#114: Eliminate Toxic Thoughts with Dr. Caroline Leaf

[00:00:00] Hala Taha: You're listening to YAP young and profiting podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Hala Taha, and on young and profiting podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life.

No matter your age, profession, or industry, there's no fluff on this podcast and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests. By doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires CEOs, and bestselling authors.

Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain, influence the art of entrepreneurship and more if you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at young [00:01:00] and profiting podcast this week on yap we're chatting with Dr. Caroline Leaf. A neuroscientist author and podcast host, who helps hundreds of thousands of people learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of life. Dr. Caroline's podcast has over 7 million listens and her app neuro cycle has 80,000 downloads. Her latest book, Cleaning up your mental mess: Five simple scientifically proven steps to reduce anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking, dives into mind management techniques to build awareness and heal the mind. In this episode, we're going to uncover Dr. Caroline's five steps to clean up our mental messes. We'll talk about the difference in relationship between the mind and the brain.

We'll look at how thoughts impact our biological age and we'll understand what a good thought looks like in the brain compared to a bad one. We'll also discuss how we can overcome trauma. Why as a human species, we're dying 18 to 25 years [00:02:00] younger. And we'll better understand the root cause of mental illness.

This episode is jam packed with useful information. It's one that I bet you'll have to listen to twice, or rewind to appreciate the fullest. If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know your favorite takeaway by leaving us a review on Apple, Castbox, Podbean or wherever you listen to this podcast without further ado here's my conversation with Dr. Caroline leaf.

Hi Caroline. Welcome to young and profiting podcast.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Thank you Hala, it's so lovely to be with you.

Hala Taha: Likewise. I'm so excited because we're going to talk all about the brain and the mind and the difference between the two and how they're related. I can't wait to get into all that stuff, but first I want to understand where your fascination with the brain and the mind first came about from my understanding you grew up in Zimbabwe, and that's when it first hit you in terms of this is the passion that you want to go on with your life.

So tell us about that, how you first got fascinated [00:03:00] with the brain and the mind.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Absolutely. I was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa and we've been in the states now for the last 13 years. And we traveled globally. I used to practice a practice 24, 25 years as a clinician and other brain and mind, brain research and neuroscientist.

I've been doing that for 38 years. So I've been in the field for many years. And my fascination with the mind of the brain began as a young girl, I was very fast. I was going to become a neurosurgeon. I even got into that field and decided that I actually wanted to know more about understanding of the mind as opposed to just the physical brain .

Trained in the era of when they didn't believe that the brain could change, but they did understand that the brain was separate from the mind. Then over the last 40 years, as we've learned more about the brain, the mind has been separated and ignored or seen as a by-product of the brain.

So we've transitioned in a negative sense. A lot of the sciences transitioned in a negative sense that we've advanced with brain science, but gone backwards with mind understanding. And I decided  to dedicate my career [00:04:00] to understanding mind what it is, what are thoughts? What are memories?

What's the difference between the mind and the brain? What happens when they interact? Why do they need to interact? How can you manage this process? Do you have any control over the process? And I started out my work trying to understand as just fascinated as a child with the brain and the mind, and started out my initial research with people with very severe issues, like traumatic brain injuries and severe war trauma and learning disabilities, dementias, autism, and then carried on in that field, but then adapted my work to helping everyone because we've all got a mind.

We've all got a brain and we'll need to manage it. So it's just been a developmental process. And my most recent book cleaning up your mental mess. I put my most recent clinical trials in there in a summarized simple version, just to show people the reality of mind, brain and the mind brain connection.

So I know that you've been studying this for, I think 38 years plus. So that's a long time and you are actually trained to believe that the mind cannot change the brain and that's how you were trained. [00:05:00] So with that, how did you know in your gut that there was more to the story and that you needed to dedicate your life to figure this out?

It was one of my neuroscience lectures that, and neuroscience was in its infancy in the eighties. So I have to tell you that it was, we talk about neuroscience. It was more neurology and it was neuroscience, but it was just, it was very much in its infancy. And it was believed that if you had damage to brain well, that's it.

And I remember one of the lectures. Talking about this. This is not right, because our mind is always changing. Our experiences are changing. Our day-to-day life is so totally different all the time. So it cannot be that the organ to which the mind works and uses that it's a mind is changing,

obviously the organ that the mind uses would change as well. So I challenged the professor, the one of the professors, and they said, I said, how can that be? And they said it is the way it is. And I said I don't think that is the case. And they said that's ridiculous question. And I said, is it really a ridiculous question?

And I started, I said, let me work with the worst. Give me the worst scenario. What would be the worst scenario that I could use [00:06:00] to show you that I believe I'm right. And they said work with traumatic brain injury because once you're brain is traumatized  from a brain injury, from a car accident.

That set, you can't really do anything about that. You just literally have to teach the patients to compensate. So I started there, I started working with traumatic brain injury and one of my first subjects for one of my first research studies was a student of 16, who was quite an average student, not brilliant, she was the average and she had a terrible car accident was in a coma for longer than two weeks.

Now, back in the eighties, if you were in a coma for longer than eight hours, you were told by the neurologist that you were basically brain dead. So her parents were told that she's brain dead. Then she was moving around a little bit. So they said she was a vegetable long story short. They just.

Basically wrote off the medical community, wrote her off but she fought back in her coma. She fought back, her parents continue to stimulate her belief. She'd come around. After two weeks she basically came around and they contacted me more or less in the first six months after her accident where she was functioning back on.

Now listen to this sort of second [00:07:00] grade level. So she was totally frustrated because she and her peer group were going into 12th grade and she could barely cope on a second-grade level. The fact that she'd actually come out of a coma was a miracle, but that wasn't what she wanted. So they contacted me.

I said, look, I was a young scientist new research. I said we can try this. I believe it will work. But anyways, long story short, fast forward, eight months. And this young girl not only finished caught up with her peer group, but she finished school with her 12th grade peer group, but not only just finished school, which was in itself a miracle.

So she caught up from second grade to 12th grade in an eight month period. But, she not only did that, she actually went on to become a math genius, which was amazing. So she finished off with grades that were way better than prior to the accident. So she was evidenced that with directed mind input with really hot, and this is not just, this is really deliberate, intentional using of the mind and developing of the mind her brain changed.

So that's neuroplasticity where the brain can change, but the brain can't  change on its own. [00:08:00] The brain changes by being changed by something and that something is your mind. So brain and mind are two separate things. And what I would develop was a system to help this particular patient and then all the other subjects and patients since then.

And I've continued to research that is a system for how can you get your mind manage and self regulated so that you can direct the neuroplasticity of your brain, the brain changes and therefore body changes and how to do that in a successful way. So that really just catapulted me to do more and more research.

I did a lot of artificial field research side. I don't bring people into a lab and create a fictitious situation. I didn't want to do that kind of research. I go into the field and so worked for years with different types of patients and different types of situations. So different organizations like government and education schools, universities, I trained physicians.

I worked in corporate, so I worked in a multitude of different places from all different socioeconomic strata war torn countries. Every color that you can, every race to try to be able to reach an understanding [00:09:00] of mind as a universal concept. And basically that's what I've done for 38 years. And that's what I present in, in my work.

And in my most recent book, cleaning up your mental mess, that's a summary of this philosophy, plus a very practical application of how you, anyone you all got a mind can use your mind to change your brain.

Hala Taha: And to everybody listening, I would highly advise the book. She gives five simple steps on how you can do this.

We're not going to be able to cover every single step in this podcast. We'll try to, but you guys should definitely go read the book so that you can really understand how to use this powerful stuff. So I want to step back a little bit because I think my listeners are, I think they're all new to this. I think we know a lot about positive affirmations and all that kind of stuff, but I don't think we know the science behind everything.

And so first what's the difference between the brain and the mind and how are they related?

Dr Caroline Leaf: Such a good question. That's the base place to start. And just for your listeners, that's the book cleaning up your mental mess.

