Dr. Caroline Leaf (Cognitive Neuroscientist)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode.

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Hey everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every week I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. Today's guest is the world renowned Dr. Caroline Leaf. She's a cognitive neuroscientist with a master's and PhD in communication pathology. Since the early 1980s, Dr. Leaf has been leading scientific discovery in terms of the field of mental health, mental direction. She's the author of the mammoth best selling book Switch on youn brain and 18 others. We sat down and had a terrific conversation recently about her five step neuro cycle that can help us practically live out Paul's command to renew our minds and to take every thought captive at work and at home. We talked about the spirituality of science and what we can learn from about mental health from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. You're going to love this conversation with Dr. Caroline Leaf. Doctor Leaf, thank you so much for joining us.

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

Yeah, this will be fun. So for those who are unfamiliar with your work, give us the short summary of the work you do today.

Okay, so I've been in the field of mind brain research for nearly 38 years now, so almost four decades. And I have, I initially started out working in South Africa with people with extreme severe traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and Alzheimer's and autism and severe trauma from like war and emotional sexual abuse, that kind of stuff. And I developed sort of doing research in the field of neuroplasticity back in the 80s when they didn't believe that the brain could change. And I challenged that and I actually have a TED Talk about, about this where I was told by my professors in the 80s that it's a ridiculous question. And I had a couple of professors who didn't think it was a ridiculous question. And so I launched a career of basically a sort of driving passion to understand Mind and brain and the difference between the two and you know, what is thinking and what are thoughts and how do we think, feel and choose and what is memory and, and can we control this and what is our sense of agency and all that kind of stuff. And basically, 38 years later, still doing clinical research. This book, cleaning up your mental Mess is my 19th book. And it's a summary of sort of. I've got my science in there, my most recent clinical trials, but it's basically the most updated research and clinical application and simple, simple application of how you can use, how you can manage your mind and self regulate on an ongoing basis, which is essential and totally based in, if you, based in science and scripture. And I know we're going to talk about, about that, but it's pretty much, if you want a really simple summary, I teach you the science of how to renew your mind. How to capture thoughts and renew your mind and choose life, basically. So it's the science behind that.

I love it. I do want to talk about that in a minute. But first, I mean back in the 80s, I mean neuroplasticity wasn't a thing. You were one of the pioneers here. You had, and you said you had, you had professors telling you don't ask these questions, these are silly questions. What's the general takeaway for that? For us, regardless of vocation, like what advice do you give to people based.

On that experience, it's really to recognize that none of us know everything and science, nothing about life is ever fixed. Everything is constantly in a state of growth and learning. And so it's really to understand that God is the source of all knowledge, which we know. Science comes from the word sklura, which means knowledge. And we are in a constant process of discovering what that knowledge is. So we are actually all scientists. And whether we often think of science and we just think of brain science or physicists or something, but you know, whatever field you're in, if you're an entrepreneur, if you, I mean, I'm also an entrepreneur, run my own business and create new things in my business. But I'm a scientist first and foremost is in the field of brain science, but also scientists in terms of an entrepreneur. So the point I'm making is that it's constant growth. My most recent clinical trials, I've developed this system 38 years ago of how you can understand your mind and how your theory of mind and how you can manage your mind. In other words, all this renewing of your mind capturing sort of stuff. But how it looked 38 years ago to now has changed a lot because I've continued to learn new information. So the takeaway is that you don't. You never know it all. And as soon as you think that, okay, this is it, you've. You're going backwards. And it's. So it's to be constantly open, to have a mindset of, you know, open possibilities, a possibilities mindset, an expectancy mindset, a mindset of I can keep on learning and keep on changing. And the other side is that I. Huge takeaways that I don't take. I don't see failure or people telling me I can't do something as stopping me. I will. I see, you know, anything that I don't even look at failure as failure. I'll look at, okay, well, that didn't work. And what. What does work? And what have I learned from that? That didn't work. And I will deal with, like, a disappointment because it comes along with that. I don't deny it. If I set my heart on something and it doesn't happen, and I work my guts out literally to make it happen and it doesn't happen quite the way that I predicted, I will own that disappointment. I don't resent it. I don't get upset about it. I will allow myself to be disappointed and I'll go and look for, okay, what next? What can I. What can I. What is the. What is the lesson to be learned? What should I not be doing in the future to. Whatever can you see that? And that's been my driving force. Nothing stops me. But the key there, and I don't know if you heard that key there is. I do allow myself to experience the emotions that go along with something not working out. So if you feel depressed or anxious, and that's a huge part of my work, and we can dive into that in terms of mental health. And that is that it's very normal to be disappointed or sad or depressed or anxious when something happens to you or something in your business or something huge like Covid or grief, loss of a loved one and so on, that we've got to stop saying it's bad to have those emotions.

