened in that last relationship. And our nervous system can't tell the difference between something happening 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, in utero, in when you're in the room. It's something happening right now. So for the basis of just breaking it down really simply, there's an idea called the triune brain theory, the three brain theory. And if you think about it, when those parts are working together, we're able to go out into the world confidently. We're able to go out into the world and achieve the things proactively that we want to achieve on all levels. But if those three parts of our brain are not congruent, that's where stuff starts to happen that holds us back. Makes sense? So the three parts of our brain is the neocortex, that's the rational brain. It's the part that knows it's magnificent out for Florida, for most of us. Some people are from the north, which makes it even more gorgeous.
Brain.
Then we— right, you know where we are, you know it's Wednesday night, you know you're here with the community. That's rational, it's logical. Then you have your mammalian brain. Your mammalian brain is connected to that timeless memories that you don't even realize is in there, but is. So for example, for those of you who are musical, I said the words, hey now, some people might finish the sentence with, that's your mammalian brain, muscle memory, autonomic nervous system stuff, right? Stuff that's in there. Your nervous system, that's where the part where your nervous system doesn't know whether something happened now, a moment ago, or something happened years ago, but it's reactivating physiology, the biochemistry. And then you have your reptilian brain. That's the part that's responsible for the 4 Fs: fight, run, y'all, you know this, fight, flight, and reproduce. The 4 Fs. There's frogs here, baby. So, but that's the reptilian survival Most of us unfortunately are stuck trying to be fully conscious, and our reptilian survival brain is constantly overpowering us. This is why meditation, sound healing, ice baths— these are all nervous system regulation attempts to heal. This is why, as a therapist traditional talk therapy only goes so far. So when those three parts of your brain are not in sync because there's that lowercase trauma, that bigger T trauma, no matter what you try to do, even if you're doing this nonstop and living in this type of community on a daily basis, there's still stuff that's going on underneath the hood. I call that emotional allergies. In science speak, in the MT world, we call that a neuro-emotional complex. It's a gathering of your biochemistry, neurology, physiology that's kind of gunked up in a way, and it's not allowing you to proceed forward. So in the theme of divorce, since that seems to be— it wasn't as recent as 2010. So it seems to be part of, you know, what we all need to go through at some level, divorcing something in our life, right? Because I'm a serving human. But, uh, I was having major panic attacks, and I tried everything— talk therapy, acupuncture, herbs. Went to a buddy of mine who's a neurologist who was like the most wonderful. Like, even if you prescribed, he's like, this is for 3 weeks and we're taking you off. This wasn't like one of those doctors that's like, you're going to be on this for the rest of your life. That helped a little bit, but it didn't solve the problem. And I stumbled upon this modality. A friend of mine did a workshop at University of Miami, and they kind of talked about it, and then she convinced me to do this program. And meanwhile, the whole weekend I was there— for the two weekends I was there at University of Miami in this training— I was having panic attacks the entire time while sitting there like this in a seminar. I was seeing clients having panic attacks, holding it in, in the middle of the session while I'm supposed to be fully present and helping them with their pain. And it was when I stumbled upon this modality, neuro-emotional technique, when I went to a colleague of mine— now a colleague and good friend— after I was being introduced, it turned out that— going back to the music reference— in 1995, I went to an Offspring concert with her two twin sons. And years later, the mom was the one who helped me heal some of this stuff. And that was my first introduction to it. By the end of the first session, I remember walking into my old office and the thought of what I was going through at that time, a specific issue popped up. And the only way I can describe it was as if there was Vaseline on my brain. It was here, it was front and center. And it literally slid off my brain. That was weird. Never had that happen before. I'm back for the next session, things got better. Went back for that third session, things got better. A month later, I took my first training, and now it's been 10 years. A few weeks ago, I've been doing this modality, certifying this modality, did a coaching training. I just helped 60 people get certified in this modality in San Diego. But what it does is it brings together the mind-body component that talk therapy doesn't get into, from the way of using the body as the tool. So if anybody's familiar with biofeedback, right, you get hooked up to a machine and your heart rate and brain scans, right? We do this without any machines. We actually use your body as the machine. So for anybody who's ever worked with a chiropractor or physical therapist, kinesiologist, so one of the tools that we use is neurological muscle testing. So we're basically— we'll get a demo in a minute— but we're basically using your arm as a fight-or-flight response in relationship to that 3-brain dynamic. So if everything is congruent in those 3 parts of the brain— the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain of the neocortex, the muscle test will hold strong because you're okay with— you're congruent with— there's no trigger that's making you go into fight-or-flight reactive brain. And if there is a trigger, muscle test goes weak. We combine that with Chinese medicine meridian points. And if you're familiar with the 5 elements— earth, metal, wood, water, and then the last one Fire. Between each one of those emotions— I'm sorry, each one of those, um, pathways and meridians go through different paths in your body, or along different pathways. And each of those pathways also correlate to specific body organs, and each of those body organs correlate to specific sets of emotions. So not only is it diagnostic, but it's also telling. So I'll give you a perfect example. If you meet someone, you're talking to someone, and they're walking around and they're just going like this— that's metal, lungs. It's probably connected to some grief, some sadness, some yearning, some despair. So we have these dispositions. So, you know, they're saying, I was almost— I