Hala Taha: And she's holding up a book for the listeners.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Yeah. I'm holding up the book and then I have other props as well, but I'll describe them.

So there are some [00:10:00] views that, is it just listeners, will there be some views as well? Do you put it on YouTube? Okay, perfect.

Hala Taha: Yep. YouTube and all social media will be video

Dr Caroline Leaf: All  the social media. Okay, perfect. So I've got some props to help people understand. And the first prop that I've got, I'm holding up a brain in a skull, sorta real brain.

So for the listeners, I'm holding up a brain in the skull. And the reason I'm doing this is to give you the very strong visual image of this is not who you are. You are not your brain. Your brain is what you use. It's part of you, but it's what you use, but it's not the Eunice of you. And it's used, it's uniquely designed to match who you are as a person.

But if you are dead now, the difference between you and I Hala, having this conversation and the listeners and viewers and a dead person and is a mind. So the mind is, are alive . So the brain, if you did, if I was holding up, if this was a real brain, we could stare at the sprain all day long and mind  would never be produced from it because it's a dead brain. So what makes this brain different? If it's a brain in a dead person or a brain that's taken out of a person versus you [00:11:00] and I who have our brains in our skulls and we are communicating it's our mind. So our mind is separate from the brain, it's our aliveness or ability to be alive and to experience life and to process that.

Our mind, therefore is external to the brain and the body, but it also moves through the brain and the body. So on a physics level, we  want to use it to understand two levels. Your brain is easy to understand. It's the physical substance, that's in your skull. I've got another little image of a model of a body and your brain and body are your physical.

That's easy to understand. You can look at yourself, you've got a skull. That's easy, but that's only 1% of who you are. One, maybe 10% of who you are. If you did this just disintegrates. If you did, it doesn't do anything. We can put all kinds of technology onto dead brains and dead bodies that they're not going to respond, but you and I are alive.

We could have EKG.   all the various different types of FMRI and we would see responses. So what we are reading is when you look at [00:12:00] technology brain technology, for example, I use QEGs . You are seeing the mind moving through the brain. So the mind is this force, this energetic force that is around the body.

It's like a cloud around the body. So here's the sport model of the body again. And if you imagine. Sort of field or a gravitational field around this body. That's what the mind is. And it also moves through the body. So to make this really simple, I'm going to give you a couple of different analogies to visualize this.

So the first thing is we sitting, we not floating that's because of gravity that's because we live in gravitational fields, but what scientists have found, and this is science right back from in Einstein's day, even earlier, the ancient was done. There's a lot. I know that you're very interested in that as well.

Ancient wisdom speaks about the mind and brain separately all the time. It's only in this last 40 years, that we've, that the narrative has mixed the two together that the mind and the brain are used, but for up until 40 years ago, it was always considered separate the physical from the mind being this energetic force that moves around the body.

So using [00:13:00] our current physics, we can talk about gravitational fields just a couple of years ago, scientists won  the Nobel prize for being able to measure gravitational fields. And not only I'll be in gravitational  fields, but we have our own unique gravitational field around each of us. You've got yours.

I contact yours, you contact mine. And it's also within that gravitational field. You've got things like electromagnetic effects and you've got all these, you've got sound waves and electromagnetic light waves. You've got all this, the stuff that we know so much more about now with modern science, we've got words and technology to describe it.

Now what's important here is that if a person's dead that goes away, you don't see that when a person's alive, you can put a cute EEG on and you can read the energy response in the brain. You can put an EKG on the heart and you can see the energetic risk. Once in the heart, that energetic response is mind.

So mind is this force that's around and through the body. And it's only there when you're alive. And that's why I talk about it as being your aliveness. So that's not the kind of physics you level, another way of seeing it on the physics level, or just as an analogy is maybe you did this at school where you [00:14:00] were given a piece of white paper.

And then there was a pile of iron filings on the paper and a magnet. And we all know that magnets, if you push magnets together, they'll push each other apart, make us attract. You can put a magnet check, paper clips. We all understand that, but you can't see the field around the magnet that's attracting the paperclip, but if it would be notes there, that's like the mind, the brain and the body are like this magnet, but then this field is erotic.

You can't see it, but it is this force. That is what we are using to experience life and moving through the brain and the body. If you take a magnet and you put it in the middle of   Pile of iron filings. So just graded iron filings. They go from being a pile to being a whole arrangement around the magnets.

And that creates that's what you call an electromagnetic field. So in this field, around us, there's an electromagnetic field. It's a quantum field. It's got lots of different ways that you can understand it, but it exists. And it's basically the mind. On a psychological level, it is how we think and feel and choose.

So notice I'm [00:15:00] saying those three things  together, when you think you feel, when you think and feel you choose. So thinking, feeling and choosing is mind in action. So when we talk about mind, we can think of it as the physics field gravitational field and psychologically, it's how we think feel and choose.

So at the moment, all the listeners and viewers are hearing auditory sound or hearing our voices, but actually what being received by the mind field is sound waves, electromagnetic light waves. It's creating reactions in the gravitational field and all that's moving through the brain. And then the brain is responding, electrically, chemically, electromagnetically, quantum level, and genetically, and as it responds genetically, as soon as you have a genetic response, it means things are made.

So structural changes occur with little amino acids, which grouped together to form proteins on made. So at the moment, All words, this conversation, everything I'm saying, the questions you ask him in the discussion we have. All of this is being received into this field by the [00:16:00] listeners and the viewers.

And it's being processed to think field choose, think field, choose at 400 billion actions per second. You're going through these cycles of things that you think people choose. Things they'll choose and the thing they  chooses pushing this energy through the brain and the brain is responding , because as the mind hits the physical brain, there's a reaction.

And that reaction is electromagnetic, chemical, quantum engineering. And as I said, when it's genetic, then it makes something and it makes proteins. So those proteins then hold my words as vibrations and the proteins group together. Cause I'm saying lots of words. So there's lots of proteins and then you basically grow tree.

So what I'm holding up now is a little green plant that looks like a little green tree it's in a pot. So obviously it has roots . And that's a thought, so the consequence or the product of mind is thoughts. So here we listening to this discussion on mind brain. So that's the discussion. So that  discussion is coming at you through this whole physics gravitational field think field choose, and it's [00:17:00] becoming this protein tree that's made of proteins and the words that are being heard and the things that are being seen in the little proteins vibrating and the proteins that form these branches. So as I'm speaking, more branches are growing because I'm giving more information, but the words that I'm saying, are the roots. So this, every tree has roots. So this is a thought that you building of this discussion and he did look like a tree.

It's got lots of branches and lots of roots, a thought has lots of branches and lots of roots, which are memories. So every it's I'm giving you the information I'm giving is actually memories, which are built into a thought. So thought is made of memories. They're not the same thing. Thought it's actually made of lots.

And lots of memories could be hundreds, could be thousands. So everything I'm saying is going into the roots, like a tree, you plant the seed and then the roots grow. As you introduce me, you planted the seed. We're going to talk about mind, brain or mental health or whatever the, how you introduce the podcast.

Then as I'm speaking the words I'm saying, I'll be converted by the listeners into [00:18:00] these roots. And every word I'm saying is adding more branches. So by the end of our discussion, it could be 2-, 3000 roots in the system. You, as the listener is receiving that then the listener immediately interprets because you all have your own unique perception.

So the branches, so the interests of the roots of the source, the branches then are your interpretation, your perception, how you are seeing this based on your own experience or the things you've read and who you are as a person and your cultural upbringing, everything you know about this field and everything you know about life, because we're talking about life stuff here.

So these branches here are your thoughts, feelings, and choices, the result of your thinking, feeling and choosing your mind in action of this information and that's how we experience life. We do this, we be bold 8  to 10,000 of these in any one day. Because as you see from the time you open your eyes, till  the time you go to sleep, every experience is going through this process.