Hmm, interesting. This idea that, like, knowledge is not fixed, right? We. We don't always. We're never going to have all the answers. I think there's something theologically interesting here. I think a lot of people assume that in eternity we'll know everything, we'll get to heaven, we'll have all the answers. But, like, I don't see Any evidence for that in Scripture? Because if that were true, we would be equals with God and we won't be. Heaven's all about God's glory, right? So I think there's something, I don't know, like really interesting and motivating for me personally. It's like I don't want to know everything. I long for the day to where you in heaven we'll continue to unlock new mysteries. We'll continue to learn. Have you ever thought about this?

Well, it's just evident all around us because I really think of the scripture when you're speaking there of heaven is at hand. So I don't kind of think it's going to be going to go to a place where we got to learn more. We're going to be learning more and more all the time. We're in that state of constant learning. So it's, it's. And that's part of being human. It's part of this incredible ability that we have been made in God's image where we can think and feel and choose. I mean that's powerful and that is totally like a labor for your life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life. We're not robots. It's renew your mind, capture thoughts. All the indications are that you're brilliant and you can think and feel and choose made in God's incredible wisdom. But you're not going to, you know, it's kind of experimental because you're still learning and you're not going to be able to control events and circumstances because that's what we don't control. But we can control our reactions and that's learning process. So I see every moment of every day as an experiment and an experiment in trying to grow in my humanity and in my wired full of nature. And I don't believe that ever ends. And that's why we keep seeing changes in science. I mean, gosh, what I know about the brain now compared to 38 years ago, it's vastly different just in terms of, I mean, just every time. Like just only two or three years ago did we learn that the brain's got its own immune system. And you know, so there's just things that we thought, how memory was formed and you know, everything it's just. And it's so exciting. It's not threatening. It's absolutely incredibly exciting.

Did you know from an early age that you wanted to be a scientist? Like, what was that spark for you?

I think that yeah, from an early age I loved the whole concept of brain and I was Going to be a doctor, I was going to go into neurosurgery. It was the most sort of obvious thing for me to do because, you know, that seemed to be where I'd get because I, I love that. I just love that side of understanding how we work. And, and then I realized when I was around at, when I was, when I got into medicine, I realized, hey, I actually there was an opportunity to do another degree which was a combination of medicine and neuroscience and linguistics and psychology and, and, and it was just, well, this is an angle that I haven't considered. And it's, it's got the combination of mind and brain. And it really grabbed my interest. And at the time when I went into it, I thought, oh gosh, I'm going back into medicine. This is, this is crazy. Working seven days a week, a seven year degree cross squashed into four years. And I'm thinking, what am I doing? And, but I'm so grateful now because it really satisfied that inside of me to understand mind. Because that's really one area in science that is very, in my opinion, very neglected. They talk about mind being the hard question of science. Mind is often likened to consciousness. So they talk about the mind and brain as one thing. This is in the current era, for about 40 years now. The mind and brain they don't see as separate, which they actually are. It's impossible not to be. And there's hundreds of years of science proving that. And then they also talked about, they talk about consciousness being the hard elusive question of science because, because science has become so biologically oriented and so physically oriented. And that's good. But you can't have that without the other. And we have scientists, A lot of science has become so physical to the exclusion of looking at the non physical side, which we can address with things like quantum physics and the advanced versions of physics and that kind of stuff where you can start really getting into this. All that area, that kind of thinking just grabbed my interest and I wanted to understand more and it just drove me. And then working with, getting into my field and specializing with traumatic brain injury was, was really because there was just no research being done on traumatic brain injury because they believed the brain couldn't change. And that was all the challenge. I needed to think, okay, well, I just cannot see that the brain is different to the mind.

Yeah, you, you needed to be told, this cannot be figured out.

Exactly, exactly. And this whole thing of science, consciousness being the hard question of science and it's bandied around like this and philosophers talk about it. And these people sound like they're so smart talking about it and streams of consciousness and it's stuff, it's. And if you really listen to the hardcore scientists, consciousness is mind. It's the spirit and the soul. And that's when that really grabbed my interest. And I don't think it's the hard question, I think it's the most obvious question. So that's the question I asked myself 38 years ago and I haven't stopped and that's what has driven all my work.

I love it. All right, so I'm going to go downstairs later and talk to my 6 year old, my 4 year old about what I did today. How do I explain to my 6 year old the difference between the mind and the brain?

