Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop and welcome to my podcast and videocast station. I'm absolutely delighted to have the opportunity for the third time to speak with James Z. G. Buckley, who is an international leader in hypnosis, in human behavior, in meditation and leadership. Welcome back, James. It's a privilege to be back and here with you, Warrick. Always a pleasure. Look, for those who've missed it, we've had a lot of fun actually in the first two podcasts. The first one, James shared his own story, which is powerful and speaks testament to someone who, forgive me if you take this the wrong way, dragged themselves up by their bootstraps to really be in a position to make a difference for others. And it's well worth listening to if you haven't heard it. The second... podcast was informative for me because we talked about hypnosis and meditation and the components of hypnosis which really for me I'd never understood there's a there's a process of subliminal messaging there's conditioning there's even linguistics trying to work with words as people go through that hypnotic process and it's intertwined with meditation and James spoke about all that eloquently and debunked it all for me and made it so much more sensible and so much more real because I've been trying some meditation myself today though I'm really keen to talk about the mind and the body and how they interact. And James and I have chatted about this before, but this is where the rubber meets the road, James, and we're going to talk about it because it's hugely important. And you know as well as I do, I see patients on a physical health journey and I don't think we look after their brains well enough to help them through that. What do you reckon? I think that we don't understand the resource that we have inside of our brains, Warrick. I think that we have been remiss in not being able to or not studying the processes that happen in the mind and the effect that they have on the body and that we really have the most sophisticated piece of machinery on the planet as far as I'm concerned and that we can use that to our advantage to nourish our body with... positive empowering thoughts and positive empowering emotions otherwise we can become victims to the unconscious programs that perhaps are slightly more negative and disempowering so i think that we have this resource and when we learn how to use it we can create magic inside of the cells of our body look i think one of the things that i'm not a neurocognitive specialist or neuroscience specialist. But one of the things that really strikes me is that there's got to be these learned reflexes or loops that recur and reinforce particular situations for people. And I'm thinking perhaps, for example, in the space of pain, and there must be these negative feedback loops that really are detrimental. two patients trying to get out of the slippery slide of chronic pain. Do you have experience in that space? Yeah, absolutely, Warrick. I can even share a story on that with a young lady that had came to see me after she had fractured or crushed three of her vertebrae after falling off of a seven-step ladder three years before she came to see me. So significant pain for that three years. Her pain on a scale of zero to ten was at a nine or a ten every single day. From the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed, she was medicated for it. She'd seen chiropractors, physios, everybody that she could see in the three years. Obviously, she was in a lot of pain. She wasn't able to go to work and function at work properly. So it was a real challenging time for her for three years. After three weeks of coming to see me once or twice a week, she was able to get that pain down to a zero for the first time in three years. And that was through those processes that we've been talking about over the last couple of episodes. So absolutely the mind can have a profound impact on the pain. So this, I mean, this is an amazing story, and I imagine you've got others in a similar space. But the thing that's extraordinary is what's changing for that patient to alleviate that pain? Presumably there's no change in her back. But what do you, how would you describe what's occurred to her through the processes you took her through to alleviate that discomfort? Two parts to that, Warrick. The first part is that the pain creates a stress response. And that stress response... response we could say tightens everything up it stresses everything out and so in that stress response it's actually creating a tighter loop of that pain for that person and so turning off that stress response or cooling off that stress response is really the first step because that allows the body to come out of survival mode where if we're in that fight flight response all of our energy is going to our extremities to be able to run away or to be able to fight that situation. And so there's none of that energy, so to speak, or those processes in the body that are able to go into healing and regeneration because they're in that fight-flight response. So that's one part of it is cooling off those stress responses. The second part of it is actually nourishing the body through the thoughts, which we know are those neurochemical events triggering. the hypothalamus to release proteins and peptides that go into every cell of the body and that's shaping the chemistry of the body and so as we did the lemon experiment you were able to feel the chemistry of your salivary glands the same is true for the body when we experience and practice certain thoughts and emotions then that chemistry is nourishing the body and starting to heal the body on a really profound level as well It's a fascinating space. Certainly that fight and flight response, the so-called