It's being received through the gravitational fields who think, feel choose, and the product is built, which is the thoughts. So the experience, what you [00:19:00] read, what you hear, what someone says to you, the email, the social media posts, the comment on social media, the conversation, the relationship, the business plan.

That's the source. Your interpretation is this. Then this is how you at art. So how you show up what you say and what you do your behavior. So everything you say and do like I'm speaking now, I'm not speaking from random. I'm speaking from thoughts that I have built over the years, over 38 years, I've got an extensive set of thought trees related to this topic.

So I'm drawing on this information as I'm speaking. And so that's what we do all the time, which is, yeah. Which is amazing. So I've got years of experience and with your questions, were you asking me, I'm pulling up certain trees that are all linked, so there'll be a whole. Bush of trees linked to the root system, because it's all connected, but different trees in the same root system.

And I'm pulling on those as I'm talking to you. And as you listening to me, you pulling on your own roots systems to build this new thought. So that's what's happening. That's what we do all day long that's and that [00:20:00] process can be controlled, which is amazing. So the mind is doing the work and the physical effect is happening in the brain.

And not only are we building these trees in the brain, but we build a wave-like version of them. In the gravitational field and there's a third place. We also, there's a representation of this in the DNA of every cell of our body. And we have 37 to a hundred trillion cells in our brain and our body. So this moment, everything that, that the listeners are hearing and seeing is being converted by mind, think you'll choose gravitational fields into the brain as thought trees, root systems, what I'm saying, interpretation of the branch memories and in the DNA and in the wave forms like wavy trees in the gravitational fields, three places, we both the consequences of our experience.

And that happens all day long. And we've been doing this since a certain age in the womb. So we have trillions and trillions of thought trees in our brain gravitational fields [00:21:00] and the DNA representation, which is phenomenal and all of that you can control.

Hala Taha: It's so amazing. It is absolutely amazing. It makes you feel so blessed to be a human, like just the fact that we are human and we have this incredible brain is a blessing. And I feel like hopefully if you got nothing else from that, you realize that how magnificent it is to just be alive and be a human, because you don't have a mind if you're not alive. So there's so much to go with that. I want to know about your perspective in terms of the soul. And your perspective on source energy and the universe and what you believe, knowing what you know about our mind and our brain, because I feel like you are one of the few people in the world that really understands what's going on.

So what is your perspective on spirituality and all of that?

Dr Caroline Leaf: I love that question. Spirituality is science, so it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin. So when I [00:22:00] talk about all these science-y things, I'm talking about the spiritual nature of man. So I'm talking pretty much, and there's all these different words we can use.

And every single religion you're going to find different names, but it's all pointing to the same thing. So I like to talk about the concept as the soul. We like in the Christian religion to talk about spirits or body, but you'll see representations of that in everything. You'll see it in Islam. You'll see it in the Jewish tradition, the Torah you'll see it across the area vedic takes.

So you'll see it in all the ancient text. You'll see a version of that. So everything points to the same concept that mankind has the. Spirit soul thing and a body and the spirit soul is this gravitational field. So I see the soul and the spirit. You could say this, I talk about the spiritual level being this gravitational field that moves through and the spirit field choose, and you could take it.

And I often talk about that as when I do talk about it in the book as well is you can take the spirit in the soul and you can say the spirit is [00:23:00] the sort of deeper part, but I prefer to explain the soul and mind as the same thing. I think it pretty much is the same thing. It's all better teachers think, feel, and choose.

But you can look at it in this way. You have a messy mind and you have a wise mind, every human at the core, the spiritual core has this wisdom. And this wisdom is this in neurobiology and neurophysiology. We talk about being wired for love that the brain and the body doesn't have any structural design for anything that is toxic and manage toxicity.

So we have designed for making a mess and repairing the mace, but not staying in a mess. So we have the design for maybe getting into an argument because that's the messiness of life. But if we stay in the argument, we don't have designed for that. What we have designed for is. Having the argument and then fixing the argument, managing the mess.

That's why I talk about cleaning up the main premise we designed to clean up the mental mess, and that's a very solely [00:24:00] spiritual thing that we're doing. And we using the brain and the body. So without the brain and the body, we can't express ourselves. So the mind and the soul, the spirit. So mine concept, I go to, I lump it undermined.

And if you look at a lot of the ancient texts, you'll see mind is referring to spirit and soul as the same sort of thing. And that's the, you can also talk about it as consciousness, but that's also not enough because consciousness and I talk about this in the book you've got, the mind has got different levels and the one level is the conscious mind.

Then you've got the non-conscious mind and you have the subconscious mind. You have three levels of mind and that's people get very muddled up as well. So to make this really super simple think, first of all of mind and brain as I've described, so mind is this force, this gravitational field, and it's Thinkful choose brain and bodies, the physical without the.

The two is separate. The mind can't express itself or the spirit can't or soul can't express itself. But with body, it has a place now to store and express so we can express ourselves through the body. That's where the magic [00:25:00] happens. The mystery of this connection between the mind brain, body integration.

Okay. Then think of, okay. So mind is the soul spiritual level. And if we think of mind, the easiest way to expand it is let's go back to the messy mind versus the wise, mind it start the, so then think of it being a pilot in a plane, the soften high explained it. And in a plane you have the pilot and you always have a copilot and the copilot.

Gives the bigger picture looks into what's going on, keeps a handle on planning, looking present past and future. It's the basis. There's wisdom in the Copart. And not that there isn't wisdom in the pilots, but the pilots really experimental. They are actually doing the action of flying.

And so that's your messy mind. And that's what we, when you wake up in the morning, till the time you go to sleep. The messy mind is operating. It's a conscious mind. So consciousness, when you talk about a stream of consciousness, that is when you're awake. So you open your eyes to between the time you open your eyes until time you go to sleep, you're experiencing [00:26:00] the stream of consciousness and your messy mind is experimenting in that process.

So we don't know what's coming up. We don't, we can't control people. We can't control events and circumstances. So it's very experimental and that's why it's messy. But this is okay because messiness allows us and affords us the opportunity to repair and to grow. So if you have a, if you do get irritable and snap at someone, you can either stay here to bond, stay snapping and keep the damage.

Your brain and body are not designed for that. Or you can respond to you're wired for love design, and your optimism bias recognize that as an imbalance recognize the impact that's had on you and on the person, cause it will cause brain damage in both you and the person. And you can mind manage that.

You can self regulate that you can apologize and you can change your behavior. That's my management. That is you using your mind to manage your mind. That is the messy mind that experimented and made a mess. And then the w the messy minds actually listening to the wise, mind the co-pilot and drawing on intelligence, so that the ability to correct yourself, the ability [00:27:00] that we have in now to have this kind of conversation, we've explained the deep things of life.

And we like getting deeper though. This is the wise mind analyzing life. And when you give someone advice and. Someone comes to you and they ask you a question and you say, you give them and you think, wow, this is like amazing advice. I wish I could take my own advice. That's a wise mind when you're in a situation and you know what you should do.

You don't always do it, but you know what you should let your wise mind to wise mind is at the core of your being. It is your point of a universal kind of word. I use the word Godness. It could be Godness. It could be your ancient wisdom source energy makes so much sense to call it source energy, because that's why I don't like to talk about God because it defines it to every religion.

And this is, we're talking about something that's beyond just man's religion. This is be talking about life that isn't of lots of sources of great is a great, but there's the Y source where you can add that. So what we do in life is we've got to train ourselves to listen to the source, to listen to the wisdom, and that is cleaning up the mental mess.

[00:28:00] That is the messy mind learning to listen and tune in and introspect and find that wise mind and connect with that. And we can train ourselves to do that. If you played a music, maybe you play a musical instrument. Do you play one?

Hala Taha: I sang, I can play piano a little.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Okay. Let's say now you want it to become an expert piano player.

You would have to spend a lot of time with a great teacher. Maybe a series of teachers you'd have to spend hours every day and you would eventually mastered, and maybe you have a natural talent and become brilliant, but you'd certainly become very good because you dedicate a lot of time. In other words, the point I'm making is you could train yourself to become a really excellent piano player, maybe even a brilliant piano player, but it requires very deliberate and conscious attention and a decision to do that and do the development.