You could take a picture of the brain and you could also then show them that and you could also then just say look at your body in a mirror. So you could look in the mirror and say okay, there's you, you can see me, you can see you and inside your head there's a brain. And point to the picture of the brain and say that's everything that we can see and we can touch it and we can feel it. But you, if you're comfortable saying this, I would be comfortable. But if you, if you die your brain and body are going to go but you still there. So what is you? You are mind. Mind is spirit and soul. So you spirit, soul and body. So it's easy to explain it in that term. So spirit and soul is a very hard concept. But if you tell a child that you can think you thinking like how do you feel about take something what happened at school today? Or what do you feel about your, about your, your best friend or your dog or your take something that you know that they love and, and say what do you think about them? And they'll tell you something. What do you, how do you, how do they make you feel? And then what do you choose to do? Would you like to play with your dog now or so then you've, then you've just exposed them to the mind in action because you've asked him to think about something they've loved and they've responded. You've asked him that's created the. They've. So they brought up the image maybe if they dog or best friend. So that's thinking then they, then you've asked them to feel which is how do you feel about that? I love them. They make me feel happy and, and I don't feel sad and we're gonna have fun. And then say, what would you like to do now? Would you like to play with them? Would you. What would you. If you could do anything now, dog or your best friend, what would you like to do? And then you're showing them choice. You're showing them three things. That's mind. Mind is think, feel, choose. So you've shown them, you've. That you've taken them through an exercise of thinking, feeling and choosing. And then you said, okay, so that you've done. You've been thinking, feeling and choosing. And you've been doing that. And your body's. Your mouth's going and your eyes are flashing and your body's moving, but your body wasn't doing that. You were doing that. Your body was responding. So your mind is this thing all around you that enables your brain and your body to work. So brain and body are like just a small part of who you are. And your mind is this force or energy or spirit or however you want, whatever words would work for, you know, your own children that keep it alive. It's the thing that keeps it alive.

I love that you mentioned a few minutes ago you just published your 19th book, Cleaning up your mental mess. How do you define mental mess? I want to make sure we're on the same page as to what we're talking about. So define mental mess and help us understand how this is connected to our pursuit of masterful work vocationally.

Okay, so if you're a human, which you are, and if you're alive, which you are, it means that you're experiencing mental messes continually. A mental mess is essentially that we don't know all the answers. And going back to our beginning of the conversation, we constantly in a state of growth and experimentation. So in that process, process, as much as we would like to think that we know everything, we don't and we're learning. And so therefore, as we wake up in the morning and we read our emails and something upsets us, we may get thoroughly irritated and react and say something mean and nasty and then feel guilty and ashamed and pretend we didn't say it or whatever. And then you get up and you, and you get into the day and you maybe get. That's kind of upset you. So you may be a little bit irritable with the family, and then you read something on Instagram and you get a bit of imposter syndrome. And then some friend of yours that has this incredible hold over you send you an email and you find yourself compromising all your things you need to do to people, please them because they aren't really afraid and so on. And so now painted a picture of a maybe slightly extreme and then something great happens. You have this great conversation.

I don't think that's extreme. I don't think that's extreme.

Yeah, it's kind of normal.

Yeah, right.

Then you have this great conversation and you're feeling wonderful. And so you've basically swung between a mental mess and you've just done what every human does. You are trying to manage and process through your think, feel, choose. Like we just used the example with a child, with the dog or the best friend. Your mind is how you think, feel and choose. Your mind is thinking, feeling and choosing. Mind is spirit and soul. We are made in God's image. God is brilliant, as we know. So we brilliant and we have choice. We can think, feel and choose. And we are instructed very clearly to capture thoughts, capture all thoughts and bring them into captivity. Which means you've got to regulate them. You've got to, you've got, you can't capture what you're not aware of. And it's not some thoughts, it's all thoughts and you always thinking, feeling and choosing. So we're supposed to be always capturing our thoughts when we awake, when we're conscious and we're supposed to be constantly renewing them. Which in essence means that, okay, so now I get the email and I'm supposed to capture that thought of irritation and I'm irritated in response too. So I capture that and I don't feel guilt. I recognize, okay, I'm irritated. It may be maybe I've got a reason, maybe I don't, but I'm going to embrace that and I'm going to see, okay, well why am I feeling irritated? Well, they said this, this and this and that was really unfair. So I feel like a victim and I feel like I have to defend myself. And, and you, you know, so you go through this process. It's a five step process. Then you're. The concept I've developed is the neuro cycle with how you manage your mind in those moments. And so you find the so instead of it just like owning your day and you just getting irritated and carrying that irritation over into everything and then creating a narrative in your head that the next time you see that person just affects your relationship, that you can actually manage your mind. You can capture that thought, you can renew it and you can actually say, I don't have the Solution. But my fifth step would be an action step of the NeuroCycle's five steps and it would be, okay, well this is how I'm feeling. Like this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to send them an email back and question this. I'm going to set up a phone call or something. So, and then you go on with the next thing, you kind of close that off, compartmentalize it and move on to the next thing. And instead of it permeating your day, that's the kind of day to day stuff of how you would use mind management via the neurocycle. So a neurocycle, Neuro meaning brain and cycle. We know what that means is how is the system. I've developed over 38 years of heavy neuroscientific mind brain research on a neuropsychological research, epigenetics, all this stuff to work out what mind is and how do we control it, what's our sense of agency? What does it mean to capture thought and renew your mind? What does it mean to think, feel and choose life or death? What does it mean in the moment?

