Speaker 1: Go to a farmer's market and buy a fruit that
Speaker 1: you've never tasted, and taste that. I think there are
Speaker 1: so many ways that we can awaken our experiences. Our
Speaker 1: brains again great as they are. As we've been saying,
Speaker 1: like to let things go, and it's much easier for
Speaker 1: our brains if everything is the same. They don't have
Speaker 1: to pay attention.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and createive effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: There's a common idea out in the self help psychology
Speaker 3: world that our thoughts create our reality, and while that
Speaker 3: is true, some of the time, it's not the full story.
Speaker 1: Because what about those.
Speaker 3: Mornings where you wake up feeling off before you've even
Speaker 3: had a thought, or the days when your mood shifts
Speaker 3: just because you stood up a little straighter. Those are
Speaker 3: certainly experiences I've had that have made me wonder well,
Speaker 3: are my thoughts the whole thing? And that's where today's guest,
Speaker 3: Janis Kaplan comes In her latest book, What Your Body
Speaker 3: Knows About Happiness, reveals something surprising. Your body is also
Speaker 3: shaping your emotions, often before your brain even catches up.
Speaker 3: We dig into why posture and movement and even the
Speaker 3: weight of a clipboard can influence how you feel. For me,
Speaker 3: this conversation put words to something I've sensed for years.
Speaker 3: Bodies aren't just reacting to our emotions, they're helping create them.
Speaker 3: It gives credence to one of my favorite phrases, which
Speaker 3: is sometimes you can't think your way into right action.
Speaker 3: You have to act your way into right thinking. And
Speaker 3: once we understand that, we can start using our bodies
Speaker 3: to change our minds. H'm Eric Zimmer and this is
Speaker 3: the one you feed.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 3: Janis, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: We are in our studio in Columbus, Ohio, and you
Speaker 3: are with me, So that is always a pleasure when
Speaker 3: we get to do these in person. So I appreciate
Speaker 3: you coming over to do this. You're in town to
Speaker 3: give a talk for your latest book, which is called
Speaker 3: What Your Body Knows About Happiness, How do you use
Speaker 3: your body to change your mind? And you'll be talking
Speaker 3: tonight at the library about that. And that's what we're
Speaker 3: going to be talking about right now. But before we do,
Speaker 3: let's start, like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 3: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 3: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 3: of us that are always One is a good wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 3: the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think
Speaker 3: about it for a second. They look up at their grandparents.
Speaker 3: They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you how that parable applies to you your
Speaker 3: life and the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love that parable and It's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I wanted to talk to you. It's such a
Speaker 1: perfect way of talking about so many things that matter,
Speaker 1: and I had not heard it, frankly, before I discovered
Speaker 1: it through you, But I realized that it's very much
Speaker 1: what I've been talking about and writing about for years,
Speaker 1: because the book I did, the Gratitude Diaries, was really
Speaker 1: about that idea that it's how we look at events,
Speaker 1: it's what we bring to the world. It's what we
Speaker 1: bring to the experiences that we have that matters, and
Speaker 1: we spend so much time thinking that it's the events
Speaker 1: that are shaping us, and in truth, there are always
Speaker 1: different ways to look at them, and always different things
Speaker 1: that you can get from them. And as your parable suggests,
Speaker 1: it's really up to you whether it's going to be
Speaker 1: the good or the bad, whether you're going to look
Speaker 1: back on a day and say, what a great day
Speaker 1: I had or what a terrible day I had. And
Speaker 1: I think once you realize that you have that control
Speaker 1: and that you have that power over your life, it
Speaker 1: makes a big difference.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I always like to think of it is it's not
Speaker 3: the events themselves exclusively. It's not only how we think
Speaker 3: about them. It's a co creation. The things that happened
Speaker 3: to us matter in life, and how we respond to
Speaker 3: them matters often far more absolutely.
Speaker 1: And when you think about there are certain people who
Speaker 1: you know that if they're going to get sick, they're
Speaker 1: going to tell you how horrible it is. They're going
Speaker 1: to be sick for a week, They're going to be
Speaker 1: complaining endlessly. And there are other people who are just
Speaker 1: going to say, yeah, I'm okay, and who are just
Speaker 1: going to move on. And of course there are terrible
Speaker 1: things that happen, and of course there are terrible circumstances
Speaker 1: that people go through, and I certainly never ever would
Speaker 1: undermine that. But I was so struck when I wrote
Speaker 1: and get to my new book soon. But when I
Speaker 1: wrote The Gratitude Diaries, and I toured extensively and talked
Speaker 1: extensively with that book, and I knew that when I
Speaker 1: wrote that book, it was about bringing my life from
Speaker 1: good to better. I've had a good life, and I
Speaker 1: don't pretend otherwise. But I spoke to so many people
Speaker 1: who would come up and thank me and tell me
Speaker 1: how the book or the sense of gratitude had helped
Speaker 1: them through. And they would tell me these dreadful situations,
Speaker 1: health issues, suicide, family tragedies, and I was always so
Speaker 1: moved by that to realize that, yeah, you got to
Speaker 1: wake up the next morning, you have to put your
Speaker 1: feet out of head the next morning, and you get
Speaker 1: to figure out how you're going to feel when you
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because mindset stuff like this or self
Speaker 3: help or however we want to categorize it. In the
Speaker 3: political dialogue of the last few years and I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into politics, is presented as something that
Speaker 3: is for the privileged. And I understand what people are
Speaker 3: saying by that, right, like if you're going to meditate
Speaker 3: an hour a day, it's a privilege to have the
Speaker 3: time to be able to meditate for an hour a day,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But I think if we look back at
Speaker 3: and it's the reason why I am and I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people are inspired by people like Victor Frankel,
Speaker 3: who is showing these same ideas were helpful in the
Speaker 3: furthest thing from privilege you could possibly have in a
Speaker 3: concentration camp, right, These things were useful and valuable there,
Speaker 3: and so they are ways of looking at and thinking
Speaker 3: about the world that serve us regardless of where we are,
Speaker 3: and I think that painting these things out to be
Speaker 3: things that are only for the privileged is the wrong
Speaker 3: way to look at it. Again, I understand what's being said,
Speaker 3: but I think it sends a message that people who
Speaker 3: aren't don't have time for this stuff, and I think
Speaker 3: we all have time to at least reflect on how
Speaker 3: we view the world and respond to it.
Speaker 1: I completely agree, And some years ago I co authored
Speaker 1: a book with a woman who had had a truly
Speaker 1: terrible tragedy in her life in New York. It was
Speaker 1: known as the Wrong Way on the Taconic Accident. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty famous accident that there were documentaries about it,
Speaker 1: and the woman's three children had been in the backseat
Speaker 1: of a car driven by her sister in law. The
Speaker 1: woman went the wrong way on a highway in New
Speaker 1: York and the three children were killed. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: anything more horrible? Somebody connected us together. We met and
Speaker 1: the first time we met, she was suicidal, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, her three small children had just been killed.
