Blossom Your Awesome Episode #7 - Mindfulness With Dr. Daniel Winkle

Dr. Daniel Winkle or Dr. Dan as he is known to many joined me on the Blossom Your Awesome podcast where we touched on so much. He is an M.D. and is certified by the center for Mind Body Science.

He's the author of the Eagles Eye Healing  Health and Wellness website where he offers short stories, poetry and guided meditation on self healing and recovery.

Dr. Dan actively practices mind body medicine at Alameda Health System where he is Medical Director of Acute Rehab Services. 

He is a co-author in the upcoming evidence based text Integrative Rehabilitation Practice.

He leads us through a powerful guided meditation so be sure to set aside about 5 minutes to listen and dive in with us into the actual practice of Mindfulness. You'll discover through this guided meditation and his explanation leading up to it that Mindfulness is not as difficult as you may think and there are a lot of misconceptions and false myths around mindfulness.

We also spend time talking about the dream state and using it to evoke greater imagination and how to really bring imaginative awareness into your life to live a more dynamic existence.

We are powerful creatures and Dr. Dan is an awesome resource to help us better understand the limitlessness of our potential.

And Dr. Dan welcomes any questions so feel free to contact him here.

To check out my site Blossom Your Awesome click here.

Or for some of my other work check out Sues Blues. 

Transcript

00:00:00
Hello and welcome to the blossom, your awesome podcast. I am Soo Dylan episode number seven. I am so excited about our guest today, we have got dr Daniel winkle on the show. He is an M. D. And the author of the Eagles I healing health and wellness website. The site offers a trove of free resources including healing, short stories, poetry and meditations, all focused on self care and the art of healing. Dr dan as he is known to many and as I like to call him, is certified in Mind body Medicine by the Center for Mind Body Medicine and actively practices mind Body Medicine at Alameda Health System where he is a medical director of acute rehab services.

00:01:02
He has experienced success and recognition in the field of Integrative rehabilitation by implementing mind body based techniques for individuals communities and staff to create a more mindful and supportive healthcare environment. He is also the co author in the upcoming evidence based text, Integrative rehabilitation practice. I am so honored and delighted to have dr dan here, Dr dan, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show and I am going to say let's jump right into it. Tell me how you got started with this path of mindfulness where it all began for you for the different reasons. Uh you know why this came about um I know early on in my medical training um first off I was attracted to go into medicine itself as you know, part of being a healing or a helping profession and and really wanted to be a part of helping people and communities to um to heal.

00:02:20
And the mind body work came into that even early on, I kind of sensed that there's something incomplete about a biomedical model and what I mean by that is just being a biologic or a physical being um or or just really thinking about the body or the body's mechanisms and almost treating our body uh like a like a machine and early on kind of sense that that was one of the foundations of al empathic medicine uh and went on this journey to find the humanity in it and what makes us human and really move into this bio psycho, social spiritual approach and realize that all of those things are making up all of our health and well being and really came into it? I tried to maintain a very traditional practice for a long time and it actually reached a crisis point.

00:03:24
I was so dissatisfied with what I was doing um that I'm mentally and physically became burnout and couldn't continue and amidst one of those um episodes, I began to find the solutions of of my my way out of that and became connected with the Center for Mind Body Medicine um and and figured out a way to, we have a lot of my personal interests and the practice of medicine together and and begin to share that through the, through the mind body medicine model. Okay, and now can you talk to me from a medical standpoint, kind of just mindfulness if we're just talking about, you know, meditation as a regular practice, What kind of benefits for people who aren't really familiar with this. They don't do it, they don't know much about it. But the, you know, the physiological benefits that one can expect from a regular meditation practice.

00:04:28
Sure. The the benefits are being really, really well documented. A lot of the science is um early but we've also known from wisdom traditions of people have been documenting these benefits for thousands of years as well. And now the science is beginning to bear out with that. The the biggest piece I see in mindfulness has to do with being in the present moment. Uh, from a physiologic standpoint, our bodies become confused. There's so many different things that we can uh imagine as threats and and oftentimes these are things that are in the future or the past. Um, but they're not necessarily always right in front of us. But when we, when our kind of mind wanders in those directions and especially in a, in a fear response, we imagine something fearful.

