E8 How To Cope, Become Resilient, And Totally Thrive
April 2024
85 minutes
E8 How To Cope, Become Resilient, And Totally Thrive
April 2024
85 minutes
Stream on:
As we encounter the daily stressors of life, a choice presents itself: will we be able to manage through the situation or will we face overwhelm? In this episode we look at the root causes of overwhelm and how we healthily and unhealthily cope to these stimuli. We review how to move into a state of resilience where we can face challenges, adapt, and withstand shocks. Finally, we take a look at how to move beyond resilience into a state of anti-fragility, where acute stress makes us stronger. Drawing on the latest from neuroscience, psychology, and business, this episode allows us to become resilient and even more beyond resilience into total thriving.
Key topics include:
0:00-5:12 Introduction To Resilience 5:12-08:48 Stimuli and Overwhelm 08:48-11:23 Antidepressants and Coping Mechanisms 11:23-14:14 Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms 14:14-22:31 From Overwhelm To Resilience 22:31-27:53 Supporting Others To Build Resilience 27:53-40:08 Social Support and Emotional Help 40:08-43:39 The Importance of Holding Space 43:39-47:29 Taking Responsibility For Healing 47:29-57:17 The Science of Self-Healing 57:17-01:00:16 Processing and Uncoupling Emotions 01:00:16-01:08:06 Post-Traumatic Growth and Anti-Fragility 01:08:06-01:12:17 Pendulation and Balancing Expansion With Contraction 01:12:17-01:25:28 Beyond Resilience Embracing Aliveness
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience. My name is Mino and I am joined by Dr. Mazen Harb and Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3Peak coaching and solutions where master leaders build healthy systems. Our company supports businesses to ensure that their top leaders have the skills they need to operate the organization as well as doing work workshops for managers and employees. Today's topic is about resilience. All of the things that help us to be resilient and even sometimes what happens if we don't feel resilient. And at the end we're going to go into something we call beyond resilience. So stick around for that. And of course, if you're enjoying the discussion today our company, 3Peak coaching and solutions, offers standardized workshops in resilience and growth mindset. So please reach out to us if that's something you'd like to do with your organization. So to begin our conversation, we're going to start with something that is the opposite of resilience. And Krisana and I were talking in the last couple of weeks about, well, what do you call that? Because there's not exactly a word you can't say. You're anti resilient. And the word that we came up with that resonated for us is overwhelm. It is a state when the stimulus around us might exceed our capacity in that moment. And I know for myself there's a lot of moments in my life that I've experienced overwhelm. And I have a strong reaction. I'm not able to handle the things around me. For me, the way that I tend to react in those moments is I tend to shut down, collapse. And so I've realized over the course of my life that to be able to manage myself, I need to manage that overwhelm. Krisana, when you work with people and they're in a state of overwhelm, what do you notice that is happening to those people?
Krisana Locke: What I see when someone's in overwhelm is they have lost the capacity to be present or in the here now with their body. Their thoughts may be scattered, they're not in touch with what emotions they're dealing with, or they have a lot of accumulated stress. And they will talk about situations that are just so overwhelming they can't handle in this current time. So this is giving me an indication that the body has not got a capacity to support itself and therefore they feel helpless. Overwhelm gives them a sense of helplessness. And working with these people, it's first to give them a sense of safety and also to start mirroring and bridging where we can bring them into, through co regulation or bring them into a sense of what gets them to feel more grounded and a sense of self in small pockets, inside the body, outside, or in different situations in life.
Mino Vlachos: And what can lead to an organism in this case, we're going to talk about humans. Mazen in a second. We're going to talk a little bit more broadly about organisms. Krisana. We talk about humans. What can lead to a state of overwhelm?
Krisana Locke: Well, basically anything can be overwhelming. Just imagine a tree. This is where I'm going to go already to resilience. Imagine a tree who has a very strong root system, a strong foundation, so the tree can grow big and then it can withstand or yield through wind and challenges. So if you have a foundational root system and things come along in life, you're easy to be able to be flexible, to adapt, to change. A lot of stress, a lot of accumulated stress. A lot accumulated stress in your personal life, in your work life, physical stress, accumulated stress from the past. So as you grow up and get older, if you have not processed stressful situations and they've accumulated in the unconscious of the body, as you get older, there will be times when you'll notice this accumulation will start spilling over. So it's a lot of accumulated stress and stresses on the body and the brain and the emotions.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. Mazen. The way I described overwhelm is that there's a stimulus and we might not be able to respond to that stimulus or kind of meet the stimulus. And so we then go into some kind of pattern of behavior. Instance for me, I go into shutdown. Can you tell us a little bit about how humans are able to interact with stimuli, the environment, and how they're able to either respond to that adequately or when they get overwhelmed. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like from your perspective?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, for sure. I'm going to introduce a new word to help, really. The word resilience is very used since a while now, even in science, but actually we should not really forget that also, the main biological component of that word need to be understood. The word resilience comes from physics, by the way, resistance, resilience and all of that. And then it's really used from there. In a biological term, I would like to use the word coping mechanisms. Why I'm introducing that word, to understand that actually what's our body programmed and what's capable of body brain systems. So resilience is nothing more than coping mechanisms. And then when coping mechanisms are inadequate and they became not adapt, couldn't adapt to the situation, to a certain stimuli, it's never one, but many stimuli, the accumulation of that stimuli, we go into overwhelm or helplessness. I'm now drawing it a little bit more on a biological terms. And then when you go to overwhelm and helplessness, it's nothing more than that. We lost safety. We lost safety in the body, we lost safety in the environment. And that by itself brings fear. So it's not that already in the overwhelm, we have cocktails of emotions, the intense emotions that come to us and we don't know. The body doesn't know at all how to deal with it because it came all of a sudden. And then instead of, we could not let go, so we could not let the body process it, so we had to intervene. And then we felt unsafe and we felt helpless. And then fear took over on top. So actually, with overwhelm and helplessness and feeling unsafe, it continues, actually. And that's why Hans say really overwhelmed. And the reason is we really don't know what to do. And then here I go backwards. What to do is the same way how I sequence. I said it. So there is resilience. Coping mechanism. The body brain tries to find ways to adapt based on the past, based on what it's learned. That's the idea. Coping mechanism, basing on what it learned already, how to deal in a certain environment. Then something happens and then we get really overwhelmed. The intensity, if it goes wrong or within us, there is stimuli that's from outside, but can be inner stimuli. Oh, my God, I cannot. And then alert. A fear system happens within us. We go into helplessness, then we go into full on safety. And then fear takes over. So when we don't know what to do is really go backwards. Understand that fear is now the Lord, the Lord that rules. And we are taken by fear. And then we really feel unsafe and actually where to find place, ask for support or find ways to feel safe. Krisana will speak for sure more about those how. I won't speak about how. And then backwards. And then by and by, the overwhelm starts to go down. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: I'm going to open a topic that my impression is sometimes might not be the most pleasant for you, Mazan. So we're going to go to a place that might potentially bring some discomfort. We're going to talk about antidepressants and some of the experiments that have been done to show the efficacy of antidepressants and SSRIs. And I know you've discussed me in the past how they'll use basically swimming for, I think it's either mice or rats as a proxy for the efficacy of some of these drugs. So can you tell us a little bit about that model of how they test and what we can conclude and maybe some of the things that we don't always talk about when it comes to those experiments?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, I'm a bit surprised you jumped there. I didn't expect it in this podcast today. Yeah. So actually it's really working on resilience. I see why you're bringing it now. It's really working on resilience, and those experiments are done to see if the resilience within the rodents, so mice or rats are rodents. So if the rodents have enough resilience, and if a drug is a medicine, is efficient to make resilience or coping mechanism become more present, and then the moment that the rodents collapses very fast, and actually that's the idea, then this drug is considered not effective. Again, that's really preclinical. There's one of many other tests. So I'm not here saying that that's a drug that decides everything later on. It goes to clinical studies, goes to humans, but this is one of the basic ones that has been used since really decades. But that's the idea, actually. So resilience, non resilience, and then when in non resilience, the animal surrenders, actually it goes to helplessness and learn helplessness, and it might die, actually, to be honest. So that's the idea of when we collapse and we don't have resilience. And then when coping mechanism, and then there is a full letting go in that helplessness. Letting go, but in a way still with full fear, not letting go. In a sense, it feels good, no, like tremendous amount of fear that the system stops, overwhelmed.
Mino Vlachos: And so I'm going to start to talk about more about the coping mechanisms that you've mentioned. And so there's different coping mechanisms. And some might lead us to a potentially healthier place and some might offer some short term relief, but ultimately, on the long term also cause some, I'll call it damage, for instance, there's some research that, again, I don't know that this is necessarily surprising, but that sugar, when we consume sugar, might be used by the brain to produce serotonin, which is one of the chemicals that can make us feel happy. And so when we eat a lot of sugar, it can be an attempt to self medicate and almost to bump up the happy molecule just for a little bit. But in the long term, chronic use of sugar can also have some negative impacts on the body. So Krisana, what have you noticed in terms of how people sometimes can pick up coping mechanisms that might not actually serve long term health?
Krisana Locke: You mean negative coping mechanisms? Yes, like soothing self to self soothe, which has a negative impact. So obviously when someone is feeling stressed and there's emotions happening inside the body and feelings, but they're overriding them with, oh, I'll look outside to take something in. So instant gratification is sugar, and a lot of chocolate these days has a high degree of sugar. So even when we eat chocolate, we feel self soothing, but then we're having cravings and we're having this negative impact with sugar on the body. Some other coping mechanisms is too much expression, too much expressing on the altar of high emotions, high emotions, thinking that, okay, if I express everything, this is going to support me, but this may be creating a lot of more high activation in the nervous system. So it's trying to find what do I need? So that's emotional coping mechanisms that you think that are healthy but are not, maybe healthy for you, and also really bad coping mechanisms with your physical health, sleep, time to oneself. So all these things coping mechanisms where you have a sense that you're doing okay, but they may be habits and they are impacting you negatively because you haven't really looked if they're really serving you in the right way.
Mino Vlachos: And Mazen, I know you've done in your time as a researcher, as a scientist, you've looked at addiction and learning behaviors. So what can you tell us about maladaptive coping mechanisms?
Dr. Mazen Harb: A lot. I really love this topic, actually. Again, the maladaptive coping mechanisms are at the beginning, they started as a way of self soothing, as Krisana have said it, I will call it as well, self medicating. At certain point when I was really very idealistic, I used to consider at certain point all self medication bad. But then actually I realized sometimes when you're a teenager and you don't know where to go to the self medication might have helped actually. So those coping mechanism. So everything that I'm going to say now, it's not that they're going to all at the beginning were unhealthy. It's our first way to go and then support ourselves. And then I would like to say the overusage of it make it maladaptive, but not the first usage, second or the third. We tend to go and then find ways to cope. This is our embedded survival mechanism. So again, everything that we went to, from drugs to food, to sugar, to watching porn, to sports, to everything, was a way to self lose and feel good. Because we are super overwhelmed and we have stress and we really want to regulate it with the opposite of it, with pleasure. So that's the first disclaimer and understanding. There is nothing here to judge. It's really an attempt. And even when it continues, it's still an attempt that has started at the beginning. Even when we have lots of addiction and things, all of those addiction came from a place where we really wanted to take care of, find a way to get out of this pain, this unsafety, this fear cycle within us. And actually that we kept on repeating it because the first time it worked and the second time it worked, but when we kept on repeating it, we create a dependency outside of us to make us rebalance our hormonal system. Yeah, that's first what I want to say about maladaptive before we go in, we can go into each one, how do they look like? But I feel like it's good for now to give it a general understanding and to help folks out there when they hear it. That judgment is part of continuing the overwhelm and the opposite of resilience. Because the problem of any addictive behavior, of anything that we consider maladaptive, is our constant emotion within us that says of shame and guilt. Shame and guilt after we do things. It is what continues this saga of really going into these cycles of up and down. So before stopping even those maladaptive behavior really go to the root of the emotions before that, which is fear, shame and guilt. And once shame and guilt has been addressed, then one goes and can address the behavior itself. And that's the thing, because so many people do amazing work, they go immediately address the behavior itself and then take it out. And on one day they collapse and then they go take it. The problem is, and they go to another cycle. Why? Because they feel super ashamed and super guilty. So why not go to the root of it? The root of everything is the emotion is not the behavior. The behavior comes after the emotions. So when we are aware of the emotions first, it will be easy later on to change a maladaptive behavior to adaptive behavior. And if one day we collapse, we don't bring the emotion back. We're more in acceptance where we are and say, okay, I see what I did, but now I will prefer not to do it again. See, there is less emotion. And that's actually what keep addiction going. It's the way how we speak to ourselves based on those negative emotions that we consider them lesser or lower or disgusting, and then we hate ourselves through them.
