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hello good day greetings wherever you are in the world thank you for joining true hope because the official podcast of true hope Canada true Hope cast takes

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a deep dive into mental Health's many psychological and physiological aspects this is the show for you if you're

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looking for motivation inspiration knowledge and solutions that is really what we're all about here at true hope

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Canada true hope Canada is a mind and body based supplement company dedicated first and foremost to promoting brain

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and body Health through non-invasive nutritional means for more information about us you can visit truehopecanada.com

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today on the show I welcome link installer Lincoln is a Quantum physicist neuropsychologist hypnotherapist

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clinical counselor psychonaut mountaineera author and educator he

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combines science spirit and economics by applying an understanding of hard science to imagination psyche and the

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behavior of groups today on the show we are going to be discussing ego culture and the subconscious enjoy the show

0:57

alright welcome to the show link and thank you so much for being with us today how are you what is going well

1:04

um thank you um what is going well well I always have several projects on my front burner and

1:11

uh most of them are very long-term projects so they sort of go up and down the ones

1:18

that are going well hmm well I'm doing some more marketing that marketing is a funny thing if it's so

1:25

elusive um and um I've been uh thinking about what your topics are

1:32

and how I would approach it but you're gonna have to uh

1:37

help me Target in on the listener because um I tell you my background is both

1:44

scientific and experiential which is to say I'd like to get my hands dirty and whatever it is I'm involved

1:51

with and I like to uh more than study it I like to research

1:56

it and uh sort of go to the go beyond the bleeding

2:02

edge um so with uh you know brain science psychology therapy

2:07

and um I don't know what you want to call it not now we're getting into delicate

2:13

terrain like spirituality so uh yeah things are uh interesting all right

2:21

that's great well as an introduction why don't you just let the audience know let me know a little bit more about who you

2:26

are and what it is that you do please well you'd think that would be an easy question but it's of course not

2:33

um let me start with the present word backwards I'm a therapist now

2:39

uh clinical counselor um I work mostly with

2:47

um sort of thoughtful older uh people who are

2:54

either in control or trying to regain control um as opposed to people who are you know

3:01

seriously um disabled as in schizophrenia or something like that

3:08

um though I've worked well with those people too I'm also very interested in

3:15

medical issues uh physical somatic so stepping back in time

3:22

I am a hypnotherapist and that's sort of a

3:28

Wild Frontier and stepping back again I spent a decade

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doing brain training neurofeedback which is

3:39

[Music] um its own story not very well

3:45

uh integrated with medicine or psychology or neurology

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but it touches on all of those and I'm very

3:57

interested and involved in that whole field and stepping back again

4:04

I was uh a kind of a world Traveler

4:09

and I experienced many altered state

4:15

experiences both culturally and ceremonially so I was pretty involved with the

4:21

ayahuasca phenomena which is Central and Southern America

4:27

in many places facilitated by many people and it was actually studying the brain

4:35

waves of people in trance and under the influence of psychedelics that got me

4:40

into the brainwave training and stepping back again I spent 20 years

4:48

as a software developer running a company that designed custom accounting databases

4:56

designed installed produced maintained supported trend and stepping back again I have a PhD in

5:04

physics Quantum systems and stepping back again I was an astronomer

5:12

with a wonderful guy um who got me a job at Nasa as a

5:18

undergraduate and one of my several

5:24

you know great mentors and uh stepping back one last time

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I spent 10 years I about mountaineering which had a very important formative

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influence both on my character and my ability to understand people because it's

5:42

both an extreme state that it puts you in and you meet some pretty extreme

5:47

people so that uh you know the wrap up is I have a a PhD in quantum physics and a

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certification as a hypnotherapist then another certification is a clinical counselor

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and um I'm doing I'm writing a lot of books and

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the books I'm working on now are trying to integrate brain training altered state experience which is sort

6:13

of coming in as psychedelics it's popular these days but certainly not the only altered state approach too

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insight and um what you might call coaching uh I

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don't I haven't found a good word for it but enabling people to be um aware of and in possession of their

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faculties so uh that brings us back to the present

6:39

wonderful thank you so much for that I love the the fact that you've gone uh you've gone backwards there I think

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that's a great practice um tell me the like done a bunch of

6:51

things with the neurofeedback work the brain training work are you able to complement all those different practices

6:56

with the current like counseling that you do now um as a practitioner

7:03

I try I can somewhat I'm limited in some ways

7:08

um the most obvious limitation is a technical because the most effective

7:14

brain training is done with a amplifying device on your scalp

7:19

and the technology has been bouncing around it's almost affordable and practical but