sympathetic nervous system or the driver, leaves people fatigued. It's something that we were designed from an evolutionary perspective to have run momentarily for short periods of time when we were confronted by a saber-toothed tiger and then to calm down again. And when these vicious cycles of constant stimulation to the autonomic nervous system particularly the sympathetic nervous system take place then I think they really wear people down do you see other health issues like recurrent colds or inflammation or or other indicators of that sort of fatigue if you like that that adrenaline fatigue in the people you deal with James? Yeah, absolutely. In my research, Warrick, it's been suggested in neuroscience that we in human beings in the Western world, living a normal Western world life, exist 70% in the sympathetic nervous system, meaning that we're in sympathetic dominance. And if we were to think of our lives as a certain trajectory, a certain timeframe, if we're in that sympathetic nervous system, then our life is... somewhat shortened because we're really burning the candle at two ends so to speak when we're in that sympathetic nervous system it's burning out the cells it's literally using up the proteins in our body and it's taking away all of our energy from digestion from healing from rejuvenation and it's putting it into our extremities so that we can fight and fight and we're not built to do that we're built to be in the sympathetic nervous system as you said momentarily mostly five percent is where we should be and what we observe in nature so our current social structures and the way that we live life is really burning us out if we're in that sympathetic nervous system for people listening wanting some other um impacts of that sympathetic drive of course it puts blood pressure up and that's a space that i'm incredibly interested in it increases your heart weight and it releases cortisol so that uh that energy is available but that cortisol is not good for you So it's a really concerning situation. And I think you're right. We all suffer this drive regularly, James. In your own experience, what about things like inflammation, whether it be arthritis or inflammatory bowel type disorders? Have you had much experience in that space with helping people realign their autonomic nervous system through hypnosis and or meditation? Absolutely. And Warrick, I'll just start with the caveat that it is a tender space in medicine and that we have to be really careful about what we're talking about. But definitely, I have seen results with my clients that have come. They've tried all types of medications. They've tried all types of therapies, diets, cleanses, detox, so on and so forth. And they haven't been able to. clear out those issues especially talking to inflammation in the gut and ulcerative colitis specifically I had a client that had come to me that had had that condition for many many years I couldn't tell you how many but well over a decade and after coming to see me for one session and having an internal experience meaning that they went into a hypnotic state they had certain thoughts that created certain chemistry in their body that created a certain emotion and that became their experience after that one experience of hypnotherapy they went off of their medication and there was no trace of the ulcerative colitis their doctor said i don't know what you've been doing but keep doing it i can't explain what's happened And that's a very common thing that we see with people that come through our programs, that come for a session or go through the meditation programs. And it's not anything that I'm doing. It's just that understanding how the brain and body works. And when you push those buttons in your brain and body, you create those responses. And that's a really common thing that we see. Extraordinary. One of the things that we touched on was really the power of gratitude. You've introduced me to that. There's no question that it sounds good, like it is the sort of thing that would be a great self-help book, The Power of Gratitude, but there's a lot of science behind it. What sort of science or evidence are you aware of in that space? I'd like to start. Sorry, I'm sorry, James. What evidence are you aware of in that space, in the healing sort of sphere, which is what we're in. Sorry. I understand. Totally understand. I'd like to state that in the state of gratitude, in the emotional chemistry of gratitude. Nothing else can exist. So if you experience anxiety, depression, fear, sadness, some kind of emotional trauma, if you go into a state of gratitude, meaning that you think thoughts of gratitude and those thoughts create the emotional response. If you do that, none of those other thoughts, none of those other emotions can exist. So gratitude really is the opportunity to break away from those things and create a little bit of a gap from those things for yourself. And over a period of time of practice, you'll be able to build that muscle so that gratitude is far more powerful than depression or anxiety or fear, so to speak. or the chemical signature of gratitude. When we look at what's happening in the chemistry of the body and the brain when we're in gratitude, there is research that has told us that 1,200 different processes start to heal and regenerate our DNA if we can simply practice that 10 minutes of gratitude. And that gives me goosebumps just to say that how profound it is that we can have that effect on our body. It's extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. 12,000 processes? 1,200 processes. Still a lot. Still a lot. Yeah. That's incredible. So one of the things that started us talking in this space was my realisation that in my own practice, I care for people's hearts, but do at times see them having a difficult, journey emotionally through the requirement of whatever it might be, whether it's a heart attack or whether it's recurrent admission for cardiac failure or getting through cardiac surgery and that rehabilitation process. How would you see hypnosis and or meditation, which or which combination helping people say through? the process of cardiac rehabilitation after they've had major surgery? Would you start beforehand? Tell me where your thoughts are in that space, where this sort of, these techniques, this science could really make a difference and help? Look, I think... Now, start now, wherever you are, no matter what's happening in your life, getting your hands on the steering wheel of your mind, your thoughts, and then the effect that that has on our emotions, on our behavior in the world around us. There's nothing more empowering than that. There's nothing more inspiring than that. And there's nothing that gives you more confidence than that, at least in my experience. So my suggestion is wherever you are, just start. because it's going to give you those positive results immediately. Well, I mean, that's good advice. And I can echo that sentiment. As I've alluded to in one of the other recordings, James introduced me to a gratitude meditation, which is actually part of his seven day meditation challenge. And if you've listened to the other two podcasts or seen this on audio, then you will have heard me say, go and check it out. And if you haven't heard me say that, then I'm going to tell you, go and check it out. James Z. G. Buckley, look up his free seven-day meditation challenge, and it includes a simple meditational gratitude, which I've been doing. And that process actually really fired me up for the opportunity to speak with you today, James, because I'm aware of the impact it's had on me. Look, we're pretty close to the end. I might finish off with a story because I told you before I love stories. Yes. But it's a story to really, I guess, underline and bring focus to how important our minds are in our journey. They're central. So this story started off when a colleague of mine said, look, I wonder if you could give a second opinion on a patient. Now, whenever somebody says that, you think, oh, no, offering a second opinion. Everyone else has done everything that they possibly can. And you're always going to be in a corner and you often can't offer very much. And therefore, you look like not a lot of help. This particular man, he must have been mid to late 60s. He'd had bad coronary disease. He actually knew this doctor who'd asked me to cast an eye over him. This man had had bypass grafting and he was getting ongoing chest pain. He'd seen a number of cardiologists and one of them was a very highly regarded cardiologist from another state. he had been told that it was his heart and there was really just nothing that could be done about it. Well, this gentleman was forlorn. He was miserable. He was really, I think he was burying himself, actually. He pretty well saw this as the end of the line, ongoing pain in the setting of bypass grafting. Well, I did go through all his notes and rummage around and it turned out that his graft... to his heart and he'd had a number of grafts but his grafts all looked pretty good and the testing that had been done didn't really show any major problem with the heart and it didn't sort of make sense to me. So remarkably this guy who came in so sad and miserable with this pain. I examined him while he was just in my office, as one should do, and lo and behold, I found he had a really tight knot in the left shoulder. And I said to him, look, I don't know if this tight knot in the shoulder is related to your pain or not. It might be as you move and walk that it stirs up and you're getting referred pain to the chest. Why don't you go and get some physio, maybe some dry needling. That's where they stick a needle in and loosen up the muscles and see how you go. Well, I can't begin to tell you. I was knocked out. This guy bounced into my office three months later. A smile from here to here, I couldn't shut him up. He was born to live again. He'd suddenly realised that he wasn't about to die from his heart, that his pain was actually just a bad shoulder. And I was like, I actually did quite well for him. But it was all about his head. Nothing else changed, really. It was extraordinary. Absolutely. And I'd just like to add to that as well, Warrick, and perhaps try and answer your question a little bit better from before in regards to rehabilitation or going through challenges. I think that if somebody has some health condition that they're working through and whether they're working through it with medications or they're working through it with surgery or whatever it is that they're doing to try and resolve that, if they're not also using their mind, it's like fixing a car that's driving. driving, but nobody's got their hands on the steering wheel. And our thoughts really are the steering wheel to what's happening with this vehicle we call our mind and body. No question. No question at all. I'm sad to say we're out of time. I'm going to wrap it up there. Thank you so much for sharing, James. It's a privilege. Thanks for the opportunity. For those listening, thanks for joining us. Don't forget James Z.G. Buckley's 7-Day Meditation Challenge. If you've not signed up for this podcast, please go and do so because I hope you've enjoyed it. I have. And we'll keep you posted as we release more podcasts. Also, take a moment and check out the Healthy Heart Network membership because there's lots of material there that I'm sure you'll find valuable. Till next time, I wish you the very best and please. Don't die from a heart attack. Goodbye. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.