I'm so glad you brought this up because you've quoted Paul a few times, right. 2nd Corinthians 10:5. Paul tells us to take every thought captive. And I've always read that and thought Paul, that's nice, I'd love to do that, but I have no idea how exactly. And, but, but what I love about your book is this five step neuro cycle is one answer to that question. So you've mentioned a couple of pieces of it. Walk us sequentially around that five step neuro cycle.

Absolutely. So, yeah, so, so in my pursuit of understanding mind and brain and the difference, I then had to understand that mind, then what are thoughts and then what are memories and what are emotions? And all these things that are totally bandied around in this day and age where mind, brain, thoughts, emotions. As you and I both know, people throw these words around because we don't really define them. We haven't really defined them. So it began with defining them, which then led into the neuro cycle. And so it's all basically, I studied the science of mind and developed a theory. And out of that theory grew the neuro cycle, which I've refined over the years and done the clinical trials. And in this book I put in the first half of the book these everything about mind and thoughts and what they are and images. And I put my clinical trials as well in a most simple version with like diagrams and colored images and things to help you understand that if you don't manage your mind, if you do choose to just like suppress the issue, suppress the toxic trauma from the past, ignore the patterns in your life that are leading you to get stuck rambling through the day, not capturing your thoughts, but letting your thoughts just ramble along. And you are going to, because your brain, your mind works for your brain and your body. That's what energizes, innovates. It's the spirit of life through your brain and body, you're going to. Then the mess in your mind creates a mess in your body. So I show that clinically as well. With biomarkers like you get increased inflammation and it affects your DNA and it affects your brain function and all that kind of stuff. And as well as your actual functioning, your behaviors and what you say and you do and your emotions and your intelligence and all that stuff. So without capturing thoughts, which is capturing thoughts and managing your mind is mind management. It is not, it's not something that we have an option of doing. It's something that we supposed to be doing because the scriptures are clear, renewing is present, continuous. So it's supposed to be, you're supposed to be doing it all the time. And you're quite right. Where on earth does anyone teach how to do that? So that's where science comes in. Bringing all thoughts into captivity brings us back to the question of, well, how many thoughts do I think in a day? So scientists have tried to estimate and I've done my own calculations based on my research and based on who I, the people that I follow that really understand this field we build. We think, feel and choose and build thoughts around about 8 to 10,000, maybe more in a day. So what that means is that right now, as you're listening to me, you are all building the thought of this mind brain stuff, this mental health, this whole concept. So as you introduced me, you identified the name of the thought that we were going to be building. A thought is like a true and like a tree has many roots and many branches. A thought has many roots and many branches, and those roots and the branches are memories. So thought is made of memories. So there's another distinction. Mind is not brain and thoughts are not memories. The mind and the brain work together. They're inseparable, but I mean separate but inseparable. The thought is a tree and it's made of branches. So those branches are memories. So memories are what thoughts are made of. So if you have like this thought now would be this mind, brain stuff. And then everything, everything I'm saying are the memories of the stuff. It's the data and it's the emotions this generates in you. So if you think of what I am saying as the roots that you are growing right now and then the tree trunk and the branches are your interpretation of what I'm saying because all of you will hear the same stuff, but you interpret it with your own unique angle and based on your history and your context and all the memories you already have inside your existing thought trees and your upbringing and your view of life. So you have a very strong Christian view versus someone who doesn't believe in God will hear this very differently. And you know, that's it. So it's just, that's kind of just to give you an example of how our, how our view is influenced by our current brain building of thoughts, is influenced by our existing memories and how that constantly can change and how we should be open to growth, which we've spoken about already.

You mentioned the book that this is something that you continue to struggle with.

Right.

Like having to clean up your mind on a daily basis.

If you're human, you do. No one's exactly right. Right.

Even though you know this stuff. So. So I love talking about habits and routines of high performance on the podcast. So for you, what habits do you instill throughout your day to day work to help you kind of work through that five step neuro cycle and clean up your mental mess?