00:05:32
Our body goes through the same stress response, our fight or flight response as if we were trying to run away from a threatening animal or you know, get out of a burning car or really leave a dangerous situation. Uh, these imagined threats, stimulate the same response in our bodies. And what mindfulness does is it brings us into the present moment. And then often times we come to realize that that we are safe that we are nourished were secured for and that activates the opposite part of our nervous system, the parasympathetic part of the nervous system. And then you know our blood pressure goes down, our heart rate goes down, we feel more calm, strong, strong or maybe even unpleasant emotions begin to to settle as well. Uh and some of the really fascinating things is eventually if we practice this enough, it changes the way our brain works. Our brain begins to make more connections to all the other parts of the brain.

00:06:37
Um the stress hormones there go down and parts that that you know maybe make our immune system not function correctly, Those begin to to adapt and they begin to rewire as well and and changing our whole, you know, our whole response to everything and yeah, those are, those are just kind of the tip of the iceberg as some of the benefits. Okay, awesome. And then question for you for somebody I know we had um we talked previously about you, you know, leading us in to a soft belly meditation or some sort of meditation. So I don't know if that's something we're still gonna do but I would love to do that if that's something you're open to but any kind of tips that you can offer to somebody if there's kind of an easy way to get started with meditation or, you know, any kind of guidance there for people, some of the early questions that I hear from a lot of people, and this still comes up for me from time to time as well.

00:07:45
Is this concept of, of right or wrong or something that's supposed to happen or? Um, but what I'm discovering with the meditation, mindfulness is it's not a destination but a but a practice. And so, you know, people say was there a right way to breathe or, or wrong way, am I doing this right, or there's really not a right or wrong way to do it? And so, um my recommendation would be to relax our own, you know, judgment and just uh just start somewhere, you know, we all start with wherever we're at and that's okay. Um you know, if that's a really stressful moment to begin to sit down and take some soft belly breaths, that's okay, or if you're already feeling relaxed, that's a great time to do it as well. Uh, so it's, it's, it's just about, you know, I think that's really helpful is is it's not really about trying to get to these changes in the brain.

00:08:51
In fact, when most people really tried too hard to get there. Um it's not that there's no effort, but when we, when we try too hard, then it can often end up being our our blockage, um, to getting started or making this regular. Um and I do I would love to get into the soft belly breathing one because I want anybody who's listening to have a very practical way. This is a great place to start when I'm working with people in the hospital, friends, family, you know, anybody who may be interested, this is a great place to start this soft belly. The soft belly breathing. Um really recommend one of the things that is also helpful, especially with getting started is smaller amounts more frequently. So rather than trying to Sit in in a in a concentrated meditation for 20 minutes to do it five minutes, three times a day, break it up a little bit um during the day and and that seems to make it perhaps a little easier.

00:10:00
Um and and maybe even more beneficial. Okay, and now, is that something you would want to do right now or kind of help guide us with that. So we have a deeper understanding or lead us on a little guided meditation for a few minutes or? Yeah, absolutely. Um I'll tell you a little bit about the meditation. So there's there's three types of meditations, There's concentrated meditation, mindfulness, meditation, and dynamic or expressive meditations. And so soft belly breathing is part of the concentrated meditation. And what that means is we're trying to concentrate on one particular action. So in this it's having a soft belly, it's also focusing on our breath. So maybe with this one there's two, but we're kind of narrowing it down and trying to keep our attention on that. What this does is that activates that vagus nerve, the calming part of our nervous system, the stress relieving part of our nervous system.

