Transcript of Episode 102: Emotional Healing and Retraining Your Brain
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and Phil Kaplan.
Meredith:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 102. I have Dr. Pompa here and we have a special guest, fitness guru, Phil Kaplan. How are you guys doing?
Phil:
I’m doing great.
Dr. Pompa:
Fitness guru? I think he’s more than that these days, but he is a fitness guru, isn’t he?
Phil:
I’ve evolved passed the fitness guru.
Meredith:
I know. I threw that in. I don’t even know why I said that. It just kind of came out. He’s so much more.
Dr. Pompa:
That too.
Phil:
I have ascended. It’s been an ascension.
Meredith:
Yep, you do. How are you guys doing? I know I’m here in Pittsburg, but you’re in sunny, beautiful Florida. How are you doing down there?
Dr. Pompa:
It’s not so sunny; not so beautiful today, but we’re good.
Phil:
It’s a beautiful 72 degrees, and there’s no snow.
Dr. Pompa:
In Park City, Utah, where I’m usually doing show, they got another foot and a half of snow last night.
Meredith:
Oh man. Do you go skiing out there?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I would be skiing. I think that the kids are out powder skiing and I’m missing it.
Meredith:
Wow. Well, it’ll be there when you return, I’m sure.
Dr. Pompa:
I used to do a radio show called Mind Body. Was it Mind Body?
Phil:
It was not Mind/Body.
Dr. Pompa:
Was it Muscle Brain?
Phil:
It was The Mind and Muscle Fitness Hour.
Dr. Pompa:
See, I got all the words. The Mind and Muscle Fitness Hour. You’re right. He has evolved from the fitness guru. Today, he really is the mind guru.
Phil:
I’ll tell you where it came from, because at first, I thought I was speaking to people in the gym – people who work out. It was a radio show, so I was talking about muscle, but when I went to a seminar, I realized it wasn’t only people who work out who was coming. Everybody was coming from every walk of life, and they would say, “I need to start. I tried but I failed. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I realized that mindset is such a vital piece of it, so it became Mind and Muscle Fitness Hour, and that’s part of why I studied mindset so much, because I realized if I’m going to help people get better, I’ve got to get in here.
Dr. Pompa:
You actually studied psychology. This was your big thing. You really dug deep in the subject.
Phil:
I started in college. I took psychology 101 and I was excited about it, because I always wanted to learn how to influence people. I was fascinated by influence. I was really disappointed with the class because we learned about Sigmund Freud, the Oedipus complex, and B. F. Skinner, but nothing that had to do with influencing people. I liked the optical illusions. I think it was page 222. They had optical illusions. The teacher would talk, but I was so bored, I would just look at the optical illusions, but I said, “This isn’t what I wanted to learn.”
Independently, I found the work of someone named William James. He was kind of a rebel, and he coined the phrase, “will power,” so when people talk about will power now, that’s where it came from. I started reading his work and it stared resonating with me. It said we all have will, it’s just do we take the power to access it?
That took me on the beginning of a different course, and then I started learning from experts in influence, some conventional, some unconventional. I did get a very different education than I think college would have led me to.
Dr. Pompa:
Take us into this topic. Why on Cellular Healing TV do we have the mind expert? The body you all can get, but the mind why?
Meredith:
Right exactly, and you gave kind of a great intro on to today’s topic, which is emotional detox, and really the impact that emotions have on our health. I know it’s been proven in science how our emotions affect us at the cellular level, and the massive impact that our thoughts have on our physical state of being. Why do they have such an impact? Let’s start there.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s go to the expert on this question.
Phil:
You’ve heard it said, “We become what we think about.” That has evolved. We can go all the way back to 15th Century and earlier. There was an awareness of this concept, “We become what we think about.” What we focus on is what we’re drawn to, and there are two words that I find are really limiting for people. Those are can’t and but. They really mean the same thing, because when somebody says, “I’d like to, but I can’t.” Whenever they use that word “but” that’s really what they were saying. I’d love to be able to exercise. I’d love to be able to do what Dr. Pompa says but – and as soon as that word comes out, it’s their mind putting a limitation on their potential, so sometimes getting rid of those blocks is incredible in getting people to develop a greater sense of potential, and with that sense of potential, of course, their potential escalates.