Mino Vlachos: There's some interesting research I just read. Even, I think, in the last week or so that they've studied, there was a study of women, and they looked at them eating and the pleasure they derive from the food, or the shame and guilt they derive from the food. And what the researchers found is that based on the enjoyment or displeasure, there was a different absorption of nutrients. So when we enjoy our food more, we absorb more nutrients, we have higher levels of iron, et cetera, when we either judge the food like you don't like it, or we actually absorb way less nutrients. So once again, there's such a link in the mind body system. And so even having something that visually looks nice can increase the amount of nutrients we absorb. So just to comment on a little bit of what you were sharing there around how emotions Mazan, can really impact the physicality of what is happening in our body, and vice versa. And I know for myself, if I kind of use myself as a personal guinea pig for this topic, maybe these podcasts are just a way for me to get free coaching from you both. Is I have historically, up until my mid 20s, really struggled with overwhelm and even the topic of coping mechanisms. I had a lot of what I would call maladaptive or negative coping mechanisms, one of which was food and something I'm still working to unwind. So I, early on in my life, adopted more binge eating behaviors. So I would go in these cycles of eating everything and anything I could and feeling these cycles of shame and guilt and kind of self condemnation, and then eating even more and then condemning myself even more. And one of the things that I've been working to unwind is a bit of this, even the part of just judging myself and just sometimes if I want to eat something that's quote unquote junk food, just even allowing myself to enjoy it, because maybe I'll even increase the satiation and what I'm looking for. Like, I just talked about the experiment rather than just judging myself for what I'm doing, what I'm doing to myself. But I was in a state of complete overwhelm. So I did not have any form of kind of emotional resilience, mental health resilience. And then I met the two of you, and I worked with you in the personal development department through tantric energetics, and I was able to start to put together some understanding of how I operated and how to start to build some adaptability, and to basically unplug from that overwhelm and start to build the foundations of how to take care of myself. So I want to now turn to that topic and we're going to now talk about resilience. And in a moment, as I mentioned early on, we're going to talk about beyond resilience, but right now we're just going to talk about resilience. And the way I define resilience is the ability to kind of adapt or withstand stimulus. So when we can kind of navigate the environment and we can be in flow with the environment, then to some extent we have resilience. I think about in New York City, we build a lot of skyscrapers. I live in New York City, and if you're at the top floors of the skyscraper, you'll notice, like Krisana gave the analogy of the tree, they sway. So when the wind goes, the whole building actually moves, a whole skyscraper. And if you've never been there, it can be very scary. But actually it's exactly how it's designed, because if the building is rigid, then the building will break with the wind and it will collapse. So resilience for the building is actually to be able to move with the wind. If we start to think about resilience. Now as a topic, Krisana, you have worked with thousands of people, including me. When you see someone that's in overwhelm, like I might have been, and using these different maladaptive coping mechanisms, what are some of the ways that you support people like me to move out of that into a more adaptive, resilient state?
Krisana Locke: First of all, I would appreciate the person that they're at this stage to express where they're at, to self inquire, just to be meeting and expressing. I've noticed the way I am around, say, for example, food, and I don't understand what is it that's driving me to have these ups and downs. So to bring in the awareness and to bring in an awareness to what's happening. And there's unconscious behaviors that are driving oneself to go unconsciously into these mechanisms of overeating. So it's really breaking down and bringing awareness and creating even the space. When the shoulds and should nots. And I feel bad or I shouldn't be eating, this is to really go totally into I know what I want to eat and I give myself time, I slow down the process, I bring awareness to it, I be total with eating. So giving yourself and others support, first of all, not to condemn yourself, not to treat yourself badly, but to bring awareness into the act, to bring awareness of the behaviors and what are you thinking about or what's driving you, but to also come more into totality with eating. Most people eat these days with their iPhone or their phone in front of them, scrolling or watching. So they may be scrolling, watching TV, having conversations. There's too much stimulus going on and everything a lot to process that unconscious behaviors are wired in and there's no way to separate yourself and to bring some steps to balance yourself. So I would start there.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen. As you think about moving from that state of overwhelm into a state of resilience, of being able to either adapt or withstand what's happening, what are some of the steps that support us to move into resilience from your standpoint?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Awareness. Awareness that we are overwhelmed. Awareness that we're not functioning well before starting to judging. Most of the time when we're afraid or when we're feeling a feeling of anxiety or depression, what's happening? We are startled, but actually we're not aware that we are in a cycle. We really feel unsafe. We're really overwhelmed. Is really to bring awareness and just by doing this, it help you to reconnect to the body. And I really ask everyone to bring that to try it. It's not going to solve everything, but actually that's a doorway in really awareness that actually. Okay. And then when I have this awareness, ask the question, how can I support myself? If you do those two things, you will jump so much in learning how to cope and how to have a resilience. The issue of being resilient or not resilient is unawareness of what's happened to us. Is the fear of those things that's happening. We don't know why they happen. You have to understand, most of our fears are based on fearing to feel the emotions. It's not based on the emotion themselves. So it's really to stop ask. And if the answer is I do not know how, it's fine, but at least you did this big jump. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know how to supervise myself. The body brain system will be like, okay, there's acknowledgment that we are inactive. You know what might happen? What might happen if we might say no to certain things. Friday night one work from Monday to Friday and then Friday night arrives, we're super overwhelmed. And then we don't know what's happening. And somebody asks us to go out and party. Since we didn't ask where we are, we go and party. To be around so many people, it's super overwhelming. And then actually the problem of overwhelm is like we start to add more things on us that makes us even more and more and more overwhelmed. But if we notice that we're not safe, then we feel like actually I cannot be with so many people, then the answer would be, how do I feel safe to be with one person or to call a family member or those all are nice coping mechanism. There's many others, but I hope everyone will tune in and really find their own answers. There's not one answer that fits all, fits everyone. So I'm not here to give answer what things to do. I'm here to give answer guidance in to bring awareness of what's happening to us and then knowing that there is a way to get out of it only by knowing that something is happening to us.