00:11:05
And it does this very quickly. Um working with traumatized people in the hospital. Um it would have been through physical trauma oftentimes really, really difficult accidents. And Even though there may be many fractures, broken bones, lots of pain, 5, 10 minutes can really begin to make a big difference um in in activating this, this part of the nervous system. So it doesn't take a long time. I like that because it works, it can work very, very quickly. And one of my mentors jim Gordon from the Center for Mind Body Medicine, uh he's the founder and director. He he taught me this is a little bit of experiment every time we go into a meditation or every time we recognize ourselves in the present moment, it's a little experiment to just see what happens. Sometimes it actually may be difficult. There may be a challenge or it's just really hard and that's okay. That's that's a learning opportunity as well. Um And sometimes it might be really relaxing, but in general, most people are going to find this uh away that works very quickly.

00:12:11
Um and and and it's gonna be different for everybody. So I can't really say what's going to happen, I can talk about what what many or most people feel um and so whatever comes up that's okay, we'll just try it and then it's a little experiment in that way, so if you're ready or do you have any questions about that, any anything that you're curious about before we start? You know, I don't, but I really do appreciate you sharing that because I think that answers a lot of kind of questions that people do have around meditation, you know, they're not sure what to expect. So I think that was awesome to kind of just leave it open to not really having a lot of expectations, like is kind of what you're saying right and letting whatever comes up for you come up without really anticipating much, right? Right. Just and that comes back to the mindfulness piece. Just observing with what's happening in the present moment. Um And observing without judging what's coming up.

00:13:15
Either just let it kind of kind of letting it come letting it go um and and and just being present with it, whether it's challenging or or or something that's that maybe we might call pleasurable. Um all of it kind of comes and goes with with the interesting idea, I think at least in my experience and a lot of people that um just practice a lot, the things that are challenging even though they may come up once we kind of relax the judgment about them, they do tend to visit less frequently, Okay? Um yeah, it I know I'll just say for me it's it really is always different, you know, sometimes it's challenging, sometimes it's just, it's like, wow, 20 minutes, but I appreciate that kind of, you know, that initial explanation. So people don't have any kind of anxiety around it, so I'm ready whenever you are.

00:14:16
Yeah, I want, I just want to say one thing about that before we get started, if if your somebody and a goal is going to work for you and that feels right, that's okay to, it's okay to have a goal, I want to do five minutes or to set a timer um that could be helpful. Uh and so if a goal feels like it's causing distress and you just wanna, you know, fool around with it or play around with it, that's okay too. Um and so either way is perfectly fine, it's about I think some of it is discovering what works for you too. Right, well I feel ready, Does that sound good? Sounds great. Alright, so what I'm going to invite you and and I'm I'm, you know, with these with these things as somebody as a practitioner to I'm going to be doing it along with you, it's not part of this is learning by example. Um and and um it's different from medicine, in that I'm gonna be doing it with you, it's not something that I'm just going to tell somebody to do.

00:15:26
We'll be doing it together um and learning from each other. So I'm gonna be guiding you and also participating with you and for our listeners. So I'm gonna invite you all to get comfortable unless you might be listening to this. If you're driving, you may want to just skip ahead a little bit so that you don't get drowsy. But if you're in a place that you can get comfortable, I want you to just notice and begin to allow your breathing to deepen. And if you if you like, go ahead and close your eyes, closing her eyes begins to distinguish outside stimuli. Let's just look inward. There's some people who may not like to close their eyes. It might not feel right. You've had a lot of trauma, a lot of challenges might not feel safe. That's okay too. You can leave your eyes open, pick a spot, soften your gaze, gently stare at it.

00:16:51
But if it feels right, just close your eyes now begin to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth is a very relaxing way to breathe. It might not feel natural. That's ok too. Just try to stick with it begin to draw your breath deep into your belly, breathing deep through our belly helps activate our bodies vagus nerve and it helps to draw our breath in to the lower zones of our lungs, the oxygen rich zones of our lungs.

00:18:21
It helps our breathing to be more relaxed and more efficient. Try to let the muscles of your belly soften, softening the muscles of our belly. Help to relax all the other muscles of our body. Soft belly, If you notice your thoughts, let them come and let them go. They are completely natural since we're thinking beings. But just for right now, they can be like passing clouds when you notice them. Just bring your focus back to your breath and too soft belly breathing deep this way through your belly helps activate our bodies.

