Dr. Judith Orloff and John Assaraf on The Ecstasy of Surrender.

Hey friends, this is John Asraft, New York Times best selling author of Having it all and the Answer. And with me today is Dr. Judith Orloff, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA in California. And she's the author of an amazing book called Emotional Freedom which hit New York Times best sellers list. And now she's got another amazing book that's just come out. Her new book is called the Ecstasy of Surrender. And, and she did an amazing talk on TED as one of the TED talks and it has been phenomenally well received. She's appeared on the Dr. Oz show, she's appeared on the Today Show, PBS, CNN and so many others. You've probably heard her and seen her somewhere on the airwaves. And so we're going to be talking about her new book, the Ecstasy of Surrender and more importantly, why you should make a decision to own it and give a few to your friends. So great having you on with me.

Dr. Oh thank you. I'm excited to be on with you.

Awesome. So another amazing book. I have a list here of all of the stuff in the book and reviewing it was just absolutely phenomenal. I was reading this know your money type and let go of financial struggles, identify difficult people, which we all need to learn how to do better and how to cope with them. So we what was the impetus for writing this book and who's it geared towards helping?

Well, this book is geared towards helping everybody because why I wrote this book was that what I wanted most of my life because I tend to be a control freak and workaholic, is to let go more, is to surrender more rather than hold on and clench and tighten. Because what I've seen with success, my own and my patients, is that if you hold on too tightly to something when it's time to let go, it sabotages you. So it's the balance of learning when to move forward and assert yourself and then also the balance of learning how to flow like a river and letting that river bring you to your greater destiny. And surrender is a missing piece to health and wellness and success and relationships. As if you can't surrender in relationships. Let's say it's going to be a hard road to hold because it means you're not flexible. Surrender allows you to be flexible and flow and tune into your intuition. It's not defeat, failure and any kind of negative connotations that traditional society has of it. They think you're laying down your power wand at that point if you surrender. But that isn't what it is. It's where you're really owning your true power by surrendering to your heart, yourself, to the greater good and to the best relationships, and then also letting go of toxic energy, vampire relationships, nor any fear or worries that may be keeping you down or resentments that hold you down.

And I think you hit the nail on the head somewhere. And when Winston Churchill says we will never ever, ever surrender, a lot of people got that as we're never going to stop fighting. And what I'm hearing you say is that in order to really have the freedom and the ecstasy, you have to allow versus admit or defeat or stop fighting.

Yes, yes, surrender is a defeat, but it is being really smart and tuning into your flow and your intuition so that you make really good choices. And I'm interested in reading people. There's a section in the book on techniques to read people, from remote viewing to body language, to reading, emotional energy. And what you have to surrender with that is the addiction to the linear mind, that you can see everything through logic. Where as a psychiatrist and an intuitive, I combine both traditional medicine, the analytic mind, plus the intuition so that you can read people, especially in business. I think that would be really helpful, you know, to be able to read people. I mean, just one clue which is so fascinating to me. If you want to see where someone is leaning in a conference, all you have to do is look under the table and see where they're toe is pointed in terms of body language.

So you mean to tell me that we're not here just to rely on what we can hear, see, smell, taste and touch? That there's other faculties of our mind that we can tap into, like intuition and our spiritual self and we can actually grow?

Well, yeah, you see, there's more. Let's say you want huge abundance, huge success. Let's say you want love. Let's say you want freedom from worry. One must go beyond the linear mind to access those powers. And I know you believe that in terms of big success, you know, the success of the heart and external success, it involves surrender. And I used to go to years ago spoon bending parties where we were taught to bend metal with our mind. And the principle was, and we get around in potlucks. And now the principle was you hold up a fork and you yell at it, you go bend, bend, bend. But then you had to let go of any attachment to that fork bending. And it was only then that the metal bent. So the success was making the intention, then letting it go. And what people are missing is the letting it go part. They keep pushing pushing, but they don't let it go. So they don't get the kind of huge success that they want.

Well, it's interesting you say that because in some of my business growth seminars I've actually taught spoon bending. We've done remote viewing.

Oh my God, really?