Mino Vlachos: So for better or worse, I'm going to go and tell people how. So we're going to pair it with each other. When we look at research of the things. I'm enjoying your smile, Mazan. When we look at the research of four categories of things that help people feel more resilient, we're going to go through each of the four and I'm going to ask us how we can do this in a healthy, aware way. The number one thing that research finds supports people to feel resilient is social support. It is interacting healthily with other human beings. Human beings were never meant to be an island onto themselves. They were meant to disperse and distribute stress across a system, across a network. And so in a moment, we'll return to how to do that in a healthy way. But that's the number one way. And I think it's almost double any other thing we're going to talk about when we look at efficacy. So having a strong social network, social support. The second, as we mentioned, is attuning to the emotions and the mental health, which is all interlinked how we basically bring balance to the mind body system and the emotions that we're feeling. And I'm going to skip ahead and say the number one thing here is to be aware of and feel your emotions. It's what everything Mazin just mentioned, attending to the physical health of the body, very important. If we're sick, it's very hard to adapt, it's very hard to thrive if we're in a chronic illness. And the last one is to bring organization to life, to have some order that we're able to bring in a healthy way. And so now I'm going to open.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Up each one of these because the.
Mino Vlachos: Quality we bring to each one will impact if they're actually a resource or if it's something that takes us further away from ourselves. So, Krisana, we hear about social support, but earlier we also talked about overexpressing can be something that actually can be a negative coping mechanism. So help me sort this out a bit. When you hear about social support in a healthy way, how can individuals use that? What does it look like?
Krisana Locke: Well, these are external factors. And social support or social connection is knowing in oneself what support helps you to self regulate, what gives you support. That I'm connected in a healthy way. So if you are disconnected with yourself and you step out and you just step into social connection and you're highly stressed and highly nervous about interacting and you go to a nightclub or a club here we're living in Berlin into a club where there's lots of alcohol and I probably am aware that there's lots of recreational drugs. This may not be a social connecting support for someone. So it's really healthy human support that you have the ability to find safety and connection where you can open up in a more intimate way with friends and family, going for a walk in the nature, and there's an opening to have a more intimate space with each other. So some people don't know what are healthy social connections. So one has to find where if one gets more agitated, then that's not the right social connection support for you or communities finding where you feel, hey, this community, I found my place, I feel safe, I feel good, I can grow in this. So finding communities that support you and.
Mino Vlachos: Some of the ways that I have found, and again, looking at some of the research is there's two categories I always talk about is one can be practical support. So if I'm going through something difficult in life, someone can cook me a meal, pick up my kids, there are things that people can do to help each other and it's a very natural, healthy thing for people to support each other with practical tasks. And the other is emotional help. So there's emotional support. But I think this is where we might not always have good models or role models for what that looks like. So, Mazan, can you give me a little bit of insight on when I come to you and I have an emotional problem, what would a healthy, relating dynamic look like between me and you versus something that might not serve either of us?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, actually, I'm happy you brought it to the second part of Krisana's answer, because without it, it's really two components of it. And I will just go back one tiny bit, which is the ability to ask for support is everything more. And metaphorically, it's everything. We are too proud and we're too shy, funny. We're too proud and we're too ashamed. It's a funny mix. They're completely not related. They're opposite of each other. We're too proud and we're too shy and ashamed to ask for support. I realized from myself first, the moment, because I felt I am supposed to solve it by myself. I cannot ask for help. The moment I ask for help is the moment where 70% to 80% something start to regulate. I was like, what? Ask for help, but then know how to receive it. The problem is we do not know how to receive. I'm going to say a big thing here. We do not know how to receive love. We go our life asking for love. The most scary thing to receive is love. You might even not notice. And that's a funny thing. And then sometimes when someone shares you, I love you, or that you're like, yeah, me too. We really feel uncomfortable. So to ask for support is really amazing. Again, before even having it. That's one. So see, regardless what the people will say already, you'll have 50%. Something will shift in you just to ask about it. Second, when we ask for support, and I know why Mino asking this question. Because in our line of work and in our cultures, we come from. Everybody's an advisor. I come from the Mediterranean. And I know Mino, your family comes from the Mediterranean. So it's more Mediterranean understanding. Krisana is more the australian English. They don't have the same approach. Unsolicited help, let us call it or advised. They're more. They know boundaries, Mediterranean. For whatever reason, we live close, well together. That boundaries is not something you have to teach it. Like, what are you even talking about? That comes from the west, very far out. And I'm like, yeah, okay, cool. Just a joke about it. We can speak about it another day. But the idea is really unsolicited help again happen to everyone, regardless their culture. Now jokes apart, it's really regardless of culture. So one of the things is why lots of people, me included. Sometimes I do like the biggest thing to really go through is to ask for help. But then I go and ask for help. Then I go and that person start to philosophize and I become feeling even more uncomfortable and even I feel shy to tell them. Actually, shut up. I'm overwhelmed. Like it's even more. The issue is in the humans like this need also, since we do not have the big ability to receive support and love and help, we have the opposite. We like to give and over give and over give. So to feel needed, okay, that's it. We like to feel needed. It gives us a meaning of our life. So when we go ask people really to be watchful, to know what to ask. And here's this thing, what to ask, which kind of help you want, and then I will explain the main help. Your friends, your mothers, your fathers, your brothers, your siblings are not doctors, are not psychologists. Your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your partner, your spouse, your kid are none of all of that. They're not healed to heal you. They're not here to therapy you. So when we understand that something relaxes us, but they're here because they're always sharing love. They can share love with you. The best way to share love with you if they give you the best and most beautiful gift for every human being, if they listen to where you are, if they're able to listen to where you are without intervening. And we're going to really watch here why we do intervene. We need to bring awareness on the emotions. When you go, share that with your parents, with your closed ones, again, not your boss, because your boss doesn't have the issue. And then I'll go to it. Why not your boss? It works better with the boss or your colleagues. Sometimes the people who are close to us, when we come with a problem, they become very afraid from their own fear. They want to help you. Why? So they feel good about themselves. They're super afraid of you. So they try to start advising. So we call it a helping helper syndrome, right. But actually the helper syndrome comes from I feel I need to be needed, but comes also from our own fear when it comes to the family circle. So the best gift actually we can give to someone, somebody asks us, what do you need? Just like, okay, and then we sit, we hold space, and then we're just actively listening without intervening, without trying to help, without trying to therapatize, knowing our role. And it's a tremendously thusing and helpful for the nervous system of someone who's overwhelmed to have another being alive, being in front of us while we can speak without this being super activated and just being holding space for us by not doing, by just really being listening, without trying to intervene and help and save us. Save us. It's super helpful. And guys, girls, please go try it there. Ask someone or you try it yourselves. This is the best way for healing is in non doing, in active, conscious non doing and being present. This is the best gift you can give yourself and others.
