Radha Agrawal breaks down how four brain chemicals—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins—create belonging. Daybreaker uses early-morning dance, consensual touch, and music to trigger each one, turning a crowd into a community.
Chapters
What are those ingredients that take you from community to true belonging?
That's the dose. And so that's. So that's. So I talk about dose quite a bit in my book and not to get too scientific, but we have these four happy brain chemicals, right? Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins.
And I love that abbreviation, by the way. It makes it so easy to remember.
D dose and the fact that no one has put that together because it's like, because dose you think of medicine and drugs, you can actually train your brain to release your natural dose of dopamine, oxygen, serotonin and endorphins, if you actually have the intention, right. To create experiences that inspire that release. So in other words, at Daybreaker, we actually design our experiences to release your dose.
So let's go into the dosc.
Okay, so the dopamine, the dopamine you get from pleasure reward of waking up early in the morning, so you're hitting your snooze button. The dopamine rush of, oh my gosh, I'm waking up at 4am, it's dark outside, I'm going to dance in the morning before going to work. That's the dopamine rush. Dopamine rush you also get from listening to music, right? Music is a very, very big dopamine release for you. Oxytocin, you get from touch. We are so physically starved for affection. Americans are the number one porn viewer in the world. And yet a famous study showed that Americans touch each other upwards of once in a conversation compared to Mexicans who touch each other upwards of 180 times in a conversation. So we are physically, we're replacing our need for touch with sex and pornography, right? So oxytocin is. At Daybreaker, we're very, very focused on really connecting human to human.
Why is it that in American culture there is this starvation for touch?
Because we live in a religious world, a religious country where it's still, it's still so forbidden vers European culture where it's like free love. And, you know, so this country is still very pious, you know, so. And because of it, we are hiding still, you know, around that. So we replace. And so, so in true communities, there's.
That safe space that allows people to give each other a hug rather than share.
And we're also very litigious in this country too. So literally, I saw on the news the other day, an employer just went like this to his employees. Like, you know, like, you'll get through it. And then she sued him for touching his leg and he had to. And his whole career is down the train, down the drain just for. Just for touching her leg like that. So we live in a deeply litigious world where everyone's afraid to touch each other now. They don't know how to do it anymore. So at Daybreaker, we have consensual hugs at the door. Our MC prompts you, now, how do.
You create a consensual hug? Is that just an understanding?
No, we actually. Because we've had a lot of discussions about this from different community members who have dealt with sexual trau. And they came to me and they said, hey, here's how I want to be hugged at the door at Daybreaker. If, you know right now when someone hugs me, goes to hug me and I say, no, thank you, I don't wanna hug. They feel really sad. Right. So instead of feeling really sad and showing that which makes me feel bad, they can just high five me and say, good job. Way to know what you need. Your boundaries. So stuff like that. Right. So just thinking about those little kind.
Of notes, that's a really good idea. I think we need to bring it to the mindvalley community.
Consensual, sort of like touch and hugs. And then when you come into the.
Cause we're a hugging culture.
Yeah, exactly.
Not everybody likes to be hugged.
That's right.
Right. But I love the high five.
Yeah. Instead of like. Because like, I used to be, if someone didn't want to hug for me, I'd be like, oh, man, like, why not? You know?
Right.
But now I'm like, hey, do you, like, you got this, you know, and it really feels good.
Let's go back to that. So serotonin is being released when you.
Feel what a sense of worth and a sense of gratitude and a sense of sort of, this is bigger than me, right? The serotonin dump you get from like, whoa. Like, I'm euphoric in this idea that we are all one, that we are all community. We're all in community together. Right? And our MCs, we train across the world to tell our community members, hey, we're all in this together. You know, like, we have so many different sort of one liners that we train our community, our MCs.
I love how deliberate and scientific you are about this.
Thank you. Yeah. And it's important because people leave and they're like, wow, it just. It feels so good. And then the final one and then the endorphins, of course, you get from runner's high. The workout, the sweating.
From the dancing.
From the dancing. You're burning upwards of, you know, 4, 500,000 calories.