Well, essentially I've trained myself and that's what I've trained myself to capture thoughts. I've trained myself to live a lifestyle of renewing the mind. So I mind manage all the time and I'm getting better and better every day. So instead of getting like having if you have something that upsets you, let's take the email example and upset you instead of that creating a mess for hours or days even and affecting a relationship. I will sort that out in a few minutes. By using the Neurocycle I'll get myself back on track. Things can throw me, I can have an acute trauma and I can get myself back on track managing it in a few minutes through using the neurocycle. So I've trained myself and also the neurocycle you can use in the moment because it's pretty. All the Neurocycle is, is how you capture thought and how you renew your mind. That's what the five steps are. And the more you do it, the more you will use it and the more self regulated you become in order to capture thought. And we build about, as I said, about 8,000 and those and we have about another 12,000 coming up where we build the 8,000. So there's like 20,000 plus things going through your brain any one day which is a lot going through your mind and your brain. It's probably more, it's probably closer to 100,000 but you know, it's different for different people at different times. So we, but we are able to manage that if we listen to what science says, which is self regulate. Which means that I need to train myself to stand back and observe my own thinking. So I don't just react, I observe my reactions. So I've lived, I've trained myself and that's what my book teaches people to do and what the neuro cycle does. I've trained myself and I'm still training and I'm getting better and better all the time as I react I immediately observe my reaction and I will evaluate and go through the five steps to fix it up. And sometimes I don't have time to fix up the whole thing because I've got to go and do a podcast or I've got to go, go and do a zoom teaching or I'm traveling or I've got to get into a business meeting or something like that or we're going for dinner with the family or something so you can't solve it on, on the spot. So. But I will never leave something. I'll get it to a point where I can say okay, I'm going to deal with that later. So I'll use the five steps quickly, then I'll come back to that. If I've seen there's a pattern in my life. So for example, there's a certain way that I maybe respond to my husband and, or to my kids or to my colleagues and my people that work for me. And if I see that that's a pattern that's affecting how I am functioning, that I, that it's detracting from increasing my functionality or it's affecting people negatively or whatever. There's something that's making me, I'm finding myself ruminating or I'm. Whatever patterns I notice, I then make decisions. Okay, that pattern's happening a lot. It's affecting me. It's affecting me in this and this way. I'm now going to do a 63 day cycle. So then I would take the five steps and I'm always doing a 63 days cycle because this is, I'm always renewing the mind. So whatever pattern I identify, that pattern in my life has got a source, an Origin. And so there's a reason why. So I have no shame or condemnation. I see it as helpful. So if there's any, maybe despair or depression or anxiety, those are not illnesses. Those are simply responses, warning signals that there's something going on. I have trained myself to see it that way. And also millions of people have trained in thousands and thousands. In my private practice, when I practiced, and I will sit down and I will dedicate 15 to 45 minutes daily for the first 21 days to identify, to deconstruct and reconstruct. So to embrace, process, and reconceptualize it. And then from day 22 to day 63, I will practice the fifth step for a minute a day. So it's 42 minutes over 42 days. At the end of that time, I've spent 63 days to create a habit. You do not create a habit in 21 days. You will deconstruct and reconstruct a thought in that amount of time. But to make that thought strong enough to impact behavior change that you stop that pattern, you have to spend at least another 42 days practicing using it. And so that's the lifestyle that I live and that I teach in the book, and I apply it all the time. And I've now got to the point, and it's going to get better. I've now got to the point that I can function incredibly high levels for long periods of time, no matter what's going on around me. So it gives you a lot of mental peace. A lot of mental peace. And I have to say this very quickly that I get thousands of DMs and emails every month from, from a cross section of society, from all over the world. And I see the most traumatized response questions. And I have to say this, but from Christians who are so filled with guilt, condemnation, and shame about what they've done wrong and how they feel so guilty and why they still depressed when they believe in Jesus. And just. I see such a lot of damage being done in the church by making people think, oh, I can't express my feelings. And, and we've. It's like we've missed the boat because we have to look at Jesus, the model of Jesus. Jesus models mental health management, mind management to a T. If you look at the whole story of Jesus in the garden. So I don't know if you want me to dive into that, please.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I would, I would. I would love to hear you talk about that, because I do think this is an acute problem in the church. I hear it with Christian professionals all the time in our audience. So I guess two questions. One, you touched on it, but why do you think it's so acute in the church? And to what is the model of Jesus as the garden?

Okay, so the reason I believe it's so cute is because we've adopted a band aid approach to being a human. And that is that as soon as you have any kind of adverse experience, because you're supposed to be filled with the spirit or filled with whatever language you use, whatever Christian is you use. And I'm not mocking any of it. I'm just saying whatever language you use, that is often used. Well, I've got. I've got to be perfect. I haven't said enough scriptures. I'm not faith. I don't have enough faith. I'm not believing God enough.

And so it's works based, right? It's kind of the antithesis of the gospel. It's like I have to do things to get peace rather than finding peace. That's been granted to me.

