Speaker 1: I get a team. It's Harps and Tiff and the
Speaker 1: good doc who will intro in a moment. Tiffany and
Speaker 1: Cook over there at typ Central just killing it. She's
Speaker 1: training for a mystery, something that will all be revealed eventually,
Speaker 1: but she's training like a mofo at the moment. We
Speaker 1: don't want to say too much, but how is the
Speaker 1: training going. I'm loving at Harps. I'm do you know
Speaker 1: how funny it is to work with you for this long?
Speaker 1: And still we're a bit starstruck that I got to
Speaker 1: train with Craig Anthony Halfer this week.
Speaker 2: Craig style.
Speaker 1: Well, I definitely don't be starstruck because I'm just an
Speaker 1: old dickhead that you tell.
Speaker 2: You what the Harp's novelty never wears off. It never
Speaker 2: wears off. You'd think it might.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I've trained you twice in your life,
Speaker 1: and I trained you on the So TIFF's doing a thing.
Speaker 1: We can't say what it is at the moment. Well
Speaker 1: we can, but I told her I don't want it
Speaker 1: to and I will be revealed why. But I'm overseeing
Speaker 1: her training at the moment, and it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that it's not easy and it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: you literally sent me in I suggests they saying I
Speaker 1: fucking hate you, which was quite hurtful I feel, especially
Speaker 1: seeing as I'm doing it for nothing. I'm an only child,
Speaker 1: but insecure a couple of pats on the back wouldn't
Speaker 1: go Australia.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even playing that app Eitherhaps they were true emotions.
Speaker 1: Anyway, keep training. Professor Mark Cohen, Doctor Mark Cohen, Mark Cohen,
Speaker 1: welcome to you, just bloody Marko.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show, sir, great, thanks to really happy
Speaker 3: to be here.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the relationship between Tiff and
Speaker 1: I do there's a bit of passive aggressive stuff going on.
Speaker 1: She kind of it seems like your old buddies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then that that trainer sort of coach and
Speaker 3: an athlete relationship is gotten strained.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we it's being a You probably don't know this,
Speaker 1: but my arguably the first trainer in Australia. So I
Speaker 1: started training people. I was one of the first anyway
Speaker 1: personal trainers, and then I set up Australia's first PT
Speaker 1: center and so I spent decades literally training people, working
Speaker 1: with teams and athletes, so that coaching people vibe and
Speaker 1: energy I step into very easily, and it doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: there are some people who go really well with it,
Speaker 1: but then there are other people who really need a
Speaker 1: little bit of molly coddling, which is not really my style,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't always work well. There's different approaches in
Speaker 1: molly colleen or slapping around or all that. Anyway, enough
Speaker 1: about my bullshit, give us the you know what, your
Speaker 1: buio was so long, you've done so much stuff. Rather
Speaker 1: than me read the two hour kind of thing I
Speaker 1: have in front of me, would you be so gracious
Speaker 1: as to tell my audience as long or as briefly
Speaker 1: as you want mark who you are and what you do. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'll try and keep it brief.
Speaker 3: So so, I'm just a human being trying to work
Speaker 3: out how to have a fun, happy life. And I've
Speaker 3: thirty eight years at university studying wellness to try and
Speaker 3: find out how I can have a fun, unhappy life.
Speaker 3: So I did Western medicine, I did Chinese medicine, I
Speaker 3: did psychology, I did electrical computer systems engineering. I spent
Speaker 3: half of my medical career. I've had a thirty year
Speaker 3: integrative medicine career. So I was head of the Integrative
Speaker 3: Medicine Association and very involved in natural medicine, but it
Speaker 3: has been half that time as a professor at r MIT,
Speaker 3: where I created wellness as a discipline. I had a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of PhD students who have studied things like
Speaker 3: or you know Lauren Burns who e lead athlete, you know,
Speaker 3: E lead athlete performance, but also you know saunas and
Speaker 3: ice bathing and health retreats and organic food and yoga
Speaker 3: and meditation and massage, basically all the fun stuff that's
Speaker 3: really fun for me. But it's got no money behind it,
Speaker 3: no research but no research funds, and no dig pharmaceutical
Speaker 3: industry behind it. But it was fantastic for me to
Speaker 3: learn about for myself. You know, herbal medicine. I've written
Speaker 3: big textbooks on herbal medicine that every natural path have
Speaker 3: studied out of the last twenty years. First textbook on
Speaker 3: the SPA industry. I still don't know what I want
Speaker 3: to do when I grow up, but that I quit
Speaker 3: my job as a pro a full time tenured professor
Speaker 3: end of twenty eighteen. And after you finish unit, you
Speaker 3: take a gap year, so I took a gap year
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen and covered the world and ran some retreats.
Speaker 3: I'm very involved with I love bathing in hot water,
Speaker 3: so I'm very involved with the spa industry and the
Speaker 3: hot spring industry. I'm part owner of a hot spring
Speaker 3: in New Zealand and now I've just been made medical
Speaker 3: director of the Peninsula Hot Spring Group, which is a
Speaker 3: big hot spring here in Victoria. But they've got five
Speaker 3: hot springs now. We're opening up one in Cannamuller out
Speaker 3: back Queensland. We've got one in metng we Go, one
Speaker 3: in New Zealand. We're opening one in Phillip Island. So
Speaker 3: I work a lot with the wellness industry. I publish
Speaker 3: a heap of research, more than a hundred research papers
Speaker 3: and textbooks, and lately I've been writing a lot of poetry,
Speaker 3: condensing a whole lot of medical wisdom into very condensed poems.
Speaker 3: I've written a co children's books which aren't really for children,
Speaker 3: but they're amazingly illustrated books, but they're very deep consciousness
Speaker 3: raising messages. So I have fun by creating connection. I
Speaker 3: mean say they say the currency of wellness is connection. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love connecting with people, making ancient wisdom or advance
Speaker 3: signs sort of understandable to the mainstream. And I'm a
Speaker 3: sort of an entrepreneur lately, so I'm an accidental entrepreneur really.
Speaker 3: In the Lockdow first Lockdown, I created a kombucha company
Speaker 3: that makes probiotics infused with herbs based on all my
Speaker 3: herbal knowledge. I have a water filtered company that makes
Speaker 3: the whole house filters that have clean water because there
Speaker 3: wasn't any filters I could recommend to patients. I still
Speaker 3: do a very little bit of medical practice, like half
Speaker 3: the day a week online avocate medical cannabis. But I'm
Speaker 3: still trying to work out what I'm what I'm going
Speaker 3: to do when I grow up.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. I don't know how you could
Speaker 1: possibly squeeze all that in. But what a bloody interesting life.
Speaker 1: So when I think about what lies it the intersection
Speaker 1: of philosophy and psychology and science and spirituality and wellness,
Speaker 1: it's you. You're in the middle of all of that.
Speaker 3: Like what I love is being on the edge of
Speaker 3: disciplines but then combining them. So I credit wellness as
Speaker 3: an academic discipline, but wellness is not just health science.
Speaker 3: It's business practices, it's sustainability, it's design, and I really
Speaker 3: love learning at the and bringing disciplines together. So in
Speaker 3: integrated medicine, I've always loved bringing natural, complementary traditional medicine
Speaker 3: with conventional medicine, or science and spirituality, or the academic
Speaker 3: world and the entrepreneurial commercial world. So yeah, I like
Speaker 3: to be at the interface. I mean, there's a permaculture
Speaker 3: principle that says the interesting things happen on the edge,
Speaker 3: and if you're not living on the edge, you're taking
Speaker 3: up too much space.
Speaker 1: So I like living on the edge. So the guy
Speaker 1: who kind of lived in academia but not really, well,
Speaker 1: you're in it, but you're out of it, and you
Speaker 1: kept pushing the boundaries and stepping into other places and
Speaker 1: state other areas and expanding and intersecting with other people
Speaker 1: doing other things. Was that embraced by your fellow academics
Speaker 1: or was it frowned upon once you started to open
Speaker 1: all of these doors that weren't particularly scientific.