We know thousands of stories about people who first had the belief and then achieved it, but it really is cellular. It is physical, and that’s what is really important for people to understand. It’s not just we think differently, so we behave differently, although that’s true; we think differently and our endocrine system changes. Our cellular makeup changes, and ultimately as Dr. Pompa shares, our DNA changes. There’s such an unbreakable link between mind and muscle or thought and outcome. I think people need to understand that if they really want to get well or they really want to get better.
Dr. Pompa:
You know, Meredith, I don’t coach as many people as I used to, and one of the things that I do is I look for people who really want to get well. Let me put it a more important way – who believe they can get well and what to get well; have the thought process ready to get well. I do, I have to interview people, because there was a time in my young career that I thought I could get everyone well, and I would get very frustrated, because I would expect a lot of people to do what I do, and certain people would have a lot of “cant’s” and “but” around that. I would always analyze my own efforts and my own coaching.
Phil:
I think until you understand it, you believe them.
Dr. Pompa:
I was taking it hard.
Phil:
We have to figure it out differently, because you can’t fail to realize then, is they can’t because they are telling themselves that.
Dr. Pompa:
I do; I had to sift through those people. Not everybody is ready to get well, whether they don’t believe it or whether it becomes their identity and they literally have fears to losing who they are. No one ever admits to that, do they? No one every goes, “Yeah, I’ll just hold on to who I am. I’m just afraid. I want to stay here.”
Phil:
I want to share this, but we just came back from a mindset conference that we both spoke at, and I gave an illustration of why people repeat the habits that they know are wrong. Why do people still smoke? Nobody thinks it’s healthy. We can talk about addiction. We can talk about the need, but there’s a recurring mindset pattern that draws people back to behaviors that are familiar to them, and this happens beneath the conscious level.
Even though somebody thinks, “I want to quit,” unless they break the ritual and break the ritualistic thinking, they get caught up in that loop. Whether somebody is sick and wants to get well or whether they’ll well and want to be better; whether they’re an athlete and want to perform better, they’ve got to change their thinking, because their thinking got them to where they are. When somebody says , “I want to change,” they may really mean that, but if they’ve been through this ritualistic behavior that leads them to failure, they don’t believe it’s possible. They have the hope, want, and desire, but they don’t have the mindset.
Dr. Pompa:
Meredith, let me bring it back to you. When we speak of emotional detox, these are the things that we’re talking about, meaning changing your thoughts to literally change your DNA at the cellular level and therefore change actually who you are and then that’s going to create different habits, different behaviors, and different feelings; that’s feelings that we get because of our behaviors, then really change our life, but also they feed back and even cement a new you if it’s a good feel. That’s what we mean by emotional detox. We can go in a million different directions, but I know you have a lot of questions.
Meredith:
Yes. I think a lot of us can understand too. We know that we shouldn’t be repeating these negative behaviors, but where do we begin. Okay. We know we need to start to change these patterns, but how do you start? Where do you begin the process of emotional healing? What does that look like?
Phil:
I think it’s as individual as a prescription for somebody to get healthy. We really have to look at where they’re stuck and help them get past it, but I’ll tell you where I see it start very often. I think the medical system supports this, and I don’t think it’s a good thing. Meredith, have you ever had a runny nose and cough at the same time and somebody say, “Hey, what’s going on?” and you go, “I am a cold.” Do you ever do that? I am a cold. I have become a cold.
Meredith:
No, I have not said those words, no.
Phil:
You would say, “I have a cold,” because you know that you’re going to pass through and come out the other side, right? When it comes to what we’ll call chronic disease of the 21st century, people are labeled. I am hypothyroid, so all of a sudden there’s a new identity. In that moment of diagnosis, there’s an identity that different than our identity before. I am depressed, not I’m having depression and I’m going to get better, but I am depressed. When you start to wear that, “I am,” that starts a loop of thinking; how can you possibly be anything else if this is what you are?” Sometimes it starts with identifying that. Where are they stuck?
I’ll also tell you that, and we spoke about this, people can go through 10 years of psychoanalysis of deep psychotherapy and they can unload stuff that they’ve been holding on to for years and they can cry and they can purge, and they can get better.
My question to Dr. Pompa was, when they get better – when the thinking actually changes; when they stop holding on to that stuff, did it happen in a moment or did it happen gradually over 10 years? I suspect it happens in a moment, so if that’s the case, if we can find a shortcut to that moment, can we bypass the 10 years?
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the10 years, but who wants to wait that long? That’s what I’ve been looking for. How do we find techniques to make that change happen and to make that switch flip so you don’t have to go through the back and forth and the back and forth and the back and forth? I found some really powerful ways of doing it in my own life. Unexpectedly, I had to rely on that.
Dr. Pompa:
I wanted to go there actually, because I think that right now, Meredith, people are saying, “Okay, I hear what they’re saying.” Our thoughts become reality. Dr. Bruce Lipton, we’re going to have him on a future show, correct?
Phil:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
Lipton wrote a book called The Biology of Belief. I think I’ve spoken about it in the past, and really what he and now others have proven is that our thoughts literally can drive cellular inflammation, which then drives our DNA. Our thoughts, therefore, according to – this isn’t my opinion or his at this point, this is solid evidence – literally, our thoughts then change ourselves – this is Cellular Healing TV folks – therefore, change our DNA. Our cells then start producing different proteins. Folks, we are proteins, hormones, and neurotransmitters. That’s who we are. Every flesh and everything we are is protein, so therefore it creates a new you. This literally creates new feelings and who we are, ultimately even healing, because it’s a new you at the cellular level. We can create with our thoughts, inflammation in bad cells and bad proteins and bad hormones or we can change our thoughts. We can then change our DNA and change our thoughts and who we are.
I know that some of you are having trouble, but you brought something up at the end. Let’s bring it to our own experiences. Meredith, I got well. I emptied my bucket using true cellular detox, right? I got rid of my causes in my life. I got rid of the sources that were bio-cumulated in my body and my cells. I got my energy back. I was sleeping through the night. My digestion wasn’t tolerant to foods anymore. All these things are better; however, I was still allergic to chemicals, if you will, allergy. How about this: I’m still sensitive to chemicals, meaning I would be fine, and then I would get a whiff of perfume and all of a sudden I would be brain reaction. I’d get a reaction.
Then, I would go into a new hotel and I would get headaches and I wouldn’t sleep that night, so this became my new reality or my new me, better, but yet these sensitivities with these odd reactions. Phil had come back from understanding what he already knew. We’re fighting it even further and gained an understanding that these are neuro pathways that we set up, and I knew that. I read some of the stuff, but I didn’t believe it quite yet, because I got better by removing chemicals, but Phil gave me some stories and I said, “Great, I’ll try it.”
Being frustrated because I had still had these four chemicals that I was reacting to, I did it. I changed my thoughts about how I thought about these chemicals. There were neuro pathways set up, so the example, Phil, that I love to give is this: Meredith, if a lion walked in that room, how would you respond?
Meredith:
I’d be scared. I’d run.
Dr. Pompa:
Would your body give you a physiological reaction?
Meredith:
Oh, I’m sure it would, yeah. I’d go into fight or flight mode.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. What would be some of the physiological things you’d experience?
Meredith:
Nerves, sweating.
Dr. Pompa:
What about your heart, would it go?
Meredith:
Heart racing.
Dr. Pompa:
Anxiety – and after the lion left, would you still be left with some that feeling?
Meredith:
It lingers for sure. It can take a while to calm down after a traumatic event, for sure.
Dr. Pompa:
Physiological?
Meredith:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
Maybe there was just a perceived lion or a real lion. We don’t know, but no matter what –
Phil:
– or a nice one
Dr. Pompa:
Or a nice lion; either way you’re brain perceived it as danger. That’s what mine and your brains were doing. We were better, but our brains were perceiving the chemicals as danger, danger, danger, creating the same physiological influences and even driving cellular inflammation. There were neuro pathways that were literally genetically grown. The question then is can we alter and make new nerve pathways? Phil?
Phil:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
How?
Phil:
You’re asking me the hard question. I want to tell you when I had that realization, because I got sick from mold and it took me a while to find out what caused it, but once I did, I got well quickly, but then the chemical sensitivity became really challenging.
Dr. Pompa:
Mine was mercury driven and his was mold driven. We were both left in the way. We got rid of our toxin, but we were both left with the same sensitivity.
Phil:
Right, so I built a new house, a beautiful house, and I was getting sick in the house. I knew there was no mold. It was brand new. I made sure there was no mold, and that’s around the time that we met, and I invited you to my house and you walked in and you said two words. Do you remember what they were?
Dr. Pompa:
Attic.
Phil:
Attic air.
Dr. Pompa:
Attic air.
Phil:
The air was coming in from the attic and it’s the chemicals that were affecting me. I couldn’t understand why the chemicals were affecting me. I knew mold affected me, but why the chemicals? I studied and spoke to doctors, read books, and I went to everybody from rabbis to priests to psychologists. I needed to understand this. Then, it hit me.
I was sitting on my balcony and I just saw a crow, and I had this thought: The crow in a fire. Imagine if you’re in a fire and you’re going into that mode. Your heart is beating faster and you’re going into that adrenal response, cranking out chemicals, and there’s a crow in a fire, and you’re trying to get out and trying to get out and trying to get out, and finally you get out. The next week, you see a crow and you get that response because your brain associated it.
What’s interesting in my history is the mold was in my office. My office was destroyed by a hurricane, so they rebuilt the office but they didn’t change the air ducts, so all of the rotten air sat in those ducts and grew mold. The office looked beautiful, but as I’m getting sick, they put in new carpet, new paint, and new drywall. Chemicals were coming at me. My brain linked the two. It associated the chemicals with the reaction, so I realized if my brain can do that, can I unlink the crow from the fire? That’s where the search took on meaning, because once I made sense out of that, now I thought there’s got to be a solution. I just have to disconnect. Can you do it? Yes, absolutely, and probably you can go through 10 years of therapy, but that wasn’t the path that I chose.
I learned about something through neuro-linguistic programming call thought stopping, and it sounds ridiculously simple. It is simply this: Stop. When a thought is going through your head, it is cyclical and it’s a pattern, and in neuro-linguistic programming, they call it pattern interrupt, interrupting the pattern. It’s almost as if you’re giving a speech and I dump a bucket of water on you. Suddenly, you stop and say, “What was that?” My brain hears the stop, because it comes out of my mouth, and there’s at least a little bit of hesitation. I can pause it and then it kicks back in.
The trick now is, how do I rewire, because the neurons that fire together wire together? A chemical started a path of neurons that led to the adrenal response.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s called a neuro network that takes place.
Phil:
We know this. Your brain does not know the difference between something real or something vividly imagined, which is why you can have a dream and in the dream you have this reaction, wake up, and you’re thinking about. You still have the reaction. You have to then relax. You have to tell your brain, “Wait a minute; that was just a dream.”
If I could take myself to a different outcome in my mind and my imagination, I can create a new chain of neurons. Neurons that fire together wire together. Here’s this loop pathway that I want to break. I can interrupt it, but where does it go from here? I want to create where it goes from here.
At first, I started using memories, because they’re in my hippocampus. They’re in there in the file cabinet, so if I can remember and I can make it so real, then my brain and my body actually go there. It’s sort of like if you’ve ever heard a song during an intimate moment in your life, years later you hear the song and you’re taken back there, right? When you smell perfume of somebody you dated years ago, it comes back. That memory was in there. I just needed to make it vivid enough so my brain goes, “Oh, this is really happening.”
Stop was followed by the memory, a really powerful, strong memory, and it took focus and concentration. At first, it wasn’t easy, because that old pathway wants to pull you back in. Stop; the great memory.
Dr. Pompa:
The great memory, because doesn’t emotion tie memory even deeper. If you think back to all the worst moments of your life, do you remember those, folks? Of course you do. It’s deep neuro patterning. Basically, you’re doing the opposite. We’re creating the good memory with that possible back experience – chemical or whatever it is.
I remember the first time I tried it. I’m going to be honest with you, I was skeptical. I’m a physical guy. I’m the guy who gets detoxed.
Phil:
Me too; this was hard for me.
Dr. Pompa:
I had to prove it to myself. I was pumping gas. Gas would crush me, Meredith – the smell of it. I would be wrecked for hours if not a day. I smelled it. My immediate response – I started feeling the feelings. I said, “Whoa, stop.” I’m in control of it. I literally visualized the pathway first, realizing that I can go around this same reaction. I stopped. I associated it with a time when I was younger. I actually liked the smell of gas. I reminded myself that I actually love this smell and then I immediately went to all these good experiences in my life.
I can tell you, it worked the very first time. I did get some head tingling. I sat in my car and I just kept it thinking on those thoughts, those pleasurable thoughts. You know what? Time went by and someone called me on my phone, and then I realized, “Oh my God! I didn’t get the reaction.” That’s when I knew I had a victory. Of course, there are four other chemicals or three other chemicals and I started applying it. I can be hit with chemicals today, even those four, and I don’t have a reaction.
Phil:
If 15 years ago I was watching this show, I probably would have turned it off.
Dr. Pompa:
Me too.
Phil:
It’s hard to accept, especially if you’re grounded in the physical.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Phil:
I went through that process too, but it was that crow in the fire recognition, and that was just my own thing in my own head, but suddenly, I said, “This is true,” but I accepted that it’s physical. The pathways are physical.
Dr. Pompa:
It is physical.
Phil:
When neurons fire together, and once I accepted that it was physical, now I was ready to take it on, because it fit right in with my belief system.
Dr. Pompa:
This was a great example this weekend. Of course, we knew the pattern, but I thought this is a great example: I said to Phil, “There’s no hamstring machine.” We were actually working out. He said, “Oh, do this.” He put a ball on the ground. He had me get straight with my feet up on the ball, and I started shaking back and forth. My nerve system was not accepting it right away, and then you even had me do it with one leg. The point is this, in about five minutes, or less than that, it stopped shaking.
What happened? It’s called neuroplasty. I was really developing new neuron connections, new chemicals, and then, Meredith, every one of you watching this have experienced that. You’re riding a bike and you’re doing this and that. You’re shaping neuro connections. This neuro network is forming, and now you can ride a bike. Now I was balancing on the ball, so that’s all you’re saying.
Phil:
That’s it. That worked for me. You know, it’s funny because I too started experimenting. I remember I was in Boston and I wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood. I want to go smell perfume, because I want to test myself and this perfume was a trigger for me, and anybody who has been chemically sensitive knows that, but anybody who has never been, has hard time understanding it. They go out and it must smell really bad, and you run away. It’s not that. It’s a major reaction where your body starts to shut down.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s real.
Phil:
You all stood up with fear with that. If somebody got in an elevator and had perfume, I would go into panic mode. Once I figured this out, I went looking for a place to go. There was a TJ Maxx. I said I’m going to go in there and find a woman with perfume and smell it.
Dr. Pompa:
TJ Maxx itself –
Phil:
I’m walking around the store and I’m sniffing women. Thank God I didn’t get arrested, but I’m walking up to them. I find perfume, and I was walking next to her and testing myself. In my head, I’m going, “Stop, stop, stop,” and thinking of a good memory, and then I flew home on a plane and I’m sitting next to a guy who had really horrible cologne. I loved it, because it was a perfect test for me, because for two and a half hours, I’ve got to sit next to this guy. I think he thought I was gay, because I kept leaning into him, but he was like, “What are you getting so close to me for?” It was like a victory. I was like, “Wow, this really works.” However, it didn’t stick. In other words, as long as I’m consciously doing it and going to that memory and going to that memory and going to that memory, but the next day, I have to do it again.
Now, the question became, “How do you make it stick?” Then, I learned something amazing. We can use future memories. That doesn’t make any sense. How could it be a future memory if it hasn’t happened yet? Again, your brain doesn’t know if something is real or imagined, so if I can imagine something strong enough; if I can make it vivid in my mind – multisensory, using vision, auditory cues, and feelings, my hippocampus takes it on as a memory. If I can do it repeatedly, it takes it on as a memory.
The beauty of this was, I now had a new pathway. It wasn’t going back to the memory that was temporary, because as soon as I come back to the present, I’ve left that memory, but now it was where I’m headed. That became exciting to me. It literally created new pathways and that’s the way I got out of that loop. I have, thankfully, helped a great many people with that, not only going from sick to well, but with a change in their behavior, change their life, and in changing their outcomes.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to do a plug here real fast, because, Phil, you’ve also done it in people who are trying to become successful. You used to do that in the fitness world, now you also do it for doctors. You do it for our doctors. You have a program called Be Better that literally is training people to think, because I always say that you are where you are in life because of your thoughts. No doubt. Here we are. We know our thoughts and behaviors have created the life that we live. Can we create a better one? Can we get the life of our dreams of being well? The job you want? The career you want? The relationships you want? The outcomes? That’s what Be Better is about.
Phil:
Be Better is an eight-month program, so what I’m sharing now, because we’re limited on time, and you asked these specific questions, is how you short cut it, but there’s a lot of science that underlies this. When we talk about mindset, everybody knows the words. It’s kind of like metabolism. People know the word, but if you ask them to define it, they sort of dead stop. They don’t really know what it is. Again, being learned in the physical – physicality – you have to make everything physical.
There are three parts of mindset – this has really helped me and this is what I share in the Be Better program – one of them is called the EEM, or emotional experiential memory. It is exactly what it sounds like. It’s emotional based on an experience.
Dr. Pompa:
I was bit by a chow, and when I see chow I have to go through this. Is that the EEM?
Phil:
It is the EEM, and it’s not rational. EEM is not rational. In a moment, it makes a decision to protect you. That’s its role. It’s going to protect you. The EEM learns in that moment chow/bad. Never again are you near a chow.
Dr. Pompa:
Chows do bite a lot of people. You should be careful of those chows.
Phil:
They’re making little love chows; so we’re not saying all chows are bad. It forms this association and it’s very similar to when a child touches a hot stove. They never do it a second time, because the EEM goes, “Don’t do that again.” The EEM has a really important role.
Dr. Pompa:
It depends on the child. Okay, go ahead.
Phil:
It depends on the child.
Dr. Pompa:
My child has probably done that twice.
Phil:
Maybe once with each hand – “Let me see if it burns with this hand.” The EEM is trying to protect you and that’s important. We need the EEM. It keeps you safe, but a very restrictive EEM creates but and can’t.
Dr. Pompa:
In fear and they’re stuck in life.
Phil:
There are people who will work in the same job, sit in a cubicle from 9:00 to 5:00, because the EEM says this is safe.
Dr. Pompa:
It can keep them from getting well.
Phil:
Sure, and as a matter of fact and I don’t want to go down this road, but some people find benefit in their sickness. In that, the EEM says this is safe, even though it’s not what they want, it says, “Stay here because this is safe. You’re going to put yourself at risk if you step outside of the zone.”
If we were ruled by EEM, we’d all be stuck in your homes and we’d never go anywhere, but there’s another part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. That is where adventure lives and where possibility lives. The only way you can think of an imagined outcome is by accessing the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex has great ideas if you let it. It’s going to go, “Whoa, look at that building! That’s so high. Maybe you could jump off it. That would be fun.” Then the EEM goes, “No, that’s not safe.”
You’ve got to have this very healthy tug of war, so when somebody is goal oriented, they’re going into the PFC and saying, “I think I’m going to start my own business,” and the EEM goes, “It’s a risk.” Somehow there has to be a tug of war, but without that PFC pulling, nobody ever goes forward.
Mindset really has a lot to do with that tug of war between EEM and the PFC, and if the EEM rules, they get very stuck, whether they’re sick, unhappy, or just stuck in a place they don’t want to be, that emotional experiential memory tells them to step out of this and there’s danger.
I think an example that some of you would be able to relate to is if you’ve ever been in a relationship and you said, “This is true love, and I’m giving myself completely. Nobody has ever seen me this bare emotionally. I’m completely giving my heart.” Then you get screwed over and your heart breaks. The EEM says, “Giving yourself that much equals heartbreak,” and it doesn’t let you do it again unless you can get the PFC strong enough to go, “Maybe there’s something better.”
There’s an elegant example of how it limits you in life unless you recognize the power of that balance.
Dr. Pompa:
Is that where you’re going to have to create that future memory, if you will?
Phil:
Yes. You cannot create the future memory without accessing the PFC.
Dr. Pompa:
Whether it’s getting well; whether it’s being chemically not sensitive; or whether it’s where you want to go in life and business –
Phil:
Whether it’s completing a marathon or winning the race –
Dr. Pompa:
Is that the same in a boy or is it more in a girl?
Phil:
It’s more in a girl. At the Super Bowl, two teams show up. They both have the same goal, so one of those teams is going to miss. We sort of accept that a goal is an attempt that we may miss. A future memory is a certainty. When you brain holds on to a memory, it knows it to be true, so if you trick your brain in to thinking something that has happened yet, it’s very simply that. It’s a memory that’s yet to come and now it becomes a certainty. It’s more than a goal.
Dr. Pompa:
You made a big impact. I’ll say this one thing then I’ll hand it over to you. You made a big impact in my life, just getting me to think better. I’m always trying to be better. I always want to be coached to be better. I do it. I preach it. I always do what I preach.
We didn’t discuss this, but I know that you’re taking on some practitioners in Be Better. When is the next Be Better? I know I have a lot of practitioners that watch this show. Is there a way that they can contact you? How do they contact you, because right now if you’re helping practitioners, they’re out there going, “Yeah, I need that training. I need that mindset training.”
Phil:
I didn’t know we were going to do this.
Dr. Pompa:
I know.
Phil:
Through my e-mail address.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, Meredith, maybe that’s it. Maybe they can contact you and you can give them Phil’s e-mail address, okay?
Meredith:
Yeah, okay. Meredith@drpompa.com. Just send that over and I’ll get you in touch with Phil.
Dr. Pompa:
Don’t bombard him with a bunch of questions. If you’re a practitioner of any type watching this – is that right?
Phil:
Yes. There’s something interesting that I’ve learned in working with fitness professionals, chiropractors, and health practitioners. They’re driven first by heart, as you are, right? As you are Meredith and as I am.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes.
Phil:
We want to help people. We want to make a difference for others. We want to make other people’s lives better, and that is a blessing.
Dr. Pompa:
It’ll get you into trouble.
Phil:
It also limits us, because we tend to shy away from things like selling, because we think salespeople are greedy, and they only care about themselves, so the altruistic health professional usually hates the concept of selling, and they hate the concept of doing things for money, because it goes against the heart, right? They want to be the altruistic person.
Dr. Pompa:
That is every doctor in America.
Phil:
Yeah, so it’s a little like the starving artist syndrome. They somehow take an odd pride in saying, “I’m helping people and I’m not getting paid what I deserve, but I’m helping people.” That’s a huge part of what Be Better does. It releases them from that, and it learns that it is a phenomenal thing, not just an improvement, a phenomenal thing to make more money by bettering the lives of others. Then, if you get a nickel only for making somebody’s life better, when you have $5 million in your bank account, that’s a whole lot of lives that you’ve changed. We have to form that association that if you run your business from your heart, then you certainly deserve reward.
The other piece of this is, until you get what you deserve, you can’t all the people that you could help. I meet a lot of health practitioners who don’t have time. They don’t have time. There’s too much going on. They have to pick up the pieces. There’s too many patients, but they are limited now the life they’re living. Again, it’s that loop, so if we can free them of that, now maybe they can do seminars, talks, write a book, and write articles and reach masses of people.
Dr. Pompa:
You’ve helped so many of my doctors that we coach. We have a message that we know the world needs. We do things that are unique; true cellular detox; everything that we do, the ancient healing strategies. Right Meredith? We see these doctors stuck. It’s like, “No, you have the answer. You have the answer,” and yet they’re so stuck. It would be great to help people. Meredith, you’ve got a question I know what pressing.
Meredith:
It is a responsibility once you have this information for the practitioners to get it out to the world. Shifting mindset is such a huge piece of all of this. I was thinking too when you were talking about creating future memories. I’ve been taking some notes and some amazing nuggets of information. How does visualization come into this? A lot of people out there talk about, “Visualize your future; visualize all of these amazing things happening.” How does this tie in with creating future memories.
Phil:
It ties in immensely. Again, that’s a road we don’t have time to go down right, but there are so many studies. We could literally speak for two days straight about the evidence of the power of visualization.
Dr. Pompa:
Just tell them one story about the scientists you’ve partnered with, with the older people. They walked into the thing – one group visualized and one experience.
Phil:
I love it when he says tell the story and then he tells the story.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m not telling the story; it was one of those past stories.
Phil:
I think I could give hundreds of studies, but there’s this repetitive process that they go through where they take two groups and one group does the thing and the other group visualizes the thing. It’s been done with foul shots. It’s been done with piano players. Inevitably, the group that visualizes but doesn’t do the thing, improves as much if not more than the group that is doing the thing. Is visualization helpful? Yes.
We are all different in many ways. We’re all the same, but we’re all different. We all communicate and learn through vision, sound, and feelings, but when I say we are all different, we tend to favor one more than the other two. Some people are more visual people. Some people are more auditory people. Some people are more kinesthetic people.
What I’ve learned is, if you’re working with somebody who is very kinesthetic – kinesthetic people, when you ask them a question, they pause, and if you’re visual, you want the answer right away. You’re watching and you want to see their mouth move. You want the answer, but kinesthetic people pause, and the reason they pause is they can’t give you the answer until they get in touch with their feelings. If you’re trying to get a kinesthetic person to visualize, it’s almost like you’re speaking Japanese to someone who doesn’t speak Japanese. For them, it might be, how would it feel, so there is this individual element. It’s not only the vision. It’s the vision, the sound, and the feeling and the more multisensory you can make that future memory, the more you mind believes it.
That’s the whole idea. With your eyes closed, your eyes are seeing the vision, so your brain is going, this is really happening, so visualization is incredibly valuable; however, the most important piece is to associate emotion. When we do a visualization exercise, and I’ve seen a lot of people do it in many different ways, and they often come out of it relaxed. Okay, we’re going to count backward, and you’re going to feel relaxed. That’s good, but what I do is I have them end it with a celebration in their mind. I want them to see the celebration, and then I want their physiology to reflect it.
When I take someone, their eyes are closed and if this vision or sound or feeling is strong enough, they literally leave the room. They’re no longer in their body. They’re living whatever it is they’re imagining. In that moment, I can get them to be very unguarded. I’m going to say, “Okay, now, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to appreciate the emotion. Make it bigger and turn it up. However you feel about it, if it’s a 10, I want you to make it a 15, and when it gets to a peak, I want you to celebrate. I want to see your celebration dance.” They come out of it, and their eyes open up and they say, “Wooo! It’s spring.” That’s what cementing it in. It’s the emotion. The visualization is absolutely important, but I think if we’re really going to work to bring about change, we’ve got to capitalize on all of this, and emotion is a huge part of it.
Dr. Pompa:
I think because all of us have a little bit auditory, visual, and kinesthetic in us, some people are pushed more one way than the other, so hitting them all is going to make that neuro pathway connect.
Meredith:
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. Wow, what a powerful technique. Making a visualization, there’s so much more in detail as well, so we can really, really feel that in conjunction with creating future memories, that’s an amazing strategy, and I love what you talked about earlier in the episode too, the stop thinking. It’s so simple but so profound. I’ve been taking notes, and I’m excited to implement some of these strategies as well.
Dr. Pompa:
We just came from training doctors this week, and I watched the impact and breakthroughs. It was remarkable. Honestly, I’ve watched it with people with health issues. The chemicals will drive the DNA and create bad proteins, hormones, etc. Chemicals do that, which is true with detox, but thoughts do the same thing. We’ve got to change thoughts if we’re going to make a new you. That’s what this is about. I think we have to have Phil back on for part two of this. Would you agree?
Meredith:
I think the same thing, because this is such a huge topic, and there’s so much more to it all. I have more questions, I know you guys don’t have a lot of time today, to really continue the conversation, but this is great.
Phil:
I want to add two more things before we wrap it up. One is, I’ve been watching your right earring, and it’s dangling and it looks beautiful. The other one is not moving so much.
Meredith:
It’s probably the light.
Phil:
I like your earrings.
Meredith:
Thank you.
Phil:
The second thing is, there are often many roads that lead to the same place, so I know that when I do talks, I get e-mails. I get phone calls, and people saying, “Well, I do tapping,” or “I do emotional release,” and there are always different techniques, and I don’t condemn any of it. I say, “If it works for you, great.” I’m not saying this is the only way. Here’s what I’m saying. This is the way that worked for me. This is the way that works for me consistently, and this is the way that I’ve been teaching other people to improve their lives.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve seen it work.
Phil:
It happened, like I said, in a moment. It doesn’t happen the moment they saw it. It happens the moment the pathway changes. We can make that happen relatively quickly if they’re willing to be all in. If you’re guarded and you kind of half visualize, but your brain is going, “This can’t be possible,” you’re not going to get there, but once you get there, switch flicks and your life changes.
Meredith:
Wow. How exciting. It gives us a lot of power and control in our lives.
Dr. Pompa:
This is a big topic, but don’t go bombarding Phil with e-mails if you’re a practitioner or doctor, watching this, he opened that up to you, and you’ll give them your e-mail. Meredith, you can give them that one more time, and we’ll wrap it up, but we’re going to have a part two, I promise, because this is a road block for many people getting well where they want to be in life, and really the new you. We really can shape our futures based on our thoughts, no doubt.
Meredith:
It’s so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing. If you’re a practitioner watching and you have any questions, just contact me at Meredith@drpompa.com. I’m excited for part two, so thanks guys so much, and have a great rest of your day. Thanks for watching everyone.
Phil:
It’s been fun. Thanks Meredith.