Exactly, exactly. And it's. And it comes to the point of using God as a genie and scripture as a band aid and pray as a past the buck. Okay, I've prayed and I've done the work and I've done passing responsibility. And then they come in. The whole thing of, you know, the devil made me do it and the devil's attacking me. When I hear that, my heckles rise and I just say, do you believe anything about. About what the, you know, what Jesus did and God and everything? Because that's not what we spoke. You know, why are we giving energy across to something that's defeated? So I won't even. Don't go down that road. You know, that's like another whole. It's just a way of not facing our issues. So that's become. There's been. That's. It's almost pathological in the church, in my opinion, because we are seeing such broken people that are not allowing themselves to express their brokenness. And everyone's broken. The evidence is there. There's. If you're human, you're broken because you've been shattered many, in many different ways and you constantly having to rebuild the pieces. And Jesus showed that in the garden so clearly. So we, so we've got to stop that. We've got to start allowing people to say I'm okay. 4% of the church talk about mental health. When they do, they say, go to the doctor. Get your diagnosis. Mental health is seen as an illness like cancer, diabetes, there is no science behind that. Mental. When you're battling with your mind, it's because of something going on. And you have to embrace that and process it, not go and label it. Labeling it has led to the current situation that we're in, that people are dying 8 to 25, five years younger in the prime of their life because they are not allowing themselves to process what they're going through. And as I said earlier, your brain will recognize an issue that you're suppressing in the same way it would recognize COVID virus. So your immune system of your brain is on high alert and trying to fight that. That's why you have increased inflammation with trauma and with suppressing thoughts or being constantly angry. And I mean, you can. There's a million scriptures that will confirm that whatever emotion you're experiencing that's toxic will damage your brain and your body. And there we come to Jesus in the go garden, where Jesus first of all shows the principles of embrace, process and reconceptualize. Not the current philosophy, which is slap a scripture on and use God as a genie and think, okay, I've said 10 scriptures now and I know I can quote 50 scriptures, healing scriptures, why aren't I healed? That's never going to work for you until you've actually done the work of getting in the garden. Because you, you've got to get away. Maybe that sickness is something you just have to accept and live with, but that's not the issue. The issue is what are you doing with your mind? Because your body's going to, you know, we live in a world where our bodies will let us down. It's just part parcel of the nature of chemicals and aging and all these kinds of things and bad diet and all that sort of stuff. But essentially Jesus models that we've got to embrace. So he gets in the garden. Jesus doesn't avoid what Jesus has got to do. Now hear this very carefully. Only Jesus can go to the cross. Only you can carry your cross. No one can fix you. We live in an over therapeutized, over counseled, overconfident, coached world. The church was one of the worst where everyone is looking to coach someone else to fix their lives. We should stop a little bit and actually look at our own lives. Because you cannot fix anyone. You can only fix yourself. And that is so scriptural. If you go read it, if you go really search through the Bible, you choose. It doesn't say go and get your dad to choose, your mom to choose or your therapist to choose. You have to make that decision. And we see like with addiction, it's considered a disease. It's not a disease. Addiction is simply, simply using something to hide the pain that you're not dealing with. And 86 to 93% of addicts will come out or people suffering from addiction or battling with addiction, I should say because it's a symptom will come out of that by choice. So therefore we have to face our stuff, we have to embrace Jesus got into the garden, willingly went in the garden to prepare to face. So there's a facing here, there's an embracing, there's a willingness to face the pain. And we're in a society where we want quick fix, five steps, three scriptures, four prayers, you know, this, this, you. Seven sermons, five conferences and now must be better. And it's like it doesn't work like that. You've got to get in the, in the garden on your knees and sweat blood and, and it's totally, this is totally showing the mind brain integration. The first half of my book with the clinical trials are I show how your, your DNA can age in, in can you, you can, your biology, your body can be older than your chronological age and you can be more sick and sickly if you don't manage your mind. In other words, your cortisol levels and your glucose levels can shoot up to. For example, I had an acute situation happen and I happened to be testing out a glucose continuous glucose monitoring device which is really great for exercise and just mental and physical health. And I'm going to be doing some research. So I happened to be testing it out and in that time I had a acute situation that happened in our family and I happened to look at the monitor and my glucose levels had shot to 240, which is like heart attack range. And normally I'm at somewhere between 84 and 96. Now if your glucose is up, your cortisol's up, your white blood cell counts up, your immune system's going crazy, your inflammation in your brain and so on. I can go on for hours with biomarkers, everything. So I know that I was in a very, very vulnerable state at that moment. I neurocycled, I captured my thoughts, renewed my mind and I did it repeatedly over that time period that I was going through this acute trauma and my glucose levels within minutes dropped. Within minutes we back down as. And I was still upset and crying and everything, but I was, I was managing it. And that's so it doesn't take the pain away. But I was facing it and I was dealing with it because you have to move forward. So Jesus progresses through the garden and sweats blood. So physiologically you can, if you are, if you are in a heightened state of, of, of distress, your every single part of your body like I described will react. And if you are, if your glucose levels are flying like mine did and your cortisol levels, that means that you're going to have incre. Increase in your blood pressure, you could burst capillaries, you could sweat blood. Totally possible. Jesus sweated blood. So we see there two major principles that are not being taught sufficiently in the church nor in the psychiatric current psychiatric move. The way mental health is managed, the general sort of standard approach, treatment is not to embrace. It is to label, diagnose and medicate, to see it as an illness. Jesus feeling totally depressed, anxious, frustrated, despair. And I can say that with all reality because it's very clear that Jesus experienced what we as humans would experience. So therefore we experience despair, anger, frustration, extreme anxiety, panic. Those are emotions that Jesus experienced because that was the model that Jesus was giving us.