Or you could just be an average plan to play now. And then, and like me I'll play chopsticks and that's about it, but I used to play the mandolin and I don't play it anymore, but I could do the same thing. I could go and relearn it. So the point I'm making is we can [00:29:00] just, we, our mind is working anyway, but if we don't manage it and we don't develop it, if we don't decide, I'm going to develop to the level of brilliance and skill. Then you stay in a messy mind. So cleaning up the mental mess, the concept that I'm delivering to people and helping people to understand is that mind is this developmental process. It's this thing that you can grow. It's malleable, it's trainable. It's a deliberate, and it's always working.

You can go three weeks without food. You can go three days without water. You can go three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without your mind working. So your mind is working regardless. So my question or my proposal is if your mind is always working and it's working with us messy mind, copilot mind, we can improve how that happens so we can get our messy mind too.

Constantly be listening or to be listening the majority of time to the copilot working with not even so much listening, but working hand in hand with, because messy is not bad , if it leads to growth and repair or repair and growth messy is only bad if you [00:30:00] don't repeat and grow and you get stuck, that thing maintains brain damage in the brain and body and increases vulnerability to disease because it changes the environment of the whole gravitational field and the body and increases vulnerability to disease by 35 to 98%, which is phenomenal.

So we, but with nine management, you can reduce that risk factor in your body. You can create, and you can then activate the natural form of Copia and natural healing. Thoughts have weight, these things that opera products of mine. These have weight, these have physical structure in the brain and collectively, as you train your mind, and as you train yourself to work on these, and as you train yourself to access the source to build these, your wise mind, you are building incredible, powerful weight into your brain, which is so in other words, you are creating every time you think right now you're creating because your brain is changing. It's neuroplasticity. This is the question that they told me. It was ridiculous in the eighties, which I showed by the late eighties. I showed that some of the first neuroplasticity research saying that, Hey, if you change your mind, you can change your [00:31:00] brain.

Which they didn't believe by the mid nineties, it was accepted when we had FMR technology and we could not just, I just had CT scans when I first started, which is a static image. By the mid nineties, we could see the changes happening and we could start seeing what was going on. So therefore, now we know that the brain was changes.

The mind is always changing. The brain is always changing. So at this moment you are being a creative being. You are changing your brain. Your brain is not the same as it was when you started. The conversation, they need you, you are creating structural change. So my point is that you can design that you can direct their change by how you managing your mind because your brain was simply do what your mind tells it to do.

So if your mind goes down the route of complaining or negativity, or that's just, and you practice that enough within 63 days, you've built a habit. It takes 63 days to build a habit within 63 days of complaining. So nine weeks of complaining, you have wired in a toxic pattern. So here's a toxic tree. I'm holding up a worry tree.

Hala Taha: I was going to ask you, what do they look like?

Dr Caroline Leaf: Yeah. They literally [00:32:00] looked like misfolded proteins. So that's why I use these two analogies that would be healthy and it would be toxic.

Hala Taha: So she's carrying up one really healthy plant. And then one that looks like dead and black basically. And the black one is the negative thought.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Is the toxic, healthy versus toxic. So I'm saying healthy versus toxic because negative and positive or too narrow, so healthy versus toxic because you healthy is. It's used, you may still feel depressed, but the fact that you're working on it, you and you turn to, to find out why that you still the praise, but you're working on it.

That's healthy versus saying that depression is all bad  because depression is not bad at all. Depression is a messenger. Depression is a signal telling you that there's something you need to work on. You need to become a thought detective because everything, if you're a core in the beginning, I explained how we.

Bolder thought with our mind, and this is then how we show up. So if you want to know what's going on in your mind, you just got to look at what you're saying and doing, what are you saying? What are you doing? What are you feeling? What is your emotions? How are you showing up on all those levels? Your behaviors, your emotions, your perspective, [00:33:00] and your body, what's your body telling you?

And when you look at those as warning signals, you can, those are what this is generating. And then you can look at what you're generating and you can track it back. Why am I? And that's what the generating, this. That's what the neurosurgical is, which is the second part of the book, which is a system I developed over 38 years developed as a therapeutic tool, but now adapted to make it very simple.

So by using the neurosurgical, which is the five-step system, you can learn to track from your behaviors back down to the roots, and then reconceptualize that reconstruct and decon, deconstruct and reconstruct. So you can take these things and deconstruct and reconstruct, which is an energy transference process.

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So you can take it, those negative thoughts that you have that are built in your brain. They actually look like dead trees, physical substance, and you can recreate them, neuro-plasticity right. Actually change the way your brain is wired into something healthy. Is that correct?

Dr Caroline Leaf: That's exactly what's happening. And you're using your mind to do that. So your mind changes your brain and your mind changes your brain controls your body. So then your mind changes your body, but your mind is moving through your entire body all the time. That's why we'll have [00:36:00] researchers that talk about the intelligences in the cells of the body, because your brain and your body are made of 37 to a hundred trillion cells.

And each cell got the DNA and it's responding. So as you are listening, now, if you choose a building in your brain, but your whole body is responding. So this mind your mind is it. A global thing over your entire body and it's changing your body. So you are a change agent. You are actually making change.

Thoughts have got weight, their substance. So we've created some. So from your mind, you create physical structure and then what you say and do. So let's just think of the invention of zoom that we also rely on to now the team of people that created that concept, that started as a thought. So there was a problem.

How do we communicate? Biotechnology and zoom was developed years ago, but there's some person asked the question, how can we have communicate in a more effective way, whatever the question was. So that was the experience that they hadn't experienced that required this. And they then started thinking and working it [00:37:00] out, which then led to the tripping voltage.

Then this thing led to the invention. The invention doesn't have just a random, it doesn't just pop out of the air. It comes out of someone's head. So someone's mind created that and then worked with a team of other, anything, everything you look around, just look at a painting, look at. The cars look at buildings, look at architecture.

It's phenomenal. What we've been doing as humans, it's all come from the mind. The mind is doing that work and using the brain and the body to be able to express it. So to make it happen. And that's what we can do. Now. We look at the bad things that have happened. Look at the negative things, look at the walls and look at how this incredible knowledge we have as humans can be misused.

So mind can be misused and that's very toxic and people that are very toxic that will do the genocides and, terrible things that happen. People that rape and murder their own brains are damaged because their brains are not wired for love. So those toxic thoughts, this is brain damaging. This is increasing vulnerability to disease.

This is [00:38:00] creating a, this is very real. But this is not the norm. So therefore keeping these suppressing tumor or growing togs, whatever you think about the most will grow. And this is what you thinking about. This is what because I'm looking through the tree. I'm looking through this toxic tree now, as opposed to looking through a healthy tree, I'm holding up the healthy tree in front of my eyes now.

So how we look at life is what, and what we think about the most is growing into our brain, changing our brain and our body. And that thing produces what we say and what we do. So we impact the world with our thoughts. The world impact is coming from every invention, everything that happens, every political decision, every racist, systemic, racist decision, every person that's heard it's come from someone's mind.

Hala Taha: It's so powerful. What you're saying, like it's literally so groundbreaking what you're saying. I can't believe that they don't teach this stuff in school when I was reading your stuff. I just, I couldn't believe that, like we don't know about this. It's not commonly [00:39:00] talked about, we only hear about positive affirmations.

We don't really hear the signs behind it. It's all kind of woo. When it's actually real, when it stick tasting the whole world and everything we live in and everything we experience. So it's so powerful.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Now you've got it  exactly. Mind is considered walk with consciousness. It's considered the hard question of science, but consciousness, which is what we have when we are awake, which is conscious is just our mind when you're awake.

We haven't even spoken about the non-conscious yet, which is so powerful, but that's not the hard question of science. It's the most obvious, because just to ask that question, you've used your mind. So how has mind hard, if you want to study mind, what are you doing? It's all you have to look at. What are you doing?