7:28

not quite I'm still uh stepping out from the Legacy

7:35

Hardware which used what are called wet contacts which uh sort of glue to your

7:41

head with this conductive peanut butter paste which requires somebody will to apply them at certain sites on your

7:47

scalp which means you have to see the person in person and there's a certain delay in you know

7:55

tuning the equipment it's almost like I feel like I'm in a computer age with radio tubes when

8:02

it comes to doing EEG feedback with wet contact and

8:08

so now there's developing a dry contact technology and there have been you know the muse

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is popular but not very good I hear and some others and of course if you want quality you

8:23

have to spend money and I'm trying to move into that the problem

8:29

is that people don't want to pay for it because well first of all the equipment

8:34

is expensive and it takes time on my part to record analyze and train

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but mostly people don't understand what it does for them and so they don't appreciate the value and it's very this

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is sort of my big thing and I'll probably talk about this today is that

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we're trained to look for what I might call reductive results

8:59

definitive objective measurable results when we assess anything

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and certainly that applies when we access our assess our investment in time

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and mental health and progress um and if you everywhere you look you see

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measures that are discernible and measurable like money and profits and progress and things like

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this but brain training doesn't give you that it's a very subtle very deep

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um process of synchronizing yourself and the typical result of people who do

9:39

brain training is that they don't notice anything and if they do or when they do they

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ascribe it to the world they say oh it's been a better day or people have talked to me more nicely today

9:51

or uh I'm in a better mood they don't really you can't really see

9:59

it happening because it underlies your thoughts and awareness so when you ask somebody to invest in it

10:06

you know they kind of want to know what they're getting out of it and you have to kind of dance around

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but to get to your question I do try to integrate it um and I'm trying to integrate it

10:20

at a less technical level which of course is cheaper and more available

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to get people to focus on the process of

10:32

awareness I'm gonna leave it there because it

10:37

won't go on you know no that's that's very very interesting and I just wonder like where are we in regards to

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um the current technology with amplifying technology and um being able to look at the what the brain

10:51

is doing in regards to frequency or wave or however you analyze it but like where are we at in regards to that technology

10:58

for like normal everyday individuals I mean you mentioned that you know some people don't want to invest the money because they probably don't understand

11:05

exactly what the the technology is doing and what the results mean um but like what can we what can we

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actually learn from this current technology and how do you go about explaining that to people because you made a great point in regards to like we

11:18

love this like reductionist idea of looking at test results and this and that and this and that we want Simplicity but sometimes it's just just

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not the case and you need to be working with a very trained technician to be able to you know analyze their brainwise

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and brain frequency so kind of like where are we in regards to the technology that's primarily available and um

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yellow what can we actually learn from if we were if we were to take the time and spend the money and spend the energy

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to to look at where we're at like what can we actually learn from the results

11:48

it depends on what you look at it's as complicated as the human body which is

11:53

as complicated as the human mind those obviously different so if you look at certain diseases there's opportunities

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um so basically your brain is a regulatory organ it's more involved with regulating

12:08

things and it's very involved with regulating itself so that it can perceive cognize and

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respond correctly but it's also involved with the body doing all those things for the body

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so if you've got certain issues that are more sensitive to your bodies such as

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anxiety and you know anxiety tends to manifest in skin issues so you know not

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always but skin issues bowel issues um muscle issues

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and other things May manifest in different organs depending on you know how far afield you

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have to go whether you're going to Chinese medicine or Western medicine so with people who have certain issues

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brain training can do other things what's still problematic is using it

13:01

diagnostically and medicinally there have been a few physical

13:07

disabilities where brain training is immediately helpful such as epilepsy so that makes sense because epilepsy is

13:15

like a storm in your brain and if you could solve that you could have great progress and in

13:20

fact you can but it's also a complicated issue and your brain is not a simple thing

13:26

so the limits of progress are circumscribed

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um if you have anxiety anxiety is largely a cognitive thing

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certainly they're outside forces but it's how you respond and if you're chronically anxious that's a different

13:44

problem from if you have you know money problems which are physical and external

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so you know here we get to the point of how does a person understand that they have different

13:57

aspects to their condition some of which they can work on through different means so uh you know the things that are

14:06

becoming popular trying to get to your answer are

14:13

um unfortunately or unfortunately more measurable things so calmness anxiety is

14:22

fitting in with meditation mindfulness and yoga these are sort of popular Trends in

14:29

Western Society and you sort of do need popular Trends because that's how people start thinking

14:35

about things using brain training in the uh 20 years ago

14:42

it was harder to develop an understanding with my clients because I'd have to sort of get them in

14:49

the mindful yoga meditative frame of mind if they weren't

14:54

and not everybody gets into that frame of mind so you'll see right now devices that are offered

15:03

uh on one of these platforms mindfulness helping you sleep um

15:09

in conjunction with your yoga practice or your meditative practice

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and what they're doing is basically the same thing as what anxiety training for

15:22

neurofeedback would do there uh that that's not as simple as it sounds because there's there's really

15:29

even this is a simplification two levels to anxiety one is Vigilance which is

15:35

rapid and elevated response and the other is uh breadth of awareness which

15:43

is uh memory and calmness and relaxation and we have to have both right you want

15:48

to be able to respond to the fire alarm that's not a bad thing you just don't want to be in a hair trigger all the

15:54

time and you want to access older memories older feelings

16:00

and older thoughts so they're really they're sort of two two directions one is high frequency the

16:06

anxiety and the vigilance and the other is low frequency the memories and the thoughts and the relaxation

16:13

so if you use brain training in that simple model it fits in well with

16:21

um meditation mindfulness relaxation sleep

16:27

um maybe altered state work that's still very new we're not sure how that's going

16:32

to play out and then this that the price is still not uh low enough for what people expect so

16:40

the price is I mean it's coming down you know as we speak uh you can get a

16:48

muse headset for between one and three hundred dollars

16:53

depending on what model and whether it's used and then the better headsets are starting to be rented for 30 bucks a

16:59

month but purchased for 400 these are dry sensors now so that you can put them

17:04

on yourself and uh in the U.S there

17:10

under another Cloud that they can't be sold as medical devices without being

17:15

subject to strict control and liability so that they're not sold as medical

17:20

devices they're sold as relaxation I mean you're sort of in this nutraceutical uh non-medical area and

17:27

you know there is that line between claiming to do something medical and not

17:33

yeah so they're not claiming to do anything medical which is sort of safe but it also means that there's no

17:39

Research into the medical Direction with these devices because that broaches the boundary of

17:45

so forth and interesting yeah and that that prevents our progress somewhat when

17:50

it comes to energy waves brain waves brain frequency

17:56

um because I feel like most people don't don't do a good job of understanding things that they can't like physically

18:03

see or understand like I can look at a blood test and analyze it and have a look at it and get my basically just get

18:09

my doctor's opinion and if it's outside of a normal range then I might bring some attention to it but

18:15

um we don't do very well with with understanding things that are like happening internally and obviously we're

18:22

all Bound to You Know the same the same laws when it comes to everything admitting an energy a

18:29

frequency it's kind of like all there but yeah we don't do very well understanding those types of like mysterious types of things especially

18:35

when so much of the brain and the body is just yet to be understood and probably probably won't be but like

18:41

what's commonly misunderstood about um I'm going to use the word energy and

18:47

frequency that you know is happening within every cell of our bodies down to the smallest

18:53

organelles or whatever you want to you know whatever you want to describe but like what do we commonly misunderstand

18:59

about something that we all have we all share it's absolutely there but the the

19:05

understanding is so unconventional that we don't really like talk about it or understand

19:10

I think the question is a culturally relative question and I have to approach it or have

19:16

approached it I have no other way to approach it culturally which is to say

19:21

I use what I know about brain waves and

19:27

you know the sort of scientific experiments done with them for whatever it can reveal to me

19:34

and I take um basically I don't know I found

19:39

traditional Chinese medicine useful though I say that as I'm not a traditional Chinese medicine

19:45

practitioner so I can I can say that with ignorance you know

19:50

um the idea of uh energy in your body and energy systems let me be more specific

19:56

so I'm I'm trying to use the tools I have to approach that question and the way I'm doing it is I'm saying

20:04

I'm using the tool of hypnotherapy uh which you know opens up that whole

20:09

Pandora's Box and I'll have to Define what I mean what I mean by hypnotherapy is a focused

20:15

awareness on something and it you know what people think is it means you're spaced out and

20:20

you're synonymistic or you're in a sleep or something but those are just

20:26

symptoms that an observer sees of somebody who's deeply focused

20:32

um you can be so focused that you're not aware of what's going on around you but that's not the point the point is what

20:37

you're focused on not what you're not focused on um so yeah you're not focused on you

20:43

know what's happening around you and you may do silly things because you're asked to but what's important is what are your

20:48

what where where have you gone so what I'm trying to do in that regard is getting people to go to their organs

20:55

or their systems or their energy systems and I'm trying to get them to focus on

21:01

whatever little somatic Clues we have as to what these systems are doing and

21:06

I'm talking about well it's hard to say what I'm talking about I'm not exactly talking about a physical organ I'm

21:13

talking about your awareness of it so I'm not exactly talking about the liver

21:19

and you know what awareness do we have of our liver well in Western medicine not much awareness that is to say

21:25

subjective awareness but in eastern medicine a lot because it's not entirely the organ it's

21:32

the energy and again it's what I say it's cultural you have to sort of learn to think

21:38

in the way that the liver is a detoxifying organ and your life has

21:44

toxic energetic influences and now you can start to think in terms of energetic

21:50

toxicity you're not really thinking in terms of your liver now your energetic concept and so this I

21:58

think I can approach with hypnosis and say okay let's bring up your awareness

22:03

of toxicity and now let's try to put it

22:09

into your liver or see if we can do something liver-like about it but I don't really care I'm really

22:15

trying to get a result whatever your result is because I think the

22:20

uh Eastern approach may be more suitable to the mentalization

22:26

let me give you a you know this easily gets lost and

22:31

in the unknown terminology so let me be more specific with something I'm personally dealing with so I had coveted

22:37

like many people did and I had covered twice and the second time was last uh

22:42

November almost a year ago well 11 months ago and it put me in the hospital with uh collapsed lung

22:49

and you know the as we all should know the doctors were

22:57

videos didn't know what to do and they weren't free to speculate and they were

23:03

constrained by in this country Canada the government's protocols

23:09

so they weren't very helpful they were vigilant uh you know putting me on various

23:15

measuring machines and taking X-rays and so forth but they weren't very helpful um

23:21

and it was uh not very reassuring to be under their care

23:27

you know they said you might die well gee thanks um uh so what I'm left with in the sort

23:33

of long covet experience is uh uh what I would call impaired

23:40

lung function and I say that because I'm not really sure where the impairment is it seems to

23:47

be upper respiratory but they you know I must say Canada is

23:52

really great at uh putting you into the system and you grind along very slowly

23:57

through all the uh all the tools the system has to offer so I have a pulmonologist

24:04

who is watching over me and uh not to be too negative but I would say doing

24:10

absolutely nothing uh for whatever reason I'm supposed to talk to him I think today in fact and uh

24:18

I'm I'm questioning whether I should ask him is it true that you know nothing about my condition but then that would

24:23

be too negative and whether it's true or not it's not going to be helpful so I'm going to ask him or tell him about this

24:30

experience which is that uh I've felt that my lungs can't fully

24:37

respire as if they were obstructed but I don't have asthma and my lung

24:43

capacity is is high above normal but they don't seem

24:48

to be functioning uh uh well and yesterday for one of the first times

24:54

I started running again which I had been doing before covet and the result of that running was that my lungs

25:02

really reacted with spasms and mucus and

25:07

so forth and so on and I thought great I've done something that gets a result now my body is pushing a boundary

25:15

and that is much more hopeful than the body not doing anything at all and just

25:21

remaining incapacitated so now I think I understand and what I'm trying to focus on is the energies

25:29

uh uh and it's very easy to be it's at some level very easy to do that so if you're

25:36

coughing you can say oh damn I feel awful I'm getting nervous I don't know what's happening to me am I going

25:42

downhill and you get more Vigilant and more anxious and on the opposite

25:48

which I'm doing I think successfully so I'm saying oh great I'm coughing I'm spasming you know my

25:56

muscles are relearning how to be more effective and how to deal

26:01

with other stresses and be uh more efficient in pulmonary function so I see

26:09

it as a positive thing and I'm every time I cough or uh sneeze or have a spasm I think oh

26:15

great calm down uh try to process try to get back in the flow and I'm already within 24 hours

26:23

feeling more functional so I can work with a person

26:31

if I was my client well I am in some extent but you know not in the real sense where I have

26:38

resistance so my work as a therapist with a client is usually to overcome resistance some some worry anxiety

26:46

hesitancy barrier is something that I can help them overcome

26:51

of course I'm doing it for myself uh uh you know I don't know if it's easier or harder but with another person

26:58

you have to get in their head and see what it is that's bothering them develop some Rapport some Trust

27:06

and then we get back to the cultural thing like can you talk to them in terms they understand

27:12

and if they're looking at a direct Improvement well whatever they were looking at sort

27:17

of blood tests or pulmonary function and and you're working on and you're doing energy work you have to sort of

27:24

convert them to think in your terms or try anyway so uh wait uh

27:33

so that was my example of doing energy work on myself and I hope you can understand how I

27:39

might try to do that on someone else whether it was covid lung function liver function or whatever

27:46

uh you can at least imagine that I would take a person

27:52

into a realm where they might be sensitive to things they were not aware

27:58

of and get them to be patient enough not to look for dramatic results because

28:05

if you're in a lost world which is to say into your body

28:12

and you were lost in that world you can't expect dramatic results at first in fact you ought to expect and

28:19

ought to cherish being lost in a new place a new territory

28:25

um how do you how what do you think about that I think that's very interesting a big

28:30

thing that come up for me is that how do you go about explaining to somebody you're working with when you're doing maybe like hypnotherapy work and you're

28:37

allowing that well and putting them in a position to become like hyper focused on

28:42

a particular organ that's causing them issues as to say the lung for example because you know in your case you're saying like

28:48

no you didn't have asthma you didn't have any like clear let's say conventional pathology that was like

28:54

causing your causing your symptoms but like energetically there's like clearly

28:59

something like going on there like how would you explain um to somebody who is working on

29:06

becoming more focused on that particular organ and how their body is responding to that focus and you know in creating

29:13

um not like a better energy but like I think of it as like if I if I have

29:20

like lower back pain for example when I've got the ability and the time to sit down and maybe meditate and start scanning my body and

29:27

thinking about that pain and bringing my awareness and my Consciousness to that particular area I feel that I am engaging in my body's

29:35

healing response and putting that energy in that particular type of area that's how like I would overcome like an in some sort of

29:42

like injury how would you go about explaining that like energy piece to people because

29:47

again like with like Energy Medicine or energy healing like a lot of people if they don't understand it a little bit

29:53

understand the science behind it then their eyes are going to roll immediately and they're not going to put their Awareness on what you're saying and

29:58

because they just don't have that they just don't have any understanding of it because they're conventional ideas of

30:05

symptoms diagnosis drug surgery whatever like

30:10

that's kind of like the clear path that we've been put on and like thinking about things with okay stop stop okay

30:16

I'm sorry okay I got it you're caught in a Vortex there the

30:22

vortex of the unknown there are three answers one is that you work with whatever the person can feel

30:29

so you ex you amplify it so you know uh one of the typical hypnosis things is

30:35

like if you have pain then imagine that you can make the pain worse by focusing on it

30:42

and if you can make it worse then you can make it better so now imagine that you make it less so you're playing with

30:48

it it's almost like loosening a nut on a bolt by rocking it back and forth so become aware become less aware become

30:54

more aware become less aware um in that way explore your own limits of awareness that's one

31:01

uh two is I give them some mystical mumbo jumbo and confuse them to the

31:06

point where they start thinking creatively that's really the point so uh you know I talk physics or neurology or

31:13

I talk traditional Chinese medicine or whatever they don't know about but think

31:18

is important and then I um either Val either authentically or

31:23

imaginatively take them to think about it in new ways like what if they could combine you know

31:31

this and that and I try to get them in a confused state

31:36

where they drop their preconceptions nice so so that so answer one was I

31:43

explore what they think and feel to accelerate amplify it answer two is I

31:49

get them to a state where they drop their preconceptions and start to

31:54

uh not only feel novelty

31:59

but think and emote in novel ways so that they can start building connections

32:05

or I should say so that connections start being built it's not clear whose intention is really operating here

32:11

um and the Third Way which is most interesting I think is I take them into hypnosis

32:18

and I do guided visualizations and they say something to the effect

32:24

you know imagine that a person is appearing who represents your pain

32:31

or whatever trouble anxiety and you know let's

32:37

explore it could be a person or an environment and so a person is in hypnosis now which

32:43

means they're very focused almost in a dream state and sometimes if people resist that

32:48

they'll they'll think oh what am I doing here I'm making this up and you know you deal with that people

32:54

they got to go through that not everybody does some people do other people you know drop into it very easily

33:00

and they just start flowing along and what happens in that state sooner or later

33:06

is that things start showing up people places objects memories associations and you encourage it in to

33:14

form uh you know what color is it what shape is it what face does it have what voice does it have

33:20

and what happens is usually they find themselves confronting

33:25

something they didn't expect and they don't know what to do

33:30

so it could be a person from their past it could be uh entity it could be an animal whatever

33:37

people I say they build this some people say these energies exist out there I don't care

33:44

um and then what I'll do is I'll say okay let me be the intermediary let me talk

33:50

to them let me tell you what to do you know let you know now go into that purple haze or that brilliant light or

33:58

uh you know we tell a story and now you're going to die or now you're going to live or you you know whatever

34:05

and I watch them and I'm looking for them to have an epiphany

34:11

and a connection so here's a simple example I had a client dealing with weight loss uh

34:17

issues so they had body image issues and through this process of imagining and

34:23

creating and evoking they established contact with

34:31

a beautiful image of themself that could speak to them and tell them how good they were I mean

34:38

this person that they created evoked would tell them how good and capable and

34:45

um self-accepting they were not me and that was tremendously useful because

34:53

now they had a connection with their own self-loving self which is uh you know something I might

35:00

have led them to sort of but they felt it was theirs they took responsibility and they had the

35:06

connection and they didn't need me anymore and I felt that that person that entity that uh

35:14

creation or reality it's not it's no less real than whoever they thought they were

35:20

would help them more than anything anyone could do how much does like somebody's

35:27

own ego get in the way of some of the of the progression to that type of place because that's a very like I mean it's a

35:34

very Progressive place to be when if you were kind of uh you know settling down and

35:40

putting yourself in a position to be spoken to like that and be connected with something outside of them it's a

35:45

really powerful place to be in how much does like our own ego get in the way of even coming to even thinking about being

35:51

in a place like that it differs with each individual you have

35:57

to understand your ego is another regulatory organ if you will regulatory

36:03

process and its job is to help you to respond to the world so depending on what your world is throwing at you and

36:09

what you've learned in terms of how to respond it can be more or less in your way

36:15

um you know in extreme forms it's very in your way you're highly responsive or

36:21

I should say reactive and um you're quick to impose on understanding

36:27

on things I mean that's an ego thing you know it's thoughtful conscious intentional

36:34

um and it can be obstructive uh there are other people who are very

36:40

loose and laid back and sometimes slow or expansive or receptive or empathetic

36:47

and uh that can be an opportunity but it can also be a uh a risk you wouldn't

36:53

want to be that kind of person in a war zone in a war zone you would want to you know we say PTSD is being overreactive

36:59

but it's not overreactive if you're surrounded by landmines it's entirely appropriate it's just that when you no

37:06

longer surrounded by the land land mines you have to then realize that and not continue in that mode so I think the

37:13

question is not exactly as you phrased it as to how much the ego is a problem but the question is

37:22

how flexible is your ego can you adjust it properly it's like saying should a

37:28

car be revved at high revolutions or low revolutions well it depends on what you're trying to do we have gears but we

37:34

also have uh you know the gas pedal and if if you get in your car and it's

37:39

either idling or your foots on the floor uh then that's great if you're doing

37:46

drag racing but uh for the most part it's dysfunctional

37:51

so that's where I would focus is not on the question of if or what your

37:57

ego is doing for you but whether you can control it whether you can manage it I mean now we're talking about brain

38:02

function again totally yeah it's fascinating stuff I what have you seen how have you seen

38:09

people's um what have you seen people learn when they're connecting to more of their

38:15

spiritual side especially for those people who have never even contemplated spirituality as a part of their self

38:24

I use my father as the as the uh as the example he was a

38:30

fairly highly driven a fairly unspiritual person and uh he would always say you know

38:37

Naval gazing was of no use that's he sort of put it in those pejorative terms

38:42

and I would say uh it's funny I've had much more useful

38:47

conversations with him now that he's been dead 10 years than I ever did when he was alive um I say to him

38:54

everything you do is based on your sense of purpose and commitment and if you have no purpose and you're

39:01

committed to nothing uh life doesn't mean much and you'll have trouble putting energy into things

39:08

so I would say I would translate spirituality

39:14

it's one of those terms that either you know it and it's useful or you don't know and it's not useful I would translate it into

39:21

practical terms by saying it's your sense of commitment and purpose

39:27

uh I think even the most materialistic person can get on board with that

39:34

um even if you get down to you know being Actuarial it's like return on investment and uh assets at risk

39:43

uh so you know in the most fundamental materialistic level spirituality is

39:49

a deeper understanding of your assets at risk

39:54

and you can't be too although it sounds like you know very measured and and

39:59

reductive you can't be too reductive when you're considering risk because risk is by definition pretty much all

40:06

the things you're not thinking about um you know I've had many people who died in Avalanches they're a great

40:13

example of risk because you just you know they're like the monster under

40:18

the bed avalanches happen on calm low slopes they don't happen on steep

40:24

dangerous slopes and you have to be aware of every they happen on bright

40:30

sunny days a nice gentle slopes and if you don't know that

40:36

um that's when you're in danger and that's where you know all my friends have been killed on nice gentle slopes

40:41

on nice sunny days um so that's a kind of spirituality it's

40:46

a deeper understanding of what's Happening beyond the things your ego looks at

40:54

I mean does that help you certainly certainly and something that you said really spoke to me in regards to purpose

41:00

and commitment to something and it makes me feel when I when I think of like a

41:07

lot of a lot of great large group of our youth seem to have a huge lack of purpose and

41:14

seem to have a huge lack of commitment to anything and like I try to look back at myself as an 18 19 20 year old and I

41:21

can't really recall too much of what was going on in regards to my purpose and my own levels of commitment to something

41:28

but like when it comes to having responsibility or teaching children responsibility I think we're

41:34

doing a huge disservice to them within schools and maybe even at home as well so I just wonder what what your opinion

41:41

is in regards to that like being able to connect your spiritual side of your purpose and your commitment like

41:47

maybe we're just stemming so far away from the capability of being in that type of spiritual place because we are

41:54

we're breeding a group of people to not really have purpose and not really have

41:59

commitment on like a strong level I think anyway I I entirely

42:05

agree I think it's a social problem and a personal problem I'm

42:10

totally anti-teacher and anti-school positive on learning and mentorship and

42:18

I think the answer to the question is unless you have dramatic personal committed experiences

42:26

you don't change and if you could Translate

42:32

what we call education into you know personal committed

42:38

um whatever personal whatever purposeful you'd have an education that was

42:43

meaningful and as long as you don't you're just training people and yeah I think it's fair to look you

42:50

know the history of education is mostly in training you know 300 years ago people weren't trained much at all for

42:56

anything they learned what was in their environment they learned how to make barrels and shoe horses and uh you know

43:03

come with the last hundred years we've become an industrial society and we've needed people to have specialized skills

43:10

and so we've trained them but that doesn't make a person aware in control of their ego

43:19

it almost limits them well it does limit them so that's why I'm anti-teacher because I understand a teacher as

43:26

somebody who trains you and I think you can get your own training once you have purpose and

43:31

commitment and especially in this age where there's in very rapidly more resources available

43:38

for learning let me just say when I think about my

43:43

youth I am lucky to have one experience that

43:49

was a landmark Watershed for me that was indicative of coming to commitment

43:57

and once I came to Commitment kind of the world changes for me it changed for me and then it became much more

44:03

revolutionary and reactionary and insistent and in control of myself and

44:08

that experience was when I uh decided to go rock climbing with a friend and we took a rope and we went

44:14

out to the cliffs and we put the Rope on and I headed up the cliff and I was about 150 feet up this is 15

44:21

stories and I looked down and I said holy I have no idea what I'm doing and I have done nothing to protect

44:27

myself and all of a sudden it's not so easy and uh I had a choice I could freak out

44:36

and die or I could get control of myself and say

44:41

uh this is a situation we have a situation here um what are you gonna do about it

44:48

uh and I was never afraid of heights after that but you know I it was a it was an

44:55

epiphany it was not safe it was definitely not safe and that that is the

45:00

danger uh if you're going to really enable people to learn they have to be

45:05

able to take some risk you'd like it not to be fatal and definitely that's true especially not killing other people

45:12

but there is a real risk and and uh you know if you go back to traditional cultures they did manage that with uh

45:19

you know coming-of-age ceremonies and other things sometimes they made it seem more dramatic than it was

45:25

but uh I think this is the answer to your question certainly yeah I think I think the big one that came out to me

45:31

with what you're saying there is is about risk and we have created um kind of a culture that's like you

45:38

know you don't take risks you don't take chances be that with your physical self your mental self or whatever that might

45:44

be and yeah we have a very very comfortable most people have a very comfortable reality in regards to where

45:51

you wouldn't have to take those types of risks to kind of figure out like your your your limits and put yourself in

45:57

those kind of scary traumatic situations where you have to yeah you have to make a choice in the

46:02

moment to to kind of overcome the emotional sympathetic self I suppose and once you

46:10

realize that you're able to do that in really traumatic circumstances you become super powerful then because you

46:15

can do them in the minor stresses that come up in your life and you can really take control of those things and you can start to you know develop yourself

46:22

develop your brain develop your nervous system to respond to you know which is quite frequently it's a very stressful

46:28

world and yeah I love the I love the Rites of Passage that we would have traditionally have that just do not

46:34

exist anymore you know we have like 30 30 35 year old man boys out there who

46:40

have never taken that transitional period in their teens too whether that's whether that's to just have a job or to

46:46

you know do something a little bit more like nature bound or something I'm not sure what it is there's a million ways

46:51

to do I've got a one-year-old and a three-year-old and I'm trying to figure out in the next 10 years how I how I can

46:57

help them transition from recognizing that they're no longer a child and they're turning into a young man which comes with responsibilities it comes

47:03

with a role and you know for me as a 15 year old my dad told me I need to get if I wanted to

47:10

start if I wanted to continue playing golf and doing all these fun things I had to get a job to start financing that

47:16

myself and that was like wow okay I didn't realize that was ever going to have to happen but obviously it had to and um I had that responsibility and I

47:25

had a role in the family I had this role at this job which taught me all of these you know I worked at McDonald's when I was 15 years of age it wasn't there

47:31

wasn't a uh luxurious job that's for sure but you know I was during ridiculous hours I was pushing my

47:37

mind and my body in these like weird circumstances and I had this role in it was just it was just it was just interesting how much that light taught

47:44

me um you know even like 25 years later on it's still teaching me that they there

47:49

was the power of having a responsibility and having a role having a Direction having a purpose and having commitment

47:56

to something and then when things like you know a wife and kids turn up

48:01

you're slightly more prepared to deal with the madness that that in that that endures and it's uh yeah it's quite

48:08

powerful I just I just really struggle to see where in the school setting they

48:14

are preparing kids for life which is difficult and hard and sympathetically

48:20

engaging a lot of the time okay I I our time is short I have a

48:26

couple things to say um I have some books on education which uh you should look at and anyone should

48:33

look at who's interested in that started out as one book and it's now three books I think I'm finished

48:40

um if you go to my website you can find it under books my website is mind strengthbalance.com

48:46

mind strengthbalance.com um the books are called the learning

48:52

project and becoming Super Genius volumes one and two that is to say you're becoming Super Genius not me and

49:01

um like we can go into those another time it is totally a topic of its own

49:06

the other thing I want to say and I'm I'm taking the lead here so you can just dragging you along is that for people

49:13

who are listening to understand the topic we're talking about Energy Medicine health and mindfulness

49:20

the simplest thing I can say is that you have to understand your mind

49:26

that your responsibility to your mind is the same as your responsibility to your body you have to pay attention to it you have

49:33

to uh see what it's telling you listen to it and respond to your mind in the way

49:39

that you respond to your body you can't just go along egotistically thinking it's all about your intention

49:46

and um your reaction to things your mind is a way to regulate your awareness not

49:53

simply control your awareness and so you have to tune it that could mean learning

49:59

it could be an awareness it could mean Health somatizing exercising everything never see an opportunity never see a

50:07

crisis without seeing an opportunity and um yeah as I I wanted to tell people that I

50:14

have a Blog they can sign up for and please do you get a free digital book uh we didn't even talk about dreams and

50:21

sleep and all that stuff but there you go thank you thank you nothing we can get you back on the show I'd love to

50:26

talk more about your books I've actually got some interesting questions in regards to the illustrations in the

50:32

front covers there especially in this rights of Passage book that's that I'd be interested to learn a little bit more about why those images are attached to

50:38

those particular types of books but if you're interested we can get you back on the show but you said your website is

50:44

mind strengthbalance.com and so I can make sure that is in the show notes so people can connect with you and your

50:49

blog your blog is on there and people can connect with that free resource yeah mind strengthbalance.com there's uh you know

50:57

a sign up sheet and it's a free monthly blog you can pay for weekly ones weekly

51:02

installments if you're interested and I narried them on podcasts and I'd love to

51:08

have you as a subscriber please check it out perfect well I'll make sure there's an

51:13

insurance but Lincoln thank you so much for spending some time with us today and going through some very fascinating topics I look forward to speaking with

51:20

you again in the future but thank you so much for today and thank you for hosting me Simon

51:26

of course well that is it for this episode of True hope because the official podcast of true hope Canada if

51:32

you've yet to subscribe please consider doing so that's it for this week we'll see you soon foreign

51:40

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