Mino Vlachos: So, Krisana, I want to do a little experiment or game. Paint a picture for you. And I want you to tell me. I'll ask a question after you tell me. So Mazen is going to be our perfect listener. Like everything he just said, he's going to help me with. He's going to have create space for me, listen. And I come as the person who is overwhelmed. And I start going, this is what.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm going to do.
Mino Vlachos: Okay, so he's holding space, he's doing his role perfectly. And I come and I say, oh my God, this woman, she did this thing and she did that thing, and then this did that thing, and then this thing happened. And then that thing happened. And then can you believe this woman and this woman did this and can you believe that guy and what this guy did and what he said? And I go on and on and on and on. Mazen is doing his job. He's listening, he's holding space. And yet, do you feel like this is going to be emotional support? Am I going to be able to emotionally regulate in this game I'm playing out?
Krisana Locke: No, because one is complaining about the others and one is not in connection with to talk about what's happening to themselves. And so one who holds space for that has an ID. I hold the space. But you're holding space for shit.
Mino Vlachos: It takes two to tango, is what I tango.
Krisana Locke: Yeah. And actually for children, it's beautiful to hold space when they're all this is happening in their life, their day, this happens. But if we're talking about adults and you get a sense that they're complaining about everybody else, judging, complaining, and they haven't been able to connect with. I feel this and I want to express where I am right now. Then we have some conscious connection of someone knowing where they're at and they just need to be listened to. For a child, it's really beautiful for adult or caregivers or parents just to be there to listen to them their day. And they've discovered this and they're so curious. A child will be not judging or complaining. So there's difference. So we're talking about with adults, I would intervene.
Mino Vlachos: Can I ask you? Then Mazen's given me this perfect gift of like he's really there, present, listening, intent on what I want to share, but it takes two to tango. So in order for me to actually almost get the emotional support I need to share in a certain kind of way, I have a responsibility as well. It's not just the person who's supporting me who has responsibility. So can you give me some principles about how I can share and express when I have overwhelmed, when I'm in the presence of an amazing listener like Mazen, so that this co regulation can take place?
Krisana Locke: Usually, if there's someone who is in the presence of really listening to someone, they've already centered themselves in their body, the listener. They're aware of their body, they're aware of being in a relaxed, easy, open space, being present with, to be open, to listen and not listen from here, but to really just listen from the heart space. And then also for the person who wants to share, because there's someone really there for you to be. You're being seen and you're going to be heard, is to really connect with your body. First to sit down, get a sense of centering yourself in your body. And then just before jumping into what is there, is to get a sense of what emotions are there, what are you feeling about what you want to talk about. And then to put together with your thoughts, what is it that you would like to start sharing in a concise way, and then just to bring with that, to share with that. And you will have space. There is space for you to be heard, to be seen, to be understood, because someone's really listening and not judging you. It's just there in a receptivity. And when someone really feels this, there's a space that they can start to go deeper into themselves, to feel themselves, to feel the depth of their heart, and to start to connect with a deeper awareness, an inquiry of themselves.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen, you've worked with many people. What responsibility does the sharer have in their sharing to be able to heal themselves?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Man, I love it. Because actually, that's the note I put here. And then you just asked the question perfectly. Actually, I'm going to go to the science of it, because without the science is nothing than to understand the fact of our brain body systems, actually, and understanding ourselves. So first, to know where we are and what's happening is to bring awareness and knowledge about what is happening. So, first of all, when we start coming here and we really want support, when we stop complaining and blaming. Again, I'm not saying that it's not a judgment that you should not do that, it's just more know where it comes from. And what does that to us? So complaining and blaming is nothing more than the effect of helplessness. So we really need to get out of helplessness. But what does helplessness look? We know that it looks in the body. I cannot connect to the body. I feel of fear. I feel unsafe. It's in my brain. How does it look? It looks on a more behavioral way and more on wordings, complaining and blaming. And the problem is when we complain and blame, we can complain once and blame once. It's good sometimes. This happened to me. This happened to me good, I understood it. But then if it goes on and on and on, that mean we're fully helpless. We're saying our power is we lost our power. It's the loss of power, of our inner power, and it's because of someone else. Hence now I define again another way, helplessness. Hence we feel really not resilient. Hence we lose all our coping mechanisms. So when we come and we really feel unsafe, we are in a headspace, because whenever we fear, we don't want to feel the body. We feel unsafe in the body. It all goes to the mind. And then in the mind, there's all those stories. And then we try to solve it. But the more we try to solve it with the mind, the more it gets complicated. Hence most of the time, at the beginning, we're not overwhelmed. At the beginning, we feel a bit of fear. We feel a bit of. And then when we start to really disconnect with the body and then go to the mind to really solve it through fear, we start to be very helpless. Hence complaining, blame and projecting. And it's because of them. So that's the first thing. So to be aware of it. When I'm sharing, I'm not talking about everyone and everything, that it's because of them. I understand certain things happen through others, but it cannot be all our issues. It's because of others, because we have to take responsibility. And the responsibility is when I come, imagine you're listening, I have an issue. I come to you, okay, this person did this at work. This happened. Okay, I got it. This is out of the way. But then you might ask me, or I might take responsibility, say, but what do I feel? What does that make me feel? That makes me feel helpless, that makes me feel sad, that made me feel angry, that made me feel the moment we know what makes us feel is the moment we're reconnecting to our body even more when we start to feel them. Because the funny thing, we're afraid of those emotions. But the moment we start to say them and know what this event made us feel, and the moment we start feeling them, that's the moment of getting out of helplessness. You're like, that's the formula. Actually, the formula is in just recognizing, acknowledging, owning the emotions that arose regardless of the event and slowly allowing ourselves to feel, because now in the presence of another being, so we can feel if that being is in his own presence, and then saying, just where I am at, oh, man, it relaxes us tremendously. And slowly, immediately, we slowly get out of overwhelm because we took back our power. We stopped the blame, we stopped complaining, we dropped the fear and tried to solve it all through the mind. And we connected to the body. And you know what? Millions of years of evolution, the body is the medicine cabinet. The body has everything. It just needs the right structure around it to allow self healing to happen. So when we go in the brain to try to solve it, we really let go of our medicine. But there's a way to go to it, and that's what we're describing today.