00:20:12
Vagus nerve, Vegas means wandering in latin. This nerve acts is the antidote to our body's stress response helps to lower our heart rate, helps improve digestion, hopes to get good sleep and it helps our body to make its own pain fighting chemicals. The endorphins, our vagus nerve also helps us to feel connected connected to our own self and to other people as well as to feel love and compassion. To help soften your belly as you breathe in through your nose. You can say to yourself soft and as you breathe out through your mouth, you can say to yourself belly soft, ballet.

00:22:00
Yeah. Soft belly. We'll take a few more nice deep breaths together on her own. We'll begin to bring ourselves back slowly and comfortably wherever you're at. You can begin to wiggle your fingers and toes, gently move your body, notice your body and whatever surface you're on when you're ready. Go ahead and slowly open your eyes. Mhm. And just notice how you're feeling, notice if you notice any changes, Sue, how are you feeling, wow, that was awesome. That was really beautiful.

00:23:57
Thank you so much for that. Um Yeah, I'm feeling very relaxed and um I want to just ask you now. It's obviously I was feeling some sort of like butterflies in my stomach. So that's a kind of an obvious reaction to have with the soft belly breathing, correct? Tell me more about it. Just it's so relaxing. But it's kind of, I can really, what do you mean by butterflies in the stomach? And you define it a little bit more for me. Oh my God, I don't know if I can. It just wasn't like a tingling sensation, you know in my stomach when I, you know, really activating the breath from that space. It just was giving me uh yeah, like a tingling sensation. If you had to guess what would you think it would represent for you? Mm hmm. I don't know what's the first thing that pops into your mind. Euphoria. It was it was so relaxing.

00:25:12
It's just very euphoric feeling. Yeah, I'm still coming to relax. That was amazing. But yeah, can you help us understand that? Is that um So first off I'm gonna check. So part of after, whenever, especially if I'm working in a professional capacity or even as I'm practicing for myself, especially right afterwards a great time to check in with our body. And so I know for me right now, as I'm checking in with myself, my hands are warmer, my hands and feet were a little cold, uh maybe the last couple of days I'm noticing the, those kind of warmed up um and just a general feeling of relaxation, I think. Um and a little bit looser in the neck postures, a little different little straighter. So there was there was, that was good and the the time afterwards.

00:26:22
So what we're doing with checking in um that's part of the process to of just then being aware of our body and then um many times will notice beneficial changes. So if after we're done, we take notice of what's going on and just pause for a moment. Um You mean what you may notice that you're describing, the, I'll name it, the euphoria in the stomach area, the relaxation. Um So you may say, you know, I'd like I'd like to experience that more often or to um or do or something like that. Uh and so that reflection period. Um I think helps us make some of the changes in our life then that that um turn this more into a habit or um I'll going to use the word self care. So to make this part of our self care, like we brush our teeth or um take a bath or something like that. So so meditation can be part of that. Um And with enough practice that it can become automatic in that way.

00:27:27
Yes. And now dr dan, can you kind of share with us a little more about the vagus nerve? I know I read a little bit about that in um on your website Eagle's Eye healing dot com, which is just an amazing resource for meditations and some really beautiful essays there and we'll get into that. But um I know you wrote about that and kind of the activation that allows us to kind of wander outside of the boundaries of who and what we think we are. I thought that was so beautiful. That was something you had written there. But if you could kind of, you know, speak to us about the vagus nerve and that. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So we're gonna now now we're getting outside of, I mentioned in the in the early story where he said, well I felt kind of constricted within the confines of just this biological model with medicine.