Yeah, the Word became flesh. Right. We don't have a high priest who could not sympathize with our weaknesses. We take that for granted that Jesus became human.

Well, we take. And we don't even think what it means. We just think it's some. I've had people say, how can you say Jesus was the priest? I said, of course he was. Then don't you believe, believe that, that, that every experience that. Have you had depression? Yes, of course you have, you're human, You've had depression. You've. Depression is simply a symptom of an under. It's not a disease. It's just an emotion. It's a warning signal. So everything you, every emotion you can list is what Jesus experienced in the garden. He embraced it to teach us that it's hard. You're going to sweat blood, you're going to suffer physiologically, you're going to get worse before you get better. I mean, Jesus got beaten after going through that and also beg for this to be taken away. So it's okay to say, I don't like this, it sucks, it's terrible, I hate this. You can say that. You can. And from the neuroscience and I show this in my book, that when you embrace in the way I'm describing, that Jesus did in the garden, when you say it sucks, please take it away from me. I hate this. It's terrible. I don't want to go through this. You don't have to feel bad about that. You've just shifted the power balance you've just created. Put your brain and body into a resilient state that you are strong and more wiser and more able to handle the upcoming situation. So Jesus modeling that shows us that those are the steps to increased resilience is that face the pain, embrace the pain, allow the physiological changes to happen. It's natural. Your mind's working through your brain and body. It's going to happen, talk about it, express it, get it out. Because then you shift the power balance. You're getting the agency that you have as a human to be able to deal with that. And it will get worse. When people have trauma in their past and they've suppressed years and they living in a state of anxiety and it's affecting relationships and then they start doing the work of neuro cycling and therapy and stuff to start getting this out. It gets so painful, people can break down. That's why you have to have support systems in place. Which is exactly why Jesus turned to the disciples and said, hey guys, wake up. He didn't ask for Prozac, he didn't ask for opioids, he didn't say swap out. And I'm being facetious, but Jesus did not ask to get away. Jesus did not ask him to fix him. He did not ask him to like, you know, make this go away away. He did not ask for that. Jesus simply said, will you be with me? Will you be with me for about an hour? It was support. We play in each other's lives a support role. We do not play a Mr. Fix it role. And as soon as you, Mr. Fix it, you are going to get frustrated and so is the person you're trying to fix. And that's what I see as a massive problem in the church too. The church, the 3% of the leadership. Actually not just in the church, across all spheres, corporate, education, etc. In general, leaders do not talk about their mental health. Only 3% do. Meanwhile, 100% of people are battling with mental health. So when we talk about like mental health is on the rise, I laugh, I say please. It's always been on the rise. When they say one in four people are depressed, I say please, 100% of people are depressed. Since the beginning of time, people have battled. And so we've got to stop that angle. We've got to come to the angle of what's the narrative that we are all battling. So how do we manage it? Let's stop trying to make it A physical illness. Start trying to recognize physical illnesses can result. But with the issue is a person has a story and the person has something they're dealing with. How can we support them through the process? And then it gets worse before it gets better. That's the treatment effect. And I saw that in my clinical trials. You get these peaks. And my subjects would say that. And my patients, gosh, this is worse. I'm feeling more anxious. But they start shifting from saying, I am depression. I am the wrong identity to oh, I now know why I feel depression. This is terrible. I hate this. But I'm going to get through this. That's what Jesus models in the garden. And then he goes to the cross before getting beaten. I mean, can it get any worse? But then Jesus rises with the wounds in his hand. And this is what I want to talk about. The significance. When you embrace your stuff and you take that toxic tree and you start seeing the signals of despair and pain in your body and behavioral symptoms and your perspective being all negative and whatever it is as warning signals that you embrace. And you're not threatened by them, you're not scared of them. And as you gather awareness of those, like Jesus did in the God and you start reflecting on those, which is the second step of the neuro cycle. The first step is to gather awareness. And when you write that down and when you recheck it, which is looking for the meaning and the antidotes and the patterns, and then when you have a little action to help you move forward and you do that each day, you are actually going to. By the day 21, you would have gone to the cross and risen again. So by day 21, you have your story reconceptualized. That wound is your story. But you've now can live with it. You've now changed how the past plays out into your future. You've now got this new beautiful tree that's got these gold leaves. Just want an analogy. That is the past story playing out into the future. It doesn't excuse the abuse. The abuser is always going to be in the wrong for that. But you have released yourself from that and you are now not letting that control you. You are taking that terrible thing that happened and you are deciding how you want that to work for you into your future. That's reconceptualization. That's rising with the wounds in your hands. And that's exactly what the process of the neuro cycle teaches, teaches you to do.