Mino Vlachos: So for those listening, Mazen's background, he has PhD, neuroscience, physiology, biology. And you've also done work in crisis. And I would like to request, because I know that what you're sharing is based in science, and I can sit here and maybe say, well, I would like a practical example. So my request is, Mazen, I would love, if you are open to it, to share. When you were doing the research with the syrian refugees that were welcomed into Germany, you've told me about a case of an individual that was passing out. And so I would like, if you're open to it, to share what was happening with that individual and the other practitioners and what you were bringing and how it brought a different outcome.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Thank you. Yes, I worked in war and migration trauma research in 2015, when Angela Merkel and Germany opened the door for syrian refugees. And it happened, for whatever reason, I also arrived to Germany, like, August 2015 arrived, like, I finished my PhD in Munich, but then I left for a while, and then I came back to Berlin. And then it happened also that I was in charite University hospital. That was the main university hospital dealing with the government. And then they took over and they start really to support all the refugees coming. And my boss at that time was the main one responsible to create this called cleaning Stella. So this where all people who need mental and emotional support, they come, their psychologists and psychiatrists, and there was me, the scientist, who was like, let me know. I want to know more about war and migration, trauma. It was a big tOpic, and I learned a lot actually through that research, a lot. A lot about listening, a lot about presence, a lot about healing, self healing. And through those experiences I've done with lots of different ages, but the ones who really struck me the most are the younger adults, actually like more of between 16 and 22, 23 and Mino, probably what you're mentioning is a story where, yeah, I had someone I do. The interviews are about like 3 hours or lots of research things to fill. I asked about their lives, certain things that happened in their childhood, lots of surveys to take. So it was more of like, all in all, I had like 3 hours with them while measuring also physiological things, stress, taking saliva to take stress hormones, heartbeat, pressure, tension. And then actually it was working with that specific person. And at the end of the 3 hours I was recording so I can go back and then take the notes. You have a ptsd diagnostic? And then I spoke with him. I'm like, okay, after being 3 hours, being listening and actively listening, being present, not trying to help him, not trying to solve him, just really being there and really accepting what happened to him. And it was a guy, yes, accepting what happened to him and really not trying to be the hero of the day, just really doing my job respectfully and acknowledging what happened without judgment, without super emotions. And then I arrived at the end of the ptsd diagnostic and I say, how do you sleep? Do you have recurrent dreams? Yeah, a lot. What happens to you then the second question, or in the questions are like, are you able to tell the story? No, I cannot tell my story. What happened to me, that event. But what happens to you when you tell the story? I go and faint. I never tell my story. And I'm like, interesting. So you never told your story? No. The moment I say I faint, I cannot. And then I'm like, why are you saying that? He's like, yes, because when I was in the camp, they were like, social workers. Social workers are really supporting. They're doing an amazing job. But for some reason, not everybody's trained to know how to hold space and deal with extreme things as war and as people come from places where blast and bombs were there and people whatever, like really big stuff. We're not ready as a human to listen to them when we come from a very safe environment. And then the social worker, really out of her goodwill, she asked the person, what's happening to you? And then the guy wanted to share, really, he wants support. He was really feel frozen, cold, disconnected. And he had to tell her, okay, the story is big. I'm not going to say it, share it now, but the story is big. I never heard such a huge story of a blast that happened. And it's like movies. And so she start to tell the story. And this person, the social worker, I imagine what happened to her. But how do I know what happened to her? Because this guy fainted and fell. And actually by telling the story, it's super extreme. The social worker didn't know how to deal with herself, so she could not accept what happened to him. So her nervous system went into full overwhelm. And then actually his nervous system was detecting what's happening. And it really kind of how to say it really proved, confirmed that this story is a huge. What happens in trauma and those things is we really feel what happened to me is unacceptable and the body cannot take with it. So whenever, even when you go to your psychologist or whenever you meet people, our nervous system, our perception is always tuned in to check if everything is safe. And if I want to tell my story, I'm always checking in unconsciously and subconsciously if all is good and how you will receive it. And then, yes, the nervous system has that capacity and that's what happened. And the nervous system is the first time I wanted to share that story with this person. So the nervous system and subconscious was checking with that social worker. And then it realized that the social worker could not deal with it. And then it's a loop of confirmation. Oh my God, of course, it's so dangerous. I cannot deal with it, I cannot process those emotions. And the person fainted. So after 3 hours, we talked, he told me about all this episode. It was everything by detail, by people in the air, everything. Him in the air, blast, like everything. And he told it as a story. And then when I asked this, I told him, but okay, yeah, you faint. You faint, right? He's like, yeah, I faint whenever I tell someone. Then I stopped, I put the pen down, I look at him, I said, you know, we've been here for 3 hours. He said, yes. Did you realize that you told me everything in detail, what happened? And he's like, oh, what? He didn't notice? But how come I always faint? And that's it. And I had to see this person after one week because I needed saliva. So to really monitor the cortisol level, stress hormone levels over week. And then this person came after week, a complete different person with a big smile, thanking me. At the beginning, I didn't know, right? It was the beginning of my research. So thank you, doctor, thank you. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, what happened? And he didn't know what happened. But later on I understood he was free and he could start to feel, finally he could allow himself to feel those emotions. And what did I do? I didn't do much, but in that, not much. I did everything. And this is what I realized. Everyone trying to do much. And that's the story, actually. And this is how the nervous system and our subconscious always checking if we feel safe, if our therapist, psychologist, friend, mother, partner, if they are safe themselves. So I can co regulate. And that's what I did. I was really present with it, really listening, not condemning anything, not the ones who made the bombing, not the war, not the whole world. I was just really listening to this person telling a story, and not when I listened, not thinking about myself. Oh, poor guy. Oh, poor me. Oh, this has happened to me. Stop all this chatter. Being present. And that was the best gift. And this person regulated. And I saw him for multiple times after, of course, he needed support more, but at least the support, like, there's no fainting. And it was more jumping good. And other people were supporting him more and more. But the big overwhelm has been crossed, and now there is a way path for healing.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you so much for sharing. It reminds me of something I've noticed with myself as well. I think this is probably most human beings, is when an event occurs and there's an emotion that gets coupled with it. I know I'm crossing into kind of Krisana's field here. I've learned, particularly in working with Krisana, that over time, if I can process the emotion so I can sit with the event and remember it and tell the story and notice what's happening in my body, notice happening with the emotions each time I tell the story in that kind of what I'll call conscious way of noticing the emotions, each way the emotion becomes less and less and less. It's like as if I squeezed a lemon and the first time I drink just straight lemon juice. But if I can really process the emotions and feel what's happening in my body, each time I'm adding water, I'm adding water. I'm adding water to the point where by the end, it actually just tastes like water or it doesn't taste like anything. So I can then access a memory and it has no emotional coupling whatsoever. And that, to me, is what good therapy also is. It's not just about remembering the past and forming intellectual links. Oh, I know now myself, this pattern, or. I know how this happened, I know how that happened. But have you sat with the emotion that comes up from that story? And have you done that repeatedly or iteratively? And so if I go through a shock, I don't know, I get hit on the street, like car accident, or. I don't know, whatever. I now do practice both, going inside myself, but also telling the story out loud. And I do it in kind of multiple iterations to see is there still emotion that gets evoked. And of course, I could bypass that and be like, I told the story and nothing came up. And because I disconnected from emotion. So there's a way to cheat that system if you want to, but if you would like to healthily uncouple the kind of emotionality, this is the way that I've learned, and it's made me a much freer person. And so now we look to. Because we can open. It's probably a way different podcast, we can open up a whole topic about trauma and trauma response. What I will say, and we've talked about this in a previous podcast briefly, and I'm sure we'll do a whole episode at some point, or multiple episodes about these topics, is that each person reacts differently to the same event. So you can have the same exact event, and people will react differently. And so we're going to bypass for this moment, talking about post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, as Mazen referenced. Instead, we're talking about an interesting phenomenon, which is post traumatic growth. So what we noticed in research is that some subset of the population, when they go through a large event that can be categorized as traumatic, they end up becoming much stronger afterwards. They end up becoming much more resilient. And there is research around a concept called antifragility, that basically there are certain systems that when you put stress upon them, acute stress, they become stronger. So we think about our muscles. When I go to the gym and I work out, I'm making micro tears in my muscles, but the muscle regenerates and grows back stronger. So there are certain systems, and biological systems actually tend to be anti fragile systems. They actually get stronger when you put them under some form of stimulus. So, Krisana, I would like to ask you, when we go through events in life, stimuli, it doesn't have to be traumatic, but just stimuli in life. What are the things that support us to actually not only just withstand that event, but thrive afterwards?
Krisana Locke: I am going to say the word withstand. You've said it a few times. And if a person is in high stress, and they're looking to go through something. Maybe it's not good that they withstand to go through the stress. It's like how to lower activation.
Mino Vlachos: There is one kind of philosophy, which is the resilience is about being adaptable, right? And we just withstand, like we just talked about, to some extent, we get through things, we learn how to cope. But there's another kind of subset where we say, actually there's something called post traumatic growth, something called antifragility. The essence of that is that we go through life and we actually get stronger through stimulation. Can you tell us about what supports people to thrive?
Krisana Locke: What really supports people to thrive is to process things through the body. So it's really allowing your body to become more resilient. So what we offer a lot in our workshops are active meditations. So this means it's supporting the body to get more resilient with some activity, with breathing, to allow the life energy to flow again into the body, so that you can start to have an ability to feel the body, to allow energy to move in your body and to then move into silence. So you're activating the body a bit. So there's a stress, there's an ability of healthy stress rising in the body. So you have energy and emotional state move through the body, and then you go into the silent phase where you then settle, and then you go into rest and witnessing. So this is a way to build resilience in the body. So there's healthy ways to have to build up with stresses that are healthy for the body. Going to the gym, studying, also learning things and applying, focusing and study brings a healthy stress because you learn memory. And also, I also encourage people to remember in their past when they went through something that was difficult and that was successful and how they achieved through their body and through their emotional state. So there are healthy stresses. There's lots of healthy stresses these days. You see, with the Wim Hof technique, they go and ICE plunging. This is actually activating the sympathetic nervous system to expand and deal with a stressor. And there's also a point where you come out and then you have to relax. So it's a pendulation, where you're expanding and you're contracting. You're expanding and contracting. So you give more of an expansion to the body, expansion of the self, to start to have a range of resilience, bigger, wider. Some people are born with a capacity to have a bigger resilience. The way they grew up, support life, family, social support activities. So some people do have a path where just even children playing, they get to expand their capacity of resilience and others don't. So it's learning how to in life to start to bring expansion. And so you come out of this contracted space of resilience. We're also in our work, and often we'll do work that involves breath work, in workshops, in tantric energetics and movement, where it will start to touch the space of life energy. And then there's this opening space, and then so there's a bigger capacity to feel, a capability to support yourself. And then after that there will be again a contraction, but it will not go to this core contract of a small tube where resilience, that's how much you have. It's like getting the growth of this to happen again. I know in myself I have a capacity of a good physical resilience in my body and a good emotional strength of myself because of my wild childhood. I grew up in a very natural environment where you fell off bikes, many, many things where you dealt with a resilience, a healthy resilience in the body.
Mino Vlachos: It's like we telegraphed, I don't know, we telekinesis. You read my mind. So I was wanting to get into the topic of pendulation. So I know some people, we talk about the overwhelm and we give whatever some advice about, well, go into a place where you feel safe, remove the stimulation, allow the exhaustion to dissipate, so rest, recovery. And then some people I've noticed can get stuck in removing every stimulus from their life. It's like, I call it the emotional bubble boy. So there was, I don't know if anyone remembers the bubble boy, where the immune system was so weak that it was just a real boy, I think it was. Or was it just a story? But he had to be in this bubble, because any germ, I guess maybe I'm saying it kind of like glee, but maybe it was actually a difficult thing for the child, couldn't be around germs. I've noticed some people, in the pursuit of getting out of the overwhelm, they remove every stimulus from their life, but then they never reintroduce the stimulus ever again. It reminds me of meditators who go into the mountains, into the cave, and then they stay there. They never reenter the marketplace. It's something that we've talked about is how to bring awareness and mindfulness into the marketplace. So can you tell us a little bit more about the role of pendulation and how to kind of oscillate so that we're kind of interacting, let's call it with the marketplace, with people, with life, and then we're also taking space for ourselves. What does that dance look like, in your opinion?