was so afraid I almost peed myself. It's connected to the water meridian. The organ that's connected to the water meridian, bladder, kidney. Fear is connected to that meridian. So as we're navigating and figuring out really what's going on, you can talk it out, but really somatically, if you have chronic if you have old stuff that's coming up, you can't just talk it out from rational brain because you don't always know what's in there. It's like Prego marinara sauce. It's all in there. But by using this, we're bypassing the rational brain, we're bypassing the neocortex, we're bypassing the story that we've been telling us that's been getting us stuck to go into that nervous system response to get us out of that fight or flight so that all the things that you are experiencing here and all the things you're doing in addition to this you'll really have maximum impact. So we're talking about everything from anxiety, panic attacks, emotional traumas, food allergies, headaches, chronic pain, right? That's the whole gamut. The beautiful thing is this came out of chiropractic, where people were going in and getting adjusted and the healing wasn't happening. It wasn't holding. And Dr. Wasser, who helped create this, realized that if— if they sat in the car like that, they were thinking about the car accident while they were adjusting, and the adjustment helped. So he started researching and seeing what's the cross-correlation between the memory and physical trauma. He started using this and developing with the field of applied kinesiology, and it evolved since then. There's some other medical doctors, therapists, acupuncturists, all licensed medical practitioners that are coming from each of their fields, but we're all doing the same thing. So for example, I had a mother a few years ago who, out of the blue— this is before the pandemic— young son just passed out of the blue. No toxic, nothing. They had no clue what happened. Within a week he passed. Seeing this person for grief a while, the person had an Ardent Tree. And when things got better over the course of a few months, as best as it can be, I wanted to say, like, can I, can I take a stab at that shoulder thing? And they had surgery, and range of motion was here from 2 years of PT and ortho rehab, and it's like locked shoulder. And use this modality, and no joke, within 8 to 10 minutes we found the original trauma that was stored from whatever age, helped clear and reprocess the neurology around that, came back to the present-day issue, double-checked that, and then like, all right, move your arm. No joke, full range of motion. And the sling that this person was wearing was in the garbage. Our Body Keeps Score, right? You all know that book. This is taking it to a whole nother level. How can you actually do the work that needs to happen so your body doesn't have to keep that score, it doesn't have to hold on to that memory, so you can be as neutral as possible? So that's where NDT has evolved into for anything that you are pushing up against in this world. Even your own beliefs about things that you think you're okay with could have other triggers hidden in there that are not linear. That could be metaphorical. That can be the worst case, you know, connected to an emotion. That's the worst case about that for you. That has nothing to do with that actual issue. That could have been something that happened when you were 8 years old, 9 years old, 10 years old, that every time something like that pops pops up thematically, your nervous system goes back to that original. Pretty wild, right? Even cooler than that is all of the research that's happening. So this, uh, the ONE Foundation, ONE Research Foundation, decided that they want to make this legit. We're all woo-woo here, right? And I'll be right, chiropractic is woo-woo for a lot of people. And Dr. Walker was like, I want this to be validated. I want this to be the validated integrative mind-body somatic healing. So they did a study a few years ago at Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and they took people who had PTSD from a cancer diagnosis who were already in the healing stages or already in remission, and they had them narrate the moment that they were diagnosed in the doctor's office with cancer. They recorded it, and then they wrote it up, and they had a practitioner while that person was in a functional MRI, magnetic resonance, read them the story of that moment that they were diagnosed in their own words. And they took a brain scan, and consistently with the 30, 40 people that they did that brain scan, the areas lit up in the exact same places for the trauma. But 40 different people, all the same area. They did up to 4 sessions of this modality put them back in the MRI and did the script again. And every— every area that lit up before was gone. So it's just a memory, it's not a biochemical response that pulls you into something. It's moved so far in the research that it's now the only integrative mind-body modality that's a graduate level 3-credit course at a major medical university in the country. So it went from a chiropractic office 35 years ago to this, which is what we're trying to do. Ice baths, clinically researched. Sound healing, clinically researched. Breathwork, clinically researched, journal published. Everything you're doing here is valid. It's valid because we believe it's valid, but it's valid in that world too. The worlds are coming together now. It's finally happening, right? I told you I'll do this 2 years ago, maybe. I don't know. We're talking about plant medicine, and I'm like, it's so interesting that my grandmother's brother was a psychiatrist. Both of them were psychiatrists, old school. You're on the couch for 30 years. And he wrote one of the first anti-medical marijuana articles that was published in the Journal of Medicine, 1971. And here we are talking about these type of healings outside of a therapy office, outside of sitting and having to talk to someone over and over and over again. How does it make you feel? Makes me feel like, damn it, do something about it already! We have the tools. We have ice bath, sound healing, breathwork, we have community, meditation. So I want to open it up to questions for a few minutes, and then maybe do you want a demo first, or do you want questions? What would be just for the mindfulness of time?
Um, let me see, how about we do a demo?
Sure.
Um, I was going to volunteer, but let's see, is there anyone here who is really interested in volunteering.
So with one caveat, what stays in Vegas, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Yeah. You guys are privy now to what a private session would be like. So obviously diving into something personal.
So, and at any point, if you want to say like, yeah, or you can whisper it in my ear, you know, that type of thing.