And I've done the research behind it as to understanding that when, when you are in that let go state, the actually, there's actually something called the dislocation of the grains within the metal that allow the metal to become pliable. And so I wanted to know both the mystical side of it, but also I want to know the scientific side of it. And so I hired some experts to teach me that. And so when I, when I was getting into this field, I want to have both sides as well, the, the spiritual side and the non physical and the scientific side, which I know that's what you do as well, which is what makes this so amazing. I want to ask you a question. In one of the pieces I have over here to talk to you about, you talk about change our relationship to power and become more influential. And so when you say change your relationship with power to become more influential, can you elaborate on that just a little bit?

Yes, because the old version of power is reptilian brain power, survival of the fittest, you know, hold things close to your best, don't reveal any secrets, you know, but not, no abundance. There's certainly not enough room for everybody, you know, in that mode. And it's very paranoid and also ego oriented. Now I interviewed Jerry Levin in the book and he talked about how he made his transformation from corporate CEO to someone who deeply believes in surrender and spiritual life. But of course it took a rite of passage, the loss of his son. He was murdered. He was a teacher in the Bronx. He was murdered. And then Jerry got prostate cancer. And in the book I interview him and he says he was being rolled into the operating room and his company was telling him, don't tell anybody about this because it will be perceived as weakness. Illness is perceived as weakness to the competitors. So this is the old version of power. It's very heartbreaking to me that we have so little confidence in a human being to have to hide over illness because of shame and lack of power. But in my book, what I'm saying is surrender to a new form of power, a heart centered form of power where you can be hugely successful without destroying the planet and without destroying other people by getting in line with your heart and surrendering to the notion that there's a new way of doing it. And you don't have to be stuck in the reptilian patriarchal model of power. It's like old, it's retro and it's boring, you know. And what I'm saying is that we can have more fun and come from a larger place with less paranoia if you can surrender to a new form of power.

And that is really a, an innovative way. A reinvention of ourselves in our paradigm of what used to be doesn't work anymore. And I think there was an era that we were high touch individuals and power meant something different. Then we went to high tech individuals. I think we're coming back to using high tech, but having high touch and authenticity through and through. And that's really redefining our sense of power and connection. That's what I'm hearing you say. Is that accurate?

That's accurate. And in the book, I want to show everyone who reads it how to do that. It's not just me, it's not just you or the corporate executive, it's everybody in their businesses. How can surrender help, help you get to a true form of power so you can have more success? What are some of the techniques and the skills to do that in everyday life? And then sometimes people have resistance to surrender because they think if I don't do everything, it won't work out. Well, if I don't hold tight, reins on everything and control everything, it won't work out. And little by little you have to see that if you allow this heart, energy and trust in something greater than yourself, who will work out beyond your greatest imagination. But the resistance, I want to say, is natural. It was natural to have resistance to surrender. But the more you try the techniques in the book, the more you'll get results. And I'm so totally results oriented because I use these techniques in my own life and if it didn't work, I wouldn't be interested in it.

I love it. Well, as soon as you said surrender, what I'm also hearing what I'm thinking people are going to say, but that's going to make me vulnerable. And, and as soon as I'm vulnerable, then obviously we're going to have the amygdala fire off and our reptilian brain is going to kick in and shut off our motor cortex and it's going to cause our right prefrontal cortex to activate, which is all the stuff that I know, you know, and cause us to want to retreat back into our safety mechanism. And so when people feel like, I'd love to do this, but there's potential fear of being vulnerable. Then what do you do when there's that fear? Fear that's looking you straight in the eye and you have the emotions of that fear, what do you do? To say it logically makes sense, but emotionally it feels awful moving towards there.

Yeah. Well, there's a section in the book on combating energy. Vampires and people who suck you dry. Of course, naturally, you don't want to surrender to them, but what you want to do is develop techniques to surrender that will help you protect your vulnerability with them. No. So I'm not saying surrender is just go with the flow with everybody. I'm not saying that it's making very smart decisions. For instance, the drama queen. Let's say you have a drama queen in your life. What you don't want to do is just surrender to that drama queen and say, oh, tell me about all your mishaps. Because you'll be there for three hours listening and be very drained. What you want to do is, number one, not ask them how they're doing. You never want to ask them how they're doing because then that opens it up. You don't want to have the eye contact or lean forward with body language. And you want to be very kind and firm and say, I'm so sorry it's happened to you. I'll hold this in my heart good things for you, and then move your body away so the body can be an instrument in terms of surrender to communication. You're making a choice. You're not being rude, but you're saying no to a person.