00:28:30
And so this essay starts looking at the vagus nerve. So, first of all, from our bodies standpoint, it is the main nerve that that transmits the signals of our parasympathetic nervous system. That's a resting and digesting response. It's interesting in that it directly connects every major organ of our body. It has a direct connection to it. Um And so from a nervous system wise, all the all the other nerves in the body require multiple synapses meaning there's multiple jumps to get either from our brain to our fingers and things like that. But the vagus nerve is a direct connection between all of our our organs and so it's becoming active in this process. And one of the things I've discovered, and I think a number of the people I work with that, many of the things that are happening, if we go into this bio psycho, social spiritual mindset, a lot of things happen in our body are also um connected to other aspects of ourselves, There's mind body or what's going on in our mind and our thoughts and our ideas are connected to what's going on in the body.

00:29:50
And so some of the activities we start establishing that connection. And then one of the things is that oftentimes something's going on in our bodies are like metaphors. So if if we look at um you know, dream analysis and looking what's happening in our dreams has been around for a long, long time. Uh and so we know that when we wake up in the morning, a lot of the things we have that happen, or possibly everything is is symbolic and gives us different metaphors for what's going on in our body or experience or socially and all of these things. Um and so the idea that this vagus nerve directly connecting everything. What I was exploring in that essay and I think is really fascinating about this particular meditation and the activation of that nerve is that I think there's a metaphor there for our deeper connections to a, you know, spiritual nature or something, you know, something nourishing us something that's connecting all of us, connecting our society together or, you know, um why all of this connection with, you know, we're connected to the earth and the crops and the types of foods we eat and the place we live in the air we breathe, and it's all sort of weave together and we also have this nerve in our body that's doing kind of the same thing.

00:31:23
Um and so I think with activation of it and practicing of mindfulness and meditation practice, we become more aware of that, that connection with the activation of the nerve. And so rather than experiencing the disconnection of trauma and injury and and many of our challenges, which I think in this day and age are coming up quite strongly for many, many people, the this brings us back into a state of connection and recognizing that um in a in a really unique way, and I think in the essay used the word kind of taking us into into a womb or warm, you know, safe um plays and you know, maybe maybe that's that was the feeling you might have been feeling in the stomach area, I don't know. Yes, very much so, but um yeah, that?

00:32:28
S a there it's for anyone who wants to read it, it's called the wandering nerve, and it's just um really, so many of your essays in your work, dr dan, they give this other perspective, and, you know, one of the things you you talk a lot about in these different writings of yours is um imagination and tying that into your dreams. So, can you kind of share a little more about how those kind of come together and how we can uh, you know, kind of, I think we're so limited, but how do we, kind of get beyond that and become more imaginative and, you know, allowed that to kind of come through the dream state, if that makes sense? Yes. Yes. Um Well, the first thing is with, okay with more imaginative, I just want to say something that the imagination is always there, what can change is our awareness of its presence, um if that if that makes sense, um it's it's a little hard to understand, and I want to say that there's actually, this isn't in that particular essay, but it's coming out in uh a book that I'm working on, which is a but there's there's the imagination is one of three parts uh that that are very, very crucial to creating our health created and even kind of ingredients to form our life.

00:34:24
Um and I don't claim to be an expert and necessarily in in in in how that um that works, but I've tested this out in my own, you know, we talked about the experiments, testing them out in my in my own experiments and those three things are feelings, emotions and imagination. So imagination is part of that uh that triad and things. The important thing I want to want to put in for this podcast for me is that we talked early on about, we can imagine all sorts of things and then our bodies react to it. Um and with that uh where we're kind of focusing our attention in that is really important and with dreams, you know, a dream I think to also contains all three of those elements.

00:35:27
There's feel if when we wake up in the morning we can notice a dream often will have a particular emotion, a particular feeling, tone or and images. Um you know, the word image or visuals would be connected to imagination. And so they all have those particular elements. And then a lot of times, I mean dreams is a it's a it's a huge, huge thing. Um but they get us more in touch with some of these other parts of ourself. It kind of takes us, we don't really notice having are kind of human body. And so we begin to take notice of some of those dimensions more like the psychologic dimension, perhaps spiritual. And so, you know, paying attention that begins to um help us move our attention in that particular those particular areas and I think there um if anything we get we as a society or more biased towards just biologic, but really all of these things are, are are weaved together and inseparable, it's the beginning to pay attention to what's going on there is is it can be transformative, they're highly, highly personal and so they give you a lot of information about, you know, what's going on in in in your life.