What are you saying? That is evidence of mind in action. That's the iron filing shape on the paper. Remember the magnet? You can see the field, but put it in iron filings or put it next to a paperclip. And suddenly there's a, there's something happening. That's what mind is. If you wanted to study mine, what is the person saying and doing what?

Look, just look around you. Just look in your room, look where you're sitting now, everything around you is, come from mind. And if you look at so therefore mine [00:40:00] can be studied. So they might, you need to look at conscious mind is you want to talk about consciousness, which is what they do in the literature.

They talk about consciousness and you hear people talking about stream of consciousness and that often the source. Re research. I'll talk about stream of consciousness, but there's more there's the unconscious mind is the biggest part of us. The non-conscious mind is only 10% of the mind and the mind is 99% of who we are.

So what's the other 90% of mind. It's the non-conscious and that's where all of our thoughts are stored. And it's. It goes, it works 24 seven. It works at 10 to the 27, which is faster than 400 billion actions per second. It moves beyond space and time. So therefore it operates present past and future all the time.

It can be understood to certain extent using things like quantum physics and gravitational fields. And that's what is operating 24 seven. And that's connected to the source. Every human has that it's connected to the source and the source is uniquely playing out in each person. So that, and what we need to do is find our [00:41:00] own unique intelligence, which then is part of the puzzle of every single human on the planet.

And when mankind gets to that kind of level, when we start recognizing that, cause it's survival, it's actually love we talking about something. That's love-based because it is for survival. It is for. Positivity it's for health love, and that's the basic core tenet of humanity. And the basic core tenet of wisdom is basically operating together as a community for the betterment of mankind.

And we've been very bad about that in the last. The  150 years, but really in the last 40 years it's been really bad.

Hala Taha: Yeah. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the last 40 years, because I hear you talk about this often, how, we've had so many medical advancements, but in fact, we're dying a lot earlier, 18 to 25 years earlier is what I remember you saying.

So why is that happening? Like, how is that possible? Like technology is accelerating so fast, but yet we're still dying earlier. It's really [00:42:00] counterintuitive. So can you explain that?

Dr Caroline Leaf: Totally , totally can intuitive and thank you for asking that question. It's very intuitive of you to have picked that up because it's something that we should be telling everyone, and you're quite right.

We should be teaching this as in schools. I did it in South Africa, I worked, I was huge. Teaching across the country, their teaching in schools, teaching this, I've done a lot of work in this country, but it takes, it's a very different way of thinking. So it takes time. So I'm always grateful to talk about the slack, one of any way to, to help try and expand this concept and get people thinking.

Okay. So that's the one thing. So basically what's happened is that we were very good about exploring mind up until about 40 50 years ago. And really, and you still got your philosophy of this day. There's still a huge body of science. But it's been pushed aside by a dominant classical philosophy of reductionism, which basically means that we have become very advanced from the mid nineties with neuroscience, the brain has taken over.

And it's great that we understand the brain. It's led to the most phenomenal discoveries, but it's became at the expense of mind. So [00:43:00] everything became mine. So instead of mine being separate and as forced, the way I've described it, the brain has become it. And they talk about mine being almost like a mistake of sad about a byproduct of brain.

So they talk about brain producing mind, and that then leads to this concept of you, not a human with a story. You just basically brain you this mechanical thing. So if you feel depression, regardless of your story, you've got something wrong with your brain. You've got a brain disease, you got a neuro-biological brain deficit, you've got a broken brain, you've got some whatever.

So they're always looking for the neuro biological correlate, which means they're looking for where in the brain is this emotion, is that experience. Is that thinking that it starts then producers? So therefore your individuality, your uniqueness, your purse, your perspective of life, the beauty, the core of humanity, which is this individuality.

That is accelerated. Or that is accentuated or enhanced in community. It's not about you, it's about you in the world, but it's the individual pieces that make up the whole, that's been. Pretty much obliterated all [00:44:00] reduced down to brain. And at the same, when you do that, you then, as I said, you ignore the person's narrative.

Now you can't ignore 90 to 99% of humanity. You can't switch off the gravitational field. You can't switch off the basic laws that how you, what you're experiencing is affecting how you function. So you can't tell a child who's repeatedly abused and then gets put in a foster care system and gets more abused and then gets labeled with all, as in this climate gets labeled with all kinds of labels and maybe gets more abused and then gets medically abused because they get given all these drugs and so on too, because they're behavioral issues, schizophrenia or learning disabled or something.

You can't tell that person well, what's happening. And they shouldn't be happening is that they're telling their kind of person, oh, you're a broken Bain. You diseased now they're not diseased. They've had a terrible life. They are having a response or reaction. If you repeatedly abused, obviously you're going to be a behavior problem.

You don't even know how to cope with yourself. You're going to hate yourself. You don't know what to do. You don't know who to [00:45:00] trust. You don't know what way to turn. So that will manifest in whatever you can do to cope. And that's going to be different for everyone. And obviously it's on a negative spectrum, but that's not a disease.

So what has happened over the last few years prior to that, we would see your experience as a reason for who are you show up. Now, your experience is not the reason for how you show up it's your brain is broken. That's the reason for why you shop like you do. So the child's battling with behavioral issues or the person's really depressed.

It's not about your story that, yes, your stories are going to make it worse, but they saying it's your brain. It's all genetics and that's wrong. And when you have that view, it's unscientific, it cannot at the science. 40 years of science has shown it's the wrong way of doing it. It doesn't work.

It's made things worse, depression, anxiety, etc. Haven't magically gone away. Like cancer's been. We've got cranes are pretty much under control with advances in medicine. And we've got things like heart disease to tremendously under control because of advances in medicine [00:46:00] that works for the body works for the physical parts of the body, but it doesn't work for mine.

Mine can't be put into that kind of category. Mind is so massively expensive and everyone there's no cookie cutter of a framework. You can have two people in the same home that have had the same abuse and one will be a total success. And one will be a drug addict. And they've had exactly the same upbringing.

We see this with identical twins. They are totally different pathways in their life. In other words, the uniqueness of humanity has been obliterated. The story of humans has been obliterated. And when that happens, you will have a major problem. So for years, for decades, we have been living longer because of advances in medicine and technology, because medicine was so bad and we drag known existence and the medicine developed, which was phenomenal and it's continued to develop.

So let's keep people alive, right? But we've reached a point in history where that advancing medicine, technology, brain science is we know how to keep a person alive, but we've taken away any ingredient that [00:47:00] is the most important ingredient and that's mind. And that then has caused her for the first time in decades.

People are not living longer. They dying younger 18 to 25 years younger, and it's called deaths of despair. So people are dying literally from lack of hope. When you have a person who's been through multiple abusive situations, you take a woman who's in an abusive marriage and it goes on for years and she gets extremely depressing.

It's goes to the doctor and it's been really bad. And gets labeled as schizophrenia and bipolar and gets given medication. That's totally ignoring the person's story. You don't need to give them a label. They're not diseased. That person has been through trauma. That person's story needs to be heard. That person needs support to be a thought detective, to be able to recognize that depression is a warning system.

It's a signal. It's basically your, if you think of being a detective, it's your clue that there's something going on. So there's, if you that's. The top of the trees is how that person is thinking, feeling and choosing about the [00:48:00] experience. The roots are all the abusive experiences over time, which are manifesting in how that person is functioning, which is then all of us is showing up in the depression that withdrawal the breaking down, the, whatever it may be.

So if we see it like that, then we can say, okay, you would, oppression is not a disease. It is telling us it's a messenger. It's telling us about your story. Let's be thought detectors and let's understand your story. Let's deconstruct it. And then it's reconstructed you can't change the fact that the abuse happened, but you can change how you respond to it and how you want it to play out into your future.

So if you look at this tree. And if you look deeply inside, I'm holding up the green tree again. And some of the binders for the viewers, some of the branches are light green and some are dark green. And they lack that for a reason, the dark green is how you want to be in the future. You want to be free of that abuse.

You don't want to be depressed. You want the patient will still come. It's a normal part of life, but you don't want it to be controlling you, that you depressed all the time. You want it [00:49:00] to, when you have a bout of depression, you want to be able to recognize what it is and manage it. So this person let's take the snow.

The woman who's abused multiple abuse in a marriage situation. The process is looking at the abuse, deconstructing and reconstructing over time. And this takes cycles of 63 days. Eventually you're going to build a new thought. This thought will lose its energy. This energy will be transferred from this toxic thought.

This of all the abusive situations and all the memories surrounding that, that injury transferred to the new tree energies never lost any transfer. So if I take the energy from here, this dies and about put a chair. This grows, and in this, the light is the story. This reconceptualized, this is what happened, but this is how I want to live my life.

The dark is the, how I want to live my life in the future. How do I want this to play out? I want to be happy, have a happy relationship. I want to feel good about myself. I don't want to feel the shame. I don't want to feel the fear. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and be happy I'm alive and not terrified of the day.

So that's the dark green and that's what you're moving [00:50:00] towards. That's not going to happen with a label and drugs. That's going to happen with you, understanding how to manage your mind 24 seven, because you're living with your mind 24 seven, you wake up with your mind. You go to sleep with your mind, your conscious minds awake when you're awake, your non-conscious mind is work 24 seven.

So while we were awake, now the non-conscious is working with the conscious, so that's why we get triggered. So now this person, this woman is in a situation that says, she's now working through the situation and she's now maybe in day 42 or something. And a situation happens that is triggered. She may be sees a picture of the ex-husband or something like that.

And that then triggers. A response, but because she's in the process of healing, the trigger can be recognized for what it is. It's a trigger of that fear, that pain of what happened. And there's a logic a wise mind can then copilot can say to the part, okay, that's what happened, but this is how we're going to manage the situation.

We're going to practice this by day 63, when the trigger happens, you're not going to respond with a flag and fright. You're going to have the [00:51:00] so strong and so full of energy. It's going to grow like a, plant's got to grow. So any small in a big, in, it takes 21 days for two to be made for this to go in this, to grow.

But it takes another 42 days to make the strong enough that it's a habit that it actually impacts your behavior. So by day 63 onwards, when you're in a situation where you, something triggers a memory from your past, you still feel that the anxiety, you still may feel a bit of depression, but the difference is you now know why and you not know what to do.

So instead of you falling into a slump and not being able to function in your day, you can have that moment of acknowledgement of the pain, where it's coming from the source. And this is what your plan is to overcome that. And so you move forward into a new relationship. Do you see what I'm saying?

That's the power that we have within us. So I'm not going to, I don't say that you're going to. Eliminate depression. I say, you're going to eliminate the source of depression and therefore increase your management of future bouts of depression [00:52:00] by 81%. So therefore, what that means is that all of us are going to have periods of depression.

It's so normal. It's not, we've got to normalize what they've taken away and abnormally. They've made it abnormal. If you have any kind of depression or up and down mood. So you're feeling societal 95% of people have suicidal thoughts and I'm not overriding it. There's. These are vitally important. In fact, I'm giving more level of importance.

When I say it's so important to pay attention to your mind that I'm saying self regulate your mind all the time. Neuroscience shows us we can do that every 10 seconds. That's how important it is. I am saying that if you just give it a label of bipolar and a medication, you taking away, the importance you dishonoring and invalidating that person's whole.

Life experience. And you're not giving the person the power in the life. You're not empowering them to face this toxic issue and reconstruct it to a point that they can actually have mental peace. So when we have a day with, let's say, now that you've gone through this healing and it's 20 years later, and you're 20 years after the abuse, but you're in a [00:53:00] situation where something bad happens and you feel a bit depressed.

You're independent. Maybe this happened 20 years ago. Now the pandemic happens and these things that can make us all to press does it maybe brain disease. It means that we having an adverse event. Variance. Okay. So that's the concept. So people, when you take that away, what happens then is that moving the mind in keeping these, keeping that abuse, keeping the trauma, this increases vulnerability to disease by 35 to 98%.

So here's the math. If you don't deal with your stuff and you just get it labeled and suppressed. Cause that's what the current narrative is doing. The current gold standard of psychiatric treatment is label and there's therapy, but the therapy is very often, also just a bandaid on a on a wound.

It's not really solving deconstructing and reconstructing and equipping people. If you do that, you then increase the vulnerability to disease. If you increase vulnerability to disease, what's going to happen. You're going to die younger. So this shift over the last 40 years has been happening. So people are now getting, not processing, keeping this, which is then shortening lifespans.

And [00:54:00] also you can given drugs that also shortened lifespan, psychotropic drugs, shorten lifespans. They double the risk of suicide in women. Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide by three, three to four times. And any kids that's even more so and so anti-psychotics increase the risk of suicide in all of these psychotropics increase the risk of anxiety and depression.

So the very thing they're supposed to be treating, they're actually increasing and we've been sung. The wrong message has been sent. The science is evident. These things do not work. People are dying. So 1996, they started seeing this trend. And by 2014, it was confirmed that people are dying younger and independent nicotine just a few years later, while we in the midst of the pandemic that hasn't been spoken about, which is not dealing with our mind.

And now the pandemic happens, what are they saying? There's an increase in mental health, right? Disease. And we have to give more diagnoses and more medication. It's going to make it even worse. It's not the solution. The solution is we have to listen to people's narratives. We have to work as communities to help people to [00:55:00] cope with these changes.

And we have to deal with things like systemic racism, et cetera, et cetera. We have to make massive community changes, not just individual changes.

Hala Taha: Wow.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Sorry. I was a mom .

Hala Taha: No, it was so good. And don't be sorry. That was amazing. So if I could just regurgitate what you said, we are living in a world of labels, right? We're always labeled, you're depressed. You're bipolar, you're sick. You're diseased. And these labels. Or just covering up and suppressing us, even the medicine is numbing our thoughts and

Dr Caroline Leaf: the soccer tropics.

Hala Taha: Yeah. Yeah. It's basically just covering it up. It's not actually fixing anything. And so the dead black thought trees that you were telling us about,

Dr Caroline Leaf: Which are very much alive, which are very volcanic in nature.

Hala Taha: Okay. So they're alive, these toxic trees in our brain keep growing because we're not actually fixing the problem. We're not actually rewiring our brain to heal ourselves. So it's so [00:56:00] crazy. Like it's actually unbelievable that this is happening right now.

Dr Caroline Leaf: It is unbelievable. And what, what's worse, sorry to interrupt you.

But the, what's worse is that even the day-to-day stuff is not being managed. So could be, we think, okay, the audio rotation that, the politics happening there, the systemic racism, and, seeing that, then reading the news, we think, okay, there's made, I'm reading the news. It didn't happen to me.

We don't think it's a fake, but it is because those little traumas are basically converging and growing and becoming as traumatic as these. And we're not managing those either. So that's also what I'm proposing. Not, but only do we need to detox the traumas of the past. We needed the patterns. We need to look for the patents, tell us what.

It's big. And then you need to spend dedicated 15 to 45 minutes a day working on the patents, but you've also got to manage your moment. By moment. You wake up in the morning, you've got to go to work, you've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to be a parent whatever it is that you do, how are you doing it?

Or you're getting mad or you're getting irritated or you're getting crazy and traffic, or you snapping at everyone. What are you freaking out at every news [00:57:00] bulletin or you scrolling through social media and getting imposter syndrome. Every time you look at the comments on or someone else's posts, what are you?

No, one's talking about that. We have to manage that too. We have to self regulate it 24 seven. And when I say 24, seven consciously and deliberately, when you're awake, you can actually do it every 10 seconds. And you're assigned shows. You can stand back and observe your own thinking and monitor yourself and change yourself.

So that in other words, if you, in a conversation in a business meeting and you find yourself getting terribly worked up because of what someone's saying, you're getting really mad and you're getting want to say something nasty. You can do the neuro cycle on that. In that moment in five seconds and you can get yourself calm and under control.

Then let's say, you go from there, you can benefit from the meeting. Then you can go from that meeting. Maybe you pick up the kids from school or something and they will fighting in the, and you're going crazy. Cause you haven't quite processed the meeting and you're upset about that. And other kids and you all you can do in your cycle and get yourself under control.

Each time you can have an argument to have to get onto a podcast, or someone says something or you get a terrible email. Now you've got to interview someone [00:58:00] because you're not doing that a lot. Interviewing people, you've got to be really focused. It's not easy to interview someone. And then you may have something may have upset you.

So you could have done a neuro-psychologist before to get your mind back. In other words, we should be monitoring our mind and we are designed to do that every 10 seconds we'd be awake. And then at nighttime, or mine's still working in sorting appropriate probably during the day. So if we've got a good neuro cycle system, it'd be our managing our mind of ourselves, of our mind.

Management's in place during the day. That means when we go into the night, we go in with a more peaceful sleep, because sleep has been so badly effected over the last 40 years as well.   

Hala Taha: Oh, my gosh

Dr Caroline Leaf: I interrupted you there, sorry

Hala Taha:  No, it's okay. I need to bring you back on this show because I feel like there's so much that I need to talk about.

Maybe I'll break you on clubhouse or something soon, but there's so much I want to ask you, where I want close this out is actionable advice. So let's say that one of my listeners out there, and I know that there's somebody listening and we're on the topic of depression. That's probably medicated right now for [00:59:00] anxiety or depression.

And they've been told that this is how they're going to heal, and this is the only way to treat what's going on. So what advice would you give them to start improving their lives and moving towards healing themselves, using their mind rather than using medication?

Dr Caroline Leaf: That's a great question. So first off is that medication I'm not anti medication for like heart disease and diabetes and just general medication for medicine and surgery.

I think it's a fantastic, phenomenal thing. And your mind is so important in getting the benefit from that. And research has shown just very quickly that if you are, let's say getting cancer treatment and your mind is not. If you're not managing your mind, you won't get the same kind of benefit, this huge amount of bodies of research.

Showing that to get benefit from medication for physical illness, you really need to have your mind involved. Okay. So that's the first thing. So when we talk about psychotropics, we're talking about antidepressants antianxiety meds anti-psychotics and stimulants. Now the entry already is the wrong word because they're not anti anything.

[01:00:00] They're based on the concept of an antibiotic and antibiotic is given to fight the bacteria. So it's entered the bacteria. So psychotropic language has been stolen from them. And the impression is that, okay if I take the antibiotic, it kills the bacteria. If I take the antidepressant, it kills the depression.

It doesn't do that because depression isn't a chemical imbalance. Depression is coming from, it's a signal, it's a warning signal. It's not an it's not a chemical embed. And it causing a chemical. It's not a chemical imbalance in your brain. So it's, there's no research to back that up at all. It is a response to an underlying cause and because moves through your brain will respond with imbalances, chemical imbalances and neurotoxicity and all that kind of thing.

But it's different for every person in the book, cleaning up your mental mess. I do show how. I looked at things like inflammation, cortisol, DNA, and how, when we don't manage our mind, those get worse. But as soon as you manage your mind within nine weeks, you can change your telomere length, which means that you literally can reduce or [01:01:00] increase your lifespan.

And we had people that were so depressed at the beginning of the study that the beginning of, and this is one of the book that they had been clinically diagnosed with depression. And I'm holding up now for those of you that can see I'm holding up a quota. Called QEG head maps and it's just basically photographs.

It's cute EEG image of inside the brain. And there's three rows, the top rows blue in the bottom, two rows or gray. Okay. So what that means is that looking inside a person who is very depressed, the energy in the brain, the energy response in the brain, the blood flow, there, all that kind of stuff, blood flow oxygen, et cetera, is very flat.

And you don't want that. You want it to be like waves in a sea where you've got the big waves at the back, and then they're built to the break and they crash on the beach. And there's the ripples. And you want that kind of flow in your brain across both sides. And that's a gray brain. We meet when that's happening.

We'll see shades of gray when a person's very depressed. You'll see blue. Now, when you manage your mind, The blue changes to gray. So what that was showing is in our clinical trial, we showed that people that were diagnosed [01:02:00] with clinical depression and had tried everything, they, once they were managing their mind using the neuro cycle, the five steps, which isn't the second half of the book very simplistically explained, et cetera.

They, the depression lifted within 21 days. It doesn't go away. It lifted. And the difference was instead of them saying, I am depression. Which was the identity that weight, but that 21 days they were saying, I am depressed because of huge difference. By day 63, they were not scared of depression. They recognized they could use the depression to help themselves.

So that's massive. Okay. So basically to come back really to the medication, then on a practical level, you cannot just stop a psychotropic. Psychotropics are basically like anesthetics. So they numb the brain and that's why people feel better on them very often because the pain is numbed. So that terrible pain that you can't, that you can't get out of bed that love.

So you feel like you can live again. And that's what a lot of people do say. Maybe for 24 hours or 48 hours, but not longer because they're very addictive and neat and they do change the brain. So some of you may have been on these drugs for years, and now [01:03:00] you're thinking, oh my gosh, I've damage my brain.

Yes. Unfortunately you have damaged your brain, but your brain can heal. That is the beauty of this. And to bet you never just stopped them immediately. So I have to put a disclaimer in here, do not just stop any kind of anti-depressant or anti-psychotic or a stimulant, because your brain will go into shock because your brain is physically changed.

So you have to come off very slowly. So if you make the decision to choose to come off, you need to get with a medical professional who understands how to get you off medication. And then you take her off tape, a T A P E R. You can Google tapering. And we putting up a lot of reference. We've got a lot of resources on our side too.

And Dr. Dave.com and we putting we're putting up even more, but basically taping means that you take fraction less every day. So your body, so you help your brain to heal, right? In the process of taping off that vitally important. I just have to stress that upfront. You cannot just stop cold Turkey cause suicidal thoughts and all kinds of things will come back.

And then you'll get told by your doctors that the disease is coming back. It's not a disease in the first place. It's [01:04:00] withdrawal effects that drugs create withdrawal effects. And the last thing with drugs is that you can request from your doctor. I think it was put you on for the informed consent, which is a big document that tells you everything about drugs.

If the doctors legally are required to do that before they put you on, and most doctors don't, and it's a legal requirement. And if if you read that document, you would have very strong, second thoughts about taking them because their documents folded, all the things that drug could do to you. But it's really important that you find the source of see the depression, not as something negative.

See it as a helpful messenger. It's telling you something. So embrace it instead of. Suppress it. And don't see depression as an it see depression as a clue detective, we are thought thoughts, detective. Okay. That depression is a messenger. It's helpful. As soon as you do that 1400 neurophysiological responses in your brain and body will start working for you and your resilience will increase.

So your attitude to, okay, this depression is fine. It's okay. There's a reason for it. It's not a disease. I'm not a broken brain. I'm okay. This is [01:05:00] just a response. It's a clue. It's a signal to something going on. And then you begin the process of being a thought detective. Then you start doing the five steps every day for 15 to 45 minutes for the first 21 days.

And from day 21. 22 to 42 63, you just do step five, the five steps. And then there's a million other things that you can do around this. There's so much in these tables, these explanations, there's examples of how to use for detoxing and everything. But basically the five steps train you to become together.

Awareness of what the signals are, what they mean. So what are the emotional, what are the physical, what are the behavioral? What are the perspectives signals? All the signals. I teach you in the five steps, how to gather wellness or the signals, but you're doing it as the pilot and the copilot. So you distancing yourself.

You don't immerse yourself in that tree. You literally imagine flying over a forest as pilot and co-pilot messy mind. And why is mine? And you paying attention to the signal? What's the signal. Depression is imagine a little signal coming out of the tree, [01:06:00] a little smoke signal. There's a little wire sticking up there.

You land your plane instead of just going over and ignoring it and suppressing it and pushing it and hoping it will go, wait, you land your plane, you get out your plane with the copilot. So what is he always was? Your wisdom and you stand back in your reserve. So I'm not in it. I'm not under it. If it's an imagine it's full of rotten apples, you don't go stand under it.

And then all the apples fall on your head, you stand back and you pick the apples. You gather when a sets the concept, that's the sort of how you come into the process and you gather witness all the different signals. Then you start reflecting very objectively. You've got to go through the sequence. Each sequence is creating more the brain, two sides of the brain to work together, increasing blood flow to the front of the brain and oxygen, increasing your decision-making capability, putting in more gang activity.

That's increasing integration and there's that. All the signs of what's happening at each step. I've put into the book, not all of it, the simple version. So each step is sequentially designed. You can't skip a step. You do all five steps because it's progressively taking you into [01:07:00] a deeper state. So the second one is basically a deep reflection.

The third one is third and fourth steps are writing steps. You do to specific, very specific ways of writing. They're not just standard journaling, but each is taking you deeper and deeper. And then the last step is an action that ends the work for the day. Cause you don't want to be working. You don't want to get stuck in this all day long.

You just focus on the toxic stuff for that 15 to 45 minutes. So the act of reach the action. Step five is just something that keeps you anchored back in a safe space. So it's just, I am not shame or something like that. So it's a statement that every time your mind wants to go and ruminate, you don't allow it.

You capture that thought you. Put it in the box. You said tomorrow I'll work on it for today. That's all I'm going to do. And you work some because the whole point is that you do it over time. You're not going to get everything revealed in day one. It takes a full 21 days to embrace process and reconceptualize into the healthy tree.

And then you would do stick fire for the rest of it. That's a quick brief walk through, but there's some detail in the book and there's an app too the neurocycle app ,   that is also at all, literally giving you

Hala Taha:  I was just going [01:08:00] to say guys, she has so many different resources. She has her book, the mental mess.

Then she has an app. She has a podcast. So I highly recommend honestly guys I've recommended books in the past, but I really recommend this one. I feel like you guys are gonna find so much value. Dr. Caroline leaf, this was amazing. The last question I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life?

Dr Caroline Leaf: Mind management without a doubt it's all driven by mind. So everything is driven by mind . So that's the, without managing your mind, you cannot do life is just mason, from there, it's just a natural profiting in everything. Relationships, yourself, peace, finances, business, et cetera. And you can also get better perspective, but you don't look at anything.

Anything. I don't look at anything as an external thing to bring into me. Everything's from inside out because it's mind out. And then I, then you've mentioned more, then I'm much more accepting of everything that happens. And I have goals and visions obviously, but I don't, they don't, they're not external that I'm trying to get [01:09:00] in. I'm growing from the inside out .

Hala Taha: I feel like what you're talking about is literally the future . Like you were talking about the future , what everybody's going to learn in school 20 years from now, but we're learning it now. And you can take advantage of it now, even though it's not mainstream. So I want everybody listening and to realize that.

 Thank you so much, Dr. Caroline, where can people learn more about you and everything that you do?

Dr Caroline Leaf: Absolutely. Thank you so much. drcarolineleaf is my Instagram handle. All my social media handles, obviously from Instagram, we all know you can get everything that book cleaning up a mental mess and is available. Wherever books are sold and also on our site, Dr leaf.com. We've got a store that all my other books are there. The neuropsycho app, you can get a Google's iTunes and everything you can get through my Instagram page will take you to everything like everyone knows. And then my podcast is called cleaning up your mental mess.

Hala Taha: Perfect. And I'll stick all those links in the show notes.

Thank you so much for your time. It was such a pleasure.

Dr Caroline Leaf: Thank you so much.

Hala Taha: Thanks for listening to young and profiting podcasts with neuroscientist, Dr. [01:10:00] Caroline leaf. Caroline was absolutely brilliant. And honestly, her brain is on a whole other level. She literally thinks faster and talks faster than any other guest I've ever interviewed on this podcast.

I loved when Caroline talks about how the mind and body are interconnected, every human is technically wired for love. We're built for love. And when the mind and body are not connected, that's when chaos ensues, negative thoughts literally look like black trees in our brain and whatever you think about the most we'll grow, we are what we think and what we think about the most will grow the most.

So if you think about bad thoughts, a lot, that's going to keep growing and growing. You're either building chaos in your brain and making a mental mess, which can cause brain damage, or you're building order into your brain, cleaning up the mental mess and boosting your brain health, which side of the coin do you want to be on?

I know which one I do. And aside from the Corona [01:11:00] virus pandemic, I think we're also facing a mental health pandemic. We live in a world where for the most part, we only suppress label and drug or mental distress instead of embracing it, processing it and reconceptualizing all the sufferings that we face in life.

When we don't process that suffering that pain is an embedded, toxic energy in our brain. And it's embedded toxic energy in the cells of our bodies. And it's literally making us die 18 to 25 years earlier as a human species. As we learned in this podcast, this has to change and it starts with you and me.

Dr. Caroline taught us that it takes 63 days to build a habit. So get out there and begin your journey. A good place to start is to download Caroline's app. Neurocycle or grab her book, gleaning up your mental mess. If you want to learn more about the different techniques to combine the mind and the body, I encourage you to take a listen to my episode number 46, mindfulness meditation, and manifesting with Emily Fletcher. In that [01:12:00] episode we explain how meditation can help you cure insomnia, reverse the signs of aging and even make you smarter. Here's a clip from that episode.

Emily Fletcher: If you invest the time on the front end to learn how to do it properly, then you're going to see very quickly that you are investing your time in meditation.

And then the question becomes, are you willing to invest 2% of your day, which is 15 minutes, twice a day, are you willing to invest that so that the other 98% of your life can be more amazing so that your sleep can be more efficient so you can have better sex. So you can be more present with your kids so you can crush it at work so that you can achieve all the things that you want to achieve.

Yes. But more importantly, enjoy yourself along the way. And so really the only thing I want to. Put out there is that if you're not getting a return on your investment for meditation, then you should consider changing techniques because they're not all created equal.

Hala Taha: Again, that's number 46, mindfulness meditation, and manifesting with Emily [01:13:00] Fletcher.

As always. I'm going to finish off this interview by sharing a recent review from apple podcasts. The number one way to thank me and the yap team is by subscribing to this podcast. And by dropping us a review on Apple Castbox Podbean, or your favorite platform. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you take a few minutes to support the show.

By leaving your feedback. Today, shout out, goes to Lizzie GA cap your day with yap. Okay. So this is the real deal I signed up for the app podcast and listened to the amazing interview with Jay Samit about his super proof, your future book. I was impressed with the setup of the podcast and the interview.

I loved the timestamp list of what is in the interview in the show notes. I loved the summary intro that Holly did about Jay. And when the podcast started, I knew I was going to hear some great info. Thanks for this alternate view, holla and keep the hope alive for the 99%.

Thank you so much, Lizzie for this amazing review and shout out to my [01:14:00] amazing research team and to myself because I work really hard and prep and study for these interviews too.

And I'm almost a little bit psychotic about how much I study for these interviews, but honestly, it's all worth it because I am obsessed with the customer. Which is all of you guys out there listening to young and profiting podcast and to all my younger profiting podcasters out there. Again, if you enjoyed listening to today's show, be like Lizzie drop us a five-star review on Apple Castbox pod bean, or wherever you listen to the show.

I love seeing your feedback and reading these reviews. And I also love seeing your feedback on social. Feel free to tag us on Instagram. You can find me at yapwithhala  or LinkedIn, just search for my name. It's Hala Taha . And now I'm on clubhouse, I'm hosting interviews on there every single week and rooms there almost every single day.

You can find me at hala. Big, thanks to the app team as always. This is Hala, signing off. .