Cleaning up Your Mental Mess With Dr. Caroline Leaf

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Hey, it's JJ and welcome to Ask the Health Expert. But this isn't just any old Ask the Health Expert session. This is your bonus session. Yes, it's the weekend and because it's the weekend, we are gonna take some time with an amazing expert. So be on the lookout for these Saturday Ask the Health Expert bonus sessions where we're gonna go deep into an amazing subject with an incredible expert to give you actionable items that you can put into your life. So I just did this interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf and I'm just sitting here honestly with my mind blown and I don't typically read someone's bio and especially not a long one, but I feel like it's critical to do it here to just give you a sense of who you're about to hear from because this is life changing information. And I'm so excited to share Dr. Caroline Leaf with you. So I so she's a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with A Master's and PhD in Communication Pathology and a bachelor's in logicopedics. And she specializes in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. So she's really focused on the mind brain connection, which is what she's going to be talking about here is what's the difference between your mind, what's the difference between your brain and the nature of mental health and the formation of memory. In fact, she was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change with directed mind input. And this all came from. She told me this story during the interview about a professor challenging her in school that the brain doesn't change. This was so exciting to hear this stuff after some of the things I was told with my son's brain injury. During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the usa, she developed her Theory, which is called the geodesic information processing theory of how we think, build memory and learn into tools and processes that transform lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with TBIs, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, learning disabilities, autism, dementia and mental health issues like anxiety and depression. She's helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed, succeed in every area of their life. Now she's written switch on your brain. Think, learn, succeed, think and eat yourself smart and many more. The latest one that we're going to be talking about here today is cleaning up your mental mess. She's going to talk about the wise mind and the messy mind and teaching about that. And she's got if you can watch any of the video of this, you're going to want to. She had incredible props all the way through. She's doing clinical trials on this five step process she has done to create this mind directing technique to help relieve mental health, mentally ill health problems such as anxiety, depression and intrusive thoughts. And all of this is through a process that she calls the neuro cycle. And she also has an app that you can use to guide you through this. So she has her book cleaning up your mental mess. And if you go to jjvirgin.com drleaf d r leaf l e a F, you'll be able to get a free workbook when you buy the book. And then I also highly recommend getting this app. I'm super excited to work with this with, with me and to work with my son on this as well. And I will just tell you, this is a deep interview, man. So if you are interested in how you can use your mind, right, the mind, body, brain connection, this is it. And be prepared to learn from the legend, the icon here, Dr. Caroline Leap. I'll be right back with her. Stay with me.

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Doctor Caroline Leaf, welcome to the show. I am super excited to talk to you today.

Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk to you. It's great to meet you.

I really don't understand how we have never met. I just.

No, I don't understand that either.

Right. I mean, it seems like we have all the same friends.

Exactly. Talk the same sort of language from certain aspects. So.

Yeah, well, we're fixing it now and hopefully we'll actually get to meet in person one of these days.

Yes. That's exciting to know we're entering back into the era of actually physically seeing people.

Thank God.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we're going to dig into all things mental health. But I think before we go there and I'm really excited to talk to you about this concept of, of the neuro cycle. Before we go into that, I'd love to just know how you got into all of this.

Absolutely. Well, I've been in the field for 38 years and initially started out as a therapist and scientist. So from day one I was became a researcher and was doing clinical research and trials. And the reason I did that was I was very challenged, long story short, challenged by one of my neuroscience professors back in the 80s. And I say 80s because at that time they didn't believe that the brain could change. So the going philosophy was once you've got damage to your brain, that's it. So we were trained clinically to help people to compensate, which is a very different way of thinking about things. And I always thought that was a bit weird because. Or odd because we as humans are constantly changing, developing, growing, experiencing, learning. And that's with our mind. And the brain is the organ that the mind uses. They're not the same thing. So therefore, if our mind's changing, the brain and body must change. So that began an era of research. Starting off with that professor saying, that's a ridiculous question. When I asked him, doesn't our mind change our brain? I've done a TED talk on this. And that spurred 38 years of research and a drive to understand, what is mind, what is brain? What's the relationship? What are thoughts, what are emotions? All things that we throw around. And what does it all mean for us as humans? And obviously applied very clinically initially with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and autism and Alzheimer's and severe sex trauma and war trauma and that kind of thing. And then very soon applied it into education. And then just day to day, we've all got a mind, we've all got a brain, and we all need to learn how to manage our mind in order to direct the neuroplasticity of our brain. So I did some of the first neuroplasticity research in my field back in the late 80s, early 90s, and, you know, that really got me into and just really researching this psychoneurobiology. And it's very exciting because it's shown me over these years of 25 years of clinical practice and 38 years of research that we really are. I mean, our minds are phenomenal. And we don't talk enough about mind, we don't understand mind. It's one of those things that's put in the list of, you know, exercise, eat, manage your mind with meditation. It's kind of subsumed under one. And meanwhile, if you're not alive, your mind's not working, so your mind is your aliveness. And that's how big it is. And it needs more tension. And that's why, you know, I do what I do and decided to really make it, make the systems that I've developed accessible in a simple way to everyone, because everyone has a mind. So that's kind of a quick walkthrough.

There's so many things I want to ask you.

So.

So I still remember, even just with my son's traumatic brain injury, they're like, well, whatever he gets after the first six months is just where he's going to be. And then it was like, well, after the first two years, I'm like, this is ridiculous. Why is there any time in here that there's a, you know, a stop to how much you can heal mind versus brain. So you brought it up. What's the difference?

Well, first to just very quickly reference your son. I also was trained in that era that the first, you know, 12 months are critical and I showed. I work with people way after 12 months. I work with some people that were 10 years post post trauma and they were like non functional. Well, they were very low functioning and ended up getting degrees and becoming leading professors in South Africa and kind of thing. So there is, there is no. Your brain is always changing, your mind is always changing and there's always hope. And that's really a huge part of my messages. Doesn't mean it's instance.

That is such an important message.

Yeah, it's thank you for that because.

I called my son walking hope because you know, the doctor said at first you just have to let him die. Oh, and I'm sorry.25% chance he'll make it. Well, fortunately none of us are good listeners, so.

Good. I'm glad you didn't listen.

Yeah, right. So we didn't listen and I figured, well, if he's still alive, we still have a chance. As long as he stays alive, we can figure out something. You know, all my friends are doctor so we can surely figure this out.

Yeah.

But it has been very interesting because the other side of that of course is if you tell someone that they can't change their brain, then that's what they'll believe. So you know, it's just interesting that you even question the professor because you know, when you're in school, that's, that's what they tell you and that's what you study and that's the key to the test. And you know, you don't question this and thank God you did because you know, you think of the poor patient and fortunately Grant, we would usher anyone out of the room that would tell us what he was never going to.

Be able to do.

Out of the room. Well, right, because, well, I believe thoughts create that you can only get as far as you believe and you know, you get what you expect. So I was like, oh no, no, no, he's going to be 110%. But you think how many people were told, oh, you know, if you have a brain injury, it's the first year, it's the first six months, it's the first two years. And so many people after Grant and what we did for healing were like, oh, it's just too late for me. Right. So I'm really glad to hear you saying out to the world, it is never too late. You can always change your brain. And but so now let's go into well, brain, mind.

Well, you were the perfect parents and exactly what I would do with my parents. And I can tell you thousands of stories that are similar to yours where the parents didn't listen, where they were told their children were vegetables and they didn't. And they literally were told that. And thank God doctors don't say that anymore. But anyway, so well done to you and your, your situation is a classic case of why I did the research I did because I decided this is no good. We cannot have a philosophy like this driving us. And it's been A swimming uphill, B literally swimming uphill. First, I'm a woman in science and second, I'm going against the natural grain and I'm currently still. Because you know, even though we now understand neuroplasticity, and I'll explain this all in a moment, we Also, in a 40 year paradigm of okay, the brain's now the most important thing, so your brain made you do it. So if you have any symptoms, emotional symptoms, they likened to a physical illness which they, not they, they symptoms of something that you've gone through versus an actual illness, even though there's a neuro, neurophysiological response. So let me explain. I'm going to hold up a brain for the listeners. I'm holding up a brain in a skull, it's not a real one. Okay. So you could just think of your own brain in your own skull. And we are not our brain. And that's probably the most important thing to understand is that you're not your brain. Your brain is part of your physical, your physical body. Your brain and body together make up around about 1 to 10% of who you are as a human. The difference between you and I being alive and having this conversation and a dead person is your mind. So your mind is this phenomenal aliveness that we have as humans that enable us to experience the world, all the good and the bad and the ugly and all the rest of it. And so our mind is this force. It's literally a force that we can describe psychologically and we can describe neuropsychologically, we can describe with physics and as we advance with these, these, these fields, we understanding more and more. So on the most simple level, your mind is the 90 to 99% of you and it's the part that is what your aliveness, that's your ability to experience life. How do you process life through your mind. And what does that mean? Well, right now you're listening to me and I'm speaking and you're hearing sound waves. And if you're viewing this, you've got electromagnetic light waves. There's a whole bunch of electromagnetic quantum energy that's happening in this discussion. And it' mind field that literally absorbs that and pushes that into the brain. So the brain is the responder. There's an incredible relationship between mind and brain. So there's this force literally that enables you to process the world. You push that into your brain and your brain then responds on an electromagnetic, chemical, genetic level and converts the experience into physical substances in your brain that look like trees, which are thoughts, which are built onto neurons. And I'm holding up a little tree in a pot and that's literally what we are building 8,000 to 10,000 times a day, because that's more or less average amount of experiences that we have in a day while we're awake. And every experience, from the email you read to the social media post, to the discussion you're listening to now, to the conversation with your loved ones, to the meeting you attended, to all the things you, every single experience, including what you eat, exercise, etc. Is all processed through the mind into the brain as a physic, as protein structures. So these, this tree is made of proteins and chemicals and the experience is stored as data and emotions and feelings, et cetera, in vibrations in the proteins. I mean, that's how technical we can get. And then as soon as it's in your brain, it sends, your brain sends a message to the rest of your body to change your DNA. So it's also impacting every cell of your body. And that's why we have body memory. That's how when people experience trauma and they recall the trauma, they're feeling all the sensation. That's why we have yoga and bodywork and all that kind of stuff. Emdr, which is pulling it out of the memory, out of the cells and memories, are the branches on the thought tree. So the thought is the whole concept. So COVID 19 let's look at a toxic thought. There's a healthy one and there's a toxic one. So I'm holding up a wiry looking tree now. So every experience we have is either healthy green tree or toxic. This toxic wiry looking tree. The source of anything is the root system, like a tree. Just think of a tree. You plant the seed, the roots grow, the bra, the trunk grows, the branches grow as we're talking now I am sowing, putting the seed and you introduce me. That's the seed as we talking. That's all the information, all that data is being converted by your mind into the root system. And then your unique thinking, feeling, choosing, which is the psychology aspect of your mind, interprets what I'm saying based on all your history and experience and anything you know about the subject into the branches of the tree. So the roots of the tree are the source of the information and the branches are your interpretation, how you uniquely think, feel and choose. All of this is data, emotions, data, everything that happened, feelings, etc. Choices, all of that's encapsulated. And then the root system and the branch system then are what you say and what you do. So essentially as humans, we are experiencing, building this into the brain and the body body, it goes into the DNA brain, it goes into these trees and it also is in the mind. So if you look at the little in using Zen caster now there's a little, these little lines going as we talk, that's kind of like what it looks like in the mind area. So we've got waves of energy that are storing this. That's nothing weird. We all understand gravity. Gravitational fields keep us from floating. What they do now know from advanced science is that we also have unique gravitational fields around each of us as a human. And we have an electric electromagnetic fields all kind of blended together. This is work even done by Einstein, the photoelectric effect and how we generate photons. And it's all related to that. But we see that when a person's dead that goes. So it's a very significant power source of power, energy. It's like plugging your computer in to charge it. Your mind is what actually charges up your brain and your body. So if you see your mind as this force, this charging force, as well as the psychological think, feeling, feel, choose. What does your mind do? It thinks, feels and chooses. And, and it generates all this electricity and everything through your brain and body. That's what we sing. So as a neuroscientist, I use things like qeeg. If it was a dead person, we wouldn't be able to have it. We wouldn't have a response on the qeeg. But someone who's alive, there's a response because they are responding to events and things in life and it's going through the brain. You put an EKG on an alive person, you get a response, on a dead person, you don't. So the responses you're getting are related to the force of mind activating brain and body. So that's what we call psychoneurobiology now. I know it's like a mouthful, but why, and why is it significant? Hugely significant. Because if our mind is us, our aliveness, it means that we can actually have the level of agency. So we have a messy mind, which is our experimental mind, which is totally okay to have. It's part of our how we design, it's all how we do life stuff. So it's, it's our experimental mind. So I don't know what's coming up next, nor do you. We don't know the events and circumstances of life, so we don't know what the next email conversation is that's going to come up. But what we, so we can't control that, but we can control our response. So our mind experiences. So maybe you get out of this and you have a conversation, you end up having an argument. That's our messy mind because you're just responding, I mean reacting. But then we can do something else. We have a wise mind. We have this internal core wide full of optimism, wise mind nature that enables us to stand, stand back and say, okay, my words had a negative impact on those people. Why, why did I react like that? In other words, we can become these thought detectives. We have this phenomenal wise ability in us to observe our own thinking. We all do it. We're doing it right now. We're using a wise mind just to have this conversation. So my whole premise is that we need to get our wise mind talking to our messy mind. And messy mind, we need to give it permission to. It's okay, it's okay to mess up. It's okay to get depressed, angry, worked up, anxious. These are all very, very normal human responses. You're not crazy, you don' a brain disease. If you're depressed, you are responding, you have a response. It's a warning signal of something that's going on in your life. These are, these are cause someone who's, who's going through repeated war trauma, they're going to interpret their life very differently to someone who's not. So that's going to show up in their life as potentially aggression and withdrawal. And so all the symptoms, PTSD is just a description of this. It's not who you are. It is a description of a symptom, a cluster of symptoms that you have because of the trauma you've experienced. So that goes kind of full circle around to when you're, when you're in someone laying labels and tells your son you can't do it. That is, that is, that literally is wired into your brain. The source is someone telling you you can't do it. But you as parents said no, you can do it. And you've, you know, you counted that so but if you live into the I can't do it. That's how you, that's what someone's telling you. That's what you interpret I'm shame, I'm useless, I can't do it. That's how you'll show up. And that because that's contrary to our neurobiology, which is wired for love and our optimism bias, which is all survival based survival is not the survival's this. We then will reject this on a neurological. Our immune system will reject this because it's a real physical thing. We have a physiological response in our body, et cetera, et cetera. This shortens our telomeres which ages our cells, which, this affects our cortisol. I mean there's a million different things and I talk about some of those in my book. In the first half I put a simple summary of my most recent clinical trials. But so yes, whatever you experience with your mind, if it's established as a wiring in your brain and in your DNA and your telomeres and your mind, the little waves of your mind, that is creating a very challenging environment in your brain and your body. Now I'm holding up a model of the brain and the body. These, if we keep these and don't manage our mind, don't manage our toxic habits and our traumas and our, and those that are staying their volcanic nature, they're going to explode. They are increasing the vulnerability of the body by a factor of. And the brain by a factor of 35 to 98% increased vulnerability to disease. So it's not a matter of I get, I have a toxic thought, I have an argument I'm going to get, get cancer. It's not quite like that. It is cumulative over time as we constantly bombard our brain and our body and mind with these unmanaged thoughts and unmanaged issues in our life. That's why we need therapy and support and counseling and to deal with our stuff. As we don't deal with them, we increase vulnerability and that increases your chance of dying earlier from a disease. And we see that we are in an era with such advanced technology, such advanced medicine, but we're in an era where people are dying 8 to 25 years younger than they should now in 2021, from diseases that are preventable lifestyle diseases. So if you constantly are unmanaging your mind just in some and you don't know how to. No one showed you. And you're suppressing your thoughts because you're too scared to say, hey, I've got depression because it's so stigmatized and you know you've got a story, you don't have it of depression. You have a story that's manifesting as depression. Depression is a warning signal showing that there's an imbalance and survival threatened. When we see it like that, we can, then that's our wise mind saying, hey, this is not. This is not. I am not depression. I am depressed because of X, Y and Z. As soon as you shift that perspective, you shift your neurophysiology. 1400 neurophysiological responses in your brain and your body will work for you. And you actually can go into that wise mind state and say, okay, I feel depressed. There's a reality, there's a reason, it's okay. People have depression since the beginning of time in varying degrees. This is a human response. It's not that I'm crazy and have a brain disease and have to live with this the rest of my life, which will make you feel worse. It will make you feel hopeless. People are dying, dying from lack of hope, deaths of despair, dying younger. But you keep this, your vulnerability increases. If you keep living with I'm no good, I can't this, I'm shame, I'm this, I'm clinically depressed. That is daily increasing your vulnerability. Eventually you will get some cardiovascular issues or you may have hypertension and get a stroke or whatever, but it's different for everyone. But eventually, over time, your body weighs down. And that's what I'm trying to help people to understand. You can't change your story. What happened to you is valid. It needs to be heard. You need to be able to express it. You need to have the opportunity to deconstruct. It never goes away, but you can at least make it work for you and take the sting and the pain out of it and redesign it in your brain and body that it actually works for you and not against you. So it becomes this reconceptualized thought where the pain is. Now I'm going to pull a little. I've got a holding up a tree and I'm putting a little piece of the tree out physically. And that's a tiny little green thing that I've pulled out of a big green tree. And it is now the converted Reconceptualized pain that you've worked through. It's changed. It's still your story. You're still going to cry when you talk about it, but different. You've now it's happened to you, but you've changed what's happened in you. And that's pretty much a synopsis of what I'm trying to do with my work long. Holy smokes, Holy smokes in there. Your brain was processing non stop.

I know, I'm like, I don't think I blinked.

No, you didn't. You just stayed. You were amazing.

Quite something.

I, I, okay, it's a different angle. It's a different angle.

It's so good. I listening to this and thinking about my son and thinking about my like, I think anyone listening right now is applying this. And of course, the big question I went, well, what a perfect book title you had of cleaning up your mental mess. I'm like, okay, obviously I want to clean up the messy brain and you know, activate my wise brain. And how the heck do we do that?

Exactly. And that's what I spent 38 years working with. So when I was challenged by that professor and they said, you can't, I thought, okay, how much going to do this? I need to understand mind.

And I'm so happy that you're one of those people that when you get challenged, you decide that, you know, oh.

Yeah, I'll show you.

Actually, I actually should, but that's actually true. That's a good point. But yeah, I keep on, I mean, I'm challenged all the time by these concepts and every challenge.

You know, it's. When I was in at ucla, my English professor told me that I was a terrible writer. That's why I became an English major stranger and started writing books. So you just see, you know.

Yeah, that one's. You should go back and tell, you should go back and show them your books and say, yes, I was a terrible writer. I only have a few New York Times bestsellers, but you know, never mind.

Yeah. How about you?

It shows you that that's the thing we can develop. Intelligence is something that's not fixed. Your mind is constantly changing. Your brain is constantly changing. And that is really what neuroplasticity is. Neuroplasticity is the, the malleability of the brain. But the brain doesn' change on its own. If someone's dead, their brain's doing nothing. I mean, I know I keep coming back to this, but that's how easy it is to kind of process if you Think a dead brain does nothing but alive. I'm experiencing something new. I'm not the same as I was before I started speaking to you. I've had another experience. That experience has now changed my brain again and I've now learned new stuff. I've progressed in a different way. I know another whatever you constantly changing. And that was what drove me to understand, okay, well, what is this? What is a thought? What are memories and all that stuff. And in that process I started understanding the neuroscience and the psychoneurobiology. And so even I've developed a system that is five steps. It's not a magic quick fix. Nothing's a magic quick fix. What I have understood is that things take time and that I've tried to work out, okay, what is the time? Everyone says, oh, it takes time to heal and blah, blah, what is that? What does it look like? So I'm very practical. So what do you do and what does it look like? And that's what the neuro cycle was birthed out of. It was birthed out of the theory of that. First I developed a theory, then I developed systems and techniques that were tested meticulously over the years. I even spent. I don't do work in the lab, I do work with real people. So I literally almost underground like a mall for almost 15 years where I just worked with different. In different countries, different places with different people, different socioeconomic strata. I was in the apart worked in the apartheid regime, that terrible, terrible time in South Africa and the transition when Mandela came to power and the post apartheid era. I was working in those areas that were so the disadvantaged areas for three days a week for 25 years. And that's where I learned most of my understanding of humanity and resilience. So all of that gave birth to a system that's. That I often likened to Amazon. And it was. Think of Amazon. It is a phenomenal delivery system. That's what it really is. It's a pro. It's a system that's been developed that delivers anything anyway, literally. And it's extremely efficient. That's what I've developed. The neuro cycle is kind of like an Amazon. Now think about Amazon can deliver anything. The neurocycle can deliver anything as well. It's basically teaching you how to get your wise mind, talking to your messy mind and making the changes that you need to do in your life to deliver what you want in your life, basically and to help you accept things like, like uncertainty and not maybe understanding why someone's done something to you. I Mean, how do you ever process a rape? There's no lesson to be learned. There's only healing to be processed and an uncertainty to be accepted. And there's a lot of teaching in the wellness industry that if you go through really bad stuff, you've got to forgive and you've got to learn the lesson, and that's how you'll move forward. You can't tell someone who's raped to learn a lesson. What lesson is there? The. The thing that you've got to do is be able to process and accept, this is what's happened to me. But I change. I own what is in me. And so the neurocycle has been birthed out of that. So it doesn't replace therapy. You can use cbt, act, any wellness technique, meditation, all of it. You can use all of it. But the whole thing is that a lot of us are doing these things, but we're not doing them in a psychoneurobiological way, which means we're not using the correct delivery system. And if you don't, if any system, if anything, in Amazon, if any of the systems are disrupted, things don't get delivered. As we saw over Covid, we had an issue where things got disrupted. So what I'm saying is that if you put whatever you do into the correct delivery system, you're going to get more out of it because you're delivering it correctly to the brain and the body, because it's mind, brain, body, and then body, brain, mind. And we've got to get that cycle going. And so things like EMDR and all those can be all used within the system. But the big thing here, just very quickly, before I dive into whatever level of depth you want to go. But if you think of it, you can go three weeks without food, you can go three days without water, you can go three minutes without oxygen, but you can't even go three seconds without your mind working. So your mind is what you go to sleep with at night, dream with at night, have nightmares at night, regenerate your body. You wake up with your. You eat with your mind, you go work out with your mind. You make decisions about what you're going to eat and how you're going to work out with your mind. In fact, the effectiveness of a workout's based on your mind. You can use up to 90% of benefit of your workout in the DNA of your cells. If your mind is not managed, if you're going with a bad attitude to that workout, if you're eating food with, like, totally worked up and fighting with someone. You're eating this really healthy farm to table meal. You can lose up to 86% of the nutrition just because of your state of mind. Because your mind is driving the effectiveness of how your digestive system works, how your muscles are working, et cetera, et cetera. So we don't. If we understand that impact, the driving force is mind and if we know how to kind of corral that driving force then we can actually then direct the neuroplasticity of our brain and we can start turning things around. And this is definitely not positive thinking, this is definitely not positive psychology. This is definitely not self help. That's just instantaneous stuff. This is, is basically a lifestyle. This is a lifestyle of I'm with my mind, I wake up. You're the one who wakes up with your mind in the middle of the night and you're worrying about stuff. You're not with your therapist or you're not with. Maybe you don't have someone around you that you can talk to. You've got to know how to manage your mind in those moments. As well as dealing with those traumas and those toxic habits and building the new habits. There's a process involved and that's what the neuro cycle is. It's the delivery system. It's how you corral the power of the mind to get wise mind talking to the messy mind.

I'm totally signed up. So, so this, so this process, like how can you kind of give an overview?

Absolutely. What's a super easy entry level into this is in the book on page. I don't know what page it is. These are. I've got a chart. Here we go. It's on page. For those that people that do have the book already, it's page 181. But basically there's a chart in the second half of the book.

And just for everybody listening, this is called cleaning up your mental mess. If you're not able to watch, if you can watch the video, she's got all sorts of fun props. It's cleaning up your mental mess. Is this the book?

Absolutely. And these chart, the first half of the book explains kind of the stuff I've been telling you. And the second half is what is the neurocycle and how does it work? With tons of examples, how to use it for big T trauma and small T trauma and acute trauma and toxic habits and building new habits. And I know you teach people how to build new lifestyle habits and there's also. That's a perfect overlay I'm looking at.

I'm looking at this as this is the foundation for everything it seems like to me.

So it's an overlay. It's if you're alive, you need to know how to direct what you've. Your aliveness. This is pretty much teaching you to do that. So as you start using it for like the big stuff like traumas and things, you, the system, then you start seeing, oh, I can use this all the time. I mean we had a situation today where we had quite a major. When I was still doing clinical research and I had a major issue with our. We needed. We thought we had lost a whole lot of data from a trial and like you don't want to lose data and that obviously can be recovered. But I mean immediately I had like a panic attack. This is. So I did the neuro cycle within. Honestly within 5 seconds I was back under control and would be solved. It was with my team. And that's the kind of thing. So you can apply it all the time because it's basically how am I going to get my wise mind working? When you need to solve a crisis, you need wisdom. You don't need chaos in your mind. And you also need to accept that these experimentation. There's so much harshness in the mental health message at the moment of, you know, if you. Even though they're trying to destigmatize, but it is. If you have a mental health issue, they consider it a disease and then there's no space for that. People think you're crazy, people avoid you, people think you're different, people think you may be dangerous. That's terrible because all of 100% of people are battling with our mind, depression, anxiety, et cetera, all normal. So that's kind of part of the philosophy. So essentially the process is you still do all the meditation and the breathing, all those are extremely important because they work on the neurochemistry and the neurophysiology and the brain body integration and the mind. Brain body integration. So I call that brain preparation. The problem comes in, in that you can't just solve, manage an overstressed life or, or the challenges we've been put through in Covid and the mental health issues that. That has increased anxiety has tripled anxiety or everyone experiences, but extreme anxiety has tripled. And when I say everyone meant just very quickly, when I say everyone experiences anxiety, depression, et cetera. Let's level the playing fields. No one's exempt. If you think of this on a scale of 0 to 10 on one side and 0 to minus 10 on the other side. Most of us hover around the -4 +4 anxiety state. So things go up and down. So I had a high extreme anxiety state with that loss of data potential. And then I calmed down, I went back to plus 4 when I found it, I was super excited. In fact, plus 10, I was so excited. So you know, we move. That's all manageable, kind of like levels out. But sometimes we have an accumulation of things that throw us down the scale into the minus 5 to 10 and that. And that can result in extreme anxiety, depression, panic attacks, even things like disassociation. Extreme states still doesn't mean you're mentally crazy. It just means that you broken and you need to process that and heal through the various different modalities. But you still need mind management. So you still need to be able to manage your mind and understand. So that philosophy of accepting what you're going through and recognizing those symptoms as warning those anxiety, depression, et cetera, as warning signals as opposed to illnesses, as helpful messengers telling you something to prompt you to become a thought detective is very overarching in the philosophy of the neuropsychical. So everything's okay. All of us have gossiped at times, all of us have felt guilty, all of us. It's that philosophy. It's be kind to yourself. It's stand back and observe yourself. Which is called the multiple perspective advantage. So you don't dive into management of your life with a hard. I've got to compete, I've got to beat. I've got to get this right. I've got to let hardness on yourself has to go because it just destroys your physiology and resilience. It's all about. It's okay, I'm a human, I'm messing up and it's part of my neurology. I'm allowed to mess up. It's actually part of my design. So now I've got. Got to what? What is also part of my design is managing the mess. So it's very important you come into it with that. Then each step has been meticulously, that's all been studied. So then, so that's the attitude coming in as kind, accepting, helpful messenger. It's okay. Then you prepare your brain and your body and that's where you can do like breathing and meditation and tapping and havening. And in the app, I have a neurocycle app that goes, that you can get, that's got the neurocycle in it as well, where I literally walk you through like therapy in there. I do a little two to three minute preparation, brain preparation, different little exercises that you can do. And there's examples in the book, but I mean, you've got, there's a host out there. You can find a million different exercises. The point is, prepare your brain before you just dive in. If you're doing a big work, like working on a trauma, prepare your brain and then you go into the neurocycle and the neurocycle. Each step is systematic. As you do each step, it's been designed that you, that you activate the two sides of the brain. So for those of you listening, you can just put your hands on your, on your front of your head, above your eyes. What you want is, you want coherence between the two sides of the brain. We have 200 different little areas across our brain that are specialized uniquely for you. And when you think in your unique, you think, feel and choose in your unique way, you activate those. And what we want is a very nice balance of energy in the form of brain waves, theta, delta, alpha, beta, gamma, high gamma, high beta across those areas in the pattern that works for you. And that, and that comes from your own wise mind. As you step into your wise mind, you get this flow. So even if you're in chaos and depression, when you step into a wise mind, the overarching pattern that in your brain will be one of, of this clarity of this, of this brainwave activity that is going to help you process, which then increases blood flow and oxygen and then sends a message to you, the rest of your neurophysiology. So it kind of controls the cortisol and the inflammation and the, you know, the heart palpitation. So you get a beautiful downstream effect and you start all these, your body starts working for you instead of against you. Doesn't mean that you've solved the problem yet. You still may be gasping with fear, totally depressed, not able to move, but you've shifted your physiology enough a little bit at a time to start getting more resilience, to be able to face the issue. And so each step has been designed to help to increase the levels of this more and more interaction between the two sides of the brain, the 200 sections of the brain, the physiology between the brain and the body and all that stuff. And even down to the level of telomeres, which are on your chromosomes, which are very important in cell division. And we're making a million plus cells every second. And the quality of those cells is dependent on our mind management. So that's all very Important to come in overarching attitude. Then the steps are really simple. Each step you're going to understand when you hear it. But when you do it, as you get into the system, you'll start seeing the depths and complexity. The first thing is to gather awareness. The second thing is to reflect. The third and fourth step are specific right steps. The first one's like a vomit. You just literally vomit on the page in this branched format. And the fourth written step is an organizational, almost like a mental autopsy step. And the first step is a closure point. It's like an action to con. That's the work I've done today. Now I stop. You're not meant to be doing heavy work all day long. That leads to rumination and overthinking and make you even more depressed. And our brain also runs out of energy. You need to restore your brain. So you've got to limit the time that you spend doing heavy work. So when you use the neurocycle for heavy work, it's limited amounts of time, 15 to 45 minutes max. When you use a neurocycle to just day to day living, you can do it all day long and then you're doing it in little five seconds or a minute long bursts just to manage something. So maybe for example, you read a social media post and this wave of jealousy comes up and it overwhelms you and now you feel mad and angry and useless and all the rest of it. Instead of it disturbing the rest of your day, you can do a quick neuropsych to gather awareness of those emotions you're feeling, of your behavioral symptoms, of your physical symptoms, of your perspective and then going to reflecting. Why do I feel like this is a reason? If you're feeling envious, there's a reason. This is the most beautiful thing and hopeful thing. Everything you experience has a reason. It's there somewhere. So if you're feeling this, then you'd start asking in the reflect question. You'd start asking questions like, okay, well why do I keep feeling this? Is this a pattern? You know, am I doing this? When am I? And then you start gathering, asking, answering and discussing. And then you limit the time. So the beauty of the thing is you'd spend like, let's say it's a, let's say it's the 15 to 45 minute session and it's a, it's like a heavy trauma that you're working through and you recognize you're in such a depression you can't get out of bed or you're so anxious that you, you just can't even function. So there's a very clear pattern that is creating dysfunction. And that's when you would do the 15 to 45 minute neuro cycle daily. And you do it over 21 days. For the first 21 days you do the 15 to 45 minutes or five steps, but you're not finished there. You have to then do another 42 days at least. So another taking you up about nine weeks, 63 days where you do just basically step five. And what the logic there for the time frame is, and I was talking about time earlier on, is that that's kind of how long it takes to re unwire and rewire our brain. Otherwise these patterns, if you don't spend long enough, they just keep coming back and you keep falling back and you feel stuck. So to rewire a pattern you have to use your wise mind to gather awareness which is the first step of these patterns in your life and the detail of those patterns. And then you've got to pull them apart, you've got to reflect on them, to deconst them. Ask on to discuss the why, why am I having this why, why, why? And then write that down. The first writing phase, as I said, is very, it's kind of like this mind dump. You just throw words on the page, but you put them on branches and it's incredible when you start in the middle of the page with a circle and you just grow these branches like a tree and just put words on these branches, it just reveals, it draws your introspective levels to another, another depth and it pulls the sides of the brain together that you pull stuff out of your non conscious mind that you didn't even know was there. So it starts helping you dig into the wisdom of your non mind. And the more you do it, the more you see this happening. At first it feels like weird, but as you do it more and more it's one of, it's incredibly powerful and insightful. We would have, when I was still practicing, I'd have patients that had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that had completely broken because of terrible, terrible abuse. And they had like five or six personalities and they were non functional. Through this process of neuro cycling and this is extreme. We would, I would take them through the process and in the, in the medico part where they're writing, we would see them shift between the different personalities. Now we had a visual because you write it down and we'd be able to say okay, look, there's the shift. And that would Be that. That would be the turning point where they would see, okay, that's what I've shifted. That's how I've disassociated. Now I can reconnect. And we all sometimes do that. We. To cope, we have all these patterns, you know, so that's the extreme level. Now you can use it on this, these. These levels where you can help yourself. And then, you know, the fourth step is then to try and make sense of all these things that you put on the page. So you come in and you find triggers and patterns and antidotes and, you know you're not going to solve this on day one. On day one, you may just get to the point of, okay, I'm depressed, like, a lot. These are my physical symptoms. This is my perspective. This is. I think I'm doing it. There's something going on. I think it's got something to do with something that happened in childhood or maybe it's at work. I don't know yet, but there's something going on. And your final act of reach would be, okay, I'm not depression. There's a reason. And that's a fantastic act of reach. By day seven, you're starting to see, okay, I'm experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety and frustration because of. And you're starting to see maybe some of the roots. By day 21, you've got a pretty good handle on the main reason why you're expressing that. And you've deconstructed this on a neuroscientific level. What's happening is that as you gather awareness and reflect and do the two levels of writing and the active reach, and you do this sequentially, you are pulling this brain protein structure tree thing into your conscious mind. At the same time, you're pulling up from your body what's stored in your DNA. And as soon as you're away, a beautiful neuroscientific thing happens. These branches become weakened, totally weakened, which means you can change them. So you now get agency. So instead of a suppressed thought getting more toxic and controlling you, you now are controlling that issue. You swap the power balance, and as soon as you feel more in control, you can then look at that toxic issue and all the barriers that it presents and you can start saying, okay, what is this? What is going on here? And you can start finding the reason. A very important thing to do as you're doing this is to go into literally like a therapeutic mode. You can even often suggest, I used to do this with my Pat. Put two chairs next to each other. And you sit in one and you sit in the other, you in both. But one of you is the messy mind. One of you is the wise mind. And the wise mind is sitting and holding the hand of the messy mind, saying, it's okay, it's okay, you're okay. Let's talk about this together. And you use, you, you don't say I, you don't say I am depressed, you say you're feeling depressed, you're feeling frustrated. Let's gather the wind, let's gather those symptoms. You know, so it's a shift. So there's a lot of that languaging that enables us to shift and get into our wise mind. All this sort of distancing and separation and multiple perspective advantage. These things I'm describing kind or creates a different neurophysiological mindset that enables you to have more resilience. Now your mind's incredibly brilliant and your brain is brilliant. Is your brain is structured in a phenomenally complex ways. You can't say your brain's brilliant because it doesn't do anything unless you are alive. But it's structured in such a complex way to match your brilliance. So when you are and your natural brilliance is drawing you towards survival to get through the tbi, to get through this trauma, to, to survive, to just have a life that you feel a level of peace, that you can have a fair. You know, we all can accept everything's not going to perfect all the time, but we don't want to be in the state where we feel like I just can't cope. We want to feel, okay, this has happened. How can I get through it that we don't feel completely crushed? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about here. How can we do that all the time? And that a huge part of that is the recognition of how do I access the wise mind? And a lot of spiritual teachings and stuff will talk about, you know, the breathing and the yoga and all that, as I said, is, is I'm not eliminating it. It's essential to get the physiological body working with brain and mind. But you can't just bring it up, you have to bring it up and you have to do something with it. So the brain preparation is helping to bring it up and get your body physiologically ready. Neurophysiologically, the gather awareness is bringing it up. So these become malleable and changeable and then the balance as you meticulously work through the five step process over the 63 days, you then are Going beyond. So it's beyond just awareness. There's a lot of research showing, and my research shows it too. If you just become aware of stuff and it throws you, I can't handle this. And you shove it down, it goes back even more toxic than before. These are volcanoes. Eventually the volcano will erupt. Eventually the volcano will erupt and the lava will pour out. But the beauty of that is even if you have done that, you can still repair. Obviously you want to try and be proactive as much as possible. But if it's already happened and the lava's pouring out the volcano, eventually the volcano runs out. So then when you start going to therapy, in a sense you are, and you do this mind management, in a sense, you are allowing the suppressed volcano that's been bubbling to explode. You're allowing the lava to come out. And eventually what happens where there's been lava, generally you get beautiful green, incredible green fields growing over the lava. We see this in Iceland. I was there a few years ago. We drove over an area that was an active volcano. It was beautiful. That volcano has now erupted, so it's lava. But in a few years time it will be green fields again. And that's kind of the concept that's happening over here. Okay, so that's a lot that I've said and I can, I can talk a lot.

This is fabulous. And clearly, obviously everyone needs this book and the app can guide you through.

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If someone goes through this, so they say they grab this pressing issue in the messy brain, that I'm assuming they notice something and I'm assuming as they go through that it's probably tied into a whole lot of old trauma around.

Oh, yes, there's always a lot of.

There'S, there's some symptom that they're like, whether it's like anger, jealousy, sadness, anxiety. And they're like, okay, let I'll dive into that. They go through the 63 days, they really uncover the root of it. They go through all, you know, Your process is, are they, is this done or do they then get the next thing and go through the 63 days? Like it seems like this is kind of an ongoing.

This is an ongoing thing. Yeah, it's ongoing because you can clear these things.

Like let's go through the 63 days. You kind of clear that. And I just wonder like if you had that trauma, how much that one trauma is creating all sorts of different things in your life.

You, you've hit the nail on the head. So what will happen is, I mean Sometimes in that 63 day cycle you might just. I'm holding up the tree now, now a toxic tree and I'm just pointing to one corner of the tree. So the root system you may only, that may be all that you deal with in that 21, the 61st 63 day cycle. You then see, oh, okay, there's more and you come back and do another and then you come back and do another and then you come back and it's finally you kind of okay, well I think that's all of it with that. But this is how finally the tree gone.

Like do we finally get through the tree?

Beautiful question. So eventually, see what happens is this tree survives on energy. So you got to keep it, give it, give it energy. So if I now I'm pulling it apart, the energy, the principle, the law of energy is that it's always transferred, it's never lost. So that I'm transferring that. So by deconstructing, going through the five steps of the neuro cycle daily, I'm taking energy from this and I'm rebuilding a healthy thought. So it's gone from there to the. So this is still my story. This is where I pulled out part of it that that dark toxic tree is now tiny little green tree inside. How I want my life to look, how I want the future to play out, how I want to react. And that's what you do over the sort of 21 days where you do the in depth, 45 minutes a day kind of work. 15 to 45 minutes. The second, 42 days, the second sort of phase, you spend around about one to seven minutes practicing this new, this new behavior, this new way of thinking, this new thought tree. So to turn it into a habit. So automatization is the scientific word for habit formation. We don't change a behavior unless you form a habit. We all know that. So how long does it take to form a habit? Not 21 days. It takes 21 days to kind of work out what we're supposed to be changing it into. And then you're going to spend the other 42 days practicing using that to give the behavior change. And that behavior change may be just one tiny thing. It's just. It may be one part of the trauma response that you have. And that's where you quite rightly said, now you see, hey, I can see that this has impacted that. So you go and start that again, and then you keep going, and then something traumatic happens in your life. Covid hits us, and that changes things. Now there's another trauma. In other words, trauma is part of our life and that we don't speak about sufficiently either. These little and big traumas. And I mean, just caring for someone maybe who's sick in your life or just repeatedly having arguments, going through a phase, maybe in your marriage where you've got a lot of arguments, or being in a work environment where you have a difficult colleague or. I don't know, I'm just kind of putting things out the hat or just reading politics. Just some, you know, if you get too immersed in politics and the arguments that in these politicians that definitely aren't. Come on.

Even last year was like one trauma after the next. It was like, well, that's why I.

Say we've all got big covert trauma trees.

And then there's generational traumas.

Absolutely. That part.

Some of the racism issues.

Racism. The racism issues. Oh, my gosh.

You know, and. Oh, my gosh. So super exciting. When you grab the book and I'm going to give you the link on how to purchase the book, you will get a workbook to help you work through this. And of course, I highly recommend grabbing the Neural cycle app as well. So you'll be able to do that@jj virgin.com. Dr. Leaf L E A L It's very, very cute how you have all the trees and the leaves and everything else.

And your name goes with that.

Like, how did you plan that?

People ask me, did I plan that? Because my. My maiden name is Beretta and I was going to keep that. And then this is kind of like, it just worked out. My husband's name is Leaf, so it just works out perfect. I know. It's so cute. People think I changed my name. I've been asked that. Very, very good name.

Me too. But mine's bit.

A little.

A little different. Virgin Leaf.

Kind of similar. There you go. All right.

Well, this was. This was amazing. What incred. Like, what. What a legacy work you put together. Like, this is incredible. I. I had no idea that. I think when my friend, Dr. Anna Kabeca was, you should meet her. I'm like, I don't know how. I haven't met her. So I super appreciate this. I hope that sometimes in the next six months we actually get to meet in person.

I hope so too.

And man, thank you for your brilliance and your work. And I'm really excited to try this myself. Not try it, work with it myself and work with it with my son because that's one of the things I've been looking at is like the trauma he's gone through and you like, we all went through it. How do we help ourselves?

You all went through it, the whole family. And there's also a chapter in the book on brain building, which a lot of this, that's a lot of that work is based on the work I did with traumatic brain injury. So that may be a really nice chapter for your son to dive into as well. And we have on the app, there's actually going to be a lot of stuff added in the apps. Free, organic, it's developing all the time. There's already a ton on it. But we'll be putting a lot of brain building exercises on as well. So it just helps all of it. Thank you. I've enjoyed this interview and so lovely to meet you. And yeah, I've interviewed Anna, she's interviewed me. So we got, as you said, some common friends there, which is great.

Well, come to Florida.

I will, I will. We actually were supposed to be there last weekend but didn't get there. But we'll be coming again in a couple of weeks, so, yeah, we come often to Florida. So I will. Thank you. Lovely to meet you. Bye. All right.

I kind of feel like saying I told you so, like, was that mind blowing or what? I don't know if mind blowing is quite the word you should be using in this example. Anyway, be sure you go to jjvirgin.com Dr. Leith, grab her book. You'll be able to get the workbook for free. Dial into that app, the Neuro cycle app, and I'd love to hear what this does for you. I've been just really focused on a meditation practice after doing a work week long Dr. Joe Dispenza workshop and now going back for number two. So this seems like the perfect thing to integrate in with that. So here's to all of our success. All right, if you've not subscribed to the podcast yet, it's easy. Go to subscribetojay.com and I'll see you next time. Bye.

Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what's Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.