00:36:57
And you know, I talked to many people, I've got a bunch of friends, uh you know, they'll look back and in a dream journal and something will um they wrote something down 25 years ago and all of a sudden they'll they'll turn to a page and they'll realize, wow, that that happened like a week ago. And so it kind of gets me asking questions and and and it's even in healing, how do we, you know, what is this force in healing that, you know, how did we know to open up that page or two, 25 years ago, you dreamt of this and now you're seeing it in front of you. It kind of, it opens it up, it it expands the imagination of what's possible um either with time or um all of these these different, these different elements and and so there's all kinds of different paths once you start looking into the present moment and mindfulness and so that that for me is is one particular path.

00:38:02
Um and all of these things are essentially at least from what I'm seeing, kind of, neutral feelings aren't good and bad, it's like I often talk to people, you know, they really, sometimes folks really get distressed about their feelings um and oh I'm sad or I'm angry, I don't want to feel this way. And there might be some, you know, unpleasant feelings, but sometimes they're the mechanism of, you know, you put your hand on a burner and it gets hot and you take it off, you know, so these their signals and so they can be very, very helpful. So things that we may be pushing away or resisting against uh can often have the the answers. So all of these kind of ingredients are are very, very important. Um and what we focus on is is really, really important as well. And so some of the some of the things with the mindfulness, soft belly that we just practice, it helps us be aware more of where are we directing that imagination?

00:39:08
Um on a, on a conscious level because the imagination is more of a of a conscious, there's subconscious and conscious, it's more of a on a on a conscious level. So um we do we do kind of get to direct that and so this helps these these techniques also help us kind of realize where we're directing it with the idea that we don't like it. We can then change it. Uh so really, really powerful tools, wow. Now, can you tell me, is there a way? Because this is a question I get asked a lot, people seem, you know, people oftentimes limit themselves and they want to kind of tap into this artistic part of themselves or creative ability or they want to do more of something that brings them a certain sense of fulfillment, but they don't really know how to activate that.

00:40:09
So does learning how to kind of expand the imagination, Does that go hand in hand with kind of evoking certain emotions and feelings? And you know, yeah, when I think of the using the word restriction, ah we do and you know, using the imagination does get us to a place um where, you know, more things are possible when we get into dreams, we could we can fly or um there's a completely different laws of physics and and uh, you know, I think consciously feels pretty foreign. Um, but it but it is much more freedom and I do think that that when we feel that in that state, we can apply it to um, our physical life and there are certain restrictions as well.

00:41:19
It's, you know, just with the imagination, it doesn't mean that, you know, somebody can go and jump off a building and just think their way that they're not going to to fall uh that there's a limitation in that way. One of my understandings of it, and I'm still working on that is, you know, in a way, by expressing ourselves physically. We've, we've accepted that we wanted to have some of these limitations to, and to see what we, we could do, um, you know, by having gravity or not being able to fly that may have pushed us to make airplanes or um, you know, and that's we that utilized the imagination. Um, and so there was this creative challenge of, we accepted this particular limitation and then, you know, there was fulfillment that came out of overcoming that and, and uh, being able to, to do that. So that's kind of an example of a process where we have a, have a particular limitation and then utilize that process.

00:42:27
And um, oftentimes, inventors really, really famous, if you look at some of these folks like Tesla, um, even some of scientific geniuses, people like Einstein, they'd often say they woke up from a nap or a dream and they saw the light bulb or something and in their, in their mind and then they just had all this energy and they had to write it down and try and, you know, try and make it. Um, so just kind of give a particular energy or a medium to uh, try and take these things that we see in our mind and, and make them physical, uh, that seems to be something that, that really brings a lot of value fulfillment for people um and a lot of challenges we're facing, you know, when I'm working in the hospital uh with depression and and things like that are, you know, the meaning and the different things that we get from, from making things physical and using that imagination um and assigning that that particular meeting when we lose that, you know, that's when many, many people get into to despair or addictions um and things like that, so these in the work that I do part of that healing work um in many, many ways, whatever tools we have um and I like to use all of them depending on where somebody's at is restoring that that meaning making for them, I can't do it for them.