Speaker 1: She was a very religious woman and frankly, she wanted
Speaker 1: to go join them in heaven. And as we were talking,
Speaker 1: she was so frail and so fragile. And then at
Speaker 1: some point she said, and I'm so grateful to my
Speaker 1: friends because after this happened, they came over every single
Speaker 1: day and I'm so filled with gratitude to them. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't have gotten through if not for them. And
Speaker 1: she was going on and on about her gratitude to
Speaker 1: her friend friends. And this was well before I wrote
Speaker 1: the Gratitude Diaries, but I think it was one of
Speaker 1: the things that stuck with me and then inspired me afterwards,
Speaker 1: because I thought, if somebody in this position can use
Speaker 1: the word gratitude, then who can't.
Speaker 3: And I think that speaks to like a really important truth,
Speaker 3: which is that you can be in a huge amount
Speaker 3: of pain and you can also be grateful for certain things,
Speaker 3: Like we can have multiple coexisting emotions or feelings about things. Right,
Speaker 3: she was on one hand despairing, on another hand starting
Speaker 3: to see like, oh, well, this part of it is okay,
Speaker 3: this part of it's good.
Speaker 1: Yes, And being grateful doesn't mean accepting things as they are.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: If there are things that you can go out and change,
Speaker 1: if there are events that you can change in your
Speaker 1: life or in the world, or in any way, go
Speaker 1: out and do them. But if not, we have to
Speaker 1: take stock and see where we are. And appreciating where
Speaker 1: you are at the moment doesn't mean you don't want
Speaker 1: things to be better going forward. And what you were
Speaker 1: saying about happiness being an advantage of the privileged, we're
Speaker 1: always looking at people who have more than us, and
Speaker 1: we don't do a very good job at looking at
Speaker 1: the people who have less than us. And think about
Speaker 1: all the people who were looking at you, or any
Speaker 1: of your listeners, or any of the people who think
Speaker 1: that they don't have enough and are saying, boy, I
Speaker 1: wish I were in your position. So turn it around
Speaker 1: that way and it gives you a different perspective.
Speaker 3: So let's now turn our attention to your latest book.
Speaker 3: And you tell a story early on about how gratitude
Speaker 3: was useful to you in a situation, but you realized
Speaker 3: it wasn't the whole story. Maybe walk us through that story,
Speaker 3: which sort of is the origin of where this book
Speaker 3: came from.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I had written the Gratitude Diaries, and I
Speaker 1: do believe the things about reframing situations looking at things
Speaker 1: from a different perspective actually do work. And I'm not
Speaker 1: going to have anybody's sympathy. As I tell this story,
Speaker 1: because I was going on a vacation one day, but
Speaker 1: it was one of those days where you feel like
Speaker 1: everything is going wrong. You know, you lose your luggage
Speaker 1: and the everything feels like it's going wrong. And I
Speaker 1: was standing in a very small airport and I was
Speaker 1: trying to do those gratitude games that I had taught myself, like, well,
Speaker 1: my luggage is lost, but I'm grateful because I have
Speaker 1: a bathing suit in my carry on, so it's going
Speaker 1: to be okay. And you know, my husband was teasing
Speaker 1: me about it, but I was trying really hard. We're
Speaker 1: on vacation. I don't want to be negative. And cut
Speaker 1: to we get to we were actually going to an island.
Speaker 1: As I said, nobody's going to have sympathy for me
Speaker 1: on this story. And so I'm on a boat and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I felt differently. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the sun was shining, the water was drifting by, and
Speaker 1: I suddenly felt happy, and I realized I didn't have
Speaker 1: to do any of those reframing, rethinking gratitude games. I
Speaker 1: suddenly felt different, and I thought, what just happened? And
Speaker 1: how can I put myself in situations where that happens again,
Speaker 1: and the epiphany, if you want to call it, was
Speaker 1: that our bodies are constantly sending information to our brains,
Speaker 1: and we don't realize the power that our bodies have
Speaker 1: to change how we feel, to change the happiness we feel,
Speaker 1: to change the joy or despair that we feel in
Speaker 1: a moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've thought about this ever since we started the show,
Speaker 3: and it's a question that I've asked in a thousand
Speaker 3: different permeations over time, because it's the question of one
Speaker 3: view of emotion is that thoughts cause emotion. And we
Speaker 3: all know what that's like. If you told me right
Speaker 3: now that our podcast had just been canceled from iHeart,
Speaker 3: I would feel terrible. Right, my thought would cause a feeling,
Speaker 3: you know, the information. But it seemed to me that
Speaker 3: it also went the other way, Like there were days
Speaker 3: that I would wake up and before I'd had a
Speaker 3: conscious thought, it was like the weather just inside fell off,
Speaker 3: and then my thoughts all took on the color of
Speaker 3: whatever that internal feeling was. And so I was like,
Speaker 3: so it's clearly not a one way thoughts to emotion
Speaker 3: or thoughts to body sensation. There's clearly feedback going on
Speaker 3: back and forth, and so you sort of talk about
Speaker 3: you have a line early on that I think is great.
Speaker 3: You say, the connections between body and brain are thrillingly complex.
Speaker 3: You have a lot of great both personal stories and
Speaker 3: studies throughout the book that show, wow, you know there
Speaker 3: really is this connection that goes both ways. Tell me
Speaker 3: one or two that feel thrilling to you. The thrillingly
Speaker 3: complex aspect.
Speaker 1: Of this, Well, there are so many into just first
Speaker 1: to pick up on what you just said about how
Speaker 1: you feel, and which comes first. It goes back one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago to William James, the psychologist and philosopher
Speaker 1: who gave the example of your walking down the street
Speaker 1: or I guess you're walking through the woods in his case,
Speaker 1: and you see a bear, or I like to tell
Speaker 1: that story if you live in you know I live
Speaker 1: in New York. You're walking down the street and you
Speaker 1: get to a dark alley and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your heart is pounding, your hands are sweaty, and you
Speaker 1: feel scared. So the question is do you feel scared
Speaker 1: because your heart is pounding or is your heart pounding
Speaker 1: because you feel scared? Well, most of us are brain centric,
Speaker 1: and we think, I see the bear, or I see
Speaker 1: the dark alley. I get scared. It makes my heart
Speaker 1: start pounding. Now we're talking about obviously split milliseconds here,
Speaker 1: but the newest research seems to suggest that it works
Speaker 1: the opposite way. That your body responds first, and your
Speaker 1: brain is constantly scanning your body, and your brain is
Speaker 1: going ooh, chest pounding, hand sweaty. I think we're scared.
Speaker 1: We better do something and run away from that year. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously it happens a lot faster than that, but people
Speaker 1: get very dubious about that because they want to think
Speaker 1: their brains are in control. But we know that the
Speaker 1: body has a lot of power. If you touch a
Speaker 1: hot stove, you're going to pull your hand back well
Speaker 1: before you can think about it. If you run into
Speaker 1: the street and a car is coming at you, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be happy that your body knows to leave that
Speaker 1: scene well before your brain can even register that the
Speaker 1: car is coming. You really don't want your brain to
Speaker 1: have to tell your eyes to blink nine thousand times
Speaker 1: a day, and what would happen while you were asleep
Speaker 1: to your breathing. So we implicitly understand that things like
Speaker 1: that occur, But on a bigger level, we forget that
Speaker 1: our brain, brilliant as it is, is just a three
Speaker 1: pound blob sitting in a very dark skull, and it
Speaker 1: is completely reliant on the sensations, on the environment, on
Speaker 1: the information that it's being fed.
Speaker 3: Yep. I think that it's important to talk about the
Speaker 3: role the body plays in comparison to the brain, because,
Speaker 3: as you said, we're so brain centric. More and more
Speaker 3: as I think about this, I start to think we're
Speaker 3: dividing these things into two things and they're not. Our
Speaker 3: brain is a part of our body. It's all wired up,
Speaker 3: like we keep dividing them. Again, I think there are
Speaker 3: useful ways of you know, for making that distinction, But
Speaker 3: I also think it makes a lot of sense to
Speaker 3: just think of this as a unified system. I mean,
Speaker 3: we'll get to some of this in the book. When
Speaker 3: you start to realize, like how pain both comes from
Speaker 3: a sensation in your body but is also process and
Speaker 3: amplified in your brain, you realize that you can't separate
Speaker 3: these two things from each other.
Speaker 1: It's a body brain partnership, and you're right, it's a
Speaker 1: very tight partnership. Let me give you a couple of
Speaker 1: examples of stories that really surprised me. That was kind
Speaker 1: of fun research. There's one that was done out of
Speaker 1: Yale by a professor named John Barge, and he gave
Speaker 1: people either a cup of hot coffee to cold or
Speaker 1: an iced coffee to hold, and they didn't realize that
Speaker 1: this was even part of the experiment. It was while
Speaker 1: they were in the elevator on the way up to
Speaker 1: his lab, and then they were asked to evaluate how
Speaker 1: they felt about certain people. And the people who were
Speaker 1: given the hot coffee to hold describe the people as
Speaker 1: being kinder and warmer than the people who were given
Speaker 1: the iced coffee to hold. Now this seems crazy, right,
Speaker 1: But what's happening is that somehow the sensation of warmth
Speaker 1: is sending a message to your brain of warmth, and
Speaker 1: your brain is misinterpreting that or holding onto that as
Speaker 1: it's evaluating the person. There was a similar study that
Speaker 1: was done with resumes, where people were given resumes to evaluate.
Speaker 1: Now that's a kind of standard psychological test, and if
Speaker 1: I gave you a resume to look at FAD, you
Speaker 1: knew this was an experiment. You'd think as she's testing
Speaker 1: for unconscious bias, and I'm not going to get tricked
Speaker 1: by the name or where the person lives or anything
Speaker 1: like that. What you might not think of would be
Speaker 1: the weight of the clipboard on which the resume was sitting.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that the people who were given
Speaker 1: the resumes on heavy clipboards found the people as being
Speaker 1: more serious and better potential candidates than the people who
Speaker 1: got them on light clipboards. What is it? Maybe the
Speaker 1: body metaphor was heavyweight versus lightweight. And you know, there
Speaker 1: are stories like that that go on and on, and
Speaker 1: the research is actually really good and really impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things like that are just amazing because we think
Speaker 3: we are these creatures of a great deal of rationality,
Speaker 3: and we are influenced by so many things we just
Speaker 3: don't understand, and we don't understand how they go together.
Speaker 3: We don't understand how the way to the clipboard interacts
Speaker 3: with how I feel this morning. And so when I
Speaker 3: think about all that, I learned to take my mental
Speaker 3: perceptions hold them a little bit more loosely, you know, like,
Speaker 3: how did I arrive at this conclusion? It's probably not
Speaker 3: as straightforward as I thought.
Speaker 1: Well, it's great that you think that, and you're aware
Speaker 1: of it because we're not usually aware of it. There
Speaker 1: was another study that intrigued me. It was out of
Speaker 1: a business school, a professor who is now at the
Speaker 1: University of Michigan, and he was looking at negotiations. He
Speaker 1: was having people negotiate for a car, and I was
Speaker 1: theoretically of course, but during these car negotiations, he found
Speaker 1: that when people were sitting on hard chairs, they negotiated
Speaker 1: harder than when they were sitting on soft chairs. So
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Well, maybe when you're sitting on
Speaker 1: a hard chair, you're feeling edgy, there's some message that's
Speaker 1: coming from your body and your life a little bit tenser,
Speaker 1: and maybe you're a little more on edge physically, and
Speaker 1: so you respond by negotiating harder. When you're sitting back
Speaker 1: in the soft chair, you're comfortable, soft chair, soft hard
Speaker 1: Who knows? And so if you ask the people when
Speaker 1: they were negotiating, what influenced you, nowhere on.
Speaker 3: The list would a chair, right, Yeah, you'd never think
Speaker 3: of it, And if you realized it, you initially might
Speaker 3: be appalled. Right. I think about these fundamental things that
Speaker 3: affect us that we don't think about. Now. One that
Speaker 3: I do know affects us. But I was just talking
Speaker 3: with my partner about it last night, and I've used
Speaker 3: this on the show a number of times, but it
Speaker 3: is how easily even the smallest amount of friction causes
Speaker 3: you to do or not do something. The classic example
Speaker 3: I give is my guitar. If my guitar is on
Speaker 3: the stand, I'm going to play it like ten times
Speaker 3: more than if it's in the same spot in a
Speaker 3: case right next to it. That's ridiculous. It takes three
Speaker 3: seconds to open the case. I mean, like, what kind
Speaker 3: of weird animal am I that that's the case. But
Speaker 3: I've learned not to fight it because it's unquestionably true.
Speaker 3: And so I think the point of learning some of
Speaker 3: these and I think we're going to get into a
Speaker 3: lot of them as we go into your book, is
Speaker 3: we can learn these little things that we can do
Speaker 3: with our bodies that are going to change how we
Speaker 3: feel overall.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very cold day here in Columbus,
Speaker 1: it is, and if we had not had this lovely
Speaker 1: session scheduled, I would not have left my hotel room
Speaker 1: this morning.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, friction, certainly, weather influences how we behave, how
Speaker 1: we feel sure. I think that one we're usually a
Speaker 1: little more aware of at least.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about how your body can make you happier.
Speaker 3: What are things we can do with our body that
Speaker 3: can improve our moods.
Speaker 1: Well, some of the things are really small, and we
Speaker 1: can do it right now. Everybody who's listening. Sit up
Speaker 1: a little bit straighter. Our stand up a little bit straighter.
Speaker 1: There's really good research showing that when you sit up straight,
Speaker 1: you are able to access positive emotions much more easily.
Speaker 1: When you're depressed, you naturally slouch. And so if you're slouched,
Speaker 1: just because that's how you're sitting, as your brain, as
Speaker 1: we said before, is scanning your body, it's going ooh, slouched,
Speaker 1: we must not be feeling so good today, And it
Speaker 1: becomes very easy to access negative emotions when you're in
Speaker 1: that position. And simply sit up a little straighter and
Speaker 1: it'll give you more access to positive feelings. There's been
Speaker 1: great research about smiling, and it goes way back to
Speaker 1: an early study that I'm sure you're familiar with, where
Speaker 1: people were told to put a wooden pencil in their mouth,
Speaker 1: and some of them held it in such a way
Speaker 1: that it made their facial muscles in a smiling position
Speaker 1: and some in this bounding position, and the people who
Speaker 1: were smiling ended up being happier and finding things funnier.
Speaker 1: And that research has challenged a lot. It's been done
Speaker 1: over and over again, but I think there are now
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty eight studies around the world that
Speaker 1: have been looked at and it really holds up to
Speaker 1: be true. Now, you would like to think that your
Speaker 1: brain is smart enough to know the difference between a
Speaker 1: real smile and a wooden pencil in your mouth, but
Speaker 1: in fact it's kind of not. There's something called the
Speaker 1: facial feedback hypothesis, which says that the muscles in our
Speaker 1: face are constantly sending information and that's one of the
Speaker 1: ways our brains are figuring out how we feel. Well.
Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons that I'm not going to
Speaker 3: get this exactly right, but that botox can be used
Speaker 3: as an antidepressant because you can't frown with it right.
Speaker 3: It takes away your ability to make the frown, which
Speaker 3: somehow makes you better. And I'm always amazed by that
Speaker 3: smile one and again we're not talking about like I
Speaker 3: smile and my problems melt away. Right, we're talking about
Speaker 3: it's just a subtle thing. But I'm a big believer
Speaker 3: in feedback loops. I'm a big believer in upward and
Speaker 3: downward spirals, And if I feel a little bit better
Speaker 3: from a smile, then I might just feel good enough
Speaker 3: to do the next thing that I need to do
Speaker 3: that's going to be good for me, which is going
Speaker 3: to then amplify that. One of my mantras is little
Speaker 3: by little, a little becomes a lot. And so this
Speaker 3: idea of yeah, sure, a smile that makes you feel
Speaker 3: a little bit better, so what But it can be
Speaker 3: the beginning and you do that often enough and it
Speaker 3: turns into something really different.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point to make, which
Speaker 1: is that we're not talking about dramatic changes in feeling
Speaker 1: or behavior by any of this, but it's really for
Speaker 1: most of us, it's those small changes on the edges
Speaker 1: that do make a difference. And I love that idea
Speaker 1: that you're suggesting that it all builds on itself, and
Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. I just mentioned the cold, but one
Speaker 1: of the other things that does make a difference that
Speaker 1: we can do with our bodies is to go outside.
Speaker 1: One of the big findings is that people feel better
Speaker 1: in nature. Your well being improves very dramatically when you're outside,
Speaker 1: and it happens to be that when you're near water.
Speaker 1: One study found that people who were near water two
Speaker 1: hours a week felt better and improve their well being.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't have to be by the ocean, if
Speaker 1: you're by a pond or a lake or a stream,
Speaker 1: or if you're somewhere inland and there's no such thing
Speaker 1: yet work. I was going to suggest just get one
Speaker 1: of those little electric windmills, you know waterfalls, those waterfalls
Speaker 1: that you can put in your living room and plug in.
Speaker 1: I try that. I actually think it's very calming. There's
Speaker 1: something about water that has a very calming effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You reference in this chapter about you know how
Speaker 3: our body can make us happy. I always say her
Speaker 3: name wrong, but marvelous miss masl myself.
Speaker 1: I think it's missus me Basil.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know they have a line in there tits up
Speaker 3: because what her manager says to her before she goes
Speaker 3: out on stage. But it's really true, like you kind
Speaker 3: of perk up a little bit, and you know, stand
Speaker 3: in a certain way makes a difference.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, standing up straight, presenting yourself that you feel
Speaker 1: good tells your brain that you do feel good. It's
Speaker 1: very interesting that we are able to change how we feel,
Speaker 1: but we can't necessarily change the best at our body
Speaker 1: is sending. So let me give you an example about that.
Speaker 1: If you're like missus Masel and you're going out to
Speaker 1: do a stand up act and you're suddenly nervous about it,
Speaker 1: and you're again we're back to the chest pounding. If
Speaker 1: you tell yourself, oh, I'm actually calm, everything is fine,
Speaker 1: your brain is not going to buy that, right, brain
Speaker 1: is just not buying it. It's going excuse me, chest bounding, hand, sweaty.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're calm. But you can turn it around.
Speaker 1: You can take those symptoms and you say, well, what
Speaker 1: else do those symptoms mean? Those symptoms also mean excitement,
Speaker 1: So so hey, I'm really excited to go out on
Speaker 1: this stage. And so if you're interpreting those symptoms as
Speaker 1: anxiety and you're slouched over and you're scared and you're tense,
Speaker 1: that's going to be one presentation as you get on stage.
Speaker 1: But if you use body and brain and let your
Speaker 1: brain say okay, no, this is excitement and excitement means
Speaker 1: stand up, be ready, strut out on stage. Then that's
Speaker 1: going to be a completely different presentation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's the thing that I come
Speaker 3: back to as I go through your book again and again,
Speaker 3: is this dance between the two because what you just
Speaker 3: described there as a cognitive approach to a feeling that's
Speaker 3: coming up. Right, the feeling is generating something, but I'm
Speaker 3: choosing to think about that feeling in a particular way.
Speaker 3: And yet there's plenty of other cases where we've talked
Speaker 3: about where there's a signal coming that never even becomes conscious,
Speaker 3: that is affecting us. And so it's how do we
Speaker 3: use our body and our brain? And I think it
Speaker 3: brings together your two books to make ourselves feel beat.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think so often we just don't have
Speaker 1: that awareness. For most people, we live entirely in our brains,
Speaker 1: and so we're not aware of those signals that are coming.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, some of them are so subtle that
Speaker 1: it's really hard to understand, like the hot coffee we
Speaker 1: were talking about before, for the hard chair, but being
Speaker 1: able to put yourself in a position where you do say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is how I'm feeling, But how can I give
Speaker 1: that a little twist that's going to make this situation better.
Speaker 1: And you know that works. If you're going in to
Speaker 1: ask your boss for a raise, or if you're giving
Speaker 1: a toast at a friend's wedding, think of it a
Speaker 1: little bit differently. Think, no, I'm not worried that I'm
Speaker 1: going to blow this toast and be embarrassed and everybody'll
Speaker 1: laugh at me. I'm feeling this way because I care
Speaker 1: about these people and I want to do my best,
Speaker 1: and I want to let them know how much I
Speaker 1: love them.
Speaker 3: And my body's preparing me for action. Right. This body
Speaker 3: piece is why I've dealt with depression on and off
Speaker 3: throughout my adult life. It's been largely well managed once
Speaker 3: I kind of got out of my twenties. I use
Speaker 3: a lot of different things to work with it. But
Speaker 3: if you forced me to say you only get one, Eric,
Speaker 3: you can only have one, the one I would choose
Speaker 3: would be exercise, which is a body thing. But it's
Speaker 3: that because when I exercise, my body feels better, which
Speaker 3: then the signal that's going to my brain is a
Speaker 3: more positive signal. And we can see the exact opposite
Speaker 3: that when you're sick, My brain turns particularly dark when
Speaker 3: I'm sick, right, I just have to tell myself, like,
Speaker 3: just don't believe your brain today, you're sick. No time
Speaker 3: for existential crisis, no big decisions, just And it's all because,
Speaker 3: to use the term that you use in your book,
Speaker 3: the entoception, my internal sense of how my body feels
Speaker 3: feels lousy, and that translates to lousy in the brain.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I so agree with you about the exercise
Speaker 1: of depression. And there's been a lot of studies on
Speaker 1: that and it is very, very powerful. And of course
Speaker 1: when you're feeling depressed getting yourself up to exercise, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a I agree and even I find it,
Speaker 1: you know, even when I'm not in a bad mood,
Speaker 1: just making myself exercise is sometimes hard, and I always
Speaker 1: wonder why, because as soon as I do it, as
Speaker 1: soon as I get in from a walk or get
Speaker 1: off the treadmill or the elliptical or the exercise bike
Speaker 1: or whatever I've used that day, I feel great.
Speaker 3: I asked that question for years on the podcast because
Speaker 3: I was like, every time I do it, I feel better.
Speaker 3: Every single time, I'm like, I'm glad I did that.
Speaker 3: You would think if you understand reward learning theory, that
Speaker 3: I would run to exercise. I think that what I've
Speaker 3: gotten from evolutionary psychologists is sort of even more important
Speaker 3: than reward learning theory. Is basic like law of leased effort.
Speaker 3: Like as an animal, your job is to conserve energy,
Speaker 3: and anything that takes a big amount of energy is
Speaker 3: going to face some degree of resistance.
Speaker 1: Right, And I talk about that in the book too.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful book called Exercised by a professor at
Speaker 1: Harvard who is an anthropologist, and he looks at that
Speaker 1: and you know, he explains that any hunter gatherer worth
Speaker 1: his salt would not run a marathon. You know, that's
Speaker 1: just a crazy thing to do.
Speaker 3: Precisely, you've got to be balancing reward versus effort. You know,
Speaker 3: You've got a great story in the book that shows
Speaker 3: how our physical response often precedes our brain. And it
Speaker 3: has to do with you and your husband in a
Speaker 3: car together. Would you share that story with us?
Speaker 1: Yeah, my husband hates that story, but he's not here,
Speaker 1: but it's absolutely true because he is usually the driver
Speaker 1: when we're in the car, and he's a good driver.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you're driving a lot or I
Speaker 1: guess when you're a guy driving, you tend to sometimes
Speaker 1: drive a little too faster, get a little too close
Speaker 1: to a car, and I will always gasp when he's
Speaker 1: too close or he puts on the break, I'll go
Speaker 1: and it really annoys him. Sure, it just annoys him.
Speaker 1: And as I was doing this book, I realized that
Speaker 1: what I have always known, but I now had the
Speaker 1: research to show it. I'm not gasping on purpose. I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking first, oh my goodness, you're going too fast,
Speaker 1: or you know, got a little close to that car,
Speaker 1: and then gasping to give him the information. My body
Speaker 1: is responding. My body is responding in a moment of fear. Now,
Speaker 1: if I could actually stop that gasp before it happened,
Speaker 1: I would because it's not worth the argument that follows
Speaker 1: in the car. Right, But yes, that is an example.
Speaker 3: That's a great example. Like if I'm in the passenger
Speaker 3: seat and somebody's driving in a particular way, there are
Speaker 3: times I cannot help my foot like mimicking it's on
Speaker 3: the brake, pedal, right, it just does it because it's
Speaker 3: just you know, that's the habitual response.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The other funny thing with driving is the opposite of
Speaker 1: that or sort of what you're describing that physical response
Speaker 1: where I talk about I think I tell the story
Speaker 1: in the Book of Driving and there was a small
Speaker 1: child in the back seat with me and he was saying,
Speaker 1: which is the break? Is it on the right or
Speaker 1: the left? And I'm trying to drive and uh, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess it's uh And now are you putting your
Speaker 1: foot on the brake? Are you putting it on the
Speaker 1: left foot of the right foot? And you completely cannot
Speaker 1: drive when somebody is making you think about it that way,
Speaker 1: because it's just not how you think your body is
Speaker 1: responding to that. So that's a little bit different than
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, but it is. It is those
Speaker 1: physical responses.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative. To take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect what's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect it.
Speaker 3: Can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good Wolves together. That story about you and your
Speaker 3: husband comes from the chapter about senses. What are some
Speaker 3: other ways that we can use our senses to improve
Speaker 3: our mood or our happiness?
Speaker 1: I think we don't always realize the power of touch.
Speaker 1: You and I have the pleasure of being in the
Speaker 1: same studio right now. So much of our lives lately
Speaker 1: is on zoom and is remote, and because for very
Speaker 1: good reasons, we've you know, become fearful of touching people.
Speaker 1: And touch is a very powerful mood changer and a
Speaker 1: very powerful we need touch as human beings. And a
Speaker 1: positive story about my husband and he's a wonderful man.
Speaker 3: I adore him, but don't I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: We had some silly argument one night and not terribly
Speaker 1: long ago, and we got into bed and I could,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can feel that tension with your
Speaker 1: partner sometimes, and and I thought we can have the
Speaker 1: twenty minute discussion of what just happened, and nobody was
Speaker 1: right or wrong, it was just something silly, and instead
Speaker 1: I just reached over and touched his arm and just
Speaker 1: rubbed his arm for a moment, and I could feel
Speaker 1: all the tension just disappear from the room and we
Speaker 1: just you know, we were able to Then it was gone.
Speaker 1: There was nothing further that needed to be discussed. We
Speaker 1: both fell asleep very happy, and and I think that
Speaker 1: power of touch and of letting somebody know how you
Speaker 1: feel that way is really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that story. When I read it. So
Speaker 3: senses play a role. Our environment plays a role also.
Speaker 3: And you talk about places, and you reference a quote
Speaker 3: in the book that people often say, which is some
Speaker 3: variation of like wherever you go, there you are, meaning
Speaker 3: wherever you go, you take yourself with you. I was
Speaker 3: a drug addict in my early twenties, and I tried
Speaker 3: to move different places to try and suddenly I thought,
Speaker 3: if I just am somewhere else, it'll be different. And
Speaker 3: it didn't turn out to be different. And yet environment
Speaker 3: and where we are does play a role. Share a
Speaker 3: little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: It does play a role. And I think what you
Speaker 1: said earlier about nothing is as dramatic as we like
Speaker 1: it to seem. So I can understand why drug addiction
Speaker 1: did not end by moving to a different place nicely.
Speaker 1: But maybe it had a smaller effect. Maybe in some
Speaker 1: places you felt or maybe in some places you were
Speaker 1: able to take a step forward that you might not
Speaker 1: have been able to.
Speaker 3: And with other support. What I will say for sure
Speaker 3: was avoiding certain places was really important. As I was
Speaker 3: getting sober and I had other support, it was really
Speaker 3: important that I not go to where I used to
Speaker 3: buy drugs. So place does play a role. Right, you know,
Speaker 3: so even in the same story I'm telling, and I
Speaker 3: can give you the flip side of it, where yeah, place.
Speaker 1: Matter, yeah, in less dramatic circumstances. The idea of wherever
Speaker 1: you go, you take yourself with you, I think is
Speaker 1: not true because you feel differently. If you're sitting in
Speaker 1: a dark room looking at a back alley, or you're
Speaker 1: sitting out on a beach looking at a vast horizon,
Speaker 1: you feel differently, and you're a different person and you
Speaker 1: have different experiences. There were some things that fascinated me
Speaker 1: on that score, in terms of how our senses are
Speaker 1: always working together with each other. And so there was
Speaker 1: that fascinating study out of the UK where a searcher
Speaker 1: set up three different rooms and he had them as
Speaker 1: dramatically different environments. One was meant to feel like the
Speaker 1: outdoors and one was meant to be like a jazz
Speaker 1: club and so forth. And he gave people glasses of whisky,
Speaker 1: and they were holding the glasses of whiskey as they
Speaker 1: moved from room to room, and after they had spent
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time in that room, they were
Speaker 1: asked to take a sip of the whisky and describe
Speaker 1: right down how they felt about the whisky, and the
Speaker 1: people described the whisky differently in each room that they
Speaker 1: were in. So when they were in the outdoorsy room,
Speaker 1: they described the whisky as tasting grassy, and when they
Speaker 1: were in the jazz room, they described it as tasting brassy.
Speaker 1: And they were picking up different subtleties in the whisky.
Speaker 1: And he pointed out that they were holding the whisky
Speaker 1: glass the entire time, so at the end of it,
Speaker 1: they knew nobody had been tricking them. They had been
Speaker 1: tricking themselves that how you experience something is affected by
Speaker 1: where you are. Now, we would think how something tastes
Speaker 1: shouldn't change depending on where you're drinking it or tasting it,
Speaker 1: but it does, and it tastes different depending on what
Speaker 1: the lighting is in the room. It tastes different depending
Speaker 1: on the color of the plate. I talk about another
Speaker 1: researcher who wrote a paper called the provencal Rose paradox,
Speaker 1: which is that wine always tastes betterse wine always tastes
Speaker 1: better in the south of France than it does anyplace else.
Speaker 1: And I've certainly discovered that with Paris. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a meal in Paris and it just is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Everything tastes good. Try to have the same meal at
Speaker 1: home not gonna taste as good. Because when you're in Paris,
Speaker 1: you're not just eating the food. You're eating the environment,
Speaker 1: you're taking in the beautiful cafe, the experience, the sense
Speaker 1: that you're in Paris, and so being aware that, yes,
Speaker 1: place does make a difference, and it does change how
Speaker 1: you experience things and how you feel about things is
Speaker 1: really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you tell a story about being in Paris and
Speaker 3: going to the doctor.
Speaker 1: Right, I had an eye infection and we needed medicine.
Speaker 1: It was a very complicated story, and the pharmacy won't
Speaker 1: let you do it. You have to go to this
Speaker 1: doctor and we climb up these stairs and it was
Speaker 1: this ancient room and this ancient doctor, and we ended
Speaker 1: up spending half a day doing that. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day I said, to again my beloved husband,
Speaker 1: that was so much fun, What a fun day that was.
Speaker 1: And he said, what are you talking about. You had
Speaker 1: to spend half the day dealing with medicine, And I said,
Speaker 1: it was such a great experience, wasn't it fascinating and
Speaker 1: fascinating to see that doctor and to go into that
Speaker 1: house and yes, so having a different experience, being in
Speaker 1: a different place can have such a different resonance than
Speaker 1: you would expect.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, my partner, Jinny loves Loves, loves France, and
Speaker 3: I've been able to observe very clearly in her. And
Speaker 3: I'm not saying like I don't have the same things
Speaker 3: happening with me. It's just sometimes easier to see with
Speaker 3: some one else the things that I don't think she
Speaker 3: would like in the US. She likes in Paris or
Speaker 3: in France because it's French, like she has this association
Speaker 3: with it. She sees through a different lens because it's
Speaker 3: a place she has really good feelings about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I bet everybody who is listening has something
Speaker 1: somewhere in their house or apartment that they bought on
Speaker 1: a vacation that seemed like such a great idea and
Speaker 1: so charming and delightful and adorable when they saw it
Speaker 1: on vacation, and it is now way in the back
Speaker 1: of a closet somewhere because when you got it home,
Speaker 1: you went what Yeah. Because yes, when we're excited about something,
Speaker 1: and part of it is also just the idea of
Speaker 1: having a new experience, because it is very powerful. New
Speaker 1: experiences wake up our bodies, wake up our brains. We
Speaker 1: feel alive. And when you feel alive, you feel better.
Speaker 1: And that's probably what your partner is experiencing in France
Speaker 1: in part, and also the joy of being somewhere new,
Speaker 1: seeing new things, and yes, it does make everything you touch,
Speaker 1: se smeller, taste feel better.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Something I've realized about myself over the last few years
Speaker 3: is that I am in the personality tests they talk
Speaker 3: about different traits of personality. There's openness to new experience
Speaker 3: is a personality trait, right, I think I'm very high
Speaker 3: on that and the combination of both the pandemic and
Speaker 3: I'm a long time Zen Buddhism student, and Zen Buddhism
Speaker 3: is kind of focused on like, just pay closer attention
Speaker 3: to what's right here and it will become special. And
Speaker 3: I believe that that is true, and I believe that
Speaker 3: I need new experiences. I mean, I just do better
Speaker 3: with them, so I have to really sort of consciously
Speaker 3: court them. And I think it's easy to understand why
Speaker 3: we would feel better in Paris. And most of our
Speaker 3: life is not a vacation, right, most of our life,
Speaker 3: you know, we can't just be like, well, I'd like
Speaker 3: to feel better, so I'm going to fly to Paris.
Speaker 3: So it's more subtle than that. What are some of
Speaker 3: the subtle things that we can do to use place
Speaker 3: as a way of improving how we feel well.
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to fly to Paris to
Speaker 1: have a new experience, right, You can drive on a
Speaker 1: different route to the grocery store than you usually take,
Speaker 1: and you're going to see things a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: I live in New York and I took a subway
Speaker 1: to a part of the city that I had never
Speaker 1: been to, and I explored it for an hour or two,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I had been to Berlin. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like I had been to some exotic place
Speaker 1: that i'd never visited before. You know, go to a
Speaker 1: farmer's market and buy a fruit that you've never tasted
Speaker 1: and taste that. I think there are so many ways
Speaker 1: that we can awaken our experiences. Our brains again, you know,
Speaker 1: great as they are, as we been saying, like to
Speaker 1: let things go, and it's much easier for our brains
Speaker 1: if everything is the same. They don't have to pay attention.
Speaker 1: And again you've mentioned evolutionary biology, and it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Right when everything is the same, you don't have to worry.
Speaker 1: As soon as something changes, you better pay attention because
Speaker 1: it may be a danger. And so in a bad way.
Speaker 1: I was at a one person show off Broadway the
Speaker 1: other night, a wonderful comedian by the way named Gary Gullman.
Speaker 1: He was in the middle of one of his very
Speaker 1: touching pieces, by the way, and there was a siren outside.
Speaker 1: It's New York, and he got distracted, and you could
Speaker 1: almost see him get distracted. He's smart and quick enough
Speaker 1: that he was able to make a joke about it.
Speaker 1: He then did some improv about the siren for a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and then he went back to what
Speaker 1: he was doing. But he got distracted because a change
Speaker 1: in the environment distracts you, and that can be a
Speaker 1: bad thing if you're trying to do a one person show.
Speaker 1: But in most of our lives, it's a good thing
Speaker 1: to have that distraction, to have something new, to have
Speaker 1: something that tells your brain wake up and pay attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that term distraction is a term
Speaker 3: that we often associate negatively, like it's not good to
Speaker 3: be distracted. And I'm going to use that to segue
Speaker 3: to where I wanted to go next, which is talking
Speaker 3: about the complex relationship between our body and our brain
Speaker 3: when it comes to pain, and we'll get to how
Speaker 3: to work with it more. But the spoiler alert is
Speaker 3: distraction is part of that. So there's my fancy segue.
Speaker 3: But let's talk about that relationship between our body and
Speaker 3: our brain and how it relates to pain.
Speaker 1: Well, it's important that you said it that way, because
Speaker 1: it is our body and brain that relates to pain,
Speaker 1: and we don't usually think of it that way. We
Speaker 1: think of pain as being very localized and physical, and
Speaker 1: we should make the distinction between two kinds of pain,
Speaker 1: between acute pain and chronic pain. Most of the research
Speaker 1: that we're going to be talking about has to do
Speaker 1: with chronic pain and acute injury. If you fall down
Speaker 1: and break you leg, if you cut your hand, your
Speaker 1: body is crying out in pain, and it is for
Speaker 1: a reason because something has happened, and it's saying, emergency,
Speaker 1: do something. But what tends to happen is let's say
Speaker 1: you're out shoveling snow, or you pick up a child
Speaker 1: and you rent your back. There's an immediate pain it
Speaker 1: lasts maybe for a couple of weeks with a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and in fact, something like eighty percent of
Speaker 1: Americans have chronic back, shoulder, or knee pain. The pain
Speaker 1: never goes away. You just continue to have that back pain,
Speaker 1: and you go, boy, it's ever since that day I
Speaker 1: shovel the snow. Well, physically, you've recovered. Physically, whatever injury
Speaker 1: was done is gone. And if the pain has lasted
Speaker 1: more than I think they say three months, it's now
Speaker 1: considered chronic pain. And what happens is that the pain
Speaker 1: signal is going from that localized area in your body
Speaker 1: up to your brain, and your brain is interpreting it
Speaker 1: and sending it back out and telling you you're in pain.
Speaker 1: What happens is that long after where the physical pain
Speaker 1: is over, it is continuing and your brain is continuing
Speaker 1: to send the message. And so most of the research
Speaker 1: into chronic pain now is focused on how do we
Speaker 1: change the signal that's coming from the brain. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a really hard thing for people to accept because
Speaker 1: people will say, hey, I'm sorry, you don't understand my
Speaker 1: back hurts. Ye don't tell me otherwise my back is
Speaker 1: all on my head, and you know, there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: doctor at Stanford said to me, it's not all in
Speaker 1: your head. I understand it is not all in your head.
Speaker 1: It is in your brain, but it is not in
Speaker 1: your head. And I said, wait a minute, isn't your
Speaker 1: brain in your head? And he said yes. But there's
Speaker 1: there's a very different nuance to that. When you tell
Speaker 1: somebody it's in their head, it means they're making it up.
Speaker 1: When you tell them it's in their brain, you say,
Speaker 1: of course you're feeling pain. I have no question but
Speaker 1: that you're feeling pain. Nobody is suggesting that you're making
Speaker 1: up this pain. But understand that the pain signal is
Speaker 1: coming from your brain and not from your back.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: One way I like to think of it is remember
Speaker 1: those electrical circuits that you did as a science project
Speaker 1: when you were a kid or for your kid, and
Speaker 1: the goal was to get a little light bulb to
Speaker 1: light up. And if you break that circuit anywhere, the
Speaker 1: light bulb goes off. Well, I think of that as
Speaker 1: being a pain circuit, and the light bulb is the pain.
Speaker 1: And what you're trying to do is turn off the
Speaker 1: light bulb. And it doesn't matter if you turn off
Speaker 1: the circuit at your back or in your brain. You're
Speaker 1: still turning off the circuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my mother has suffered chronic pain for years. I
Speaker 3: feel like I live in this nexus, and I've interviewed
Speaker 3: people about this idea, and I think it's another one
Speaker 3: of those things that gets to be a little bit
Speaker 3: tricky and nuanced, because sometimes it is physical signals from
Speaker 3: the body. Sometimes it's the brain stuck in this on position.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a combination of these things. So it gets
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to sort out. But I want to
Speaker 3: break this down into two separate areas. I think one
Speaker 3: is what actually happens in our brain when that pain
Speaker 3: circuit gets locked on. The second pieces, I also want
Speaker 3: to explore what happens to our perception of pain depending
Speaker 3: on how we relate to that pain. You talk about
Speaker 3: both these things in the book, So let's stay first
Speaker 3: with the one we've been covering, which is this pain
Speaker 3: circuit sort of getting locked on. I interviewed somebody, Yoni
Speaker 3: Ashar I believe is the name, a doctor about this,
Speaker 3: and one of the studies they've done that showed this
Speaker 3: was they were able to see that as pain moves,
Speaker 3: and you may have talked about this a little bit.
Speaker 3: As pain becomes chronic, they start to notice where it
Speaker 3: is in. The brain starts to move and it moves
Speaker 3: to areas that are much more memory related, meaning there's
Speaker 3: a memory of the pain. And again, none of us
Speaker 3: are saying you're not feeling immense amounts of real pain.
Speaker 3: It's just like you said, where kind of is it
Speaker 3: coming from? Now, let's also talk about though you call
Speaker 3: it the cycle of rumination, magnification, helplessness. Right, this is
Speaker 3: an amplifier of even perhaps legitimate pain that's still coming
Speaker 3: from our back. This is a way I think we amplify, right.
Speaker 1: And the more we worry about pain, the worse it gets.
Speaker 1: And the less we move, which makes our pain worse,
Speaker 1: and the tensor we make our muscles which makes our
Speaker 1: pain worse. And yes, it was one study that was
Speaker 1: looking at I believe it was post surgical pain, and
Speaker 1: it found that the number one correlation to what caused
Speaker 1: post surgical pain was not the skill of the surgeon,
Speaker 1: and it was not where the surgery was done. It
Speaker 1: was how much the person worried about being in pain beforehand.
Speaker 1: And so how you feel about your experience makes a
Speaker 1: huge difference. And the reason that some of the studies
Speaker 1: that I'm sure you've seen and that I talk about
Speaker 1: in the book on Behavioral theory for pain work is
Speaker 1: because it gives you a different way of thinking about
Speaker 1: the pain. And pain is scary. When you're in pain,
Speaker 1: wherever it's coming from, whether it's your back or your brain,
Speaker 1: it's scary. And to get a new way of thinking
Speaker 1: about the pain to be told, Okay, well let's laugh
Speaker 1: at this pain. It's coming from your brain. Your brain
Speaker 1: is tricking you. Don't worry about it. You're not going
Speaker 1: to hurt your back by going out and walking. You're
Speaker 1: not going to hurt yourself no matter what you do.
Speaker 1: We've got to figure out a way to stop your
Speaker 1: brain from sending these signals. But stop worrying about your
Speaker 1: back changes how you think about it, and changes how
Speaker 1: you feel about it, and changes how you move. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's one of the reasons that kind
Speaker 1: of behavioral approach has been so effective in so many clinics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think with post surgical pain the other thing.
Speaker 3: And I was just reflecting with another guest recently about
Speaker 3: this because we've been through it, and a friend of
Speaker 3: mine went through it recently, which is people come out
Speaker 3: of cir and they're in pain and they think there's
Speaker 3: something wrong, whereas if that they'd just been told by
Speaker 3: the way, you know, we just did back surgery. Don't
Speaker 3: expect that when you come out your back's going to
Speaker 3: feel immediately better. You're going to be in some degree
Speaker 3: of pain, because post surgical pain is a real thing.
Speaker 3: But what happens is people get themselves all amped up like,
Speaker 3: what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong? The surgery didn't work,
Speaker 3: that all of that, when what you're dealing with is
Speaker 3: the very normal acute pain that comes from having your
Speaker 3: body sliced open and something done in it. It's that rumination, magnification,
Speaker 3: helplessness loop that somebody's in in that case, Whereas if
Speaker 3: they understood what was happening, they could turn down that rumination,
Speaker 3: they could turn down that magnification. That's a great example.
Speaker 3: You're right, because if you come out of surgery and
Speaker 3: you know that it's going to be painful, and you
Speaker 3: were told you're going to have a miserable three days
Speaker 3: and then by the end of the week you'll probably
Speaker 3: start feeling better, you're going to deal with that. So
Speaker 3: much different, and it's going to give you a very
Speaker 3: different experience.
Speaker 1: My dear husband, who we've mentioned a couple of times,
Speaker 1: is a doctor, and I have the advantage of that.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll get a cold or the flu or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he'll say, yeah, you're going to feel lousy for
Speaker 1: two days. But I'm seeing this all over. Everybody's got it,
Speaker 1: and after a couple of days, everybody gets better, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to be fine. Yeah, fine, no problem anymore.
Speaker 1: Two days. I can deal with it right precisely.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. You know. You talk about your own back
Speaker 3: pain in the book, and I've talked about my back
Speaker 3: pain before, which has really been managed largely by a
Speaker 3: How I think about it is a big piece and
Speaker 3: how I talk to myself about it, you know, instead
Speaker 3: of saying my back is killing me, I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's some tightness in my back. But the other thing
Speaker 3: that you talked about is you start doing core exercises,
Speaker 3: and the core exercises may have helped with the back
Speaker 3: pain because your core is taking weight off of your back,
Speaker 3: so yes, it may be helpful, but you talked about
Speaker 3: how it was also helpful because you felt like you
Speaker 3: were able to do something about your pain from helplessness
Speaker 3: to a position where you had some agency.
Speaker 1: I think that is so important and I use that
Speaker 1: even now. And I don't have particularly bad back pain
Speaker 1: by any means, but you know, we all get those
Speaker 1: twinges or those moments we feel a little stiff, and
Speaker 1: I do find that as soon as I feel that way,
Speaker 1: I go, oh, I'm just going to go do a
Speaker 1: few you know, tummy tightening exercises or this or that
Speaker 1: or the you know, the four exercises that I've learned
Speaker 1: to do. And it does give you that sense of
Speaker 1: I'm doing something and I'm able to make this better,
Speaker 1: I'm able to make this go away. I think I
Speaker 1: suggested in the book that I think my back pain
Speaker 1: improved much faster than my core. Did you know. There
Speaker 1: was no way that my core had gotten stronger when
Speaker 1: my back pain went away, But it was that sense
Speaker 1: of Okay, I'm back in control.
Speaker 3: It's funny you say that, though, because I recently was
Speaker 3: having some low back pain. So I did my like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what did I used to do? What exercises did I
Speaker 3: used to do and look them up and started doing
Speaker 3: And you're right, they probably couldn't have helped as quickly
Speaker 3: as suddenly I started feeling a little bit better. I
Speaker 3: think they do help, of course, Right, it's both and
Speaker 3: the body is sending real signals that are important, and
Speaker 3: our brains are amplifying and modifying and choosing how we
Speaker 3: perceive those signals.
Speaker 1: You know, we get embarrassed when we talk about something
Speaker 1: like that and you say, like, oh, that's just the
Speaker 1: placebo effect. The placebo effect is a good thing we
Speaker 1: should be We should see that as a wonderful positive,
Speaker 1: not something to be embarrassed about. It's your body making
Speaker 1: you better. It's your brain making you better and able
Speaker 1: to take over instead of drugs or other things having
Speaker 1: the same effect. So it's wonderful if you're able to
Speaker 1: enact the placebo effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the amazing thing about the placebo effect is that
Speaker 3: sometimes it doesn't just change your perception, it's changing actual
Speaker 3: biomarkers that people can measure. Right, it's crazy that that
Speaker 3: is happening because it's easy to see how the placebo
Speaker 3: effect might make me think I feel better, But when
Speaker 3: you're actually able to measure things that show that people
Speaker 3: indeed do feel differently, you're like, Wow, this is really
Speaker 3: kind of a remarkable thing, and.
Speaker 1: It's a great thing if our bodies can manufacture the
Speaker 1: chemicals that we need. Bravo's that's what we need.
Speaker 3: Yep So listener and thinking about all that and the
Speaker 3: other great wisdom from today's episode. If you're going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five,
Speaker 3: just one? What is it? Think about it? Got it? Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Speaker 3: Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash sm It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to one ufeed dot net slash
Speaker 3: sms all right back to it. So I'd like to
Speaker 3: end with kind of where you end the book, which
Speaker 3: is with what you call the Body Mind Happiness Plan,
Speaker 3: and in it you have us walk through a different
Speaker 3: aspect of body mind connection each day. I'm going to
Speaker 3: just read what they are, so listeners kind of get
Speaker 3: the pick, and then I'm just going to ask you
Speaker 3: to comment on one or two of them. So Monday
Speaker 3: is creating a cozy environment, so we sort of talked
Speaker 3: about how our environments matter. Tuesday is whole body happiness.
Speaker 3: Wednesday is time outdoors. Thursday is reinterpreting body signals, which
Speaker 3: is what we were just talking about. Friday's movement and exercise.
Speaker 3: Saturday is eating for pleasure and Sunday is walking and creativity.
Speaker 3: So if you would just pick one or two of
Speaker 3: those to leave listeners with a couple practical strategies they
Speaker 3: can use based on your plan.
Speaker 1: Here, well, let's go to the last one, the walking
Speaker 1: for creativity, because we haven't talked about that, and it
Speaker 1: was fascinating to me to discover that. You know, most
Speaker 1: of the time when we're dealing with a problem or
Speaker 1: a work problem, we hunch over our laptop more and more,
Speaker 1: and you know, we just I'm going to sit here
Speaker 1: till I figure this out, and you should do the opposite.
Speaker 1: Get up, take a walk, go outside, because the fluidity
Speaker 1: of your body encourages the fluidity of your mind. Creativity
Speaker 1: in your body. Movement in your body causes creativity. And
Speaker 1: to realize that you can almost feel it. And so
Speaker 1: put yourself, I think in the positions where good things
Speaker 1: can happen to you. Allow yourself to be in those
Speaker 1: places that are beautiful, Allow yourself to be outdoors. Allow
Speaker 1: yourself when you're unhappy to say, I just want to
Speaker 1: taste something that's going to make me happy, and just
Speaker 1: a tiny taste that will awaken my senses and make
Speaker 1: me feel good. So I think that pleasure of letting
Speaker 1: your body move, letting your senses experience things is really
Speaker 1: very helpful in any situation that you have.
Speaker 3: Wonderful well, I think that is a great place to
Speaker 3: wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us, thank
Speaker 3: you for coming here to sit down with me in person.
Speaker 3: And the book is called What Your Body Knows About Happiness,
Speaker 3: How to Use your Body to Change Your Mind. And
Speaker 3: we'll have links in the show notes to where people
Speaker 3: can get the book and where do they can find
Speaker 3: you online. So thank you, thank you.
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