Speaker 3: Well, I actually had a pretty good reception, but like
Speaker 3: I always say, I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Speaker 3: So there's a group of doctors who came like about
Speaker 3: ten fifteen years older than I am. Really fought the
Speaker 3: medical system that got deregistered. You know, they're always rubbish
Speaker 3: and doing natural people like Ian gaul Or and Ian
Speaker 3: Bright Hope and Sally and.
Speaker 1: Whereas I was still on their shoulder.
Speaker 3: And because I had a medical degree and a PhD
Speaker 3: and I always talked about research and evidence space, I
Speaker 3: was actually quite accepted. So I think I was the
Speaker 3: guy on the TV to talk about defending natural medicines
Speaker 3: when there was a natural medicine, or they'd roll me
Speaker 3: out at a cardiology conference or a rheumatology conference to
Speaker 3: tea to speak to specialists about natural medicine because I
Speaker 3: didn't want a natural talking to medical specialists. But that
Speaker 3: have me as a doctor with science and research behind me.
Speaker 3: So I've actually had a pretty good run. But having
Speaker 3: said that, I started out I was a Monish university.
Speaker 3: Well that's where I did my medical degree. But then
Speaker 3: I spent ten years creating a center for Complementary Medicine,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't the university wanted it is because I
Speaker 3: wanted to create it. A created electives that the students
Speaker 3: loved and brought money, and then I had honored students,
Speaker 3: so I sort of created that off my own bat,
Speaker 3: but I was able to do it whereas other doctor.
Speaker 3: I mean I was the first person to teach acupuncture
Speaker 3: to medical students in Australia, not because the university wanted it,
Speaker 3: because I thought it was a fun thing to do
Speaker 3: that It was so I got to do that. And
Speaker 3: then at r MIT I got this great position to
Speaker 3: be attended Professor of Complementary Medicine, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: create wellness as an academic discipline. It's not because the
Speaker 3: university wanted it. I just wanted to have wellness as
Speaker 3: a discipline. It was a really good sort of field
Speaker 3: for me to playing. I've got to interact with all
Speaker 3: these different professionals and perma culture and yoga and positive
Speaker 3: psychology and bring all that into a you know, a
Speaker 3: postgraduate forum. So yeah, I was allowed to do it.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really because the university wanted it. I did
Speaker 3: it off my own bat and it was a.
Speaker 1: Lot of fun to do.
Speaker 3: But I've had a really good run because I think
Speaker 3: I have had a really firm foot in the evidence
Speaker 3: based conventional medical world, as I'm really firm foot in
Speaker 3: the you know, the spirituality, natural medicine side, and I
Speaker 3: didn't really well, I represented both very well. Both both
Speaker 3: sides were happy with you know, you know, I bought
Speaker 3: value to both sides.
Speaker 1: So like a lot of people in their career are
Speaker 1: driven by ticking boxes or you know, status or making
Speaker 1: lot to do, nothing wrong with any of those things.
Speaker 1: But but what drives you because it seems like a
Speaker 1: myriad of things, Well, I mean curiosity, fun. Well how
Speaker 1: do I focus on fun?
Speaker 3: How can I have the best, most fulfilling, rewarding life
Speaker 3: and one of the most fun things to do. So
Speaker 3: that's really been my driving goal since I started into medicine.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I think I do have this sort
Speaker 3: of inferiority complex because I mean, who needs two PhDs
Speaker 3: and a medical degree and an honors degree and all these?
Speaker 3: You know, So I was clicking degrees and credibility because
Speaker 3: I'm probably very insecure. But really I went into medicine
Speaker 3: originally ninety eighty two because I wanted to have fun.
Speaker 3: And I think in medicine would teach me about the
Speaker 3: body and life and death and everything in between, will
Speaker 3: teach me how I can have the most fun fulfilling life.
Speaker 3: Not because I wanted to help sick people. So you know,
Speaker 3: fun has been really the focus. And you know, when
Speaker 3: I pick my students, I pick students who are got
Speaker 3: something I'm going to learn from and it's something I'm
Speaker 3: very interested in. So I've had a really diverse research
Speaker 3: career and a really diverse student population who are you know,
Speaker 3: PhD students and things, because because I'd follow the fun
Speaker 3: and funny is always happening at the edge as well.
Speaker 3: I mean, fun happens at the edge of your capacity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you know what's do and everything, it's just become
Speaker 3: boring and we can make money that way, but money
Speaker 3: has never been my dry. Having fun has So that's fir,
Speaker 3: that's my focus.
Speaker 1: Do you think that a lot of people when it
Speaker 1: comes to career settle and you know, we find sounds
Speaker 1: a bit judge. I don't mean it too, but you know,
Speaker 1: we do a thing and we wake up five years later,
Speaker 1: we're still doing the thing that doesn't really blow our
Speaker 1: socks off or fulfill us. But we're in a kind
Speaker 1: of a groundhog dayus of operating system. And you know,
Speaker 1: it ticks a box and it meets the needs. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of joy, there's not a lot of learning.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of fun, but we've got to
Speaker 1: have a job, and so this is the job, and
Speaker 1: then after we've done the job, then we'll try and
Speaker 1: have some fun.
Speaker 3: Then.
Speaker 1: I think that's typical.
Speaker 3: I think most people are like that because you know,
Speaker 3: you need security, you need to be able to pay
Speaker 3: your bills and feed your family and do those things,
Speaker 3: and you know, you fall into a position that provides
Speaker 3: that security, and then it becomes really scary to move
Speaker 3: outside that. And I've had some really edgy times in
Speaker 3: my career where I was going into the unknown and
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't have security. I didn't know if
Speaker 3: it was going to work out, and that was pretty edgy.
Speaker 3: And I was fortunate that I was in you know,
Speaker 3: I was able to deal with that in security, but
Speaker 3: also I felt I had a good backup with my
Speaker 3: family and my degree. It's going to good aways go
Speaker 3: back into medicine. But I think that's quite typical. And
Speaker 3: then people have this that's where you have the work life,
Speaker 3: divide the work for money and security, and then you
Speaker 3: have your life where you have your fun. Whereas I've
Speaker 3: never really done that, and right now it's like I
Speaker 3: don't I mean, I'm sitting at home in my kitchen
Speaker 3: table right now. I don't know if I'm working. This
Speaker 3: is you know, this is not.
Speaker 1: What I do.
Speaker 3: I'm just living my life and things happen. But I
Speaker 3: think most people do have that compromise, and I think.
Speaker 1: That society is built that way. That you have a
Speaker 1: job and.
Speaker 3: That's where you get paid for and then you have
Speaker 3: recreations and holidays and after time, and that's when you
Speaker 3: get your enjoyment. And if they talk about work life balance,
Speaker 3: but it's really difficult. If you're really dividing, if you
Speaker 3: don't like what you do, then then slowly it's killing you.
Speaker 1: I talk about a thing doc called work impact, so
Speaker 1: not work life balance, but whatever you do, whether it's
Speaker 1: twenty hours a week or sixty hours a week, what
Speaker 1: impact physically, mentally, emotionally that thing has on you. Because
Speaker 1: I'm a bit like you. I haven't had a job
Speaker 1: in inverted commas since I was twenty six, which was
Speaker 1: thirty three years ago. So I've worked for myself forever,
Speaker 1: and I don't really have a sense of well, I
Speaker 1: have no sense of a job, and even when I work,
Speaker 1: I don't really have I don't know what the experience
Speaker 1: of work is for others, but for me, like right now,
Speaker 1: you know, this is part of my job in inverted commas,
Speaker 1: talking to you, interviewing you. We're on a podcast, we
Speaker 1: have sponsors where associated with Nova, we're on their platform.
Speaker 1: This is you know. But you and I could be
Speaker 1: at the cafe talking and it would be the same
Speaker 1: sense for me, the same experience, right, I think you
Speaker 1: know it's regard though. I think we're both.
Speaker 3: I'm born in sixty four, so it sounds like we're
Speaker 3: about the same.
Speaker 1: Time September sixty three. Yeah. Yeah, But and I think
Speaker 1: some like you might do eighty hours a week of something,
Speaker 1: and people go eighty hours is too much. Don't do
Speaker 1: eighty that's ridiculous, Like what if you love it. I
Speaker 1: do eighty hours every week because I'm studying full time
Speaker 1: and working full time. But it doesn't But when I'm working,
Speaker 1: like for me that the over arching experience is something
Speaker 1: between curiosity and joy and fun. There's very little that
Speaker 1: I do where I go. I fucking hate this. I
Speaker 1: am not like that. Nothing feels like labor to me.
Speaker 1: The only thing that I don't love to do, which
Speaker 1: I do, which you would understand more than any of us,
Speaker 1: is you know, reading journal articles and you know for
Speaker 1: all my research and stuff, which doesn't light my fire,
Speaker 1: but it's part of the process, you know. I actually
Speaker 1: like reading journal articles, which stuff I can. I send
Speaker 1: you a few and you just give me the fucking
Speaker 1: Reader's digest version.
Speaker 3: Send it there software that AI softly that will do
Speaker 3: that for you much. Now, which is did you rearkable
Speaker 3: when you.
Speaker 1: When you were studying medicine at Monash, which is where
Speaker 1: I'm studying. So you're in this it's very kind of
Speaker 1: structured kind of medical model, and you're learning Western medicine.
Speaker 1: Of course, in the middle of that. Were you curious
Speaker 1: about we completely invested in that and when this is
Speaker 1: me for the next thirty years. Or were you simultaneously
Speaker 1: thinking about Eastern medicine and Eastern philosophies and all the
Speaker 1: other kind of things that.
Speaker 3: Intersect well, I absolutely was, so I did. I started
Speaker 3: off in Moe Nash Western medicine and I did three
Speaker 3: years of that and thought, hey, I haven't learned how
Speaker 3: to have fun at all. They've taught me a lot
Speaker 3: about disease and illness, but not about wellness. I actually
Speaker 3: took a year off and did an honors degree in
Speaker 3: psychology and physiology. And at the time I wanted to
Speaker 3: study pleasure, but that this is like fifteen twenty years
Speaker 3: before positive psychology was a thing. So I actually they
Speaker 3: said you can study pain, so I didn't honor. I
Speaker 3: think a pleasure in pain. You know, it's a fine line,
Speaker 3: you know. If I learned about one, I learned about
Speaker 3: the other side. She did an honors degree in psychology
Speaker 3: and physiology, so covering mind and body. And in that
Speaker 3: year I came across you know, Chinese medicine and acupuncture
Speaker 3: and reading about these Chinese martial artists and meditators who
Speaker 3: improve with age.
Speaker 1: I thought, I want some.
Speaker 3: Of that, you know, I want to improve with age.
Speaker 3: We're in the Western medicine. You know, you deteriorate with age,
Speaker 3: and you know it's all about how you manage that
Speaker 3: age deterioration process. So I got really intrigued by Eastern medicine.
Speaker 3: So I went back and did my fourth year of
Speaker 3: my medical degree to get some clinical experience, and then
Speaker 3: I took three years off my medical degree to do
Speaker 3: a PhD in Chinese medicine. So I was right in
Speaker 3: the middle of my and that was a big That
Speaker 3: was one of those moments where I pulled the security
Speaker 3: out from under it. Me. I'd studied four years of medicine,
Speaker 3: did an honors degree, and suddenly I'm off traveling to
Speaker 3: Asia to study acupuncture and may never come back. But
Speaker 3: I was sort of driven to do that because it
Speaker 3: was my curiosity and I thought that would be much
Speaker 3: more fun. And I couldn't live with myself if I
Speaker 3: hadn't followed my own no path.
Speaker 1: So you did three years of medicine, then you did honors,
Speaker 1: then did fourth year of medicine, then you went. I
Speaker 1: love how you say you had a year off, and
Speaker 1: in the year off you did honors in physiology, and
Speaker 1: so it's not really a year off, bro, but anyway,
Speaker 1: and then you took another three years off in inverted
Speaker 1: commas and did a PhD, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: pretty quick to do a PhD. Did you then come
Speaker 1: back and do your fifth year or I.
Speaker 3: Came back then and finished my medical degree and started
Speaker 3: working as a doctor and the intern and did that,
Speaker 3: And then I did a second PhD in electrical computer
Speaker 3: systems engineering, just because I wanted to understand how technology
Speaker 3: could assess the body and how the body works from
Speaker 3: a communication perspective, and we study communication networks for electrical
Speaker 3: computer systems.
Speaker 1: Engineers, not no doctors. Wow, and so do you what
Speaker 1: do you? I mean, I'm sure you think a million things.
Speaker 1: So this is a dumb question, but I'll open the
Speaker 1: door about the you know, the convergence of biology and
Speaker 1: technology now where like it's it's becoming intertwined. It's mind blowing.
Speaker 3: I've I've just written an article on biohacking for the
Speaker 3: Global Wellness Institute. I've been part of the Global Wellness
Speaker 3: Institute for the last seventeen years. You had to do
Speaker 3: a bit of research on this because I've always been
Speaker 3: on the front of that technology biology interface. So you know,
Speaker 3: like looking at devices that you know, buio feedback and
Speaker 3: consciousness tech, you know, binoral beats and that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: which I'm studying in the nineteen eighties. And if you
Speaker 3: look what's happening now, it's mind blowing. In you know,
Speaker 3: you've heard about Zeno bots, the living robots that are
Speaker 3: they alive? Are they know their machines, but they're living
Speaker 3: and they can reproduce and they can know they can die,
Speaker 3: but then they can spoil others. And so we're getting
Speaker 3: to this borderline of what is alive and what is
Speaker 3: what is living?
Speaker 1: And then you've got all the AI, which is is
Speaker 1: that sentient? How do you know when it's sentient?
Speaker 3: And then you've got and this is what I was
Speaker 3: really interested when I was when I was making the
Speaker 3: decision to study medicine nineteen eighty one, I figured, one day,
Speaker 3: we're going to be able to control all the sensory
Speaker 3: inputs into the body, no site, sound, tage, taste, smell, temperature, everything,
Speaker 3: and you're going to be able to program those inputs
Speaker 3: to make the best healing experience for you, personalized based
Speaker 3: on all the information I get from your body and
Speaker 3: in real time. And it's you know, we're still not
Speaker 3: there yet, but we're probably two to five years away
Speaker 3: from that where you get real time biofeedback that can
Speaker 3: then either put pressure, you know, like massage chairs that
Speaker 3: can massage your body, or electromagnetic fields, or sight and
Speaker 3: sound and color or video that is tuned just to you.
Speaker 3: And we're also getting to the point where technology is
Speaker 3: getting to master practitioner level, so you know, you go
Speaker 3: to a master massage therapist for example, they'll put they'll
Speaker 3: suss out your body, they'll work out where the source
Speaker 3: spots are, and they'll put just enough pressure and that
Speaker 3: gets you to the point of focusing your attention on
Speaker 3: that point. But just before you WinCE and you know contract,
Speaker 3: they'll relax because they're studying your faith, they're studying your breathing,
Speaker 3: they're studying their own they've got their own intuition of
Speaker 3: what works, and that's that master practitioner level. Well, we're
Speaker 3: getting to the point where AI can do that. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've already see to the point with you know, AI
Speaker 3: can beat us in chairs and AlphaGo and poker and
Speaker 3: Rubik's Cube and all these things. But we're getting to
Speaker 3: the level where AI can actually interact with our body
Speaker 3: as good or not, if not better than a master
Speaker 3: practitioner can, and actually interact with us in real time
Speaker 3: for you know, healing us, for creating excitement, for creating fun,
Speaker 3: for taking us on journeys and narrative explorations, that you
Speaker 3: can pread a whole world that is designed just for you.
Speaker 1: I think that're heading towards that. That's not far away. Amazing.
Speaker 1: We had a guy and called Andrew Hessel, who's a
Speaker 1: microbiologist and a geneticist. He was on the other day
Speaker 1: and we're talking about synthetic biology, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: genetic engineering and programming cells and like totally personalized drugs
Speaker 1: built for your DNA, and it's it's it's bloody overwhelming,
Speaker 1: it's overwheling.
Speaker 3: So the stuff I've been reading, I mean they can already,
Speaker 3: they can they can three D print an ear or
Speaker 3: a bladder and body parts, so they take stem cells
Speaker 3: and they can take a skin, you know, skin scaffold.
Speaker 3: So you're talking about body modification. So just for fashion,
Speaker 3: if you want you have wings in the future, they'll
Speaker 3: be you'll be able to order which we want, and
Speaker 3: they'll be part of your body. You know, if you
Speaker 3: want to have an extra ear or pixi ears or
Speaker 3: whatever shape you want.
Speaker 1: This is all coming.
Speaker 3: The synthetic biology and that in it's not even just synthetic,
Speaker 3: it's it's you can actually transform real biology. And we're
Speaker 3: doing that already with you know, Crisper, and there's these
Speaker 3: biohackers and inject themselves with gene editing technology to grow
Speaker 3: their muscles or you know that you can buy gene
Speaker 3: editing stuff online to make glow in.
Speaker 1: The dark beer.
Speaker 3: So you yeah, it's I mean it's really crazy the
Speaker 3: technology that we're coming up, and it is this merging
Speaker 3: of the inanimate world with the animate world, you know,
Speaker 3: And if you go back to the the ancient ancient wisdom,
Speaker 3: I really like combining advance signs with ancient wisdom. I mean,
Speaker 3: everything was alive. There was no distinction betweenimate and animates.
Speaker 3: And I think we're coming back to that, you know,
Speaker 3: as a big sort of spiraling back, but with using
Speaker 3: modern technology for that realization.
Speaker 1: I feel like a long long time ago, as a
Speaker 1: species and as individuals within that species, because of the
Speaker 1: environment that we lived in and what we did and
Speaker 1: what we didn't have, I feel like we were much
Speaker 1: more connected with our body and our physiology and biology,
Speaker 1: and that we were much more intuitive and instinctive. And
Speaker 1: in two tenty and twenty three, where you've got access
Speaker 1: to everything, you know, in terms of food and booze
Speaker 1: and drugs and everything, to change your state is just
Speaker 1: you know, three feet away, we've kind of become disconnected
Speaker 1: from that biofeedback, that's right.
Speaker 3: I think we have lost our own intuitive sense of
Speaker 3: who we are. And I think that you can reclaim that,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the things I talk about are
Speaker 3: trying to reconnect people to that sense of their own biology,
Speaker 3: of their own physiology. And I think there is a danger,
Speaker 3: you know, with all these biometric devices now you know,
Speaker 3: the fitbits and the aura rings and stuff, where you know,
Speaker 3: it's nice about how well you sleep and how many
Speaker 3: steps you've done, but you sort of it detaches you
Speaker 3: from your own intuition. You lose faith in your own
Speaker 3: intuitive sense of your body, and you're trusting output from
Speaker 3: some device. I think there'll be a circling back, so
Speaker 3: we're actually not going to need this technology at all,
Speaker 3: but we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: They're still to go. That's such a good point, Like
Speaker 1: when we would look at a number that's on our
Speaker 1: watch and would feel good or bad based on that number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not how well you sleep.
Speaker 3: Oh look, you know, my watcher tells me how well
Speaker 3: I sleep, rather than knowing when I wake up in
Speaker 3: the morning.
Speaker 1: Oh that was a good night's sleep. So over the years,
Speaker 1: dock one of the things that I did thousands of times,
Speaker 1: which I wouldn't do anymore. But back then we didn't
Speaker 1: know any better. But in the old days, in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, we would weigh members or weigh clients
Speaker 1: every whatever, once a week or something. People would want
Speaker 1: to be weighed. And somebody could be having a great day,
Speaker 1: they're happy, everything's good, and they stand on the scales
Speaker 1: and they look at a number that appears between their
Speaker 1: toes and then all of a sudden, life shit, They're
Speaker 1: having a bad day. They're depressed, they're you know, because
Speaker 1: some number appears between their toes that isn't the number
Speaker 1: that they want. But thirty seconds ago, they felt really
Speaker 1: good physically, mentally, emotionally, felt really good. And then now
Speaker 1: they've got a new bit of information. Now they feel
Speaker 1: terrible despite all the physiological kind of stuff that was,
Speaker 1: you know, a minute ago, they were good.
Speaker 3: And I think, I mean, I see that a lot
Speaker 3: in medicine. So for example, there's this been trend in medicine,
Speaker 3: especially natural medicine, where they'll do still a whole lot
Speaker 3: of testing, yeah, your blood, you know, serum, rhubarb and
Speaker 3: minerals and whatever, rather than actually find out what's what
Speaker 3: symptoms you have and treating the patient. Yes, and I
Speaker 3: think you know, when you when you're actually really and
Speaker 3: it does take a lot of skill to take a
Speaker 3: good history and you know, inquire into a patient how
Speaker 3: they're feeling, and you know when do that starts and
Speaker 3: really investigating what's happened. So it's very easy just to
Speaker 3: order a pathology test and seeing your minerals, your blood
Speaker 3: levels or whatever, and then treating the numbers on the
Speaker 3: pathology test rather than actually treating the patient.
Speaker 1: And I think there is a place for both.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's really good to have information, and the
Speaker 3: more information you've got you can make better decisions. But
Speaker 3: to rely just on that information for your decision making
Speaker 3: and not rely on the intuitive side and the experiential
Speaker 3: side of what's actually happening, I think the danger there
Speaker 3: will be we're sort of the technology becomes between us
Speaker 3: and our intuition.
Speaker 1: I know you don't see patients too often these days,
Speaker 1: but when you do, when somebody comes to you as
Speaker 1: a medical doctor, do you ever put on another hat
Speaker 1: and go? I actually think you should go and work
Speaker 1: in the garden, or go for a jog, or it's
Speaker 1: an acupuncture or you know, play with your puppy seven
Speaker 1: times a day. Well I've been I guess I'm famous
Speaker 1: for doing that.
Speaker 3: The last thirty years where I'd write prescriptions, which would
Speaker 3: be going to play with your puppy or draw dragons
Speaker 3: or go dancing. But what I do is actually ask
Speaker 3: people what do you do that. When you do it,
Speaker 3: you lose track of time. You're so absorbed in the activity.
Speaker 3: You're not worrying about the future, you're not feeling guilty
Speaker 3: about the past. You're just absorbed in that activity. And
Speaker 3: often you you know, some people would say I don't
Speaker 3: have anything like that, and they were the really sick ones.
Speaker 3: And other people wuld say, oh, yeah, I used to
Speaker 3: do ballroom dancing, or I used to paint, or I
Speaker 3: used to garden, and you'd inquire and you'd see how
Speaker 3: that their illness actually deteriorated when they stopped doing those activities.
Speaker 3: So I would prescribe. I'd get a script pat out,
Speaker 3: I've been seeing patients this morning. Actually I get to
Speaker 3: that out, and I'd actually write you gardening three times
Speaker 3: a week or no ballroom dancing three times a week.
Speaker 3: I'd say, you know, put this on your fridge. This
Speaker 3: is your prescription. This is what you need to do.
Speaker 3: And it was amazing the change you're getting people. Yes,
Speaker 3: and either when you get people to talk about the
Speaker 3: things they love. Because as a doctor, you know you're
Speaker 3: asking about their pain and you know to travel here
Speaker 3: and there and how does it come on and off?
Speaker 3: So you're asking people about negative things in their lives.
Speaker 3: I would take a pleasure history. What are the most
Speaker 3: fun things you have in your life? What's your reason
Speaker 3: for living? What are the things you do but you
Speaker 3: really enjoy? And when people start to talk about those things,
Speaker 3: their voice changes, their posture changes. You can see them
Speaker 3: in live and in front of you, just as they're
Speaker 3: sharing with you, you know, the activities that they really enjoyed.
Speaker 3: And that was really powerful to focus on. So I
Speaker 3: mean one example, I remember I had an old patient
Speaker 3: who was a Vietnam vest. He'd broken everybody bone in
Speaker 3: his body as a paratrooper, and he had this chronic
Speaker 3: pain condition and he was getting pathodene injections and there
Speaker 3: was not even off station in his body to put
Speaker 3: the injections because it was all Frey brosed up. But
Speaker 3: the one thing he did with fly remote control aeroplanes.
Speaker 3: This is in the nineteen nineties and when he was
Speaker 3: focusing on and he was like an Australian champion at it.
Speaker 3: But when he was focusing on airplanes. His pain wasn't
Speaker 3: an issue. Wow, But the rest of.
Speaker 1: The time it was.
Speaker 3: So you know, having something that you love to do
Speaker 3: and you focus on that, that's actually medicine and that's
Speaker 3: what i'd prescribe.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I do that commonly, isn't it? Do you
Speaker 1: find it? Probably people listen to you and respect you
Speaker 1: a lot more than they do me. But I find
Speaker 1: it interesting sometimes when people talk to you about, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're flat or they're depressed or they're anxious, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, you know, doing something that is like
Speaker 1: we spoke about like playing hanging out with your animals
Speaker 1: or being in nature or listening to music or meditating,
Speaker 1: or they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But what do
Speaker 1: you think is xanax?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, one, I'm not a doctor, but two,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we like are We're a culture
Speaker 1: that seems to have more faith in drugs than I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that can lower your heart
Speaker 1: rate and lower your blood pressure and reduce anxiety and
Speaker 1: that that don't involve any kind of drug. So I've
Speaker 1: got a poem for this.
Speaker 3: At the start of the pandemic, I was thinking you know,
Speaker 3: because I've studied all these complimentary medicines. I've written all
Speaker 3: these research papers on them. So I saying, what are
Speaker 3: all the activities you can do at home with no cost,
Speaker 3: no training, and no equipment that have research evidence that
Speaker 3: they reduce anxiety, improve immunity. And yeah, they've got evidence
Speaker 3: behind them. So I've started writing these out and it
Speaker 3: came and it came out of the poem. So this
Speaker 3: I'm sort of I'm proud of this point. It's got
Speaker 3: fifty activities in it, but hear it. If you go
Speaker 3: to my website, you can click on each of these
Speaker 3: activities and it will link to the research behind it.
Speaker 1: Do you know what, We've never in five years and
Speaker 1: one thousand and nearly eleven hundred episodes, never had anyone
Speaker 1: share a pime. So this is the debut for typ pimes.
Speaker 3: And this is a systematic review poem, so it's evidence
Speaker 3: based poem. I call it The Whorl of Wellness and
Speaker 3: it goes like this, hold someone's hand, gaze into their eyes,
Speaker 3: go barefoot in nature, bask in sunrise, choose a dance
Speaker 3: partner and go find your groove, do tight your yoga
Speaker 3: and mindfully move share a massage, enjoy healing, touch, Focus
Speaker 3: on one thing and don't think too much. Make time
Speaker 3: for a hobby, play chess, fly kite, make use of
Speaker 3: your hands, draw paint, so or right. Help someone in need,
Speaker 3: Donate to a cause, play games, meditate, read stuff from bookstores,
Speaker 3: turn off your screens, get a good sleep, declutter, spark,
Speaker 3: joy and love what you keep. Dig around in the garden,
Speaker 3: pick up a guitar, Slip into a bathtub, sauna or spa.
Speaker 3: Care for a pet, take up a sport, Go on
Speaker 3: vacation and make your home a resort. Lie in a hammock,
Speaker 3: relieve pent up stress, relax and do nothing and then
Speaker 3: do even less. Laugh out loud, share a joke, give
Speaker 3: someone a kiss, say a prayer, chant a mantra, and
Speaker 3: follow your bliss.
Speaker 1: So that that's pretty amazing. I love that. Where can
Speaker 1: people find that mark on my website?
Speaker 3: Doctor mark dot co, d r M A r C
Speaker 3: dot co and forward, slash poems and uh all research backed.
Speaker 3: That's all research back. So each one of those activities
Speaker 3: has a link to the to the systematic review or
Speaker 3: the randomized control trial that that's backing backing it, And
Speaker 3: I give I think of that that that poem to
Speaker 3: my patience. I say, you have include as many of
Speaker 3: these activities in your life if you can.
Speaker 1: You know what I laughed is just before when you
Speaker 1: said I've been seeing patients this morning and you held
Speaker 1: up a script pad there, I would think, one because
Speaker 1: you're a medical doctor, and two because you're writing. Even
Speaker 1: if it's like go dancing, or even if it's you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes a day line the floor with your dog,
Speaker 1: you know, or twice a day, but it's on a
Speaker 1: script pad. It's given to me by a doctor. I'm
Speaker 1: much more likely to do it. That's it. You just
Speaker 1: told me to do it. I'm less likely. But if
Speaker 1: you write it out on a script I feel like, well, shit,
Speaker 1: this is clinical. I've got to do this.
Speaker 3: That's right, and put it on your fridge, you know,
Speaker 3: the fringe magnet. Yeah, so it gives it some authority
Speaker 3: to do that. At the moment, I just write script
Speaker 3: of medical cannabis, so I don't really write other other scripts.
Speaker 1: Oh well, now you're going to get in undated. I
Speaker 1: don't need more patient. Don't really know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that we've spoken about, I reckon five times in
Speaker 1: a thousand episodes. I'm interested in your take on it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Tiff and I spoke about a guy
Speaker 1: that we've both spoken with a bit called Professor Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Reddicker from Harvard, who is a researcher but specializes or
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time and effort researching spontaneous healing
Speaker 1: and plus ebos and all of that.
Speaker 3: What do you think of all that? Where do you
Speaker 3: sit with the you know, our ability to heal ourselves
Speaker 3: from things that apparently are death sentences or terminal Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I believe nature has infinite healing power. And
Speaker 3: I've because I've been in this natural medicine world for
Speaker 3: thirty plus years, I've seen so many cases of dramatic healing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a good friend with Ian Gawler. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a case study of you know, he had these
Speaker 3: cannonball lesions in his lungs and the bony cancers all
Speaker 3: the way through his lungs and given six weeks to
Speaker 3: live and what forty years later he's still around and
Speaker 3: you know, transformed his life through you know, sort of
Speaker 3: meditation and you know, lifestyle change. So I've seen some
Speaker 3: really dramatic turnarounds. Yes, and I mean if you have
Speaker 3: a look what humans are capable of, it's mind blowing.
Speaker 3: You know, some of these amazing YouTube videos of what
Speaker 3: people can do.
Speaker 1: And now how to turn that on?
Speaker 3: Because one thing to say, Okay, there's these examples of it,
Speaker 3: how do you actually activate it? And some of those
Speaker 3: activities in my poem and those activities, but when you
Speaker 3: lose track of time so you're sort of at one
Speaker 3: with the universe, that's there. They're the activities that can
Speaker 3: potentially turn that on, But there is no answer of
Speaker 3: how to you know, switch that on for everybody, and
Speaker 3: not that you want to. I mean, in Western medicine,
Speaker 3: we see death as the enemy and you know, fight
Speaker 3: it at all costs. But I've seen people have amazing, beautiful,
Speaker 3: really wanted and welcome death and they were really successful.
Speaker 3: But Western medicine still sees that as a as a
Speaker 3: failure a deare.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we have incredible power. I mean, the
Speaker 3: whole placebo effect. I mean, it's so powerful you have
Speaker 3: to control for it and all these experiments because it works. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it works a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: What about one of the great challenges, especially twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I think it has been around forever really, but post pandemic,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conversation around anxiety. Is anxiety produced
Speaker 1: more by the situation and circumstance or more by the
Speaker 1: individual in the middle of it? Oh, certainly by the individual.
Speaker 3: And a lot of the stuff I've been teaching people
Speaker 3: now and working on is how you can remain really
Speaker 3: calm and relaxed in the midst of a really chaotic
Speaker 3: and stressful situation. So there's things like I did a
Speaker 3: too with Bim Half and you know, how to teaching
Speaker 3: people how to stay in an ice bath, which is
Speaker 3: not really comfortable, but how do you then relax when
Speaker 3: you're in an ice bath? And the work we did
Speaker 3: with Lauren actually the Lauren burn 'osing a gold medice
Speaker 3: in taekwondo, and she was one of my PhD students,
Speaker 3: and we investigated these world champion athletes who'd be multiple
Speaker 3: world champions and said, how do you stay in the
Speaker 3: top of the world in your sport for so many years?
Speaker 3: I mean, what you eat, what do you think? How
Speaker 3: do you live? And we found out that they all
Speaker 3: did ice bathing, and they did it for the mental
Speaker 3: health benefits of how to relax in a stressful situation,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a really important skill. I mean,
Speaker 3: yoga gives you that skill. When you do a yoga stretch,
Speaker 3: you sort of go to the edge of your stretch,
Speaker 3: and there's a point that I call the point of
Speaker 3: forced mindfulness. That's the point where your body says, don't
Speaker 3: go any further, you're going to hurt yourself. You don't
Speaker 3: stretch any further. And if you do stretch, if you
Speaker 3: try and push past that, you're going to tear a
Speaker 3: muscle and you reduce your flexibility. If you just go
Speaker 3: to that point of where you're feeling quite stress and
Speaker 3: you're at the edge of your tolerance, and then you
Speaker 3: practice relaxing and breathing, so you're relaxing in that stressful situation.
Speaker 3: The same thing happens in a sauna or an ice ba.
Speaker 3: There's a point where your body says, get out too much,
Speaker 3: when you're about to tap out, and at that point,
Speaker 3: if you can just relax and practice being relaxed under stress,
Speaker 3: that builds up your resilience. But if you do that
Speaker 3: what I recommend, and this naturally happens in the op class,
Speaker 3: so you know you're doing your stretches and your stretch
Speaker 3: one side and the other side, and you go to
Speaker 3: the point of that no forced mindfulness well being comfortably uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: So you're practice being relaxed under stress. But then at
Speaker 3: the end of the class, you go into Shavasena at
Speaker 3: the corpse pose and you do a deep relaxation and
Speaker 3: then you're practicing relaxing while you're relaxed.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, you.
Speaker 3: Go much deeper into the relaxation because you've stressed yourself earlier,
Speaker 3: so the contrast between the stress and the relaxation is greater.
Speaker 3: And when you really relax deeply like that, all your
Speaker 3: stress hormones can't fall back into balance, your mental activity
Speaker 3: comes back into balance, and you really get in touch
Speaker 3: with your inner self. That's a great time to make
Speaker 3: decisions if you have to have to make an important decision,
Speaker 3: because you're in touch with yourself literally, and it's a
Speaker 3: really good time to heal. That's when your body doesn't healing.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I really encourage people to go to the
Speaker 3: limits of their stress and practical relaxing while they're stressed,
Speaker 3: but then balance that with having a deep relaxation and
Speaker 3: practicing being relaxed while you're relaxed.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Lauren. If Lauren's listening, we love you
Speaker 1: your ace and thanks for connecting the doc and us.
Speaker 1: It's much appreciated. Yeah, that's that, that equanimity, that calm
Speaker 1: in the chaos, right, That being able to, you know,
Speaker 1: despite what's going on around you self regulate and to
Speaker 1: be able to James Bond effect. Right.
Speaker 3: We love about James Bond because you know, there's all
Speaker 3: these chaos going around, but he knows who to shoot
Speaker 3: and who to care for you to go through and
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do I make good decisions and do smart
Speaker 1: things and act and react the way that is optimal
Speaker 1: in the middle of the ship that's going that's right,
Speaker 1: that's going on around.
Speaker 3: But the way to do it is you create a
Speaker 3: ship best and you practice doing that and then when
Speaker 3: life throws it at you, then you can deal with it.
Speaker 1: That's so true. Is like we in fact back to TIFFs.
Speaker 1: So TIFF's training for this thing that will remain nameless,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be horrible potentially. And so I
Speaker 1: said to her, like the other day, I've been getting
Speaker 1: it to do things that a lot of them are
Speaker 1: fucking horrible and I go, you need to be used
Speaker 1: to horrible because if we just get you traditionally fit,
Speaker 1: you know, that's great, But if we're doing it in
Speaker 1: a methodical, reasonable, comfortable, sensible way, when you get in
Speaker 1: the middle of this thing that you're training for where
Speaker 1: it isn't predictable, it isn't nice, it isn't comfortable, it
Speaker 1: isn't familiar, it's freezing, you're in the middle of water,
Speaker 1: you're here, you're there. There's all this shit going on
Speaker 1: that you haven't dealt with. You know, for me, even
Speaker 1: as an exercise physiologist, I think it's thirty percent about
Speaker 1: your body and seventy percent about all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, so me trying to get and the same
Speaker 1: with you know, I've worked with lots of professional athletes,
Speaker 1: and you know, understanding what their body needs to be
Speaker 1: doing to execute what they need to do for their
Speaker 1: sport or task or activity is fundamental. But you can
Speaker 1: get any brilliant, genetically gifted athlete who's beautifully trained, but
Speaker 1: if they can't perform under pressure, they're fucked. You can't
Speaker 1: be a Lauren Burns, no matter how great your body
Speaker 1: or genetics or skill or talent is. If you can't
Speaker 1: go to the Olympic Games and under extreme pressure execute,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's the thing is, so it's like, yeah, fit, strong, functional,
Speaker 1: specifically trained, well nourished, well slept, you know, all the
Speaker 1: physiological buttons pushed. Yep, sure, but can you deal with shit?
Speaker 1: Can you do what most people would give up on?
Speaker 3: That's where you know, you can recreate a ship storm
Speaker 3: and practice it, exhibiting the ship storm and then and
Speaker 3: then then you actually feel it. That does It builds
Speaker 3: your physiological resilience. It also builds your confidence because when
Speaker 3: you can do that, you feel like you can handle anything.
Speaker 3: You feel invincible. And yeah, that's what I really know.
Speaker 3: I love teaching people that and I do a lot
Speaker 3: through bathing because bathings. Most people think bathing's really comfortable.
Speaker 3: You know, you go to hot springs and your line
Speaker 3: in hot water, it's really and it is, that's super
Speaker 3: relaxing and super comfortable. But you go into an ice
Speaker 3: bath and after a minute or two you really want
Speaker 3: to get out, Or you go into a sauna and
Speaker 3: after you know, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, you really want
Speaker 3: to get out because your body is suffering and dealing
Speaker 3: with that and actual you've got another little poem here.
Speaker 3: So the last poem was all about the chronic things
Speaker 3: you can do to keep yourself relaxed. So this is
Speaker 3: in the acute situation, when the ship storm is hitting you,
Speaker 3: there's what you want to do is activate your parasympathetic
Speaker 3: nervous system. Because normally, you know when the ship storm hits,
Speaker 3: you've got your sympathetic nervous system where it's fight and flight,
Speaker 3: you're up and your adrenalines up. But when you're in
Speaker 3: fight and flight, often that's fearful and your brain turns off.
Speaker 3: In that fight and fight, you don't want to think
Speaker 3: about it. You want to act instinctively, so you don't
Speaker 3: have tiger or should I do this? All that. But
Speaker 3: if you can calm yourself down, you can make a
Speaker 3: better decision. And there's a way to do that to
Speaker 3: stimulate your rest and digest your parasympathetic nervous system. And
Speaker 3: there are things you can do with your body, very
Speaker 3: simple things that will activate your parasympathetic nervous system. And
Speaker 3: like all these things, the ten hacks to relax, and
Speaker 3: it's super simple. It's touch all your fingers, wiggle your toes,
Speaker 3: soften your stomach, breathe through your nose, thy smile, wallow thing,
Speaker 3: flutter your eyelids, and focus within. Now, all of those
Speaker 3: activities activate your parasympathetic nervous system. And there all activities
Speaker 3: you do when you're safe in your cave, when you're
Speaker 3: running away from tig or fighting a battle.
Speaker 1: It's so smart that you do that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so smart that you you're teaching people, you know, because
Speaker 1: people can memorize that quite easily and recall that you.
Speaker 3: I was teaching to a patient this morning with PTSD
Speaker 3: and anxiety and having panic attacks. And when the panic
Speaker 3: attack comes on, if you've got things you can do
Speaker 3: that give you a sense of control, but they actually
Speaker 3: calm your nervous system. And this is you know the
Speaker 3: you know the power of vaguel. You know the Vagel
Speaker 3: theory where you can have sympathetic nervous system high because
Speaker 3: you're in a high adrenaline situation, but then you can
Speaker 3: increase your vagual activity, your parasympathetic so you can still
Speaker 3: be relaxed in that chaotic situation. And that's when you
Speaker 3: make the best decisions. That's when you can get the
Speaker 3: edge over your component, your opponent, and where you for
Speaker 3: much better. So it's how do you stop panicking and
Speaker 3: stay calm when the ship storm hits?
Speaker 1: And these sort of tricks can help, so you can
Speaker 1: be cognitively and physiog logically optimal at the same time. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe forty percent of my audience, I'm guessing, do not
Speaker 1: know who wim Hoff is. I do. I'm a fan,
Speaker 1: tiff you and I of course don't you. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: one tell us who he is and tell us what
Speaker 1: you did with him.
Speaker 3: So whims they call him the iceman. So he sort
Speaker 3: of made ice fading quite famous. He has a method
Speaker 3: that involves breathing where you breathe as much as you
Speaker 3: can so hyperventilate and blow off all your carbon dogs
Speaker 3: side and get dizzy and lightheaded and really uncomfortable, and
Speaker 3: then you hold your breath for as long as you can.
Speaker 3: And it just happens when you if you blow off
Speaker 3: all your carbon dogs side, then hold your breath. You
Speaker 3: can hold your breath for a long time, and anyone
Speaker 3: can do that. And then he also promoted he had
Speaker 3: the world record for many years of the longest spent
Speaker 3: in an ice bath over an hour. He can spend
Speaker 3: in full ice and control his body temperature, and then
Speaker 3: no one could believe that he could train anyone else
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 1: And they actually tested him.
Speaker 3: They did some research on him where they gave him
Speaker 3: in with the poison around E.
Speaker 1: Coli.
Speaker 3: So it's it's pretending you've got a blood infection without
Speaker 3: active bacteria. So it's the lipoprotein coat around the bacteria.
Speaker 3: That's what your body reacts to when you've got septacemia
Speaker 3: or blood infection. So they gave that to him and
Speaker 3: he did his breathing, did his thing, and he didn't
Speaker 3: get affected by it at all, and they couldn't believe.
Speaker 3: And he's this amazing charismatic dutch Man who's got a
Speaker 3: lot of bravado and a lot of self confidence. And
Speaker 3: they said, you know, oh yeah, you can do that
Speaker 3: because you're a freak. He goes, no, I can teach
Speaker 3: anyone to do it, And they said, how long you
Speaker 3: take a year of training on? Take them on the weekend,
Speaker 3: and they said, oh yeah, sure, And he did it.
Speaker 3: He took a group of about twenty five people away
Speaker 3: in Poland and I think it maybe he took him
Speaker 3: for five days or a week and trained him on
Speaker 3: the training them on the breathing, trained them on the
Speaker 3: ice bathing. They did end up walking up a mountain
Speaker 3: in the snow in their in their board shorts, and
Speaker 3: a week later they all tested with the same injection
Speaker 3: of what should have been except to see me, which
Speaker 3: gives you fever and chills and pains for twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: and they were able to do it as well. So
Speaker 3: he has this whim half method, which is the breathing
Speaker 3: and the ice bathing, where he trains people to overcome
Speaker 3: their own sort of body, their own physiology.
Speaker 1: And he came to.
Speaker 3: Australia about five years ago, ess actually living up in
Speaker 3: NUSA at the moment, I think, and I sort of
Speaker 3: toured with him, giving the lecture on the signs behind
Speaker 3: the whim Holf method. And it was really interesting for
Speaker 3: me to formula research there because I'd already done a
Speaker 3: lot of research on breathing practices and bathing practices and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I sort of condensed that together. And so you know,
Speaker 3: we went to Brisbane and Sydney in Melbourne and we
Speaker 3: had like five hundred people would come to an event
Speaker 3: and they'd all do two minutes in an ice bath.
Speaker 3: And when you do two minutes on an ice bath.
Speaker 3: You feel amazing when you get out in this endorphin
Speaker 3: rush and you feel really powerful. So they're really sort
Speaker 3: of high vibing events, and so I travel with him.
Speaker 3: I ended up doing some research which you never fully
Speaker 3: got published, that where we in survey one of my
Speaker 3: PhD students surveyed about four thousand people doing the wim
Speaker 3: hoffmet and saying, you know, why do you do it?
Speaker 3: What effects do you get? What are the benefits? And
Speaker 3: it was amazing that people get incredible benefits from PTSD
Speaker 3: and anxiety, from depression, and from back pain and joint
Speaker 3: pains and fibromyalgia and chronic pain. They were like the
Speaker 3: big ticket items that people got benefits from. And I
Speaker 3: think it's especially with the anxiety and the PTSD, is
Speaker 3: like when you go into an ice bath, you naturally
Speaker 3: you had to ventilate, and that reproduces the breathing pattern
Speaker 3: and the body chemistry of anxiety of trauma.
Speaker 1: You know, when I.
Speaker 3: Was working in emergency departments, you'd have people coming into
Speaker 3: the emergency department thinking they having a heart attack, but
Speaker 3: they're hype of ventilating. They're having a panic attack. But
Speaker 3: it's the same sort of feeling that you're having well
Speaker 3: you're about to die and having a panic attack, and
Speaker 3: you can simulate that by going to an ice bath.
Speaker 3: But then if you can control your breathing and overcome that,
Speaker 3: it gives you the chance, well, I can overcome this panic.
Speaker 3: And it can be dangerous if you've had really severe
Speaker 3: trauma in the past and you do that to someone unexpected,
Speaker 3: you can reactivate that trauma. But if you do that
Speaker 3: in a very controlled environment where they can get out
Speaker 3: anytime they want, they're in full control of the situation.
Speaker 3: There's a hot bath or a sawn or something that
Speaker 3: can warm up so they're not going to freeze, then
Speaker 3: they can actually reproduce that previous trauma, that panic in
Speaker 3: a way that they're in control of it. And then
Speaker 3: they can overcome and they can control their breath and
Speaker 3: relax their breathing down, and suddenly they've got mastery over
Speaker 3: their own body when they didn't have it before, and
Speaker 3: that could be super powerful. And often when you're doing
Speaker 3: big public events or five hundred people sitting in nice bars,
Speaker 3: you need to watch out for the people who are
Speaker 3: getting triggered by that who and with a bit of coaching,
Speaker 3: pretty much everybody gets through it. But it's a really
Speaker 3: empowering thing for people to do. But you do have
Speaker 3: to be a little bit careful because people are more sensitive.
Speaker 3: To give people that feeling of control over panic, it's
Speaker 3: such a gift to give to people, do you know.
Speaker 1: You know, so I remember hearing about that where he
Speaker 1: was in that hospital and they injected him with that
Speaker 1: whatever it was that made people. Typically it would make
Speaker 1: people really unwell for a period of time, and he
Speaker 1: went give it to me, and they gave it to
Speaker 1: him and he was completely fine and there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he trained all those people that were not handpicked
Speaker 1: by him. I don't think.
Speaker 3: I think they're actually chosen by the researchers or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, and I hadn't done anything special before, and no,
Speaker 3: just hear I can't like.
Speaker 1: What I don't get is why does that not blow
Speaker 1: everyone's socks off. Let's research that. Let's lean into like,
Speaker 1: here's all of these people doing shit that is not
Speaker 1: meant to be possible. Why are we not pushing into that?
Speaker 1: Is it because it makes no money?
Speaker 3: There's no money in it? I mean what I mean,
Speaker 3: He's and now you know all the stuff in that
Speaker 3: poem I just read. You know, those activities don't cost anything,
Speaker 3: and they don't make money for any organizations, do they.
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, suddenly, I mean the wellness industry and
Speaker 3: the spa industry in Hot Springs. I mean, yes, pretty
Speaker 3: nice and boring, but it's not it's not really a
Speaker 3: blockbuster drug that you make a billion dollars or you know,
Speaker 3: many bultiple billions of dollars out of a molecule by
Speaker 3: doing that.
Speaker 1: These are activities. I mean.
Speaker 3: So for example, I really I've got to I think
Speaker 3: I call the cold water hokey pokey, which is a
Speaker 3: way of so because after the wim Hoff thing and
Speaker 3: traveling in the ice bathing, I was going to lectures
Speaker 3: in a plays like wing Gana, which is like in
Speaker 3: this luxury health retreat and tell people to you know,
Speaker 3: going to use cold water. And most people say, I know,
Speaker 3: we hate cold water. We can't tolerate it, you know,
Speaker 3: because people are pretty wimpy generally. So I thought, and
Speaker 3: you know, wim just do it, you know, get in there.
Speaker 3: And but you know, the people who come to whim
Speaker 3: Hoffa then, or the alpha males or the alpha females
Speaker 3: or they you know, the fighters and the martial artists
Speaker 3: and the footballer, and I was talking to elder women
Speaker 3: and people who are more sort of relaxed, so though,
Speaker 3: there must be a way to do this that's gentle,
Speaker 3: and I came up with this what I call the
Speaker 3: cold water hokey pokey, And you can do it at
Speaker 3: home in the shower.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cost any money.
Speaker 3: You so just basically you start off with a hot shower,
Speaker 3: and then at the end of your nice hot shower,
Speaker 3: you turn the heat up a little bit so you
Speaker 3: become a bit uncomfortably hot and a bit flushed. And
Speaker 3: at that point you stand back and you turn the
Speaker 3: hot water off and the cold water on. But you
Speaker 3: just get your left foot it's okay, you've been really hot,
Speaker 3: and you put your left foot can handle the cold water,
Speaker 3: and then you put your left leg in, and you
Speaker 3: put your right foot and your leg and then your
Speaker 3: left hand and arm and your other hand and arm.
Speaker 3: And what that does it constricts the blood in your
Speaker 3: limbs and sends that hot blood into the core of
Speaker 3: your body. But you're still feeling okay even though you've
Speaker 3: got the cold water on your limbs. And then you
Speaker 3: keep breathing calmly, and you smile to yourself, because that's
Speaker 3: what it's all about.
Speaker 1: How do you stay calm and you.
Speaker 3: Have that inner piece, and then then you take a
Speaker 3: big breath in, and before you put your left side in,
Speaker 3: you start to sigh out. And then you put your
Speaker 3: left side in, and when the water hits your neck
Speaker 3: and your sort of upper body. Normally that would when
Speaker 3: you go oh, it would make you have a big
Speaker 3: gasp because your blood vessels are close to the surface there,
Speaker 3: and that gives you that shock. But if you're already
Speaker 3: going as you do that, you feel the cold, but
Speaker 3: you don't get the shock, so it takes the emotional
Speaker 3: reaction away from it. So you take a big sigh
Speaker 3: and you put your left side in, your right side in,
Speaker 3: your front side in, and you turn yourself around and
Speaker 3: you keeping calmly and smile to yourself because that's what
Speaker 3: it's all about. And then you put your whole head
Speaker 3: in and then you move your head around, you know, standstill,
Speaker 3: get a drenching, slowly, turn yourself around, continue breathing, calmly,
Speaker 3: smile to yourself. That's what it's all about. And then
Speaker 3: you can put the cold water on your kidneys when
Speaker 3: you're growing and on your armpits there are places where
Speaker 3: your blood vessels are close to the surface, chills your
Speaker 3: body a little bit, and you'll find after doing that,
Speaker 3: you'll be standing in the cold water and you say, oh,
Speaker 3: it's all right, I can do this. And at that
Speaker 3: point you're breathing calmly, you're in the cold water. You
Speaker 3: get out and you start your day. And it takes
Speaker 3: about a minute, like literally one minute to do that.
Speaker 3: And if you do it, you started your day singing
Speaker 3: and dancing. You come out feeling amazingly alive and invincible.
Speaker 3: Your hair and your skin improoves because cold water actually
Speaker 3: is really good for your hair and your skin, and
Speaker 3: you feel like you can do anything. And the hardest
Speaker 3: part of that whole thing is the decision to do it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't cost any money, it doesn't take any time.
Speaker 3: I mean saves money, you're saving hot water. But that
Speaker 3: decision to do it is that barrier.
Speaker 1: But if you can.
Speaker 3: Overcome that barrier, that procrastination barrier, that can then have
Speaker 3: like a rollover effect for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: So that difficult conversation you want to you had to have,
Speaker 3: or that job that shitty job you really didn't want
Speaker 3: to do. Suddenly okay, I can just do it, and
Speaker 3: you just make the decision to do it, and you
Speaker 3: do it knowing that it's not the best thing to do.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not the most fun thing to do,
Speaker 3: but it's actually fun overcoming.
Speaker 1: That hurdle once we get fully immersed, Mark, once I'm
Speaker 1: all in head, yeah, everything pits knackers are how how
Speaker 1: long do I stay and need to stay under there?
Speaker 1: Thirty sixty?
Speaker 3: Not even just to the point where you're breathing comfortably, right,
Speaker 3: so that once you're breathing comfortably, you've that's the biggest hurdle.
Speaker 3: Now there is an added benefit if you can get
Speaker 3: to the point where you become shivery, right, so at
Speaker 3: the point of you're not shivering and a chattering, but
Speaker 3: if you're a little bit shivery, then what you've dropped,
Speaker 3: you've dropped your body temperature, and that does things like
Speaker 3: activate brown fat, which helps you burn white fat, and
Speaker 3: that turns on your metabolism, has other benefits. But just
Speaker 3: the benefit of overcoming the cold and showing that you
Speaker 3: can actually overcome a difficult situation. I be calm just
Speaker 3: to the point where you're in the cold, breathing calmly.
Speaker 3: That's all you need At that point, you're good to go.
Speaker 1: Well, if you know what today's activity is, don't you.
Speaker 3: Thanks?
Speaker 1: Hi, Mark, You're amazing. We know you've got another podcast
Speaker 1: coming up. How do people find you? Follow you, connect
Speaker 1: with you, read your poems and learn more about you
Speaker 1: and your work.
Speaker 3: So my website is dtor Mark dr M A r
Speaker 3: C dot Co. I post a bit on Facebook and
Speaker 3: on LinkedIn. I'm not really on Instagram. I need to
Speaker 3: up my social media, but yeah, on my website of
Speaker 3: Facebook or LinkedIn the main sort of avenues, they can
Speaker 3: email me info I n FO at doctor Mark dot co.
Speaker 1: They can email me for people you want to communicate
Speaker 1: with me at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm upgrading my website. But all my poems
Speaker 3: and stuff are there at the moment, and they're all
Speaker 3: free and I'm happy to share.
Speaker 1: Well, we would love to have you back because you're
Speaker 1: a killer, But we'll say goodbye. We'll say goodbye off
Speaker 1: air in a moment, but for the minute, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Come and have a chat with us on typ We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I've been a pleasure, Craig, and I'm good luck with
Speaker 3: your training teat sounds like you can be doing. Thank you, Mark.
Speaker 2: It'd be rude for me to have a favorite on
Speaker 2: typ but I think I just have one. I think
Speaker 2: Mark's just Yeah, you're amazing.
Speaker 3: I love that. Well, I've got more poems I can
Speaker 3: share next time. Yeah, stay there, mate, we'll say goodbye.
Speaker 3: Thanks everyone.
Speaker 1: Now you've got lots of things to action, because that
Speaker 1: was fantastic.