00:44:01
That's that's misspeaking but guiding and and being there, you know, alongside somebody through that process. So, um that's that's a few examples of the power of it and and the restriction, but in the end, the restrictions are are okay, they give us a particular challenge to, to move through that I think provides meaning in our life. But then there's kind of a paradox that then we we overcome them in a way to uh so there's a lot of different dimensions to that now dr tan you just said something uh meaning making, you know, restoring that meaning making. So I'm sure you find in your work with your patients, um people kind of, you know, as a recovering or healing through trauma or whatever may or you know lose hope or whatever. So how what is like a simple tip for somebody who's at that place and they like how do you kind of guide? And I know this is a much longer conversation that we are hopefully going to have in the future, but you know, just a simple kind of tip to leave people with somebody who might feel stuck or kind of hopeless or you know, kind of restoring that meaning.

00:45:15
Making what is something you can offer to people for that. I mean sue the place that I like to start is is the soft belly breathing that we did. Um and the reason is the power to heal happens in the present moment. Um and and I think there's also a concept at play that the meaning isn't ever really lost. We just kind of lose sight of it oftentimes when people are moving through something, they'll go, gosh, you know, they start to feel that again and they're like, man, how did I lose sight of that or forget about it? It was kind of like, you kind of come to reason, like it's it's been there. Um but at the same time, uh you know, you can lose sight of it. So the meditative practices um and activating the vagus nerve getting into soft belly breathing um is a great way to start if if somebody would want to start.

00:46:21
The other thing we talked about that I think is a great places. Start just simply paying attention to your dreams. Um Yeah, I have a mentor of mine that had been studying with for many years just as even if you don't remember him, say go to your journal the more I had a dream, you know? Um and if you don't know anything else about it, it just it's sort of sends a signal that like okay I know that's going on and we want to direct our attention. Um there so those are some and then actually within the dream, if you do start remembering then trying to search for meanings. Um there you know there's symbols and I think a trap is there's lots of books and it tells you what everything means. There can be all kinds of different um things. An example of that is I had a dream that was about patients like patients in the hospital um you know in like a hospital bed. And one of the things I discovered through it that it was from a perspective, it was it was a play on words that I saw it as patients as as in a hospital patient, but the word was actually patient, patients like being patient about something or letting something develop.

00:47:35
Um And so sometimes we can get into a trap with some of those the the symbolism books um that they want to assign something, oh this is this and this is, it's, it's kind of very simplistic, these things can be really tricky. So I think the other realization that times ties into mindfulness is this is very, very personal um that that whatever shows up is going to be um for that particular person to look at for themselves and with, you know, of course other people with guidance that then could kind of give us little hints and tips and things along the way, but um that's what I like about the mindfulness techniques to in that it kind of begins giving us tools to to build that that self confidence and self awareness to do that work or play, you know, whichever you want, whichever you'd like to call it. Right, wow, okay, now dr dan, this was so amazing, I feel like we are literally, we have just scratched the surface and this has just been so awesome, I cannot thank you enough and I look forward to having you back on the show and we are going to get into the energy work you do with patients and kind of helping people understand that and how they can kind of self heal and um I would love to have you back on to share your expertise in that and kind of offer some guidance to people with that.

00:49:09
Sure, that sounds, that sounds wonderful, I'm looking forward to it. Okay, awesome. Dr dan, thank you so much, I cannot thank you again, I'm gonna have links to your website and ways for people to contact you and so they can check out all of your work and I appreciate you and your time so very much. Well thank you so much. So I'm looking forward to it. Okay? Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm.