The Benefits of Meditation and EFT Tapping with Dr Dawson Church

It's common to hear that a good diet and exercise can significantly improve our health. But health is more than that. Your thoughts and beliefs can change your genes and brain structure! 85% of our genes are malleable, and you can change them for the better with good practices.

In this episode, Dr Dawson Church joins us to talk about the benefits of meditation and EFT tapping. He shares that changing our mental states can significantly impact our bodies and even our environment. The key to happiness and calm is in our hands; we just need to invest time to achieve it.

If you want to know more about the benefits of meditation and the science behind EFT tapping, then this episode is for you.

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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

1. Discover the ways you can influence and change your genes and body.
2. Understand the benefits of meditation and achieving a flow state.
3. Learn how to become a force of good in the world by being an emotional contagion.

Resources

• Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!
• Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio.
• More Pushing the Limits Episodes:
• • 183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Elena Seranova
  • 189: Increasing Your Longevity with Elena Seranova
  • Pushing the Limits Episode with Dr Don Wood
• Connect with Dr Dawson: Website | Twitter | Facebook
• Check out these amazing books and resources from Dr Dawson Church

• The Genie In Your Genes

• Mind To Matter. Get it for free here!

• Bliss Brain. Get it for free here! You'll also get eight meditations that accompany each chapter of the book.

• • The EFT Manual
  • The Immunity Meditation: Receive Your Complimentary EFT Mini-Manual and BONUS Immunity EcoMeditation!
• EFT Universe
• Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler
• Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• ABC's Catalyst - Meditation
• The Muscle Intelligence Podcast with Ben Pakulski: Using energy therapy to heal trauma and illness, increase productivity, up-regulate gene expression and build character traits with Dr Dawson Church

Episode Highlights [05:52] The Benefits of Meditation and Alternative Practices

• Dr Dawson shares how his research shows that our minds can turn thoughts and ideas into reality.
• People who practice meditation become really happy.
• Dr Dawson shares that he studied meditation, energy healing, and psychology.
• Through this, he transformed from a miserable teen to the happy character he is today.
• Dr Dawson believes that his purpose is to give the gift of happiness to others.

[10:18] Quantifying Ancient Traditions with Science

• Dr Dawson shares how he was able to measure acupressure points using the galvanometer.
• His findings proved the integrity of the Chinese practice of energy flows.
• Energy treatments have shown astronomical results. Listen to the full episode to hear the breakthroughs in these treatments.

[13:55] How to Influence Your Genes

• While we can influence our genes with diet, recent research shows that you can also change it with your beliefs and attitudes.
• 15% of our genomes are fixed, while the remaining 85% are malleable.
• In his practice, Dr Dawson learned how anxiety spikes cortisol levels, depletes the immune system, produces calcification in the brain and more.
• This finding shows that it's important to manage our thoughts and beliefs.
• Through this, we're able to influence our physical bodies positively.

[16:36] How EFT Tapping Addresses Trauma

• EFT tapping has shown its effectiveness in resetting your emotions, especially when you're feeling stressed, anxious, or angry.
• Normally, your stress response creates re-traumatisation by sending high levels of signals in your body. Over time, this can shrink the brain.
• When you remember a traumatic event while tapping, you can reduce the signals and break traumatic associations.
• Once you break the association between your traumatic memories and fight or flight response, it stays broken.
• EFT Tapping is a powerful tool. Learn how Dr Dawson uses this to help war veterans in the full episode!

[25:44] Break the Trauma Loop and Calm Down

• When traumatic memories and experiences haunt you, you fall into a trauma loop.
• We have evolved to become highly attuned to potential dangers, even if they're just possibilities.
• Our modern world doesn't help with this condition, where people say that it's hard to find time to meditate and calm down.
• Dr Dawson shares that a few minutes of mediation will pay off. Not only will you be calmer physically and physiologically, but you will also perform better.
• You cannot afford not to meditate.

[31:55] How to Get into the Flow State

• Scientists found that when someone is in flow, they have a characteristic brainwave state.
• They sought to re-engineer this and train ordinary people to achieve the same state.
• We can achieve the flow state through mediation like the mystics do or through peak performance.
• Once you hit this state repeatedly, your brain will be naturally addicted to the boost in anandamide. You get into the same state of bliss that you achieve through drugs.
• There are several other benefits of meditation. Listen to the full episode to hear what it can do.

[37:10] Letting Go of Local Reality

• Dr Dawson shares that great figures throughout history have let go of ordinary states to achieve the extraordinary.
• In meditation, you have the opportunity to let go of local reality and go to a field of consciousness.
• This place is where we can deliberately change our belief systems and then affect our local reality.
• When you enter the non-local reality, you can change the hardware of the brain.
• Immerse yourself in meditation, and it will change your mind and brain. Then it starts to change your whole life.

[44:18] Mindset Changes on Sports and Exercise

• Athletes often get injured when they're not in the flow state. Athletes who have a long career tend to know how to pace themselves.
• For people looking to lose weight, it's important to associate exercise with pleasure rather than pain. This strategy helps to stretch people's limits without burning out.
• Learn to listen to your body and stop when it tells you to do so.
• Athletes are typically expected to push themselves. It's the same principle: they need to learn to listen to their body and understand their limits.
• The way we build strength and endurance is through recovery. Don't forget this part of the training.

[56:11] Be an Agent of Positive Emotional Contagion

• People can affect their environment. Our emotions and moods are contagious.
• We don't know how far our positivity can reach. It can affect hundreds and even thousands. It can even save lives.
• Become an agent of compassion and love. Not only will you help others, but you also help yourself.
• Listen to the full episodes to learn about the research on spreading positivity and happiness.

[1:05:36] Living Longer

• On average, optimists live ten years longer than pessimists.
• Negative emotions are like corrosive acids that will damage your body.
• You need to work on being optimistic and healing your trauma simultaneously.
• Note that this is a continuous process.

7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

'I just said, "You know, universe, what is your purpose for me in the coming year?" And the universe, I heard these words, they said, "We've given you the gift of happiness. Now, go give it to everyone else, too." So that's really what I see myself doing now and where I came from originally and where I am today.'

'It's [EFT] like pushing the reset button for your emotions. So you're upset, you're angry or you're stressed whatever way, then you simply tap on these points very, very quickly.'

'You cannot afford not to meditate. The gains in productivity, problem solving ability, and creativity is so enormous that if you don't spend that hour or that half hour, you are missing out on your biggest single leverage point for success in your life.'

'In meditation for a little while, you let go of local reality, and you simply identify with the field of consciousness that is the cosmos. There's this huge information field in which we swim in it. We're like fish looking for water when we're looking for God or spirituality.'

'I wrote in my journal, "My heart is just burning with love and bursting with gratitude". Because you come down in the states of such ecstasy and the rest of the world in your life, and it is a world of magic. You then create that magic all around you.'

'Athletes, first of all, when they're in the zone, when they're in flow, they injure themselves less and their performance goes up. It's that old Yerkes-Dodson law, currently referred to a little bit of stress is fine.'

'Jesus said, "Love your enemies," to go to them that hate you. Yeah, very good advice, even though it's 2,000 years old. And when you do this, you're producing emotional contagion around you. You have no idea how far it's going.'

About Dr Dawson Church

Dr Dawson Church is a leading health writer and researcher whose principal work includes The Genie In Your Genes, Mind To Matter and Bliss Brain. His research linked the connection of consciousness, emotion and gene expression. Moreover, he has looked into the science of peak mental states, flow states and happiness.

With his research, Dr Dawson conducted clinical trials and founded The Institute for Integrative Healthcare to promote groundbreaking new treatments. To date, his largest program is the Veterans Stress Projects which has offered free treatment to over 20,000 veterans with PTSD.

Dr Dawson further shares his research through EFT Universe, one of the largest alternative medicine websites. In addition, he is the science columnist for Unity magazine and has written blog posts for the Huffington Post.

In his undergraduate and graduate courses at Baylor University, Dr Dawson was the first student to graduate from the University Scholar's program in 1979. He earned his doctorate from the Integrative Healthcare at Holos University under the famed neurosurgeon Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, the American Holistic Medical Association founder.

Are you interested to know more about Dr Dawson's work? Check out his website and EFT Universe.

You can also reach Dr Dawson on Twitter and Facebook.

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa.

Full Transcript Of The Podcast

Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Your host, Lisa Tamati, here with you and today I have another very, very special guest for you that is perhaps going to change your life. A really very interesting man. Dr Dawson Church, PhD, who is an award winning science writer with three bestselling books to his credit. The Genie in Your Genes was the first book to demonstrate that emotions drive gene expression. So that's all-around epigenetics, epigenetics and how your emotions can actually change the way your genes are expressing. The second book Mind to Matter, which is really something that you must read, shows that the brain creates much of what we think of as objective reality. And his third book, Bliss Brain demonstrates that peak mental states rapidly remodel the brain for happiness.

Now, Dawson has conducted dozens of clinical trials and founded the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare to promote ground-breaking new treatments. Its largest program, the Veteran Stress Project has offered over free treatment to over 20,000 veterans who are suffering from PTSD. All for love, no money involved, an absolute amazing project. Dawson now shares how to apply these health and performance breakthroughs through his EFT universe. It was just an absolutely fascinating conversation with him. I'm very, very interested always in neuroplasticity because I was told, with my mum story, as you all know, that there was no hope that her brain would not be able to remodel and not be able to learn again and that is so far from the truth. In his new book, A Bliss Brain, award winning science writer Dawson Church focuses on the positive and negative mood and negative thinking and how it's associated with activation of brain regions like the prefrontal cortex - the state of yourself, and positive emotions such as altruism and compassion.

He blends cutting edge neuroscience with the stories of people who've had first-hand experience or brain change. And Bliss Brain really examines the effects of emotional states on brain structure. Suffice to say, you have to listen to this episode. I think if you're struggling with anxiety, struggling with stress, feeling the effects of ongoing long-term stress on your body and with illnesses and sicknesses and depression and all of these things that hamper just so many of us, so many of the people that I work with, and certainly I struggle with it on occasion, as well, then this is a book for you.

Dr. Dawson really emanates happiness and joy. But that wasn't always the case, he was someone who had suffered from depression quite badly in his early years. And this is what sent him down this great path. He manages to marry the science with the traditional things like Chinese medicine and Meridians and energy medicine. He's been able to quantify it so that people like me who love science in general open minded sceptics, I like to call myself, can actually understand why these things work. And that's really, really important.

Before we head over to Dr. Dawson. I just like to remind you, we have now our Patron membership for the podcast. If you'd like to get involved with the podcast, if you'd like to support what we do here at Pushing the Limits. We've been doing it now for five and a half years, and near on 200 episodes. I can tell you, into each episode goes a heck of a lot of work and a lot of research, and a lot of book reading, a lot of time. And we really need — to keep this on air — we really need your help. So if you'd like to come and support us and get a whole lot of extra member benefits, then head on over to patron.lisatamati.com, that's patron.lisatamati.com. You can join us in our tribe there. I would really, really appreciate you doing that. And as always, please give us a rating and review for the show because that really does help us as well and share it with your family and friends if you get benefit from us. I'd also love to hear from you, if you've got a question about one of the guests. If you want to dive deeper into one of the topics, please reach out to me, [email protected].

I'd like to remind you too, that we also have our epigenetics program, which is our flagship program that we have that looks at your genes and how to optimise your genes, and how to understand the nuance of what foods, what times of the day, what types of exercise, what are your dominant hormones, what are your dominant neurotransmitters and how that plays out in your life. So if you'd like to join us for that, please head over to lisatamati.com and go under the Work With Us button and you'll see all the information there.

Now over to Dr. Dawson Church.

Lisa: Hi everyone, and welcome to Pushing the Limits. I'm super excited to have you here with me today. I have an absolute legend, a man who has done so much research and so much good in the world, Dr. Dawson Church with me. Welcome to the show. Dawson, it's really, really exciting to have you with us today. Thanks for taking the time.

Dr. Dawson Church: For me, too, Lisa. We have had such fun now and the next hour. We just had off the air, this would be a fabulous time for you and me and everyone else combined.

Lisa: Exactly. We already had a couple of really good connections. That's fantastic.

So, Dawson, well, you are an incredible man with a number of books. You have your research, you're an expert on the brain and the mind and body connection. Can you give us a little bit of background about how did you get into the space and what you've been studying? I mean, it's a big question, but we'll start there anyway.

Dr. Dawson: Well, let's start right in the middle. I worked at a book about five years ago called Mind to Matter. It was really off the cuff project — I was interviewing scientists, I was trying to trace all of the scientific pieces, the links, the chain between having a thought and a thing. And I thought, "Well, I'll find some links to the chain, not others." But I found all of them. It was so interesting to see how our thoughts literally become things, how our brains function like transducers, from the universal field of information and we then manifest those things all around us. While I was doing that I got into — so I've been meditating everyday for like 20 years plus — but I own some really esoteric forums, our meditation practice by masters who've done it like 10,000 hours. By the end, I find myself getting really, really, really, really happy. I was already a really happy person. But at the end, I had to find myself getting super happy, no matter what the circumstances. But we had to look at all why people who do certain styles of meditation gets so happy. That's why I wrote the book, Bliss Brain. I began the process, 50 years before that, as a teenager, when I was so toxically depressed and anxious and miserable. I was suicidal, I mean, I want to just kill myself when I was 12, 13, 14 years old. And I looked into my own eyes, walked past a full-length mirror one day when I was 15, looked into my own eyes, and I said to myself, those are the saddest eyes I've ever seen. I realised I was so messed up inside. So, I went to live on a spiritual community for many years. I learned meditation, learned energy healing, studied psychology. Wanted to figure out how I could make myself happier, and got a little bit happier over the years. And then when I began to meditate every single day, I didn't have to use energy therapies like EFT tapping, suddenly I got a lot happier. After Mind to Matter, doing these esoteric meditations, got super happy, I want to then just tell it to the world. So I had this epiphany. But I don't want to retreat every New Year's Eve and spend about two, three weeks just really getting quiet meditating, asking the universe, "What are my marching orders for the coming year?"

I was walking the labyrinth with a group of about 40 people at a meditation centre in New Year's, couple of years ago. I stood at the centre of the labyrinth at the stroke of midnight. And I just said, "Universe, what is your purpose for me in the coming year?" And the universe, I heard these words, they said, "We've given you the gift of happiness. Now, go give it to everyone else, too." So that's really what I see myself doing now and where I came from originally and where I am today.

Lisa: Oh, wow, that is beautifully put in. So, Bliss Brain because you've written a number of books. Mind to Matter was the last one and then Bliss Brain is this one. And when people are listening to this, a lot of people will think, "Well, yes." But is this, especially a lot of the people that are scientifically, believe in the science and they want evidence. What I found so interesting with your work is that you've met managed to marry the science, the quantified effects of energy medicine, of meditation, of pressure points, of EFT, all of these things is energy, things and actually quantified those with science in very rigorous-based, evidence-based, which for me is always a fascinating thing. Because I'm very much an open minded person, but I like to have that rigor, that sceptical mind, that prefrontal cortex that often jumps in and goes, "But is this real?" And you said, on the cusp between, being open minded and being scientific and you've seem to marry these two, just beautifully in your work and being able to quantify some of the ancient traditions the Chinese medicine, the Meridians, these types of things that have been known for thousands of years, but are now actually being shown to be correct and with science. Can you tell us about that?

Dr. Dawson: What's amazing is if you're taking a pedal instrument, handheld instrument, called the galvanometer. It's battery powered, it picks up the electrical resistance on your skin. And so, at my live workshops, I will run this over people's skin, and the little muscle device makes beeping sound whenever it hits an acupuncture point. And it's because those points are very, very high conductance, low resistance. You'll run this little deal over the person's face, nothing's happening, it'll hit an acupuncture point like this over here is on the bladder meridian, this point over here, and suddenly the machine goes crazy and starts beeping and flashing only in this tiny point about a millimetre in diameter, and no other surrounding skin. That's the exact point shown in a 2400-year-old Chinese scroll.

These ancients knew about all these points, energy flows, the chakras, the meridians, and so on. Now, we have instrumentation to measure them. At least the cool thing about the measurement process is, as we're measuring the effects of energy therapies, energy treatments, we're finding that as we quantify them, the effects aren't tiny. They aren't 3%, 5%. Sometimes they're astronomical. Like for example, the EFT. So in meta-analysis, meta-analys-s gathered together 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 studies into a bundle. And then, they extract all the information on a scale of how effective a therapy is. An effective therapy gets a score of two. A really effective therapy gets a score of five, and an extremely effective therapy is a score of eight. So two, five, eight, those are the three points in a meta-analysis that tells you whether a therapy has some effect or a huge effect.

In studies in meta-analysis of EFT tapping for anxiety on that 2-5-8 scale, the effect of EFT is 12. It's off the odds, off the scale, off the chart. Same thing for depression, same thing for PTSD. So now that we're quantifying these therapies, meditation, EFT, other kinds of therapies, we're applying some of them, have incredible results at the level of the genome, proteins, proteins expression, enzymes, all kinds of processes in our bodies.

Lisa: Wow, that is, okay, because you've written a book called The Genie in Your Genes. It was a marvellous title because I studied epigenetics and genetics. I know that you collaborated on the book with Dr. Bruce Lipton. I was like that's one of my favourite books of all time, and actually got me down this rabbit hole of epigenetics. And so, I've looked at epigenetics in relation to the food and the nutrition and the social environment and your neurotransmitters and these sorts of things. But when I heard you talking about how it affects, like meditation — you're able to see, I think it was 72 genes or something, where it actually changes the expression of those genes in real time, when you're doing these meditations. And these were areas, I mean you know the areas better than me, perhaps you can talk about it. Because I think a lot of people don't understand that we have a DNA that we've inherited from mum and dad, that's our code if you like. But all throughout life and throughout every day and with everything that we do, we're turning genes on and off for the want of a better description, up regulating or down regulating certain genes with our environment. So what sort of things can we influence through meditation and through EFT, and so on?

Dr. Dawson: That is the key question to ask me, Lisa. We can influence our gene expression with things like diet. You eat certain foods and eat really healthy foods is to turn on certain genes and result and certain processes in your body. And so, the early after they studied and study, 1999, 2002, were all about introducing dietary factors usually in experimental subjects of rats, mice, and then seeing how that affected their gene expression. But what I am much more interested in than things like drugs and external factors like food, is I am super interested in what we can do with this thing behind our bars over here and our beliefs and our attitudes and our energy. It turns out, I mean, that's funny you just mentioned, by done by remarkable, insight-filled therapist called Beth Maharaj. And she found that in an EFT session, a one hour EFT session of psychotherapy using EFT acupuncture tapping, all those acupuncture points, 72 genes were changed. And again, about 15% of our genome is fixed, like I am two metres tall, I have grey eyes and brown hair, not very much of that anymore, and I just have certain physical characteristics that are what they are. Those are fixed genes, but those are only about 15% of the genome. The other 85% is changed. When I have a negative thought, I start producing cortisol, I send a signal down to the medulla on my adrenal glands, my adrenal gland starts producing cortisol, and adrenaline. Adrenaline is your fast-acting, stress hormone; cortisol is your slow acting, but still, it hasn't two minutes and two minutes is turning everything on and off all kinds of other processes off in your body.

And so I'm doing that with my mind alone. If I'm having high cortisol day after day because I'm worried, because I'm stressed, because I'm anxious. Now, what I'm doing is I'm driving my body into this fight or flight state over and over and over again, chronic stress. It's depleting everything else, my body, my immune system, it results in muscular wasting. It literally, over time, produces calcification of the brain's learning memory centres. And you want a lot of calcium in your teeth, a lot of calcium in your bones. You do not want calcium in your brain, but it does. It literally deposits calcium in your brain's memory centres. So that is the effect epigenetically of our thoughts and our beliefs. So, it's so important that we take control of this, like there's a saying in the biology of belief that has positively positive thoughts releasing the ones going our way as having a dramatic effect on our physical bodies.

Lisa: And this is like, because I've seen those scans where you have the shrunken brain that's been exposed to a lot of stress. The hippocampus shrinks and the prefrontal cortex and then you have the healthy brain that's nice and plump on the other side, if you like. It is a very good visual because this is very much like we tend to think, 'Well, yes, I'm stressed and but that's neither here nor there, toughen up and get on with it' type of attitude. I think that this, I think we need to distinguish between short term hermetic stressors, which are good for us - the things like going in the sauna, or going into cold water or going for a run and exercise and things like that, that are slightly outside the comfort zone. But not these long-term or even medium-term stressors that are going on day for day and week upon week, and month upon month. Those are the ones that really, when you are affecting the genes on a daily basis and your cortisol, and your adrenaline are just pumping all the time.

And this is something like with my genetic makeup, I have a deficiency in receptors of dopamine, so I'm constantly after dopamine. I'm always chasing the source that I can never reach, right? And I have a lot of adrenaline and I was exposed to a lot of testosterone in the womb. So I have that personality that take action, risk taking, jumping, still playing, no strategy, that type of a personality. And these things really affect us.

However, I can take control of that through practice. I can do things that can actually help me control my innate biology if you like. So, how can people, I wanted to ask, because I think a lot of people won't know what EFT is, per se. Would you explain what that particular type of energy work is?

Dr. Dawson: EFT is very popular. It's used by over 20 million people worldwide. It's grown purely by word of mouth, there is no drug company, there is no advertising campaign, people study each other on EFT. It is often called tapping because you simply tap like this on acupuncture points. There are about 13 W's, commonly they're linked to the 13 meridians of the body. It's amazing. I'm working on a video now where I have to describe EFT in two minutes. And it's like the body's reset switch. A therapist used that in a paper, in a peer-reviewed journal recently. It's like pushing the reset button for your emotions. So if you're upset, you're angry or you're stressed whatever way, then you simply tap on these points very, very quickly and it resets you.

So, there are several of these points. While you are thinking about the bad stuff in your life, you combine that reflection of ruminating on the stuff that bothers you with the tapping. And if you ruminate on the bad stuff, what happens normally, if you're just thinking about the bad stuff, is you're sending a signal through those neural bundles and they're getting bigger and bigger and faster. That's what we call re-traumatisation. That's when you re-traumatise yourself and we find over time, that shrinks the brain; the brains of people who are traumatised as children are on average 8% smaller than those who weren't traumatised as children. Traumatic stress is, it isn't psychological, it's physiological. So that's what you're doing if you're retraumatising yourself.

If you remember that bad thing at the same time you tap, then what we see in MRI EFT studies is that the emotional midbrain gets all upset, it's all aroused as a result of thinking about the bad things. When you start tapping, all that arousal just goes down. For example, one veteran I was working with, because we work with over 20,000 veterans, giving them free treatment free of charge. What one veteran was really bothered by a memory when he was in Iraq, he was a medic. And right in the beginning of his tour of duty, one of his friends was shot. And so, he had to deal with all the gruesomeness of that friend's death. One of the things he had to do was he had to clean the uniform of his dead friend to send back to his mum and dad back in the US. Cleaning the human remains and tissue out of the uniform was tremendously triggering for him. He remembers this event, he was cleaning them out in the medic's hut. And then he'd have to run outside to take a breath of fresh air because the smell was so bad that he'd run back in a little more cleaning, run back out again. We tapped on this terrible traumatic memory. He just then had this complete sense of relaxation. He said, 'I'm so glad I was the person who got to clean that uniform because it was my way of honouring my friend'. And as his emotional midbrain calmed down, his story changed to where it was no longer one of tragedy, but one of honouring and one of love and one affection with his friend, and you do this act of service. So if he shifts brains function that way, and it shifts it in just a few seconds like that. There's no therapy, there's no elaborate attempt to understand how you are the way you are, you just tap while you're remembering the bad stuff, while all of those new neural pathways are fully engaged, that then calms the brain down immediately. And then I met this young man again, I saw him again, about three months later, talked about the uniform, talked about his dead friend, he was still totally calm about it. And we find in long-term studies, that once you break the association in the brain between that traumatic memory and going into fight or flight, the association stays broken, and people find later on down the road.

Lisa: That is absolutely amazing because I think, the longer we all live, we all end up with traumatic, hopefully not as horrific experiences as that. Are you aware I had last week on the show Dr. Don Wood, who I'd love to introduce you actually to. He is also a trauma expert who works with vets and PTSD and everything, addiction and so on. He has a four-hour program that he takes people into the, out of beta into alpha brainwave states and takes that high definition sort of movie that's playing in people's heads around this event or events. And he says, as a description, puts it into black and white, and it's no longer triggering. So probably a different direction to get to a similar result. But you think we can do this actually, in minutes with EFT, where you can actually take away the power of that memory. Because I mean, I've been through, unfortunately, my listeners know, I lost my dad, just seven months ago, eight months ago. It was a very traumatic event and process that we went through. The intruding memories, the recurrent nightmares, all of the horror that surrounds that event is very powerful, how much it drains your daily life and your energy. I've found, since that event, I've been doing various things, but it's still very, very raw and very real to me. You are triggered a hundred times a day, and it's just draining your power to be able to work fully in the world, and to be the best version of you that you can be. I sort of know that and I'm trying to work out ways. So this is definitely one that I'm going to jump into.

Dr. Dawson: Sorry, you lost your dad and what you'll find is that you don't have to let go at the normal sense. In fact, we encourage people to really grieve, really get into their feelings, that and then do the tapping as well. What happens is you process them very quickly. So we aren't telling these veteran, 'Don't think about the bad thing. Don't think about the death. Don't think about all the trauma'. We say, 'Do think about it, but tap while you're doing it'. And then that breaks the association in the brain between that traumatic memory and going into that stress response.

So I really encourage you to do that because we've seen so many people do this now. We work with examples, with kids who lost their parents in the Rwandan genocide. Many of them, still 25 years later, have severe PTSD. We work with victims of school shootings in the US and various places. And again, mothers and fathers who've lost their kids in school shootings. We work with them successfully with EFT. So it's not like we're just working on superficial stuff, but it is that we're trying to work on what you're being worried about in the report you have to turn it into your boss next week, and it also works on severe psychological trauma.

Lisa: This is so exciting. And it is like resetting the brain. I mean, Dr. Woods mentions that it's sort of like a error glitch, and you're just going round and round and you can't get out of this sort of pattern of things.

Dr. Dawson: Yes. The trauma loop, we call it the trauma loop. The trauma loop, it's literally a loop between the thymus, thalamus, hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the amygdala in the centre of the brain. What's supposed to be happening is that input associated be referred to the prefrontal cortex and other regions to moderate emotions. And it isn't; it's stuck in an emotional midbrain, looping and looping and looping. Here's the thing is, you can't talk yourself out of it. Like I was worried about a situation at work a few weeks ago, and I would say to myself, 'It's time to meditate now. It's 6am in the morning, I'm meditating. I will not think about that thing at work'. Well, of course, within nervous sighs, obsessed with a theory, I say that 'Dawson, I'm going to let that go. It's meditation time now. I'm not thinking about thing at work, I'm going to return my mind to the meditative state'. Now, the thing at work, we cannot talk ourselves out of it, our conscious