I love that.

Dr.

Leaf, you've been at this almost 40 years. It's incredible. You've. It's so much passion for this topic. I'm curious if you see a connection between your faith and your ambition for this work. Is there a connection there for you?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I don't see any difference between science and spirituality. And I see God in science, and I see. See some of my most deep spiritual experiences have been as I have done clinical research, and as I see someone respond and get that peace back, we see someone who's totally suicidal and wanting to give up on life and suddenly fighting through that garden and going through the whole thing and then seeing them come through it and starting to change from being. Not wanting to live to wanting to live or someone going through that is, for me, such a connection. That is. That's what it's all about.

That's redemptive. Right. You're fixing. You're an agent of redemption and fixing what's broken, right?

Yep. And pretty much. And I just see that that's something that all of us. It's not just. It's not just this. We've got to get away from just the therapist or the clinician or the scientist doing that. You're a human. You've got that ability. And this is why this skill should be taught as young as 2 and 3. I mean, my kids have learned this from day one. They've learned these principles as I've developed them. They've grown along in their knowledge with me. And, you know, this is. If this is trying to help people to realize that you don't have to, like, battle to see a doctor before you can live. You can learn how to live now in peace. You can take that. You. You can reconstruct that house. You're living in that and into a place of peace. You can take that ugly old house and bash it down and rebuild it into a place of peace. And you can remember how you were, but you can live in that sense of peace. And that's something everyone can do. And that's why I write what I do, and that's why I've written this book, is to really bring mental peace and to. To help people to recognize mental mess is okay as long as you manage it. And here's how you manage it.

I love it. All right, three quick questions before we wrap up every conversation. Number one. Other than your own books, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently to others?

Oh, gosh, I have so many. I. Because I'm. Because I love science, I have to be honest with You. I. It will always be along the lines of whatever is my most, you know, favorite sort of science books. And they do, they do vary and especially in the. In the area of brain. Brain research and mind brain research. So quite technical. But when it comes to fiction, Lord of the Rings is one of the ones that I would. I recommend everyone reads because of, first of all, C.S. lewis was a South African, so maybe a little biased, but I mean Tolkien, not C.S. lewis, Tolkien. And also he believed in God. And even though there's a lot of stuff that, you know, these is always every. Every storyteller has things that you may or may not agree with, but it does talk about the epic journey of life and how we've got to carry our own ring. And I think that's one of my favorites. I watched that over and over with our family. I've been to all the places. For me, that's very significant of the journey of life and this uniqueness.

That's a great one. I'm curious who you would like to hear on this podcast. Somebody who is a practicing Christian is serious about their faith, but also really serious about the work they do in the world.

Dr. Daniel Amin is a good friend of mine and he's fantastic. He's a psychiatrist. We have the same philosophy.

I've read his stuff.

Yeah, he's a great friend of mine. He's great. I love his work. Let some. Yeah.

Last question. You're talking to an audience of Christians who want to do great work in service of others. What one piece of advice do you want to leave them with?

Dr. Leaf? I think this is going to be the most obvious. You need a neuro cycle. You've got to get. You've got to. You've got to. Without renewing your mind. You can go to all the courses, read all the books, but if you don't get your thoughts on, if you don't bring every thought into captivity and train yourself to do that and renew the mind. If your mind's a mess, everything else is a mess, and then it's all window dressing. Everything that you're doing is window dressing. Change has to start with getting your mind, which is the source of everything interstate, where you're managing it, and it's never going to be under control, but you can improve how you control, how you manage. So that renewing of the mind, capturing all thoughts through the neuro cycle is absolutely essential.

I love it. Dr. Leif, I want to commend you and everyone else listening for the. For the important redemptive work you're doing every day. Thank you for helping us be obedient to Paul's commands. Right. To renew our minds, to take every thought captive. Thank you for helping us understand how to do that, practically. Guys, the book is cleaning up your mental mess. You could pick it up wherever books are sold. Dr. Leaf, thanks again for joining us.

It's my pleasure. Thank you.

And you guys thought I was the fastest talker on your podcast feed? Nope. Dr. Leaf beat me. I loved that I had to listen to it at half speed, but man, so much goodness and wisdom and data and science from Dr.

Leaf.

I love that she was able to join us. Hey, if you're joining the call to mastery, do me a favor. Go rate the podcast right now on Apple Podcasts so that we can recruit more guests like Dr. Leaf and more listeners to this message and to this cause. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

Sam.