And that's what I love about what you've got in the book, is there's not just what the situation is, but here's some tools and techniques to how to master your own emotions, master your own life, master your thinking and your behaviors. That's really the whole key here, is not just talking about it, but here's what to do about it. Which leads me to another thing that you talk about, and that's don't absorb other people's stress. And when we're talking about not absorbing other people's stress, let's talk a bit about how not to do that.

Right. Well, in the book, I talk about a relationship empath. And what that is, is that's an emotional sponge, somebody who's open and sensitive and loving. But when you're around stress or illness, you tend to absorb it in your own body. I know because I am one, and so I've had to work a lot with that, because I used to get demolished in large groups of people or crowds because I take on the energy or the stress, and so I work with myself so I can be vulnerable. I don't want to not be vulnerable, but I don't want to absorb anybody's stress. It's none of my business, and it's a codependent thing to take it on. But there are strategies on how not to absorb of other people's stress. But number one, people have to identify if they're a relationship empath so they can go right to that section in a book and read the questions. Have you been labeled as overly sensitive in your life? Do you tend to want to replenish alone rather than with people? Do you take your own car places because you don't want to get trapped with too much stimulation and staying too long with people? Do you get overloaded in crowds when you're around someone in pain, do you tend to take it on or notice that you get exhausted or have some kind of back pain, so you literally, by osmosis, take on the energy and emotions of other people? And if you want to be successful in the business world or certainly in the healing professions, to have longevity, you have to learn strategies. So some of those strategies involve, number one, meditation, learning to breathe, center yourself. Let's say you're going into a potentially toxic meeting, and so you need to kind of surrender the fears and the stories that you tell yourself about that meeting or that person, because that's half the battle. 50% of it is you do to yourself. So you just want to clear the mind, breathe center. And there's a surrender meditation where you go inward, breathe, relax, let go, get in your heart, and then go forward into the meeting. So that brings you strength. So you're centered inside. And when you go in that meeting, you know, just to not absorb. You don't want to shake anybody's hand. You don't want to look deeply into their eyes. You don't want to hug everybody because that transfers energy from toxic people. And you want to drink water in the meeting. You want to have water because water is a purifier. And then you want to be very clear about your tone. You want to have a very kind but firm tone. But if somebody presses your buttons, you don't want to go for it. You just don't. You do not want to emotionally react, no matter what you're feeling in a business meeting or with an energy vampire, because they feed off of your energy. And so in the book, what I'VE done is I said, there are different types of energy vampires, and here's what you do about them. Here's what you surrender to, here's what you don't surrender to. And then you go out into life and you. You deal with it. And another great technique is a visualization technique where you visualize a beautiful shield maybe five inches above your body, and it's a protective shield. You know, many cancer patients do this, you know, in terms of visualization, the shield and the, you know, visualization of eating up the cancer cells and the white cells growing, you know, lots of armies of white cells.

Well, I remember when I was in my early 20s, I had severe ulcerative colitis. And I was on 25 pills a day and cornison enemas every day. And the doctors want to take about 30 centimeters of my colon out if it didn't get better. And that's when I started to study psychoneuroimmunology and I realized the power of our own minds. And I healed myself within five weeks after two years of being on medication. And I've only had one flare up. And every time I think about somebody who's got a state of disease, biggest pharmacy in the world is right there. But we haven't been given the tools to use it. And so I love that you're giving people tool after tool after tool and skills and strategies and techniques, and also a way of identifying who they are and what might be affecting them, and then how do you overcome that and how do you move forward? So that is absolutely awesome.

Thank you. And especially when you're ill, when you're ill, you need to create a positive bubble around yourself and get those energy vampires out of your space. You can't afford it. You just can't afford to have negative energy coming in. So it means you might have to surrender certain relationships, and it may mean being rude or hurting someone's feelings. But you can't afford to have controllers, criticizers, negative people draining your energy with their problems or whatever their point of view is. You need to have positive people. And part of the surrender of healing and illness is letting that love in and that positive energy in. Instead of just thinking, oh, these are nice people. It's a technique of really becoming one with it. And surrender means love, surrendering to love. And when you're healing as part of an illness, you have loved ones around you. They're your angels. They're exuding the healing force coming at you. But a lot of people don't know how to receive and part of surrender is the ecstasy that's in the title. The ecstasy of surrender is allowing all the good stuff in. You know, that's the great thing we're talking about. What not to surrender to, but what to surrender to is all the love and the positive people and the gratitude, but not the negative stories you tell yourself about illness. Illness has to be taken, surrendered a day at a time or a moment at a time. What I see with my patients is where do they start? The cortisol and adrenaline rushing through their system is they're lying in bed thinking horrible thoughts about, oh, this treatment isn't going to work, oh, I'll be in pain forever. No, negative, negative. And it's not true, probably. And so you have to surrender that by breathing, conscious, refocusing on I love my body, I'm going to harmonize with my body and heal and positive, affirming thoughts when you heal rather than let your mind drift. The drifting mind can be the enemy when it gets going. The negative mind, especially when you're healing or in pain. And you have to be aware of doctors too because they put hexes on you. I remember once years ago I hurt my ankle and this doctor said to me, you're going to be in chronic pain all your life. And I am. You know, it's like a negative thought and no, I'm not, but it takes a pretty strong person to let it go because even today I still have that thought in my mind that he said that. Now it's not true. I don't have chronic pain. But you have to beware of the negative messages that people send you. But the surrender and the tools for surrender during illness involve coming back to the moment, always reeling yourself back from whatever place that your mind has gone and focus on the healing and focus on the love. There's a chapter in the book on the divinity of the body. And as a physician I feel that many people have self loathing of the body and they don't realize it. Not just for the outside, in terms of being too fat, too thin, whatever they think they are. But it's the inside, the organs, the blood, the secretions and the subtle energy that permeates the body and extends beyond the body radiates. And so I love this chapter on the divinity of the body because I'll give you tools to begin to embrace your whole 34 dimensional self. And most people don't think about what's underneath here, but as a physician, I've had the honor of seeing a heart beating in a chest I've held the GI tract in my hands, so it's so gorgeous and incredible. And everyone is gorgeous and incredible, but you have to surrender to that. And that's so hard sometimes where people can't let that in. But the last chapter of the book is Embracing Joy, and that's part of it. I found that sometimes people have a hard time surrendering to pleasure. Like with orgasm. You have to surrender to have an orgasm. There's no way you can. But to really embrace pleasure. Not just, oh, this is nice, and it feels good for a second, but to really breathe it in and surrender to what that is. To be able to have the body filled with all that vibrant energy. That's part of surrender, too.

I love that. Well, the book is going to be another best seller that I'm sure of. And you'll be helping millions of people as you have, you know, on the TV shows and other books that you've written. And so if you're watching this right now, go to Amazon, go to your favorite bookstore, go to anywhere that you buy books, and don't pick up one book, pick up two books, one for yourself and want to give away to somebody that you love. And what I highly suggest is what? Read it and study it, share it with somebody that you love so that you can enjoy the benefits of communicating and growing together. So pick up the Ecstasy of surrender by Dr. Judith Orloff. And what I'd love you to do is if you're on my list or if you're watching this on one of our YouTube channels or anywhere, leave us a note as to how impactful this has been in your life. And let's have a little dialogue about it because it has got some amazing tools and techniques and strategies and tactics to help you enjoy your life more. And more importantly, love your life more. Dr. Orloff, thank you so much for doing this. I look forward to being a big advocate of helping you make this book a best seller.

Oh, thank you. It's just been my pleasure, John.

Thank you so much. And remember, everybody, pick up two copies, one for yourself and one to give away to somebody that you love. And remember, it's your choice to create an amazing day and an amazing, amazing life. Take care now, everyone.