Krisana Locke: The people, first of all, the people that go into taking all stimulus away to bring down, overwhelm or to be the perfect person, like I have a goal. They are bypassing the body. They're bypassing. It's a very mental, conceptual way to see yourself. So they're basically numbing themselves and they're isolating themselves. I'll just meditate and I will shut off any stimulus. But your body doesn't need stimulus. Your body needs to process emotions, digestion, many, many things. So if we do this, you put yourself into components and we are not components. We are a very unique being. So actually, also when we're working with people, where I'm working with people, there's so many factors I have to look at, like what is happening. There's many layers. So I have to discover and support in the way that's most appropriate for them. Pendulation is expansion and contraction. And how we can do this in our life, it's very easy, is to bring in imbalance. So when we basically are over active at work, we need to go for a walk in the park. We need to slow down, we need to stop. Okay, you can blow up a balloon. Keep blowing up the balloon, it expands. But if you keep blowing up the balloon, blowing, blowing, blowing, there's going to be a point where it's going to explode. So how much are you going to want to be in expansion? And then so there's this always going to happen. So it's really on a broad level, is to find what supports you in your life where there's overactivity, where you can bring in balance by bringing in rest or slowing down or doing something, but not doing it to the level of ten, but doing it to the level of seven. So you're not increasing all the time, but you're allowing this to happen. Everything is in an expansion and then contraction and pendulating life cycles, nature. You will see jellyfish, wings of birds, everything, night and day. And if we don't understand these balances, then we come out of rhythms. So finding rhythms, if you find that you start to talk too much so fast, slow it down. So there's many pendulations and expansion and contractions you can see in life. But that's very broad.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. So, Mazen, I know when we've had some discussions there are some moments, and I know you're a very dynamic person, so this isn't a fixed state, but there are some moments where you've expressed that the word resilience can feel limiting, like it doesn't fully embrace the full capacity of who we are and what we can be. So I'll take a similar kind of approach, which is there's resilience, which is about this perception of we can just get through things and there's a different state of being, which is we actually become stronger when we are in life and interacting with things and learning and then going and reflecting. Can you tell me a little bit about, from your perspective, what is the kind of thriving state look like? What is beyond resilience?
Dr. Mazen Harb: What's beyond resilience is to be alive and why. It's beyond resilience because we have gained enough experience, hence enough wisdom about our cells, our bodies, our brain, our nervous system. So we start to be not as much surprised, and we start to understand the game of life and the spectrum of all the events and everything that needs to be attended to. What's beyond resilience is aliveness. That means knowing that like the moon, like nature, every single day that comes, it's not like the one before. It can never be. And it's not like the one after. The issue about resilience coming out from super overwhelmed to resilience as a method, we become stuck in concepts. Concepts are super useful, but they are not the truth. Concepts are useful to us, understand something and to learn something and to train ourselves. But the moment that something is embodied, that concept is not needed. And that applies for everything in life. That's another podcast on its own. But I hope people will reflect on that. What I just mentioned here, you're going to say, so what is beyond concepts? When we wake up in the morning, after we establish routine, after we established broad organization, so we're not overwhelmed. After we establish the physical activity, to really regulate ourself, after we establish awareness of our emotion, after we establish social support. See here, I mentioned those four things we said to people to get out of overwhelm. Social support, awareness of our emotions, physical health, physical and bringing organization. That mean bringing priority. So after we establish all of that, there's the human that wakes up in the morning. Either we go through automatic way of being because we are afraid to go to overwhelm, but we want to stay in resilience. So I want to keep on to those four pillars that I heard here and everybody speaking about. This is amazing for a while until you understand that safety is something you can attain from within. I'm not. We don't have to go over competitive with ourselves to like, what is he saying? The point is aliveness happens. I'm going to give a very tangible example. The kids, the kids have the same thing. I'm talking about aliveness, but in a very unconscious way. So what I'm speaking about beyond resilience is how to be as alive as a kid in a conscious way. Bam. No concepts needed. Again, I'm not going to teach that, I'm not going to guide that, because this is a place where there is no more guidance, aloneness, one need to travel that road alone. Once we know that we can bring back safety, once we know that we can adapt, now as we know we can get back to coping mechanism, when we start to really learn and understand about ourselves and how we function, then it comes full aliveness. And you know what, in full of liveness you're going to say, but what if things happens? I'm like, exactly. You don't know what's going to happen. And actually you are in the unknown, but in the unknown you are fresh, you are alive, you're not afraid to express yourself and you don't plan what might happen controlling. But when something happens, you have the tools, you have the key of awareness, you have the key of asking for support, you have the key of what you use the word Krisana, she said self inquiry. You have the key of the physical health. You start to have so many keys you used in the past, but they are not dogmatic anymore. And yet then the question asks, what do I want? And then really we're in tuned with our nature. Yes, I have work to do, but what happens? What do I want on a day to day and to finish, we start living in the moment. I'm not going to go into quantum physics, I'm not going to go into consciousness work, but actually we might other podcasts. We start living moment to moment. We start living and the only time that exists is now here. And then from here now as the only place that we can feel safe and that's the only place we can adapt and solve and deal with everything. And remember very well, every time you dealt with anything within you, you dealt always from the here now and you dealt with it moment to moment.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. And so I'll just add from my own two cent is for me one of the most beautiful experiences in my life is this pendulation that we've talked about. It is this process of actually becoming stronger by being in life and enjoying life and experiencing life and being in the marketplace. I've been to many workshops and retreats, and so I did. I left my place of living and I went to these places and I went and I learned skills and I rested and I regulated myself. But for me, the most important thing was bringing back into my world. It was how to integrate it into my day to day life back in New York, back at work. And then I figured out, well, this still isn't working in some way. So I had to kind of leave again, learn something new, attune to something new, but then go back and try again and try again and try again, until one day I'm waking up and I'm like, I'm actually able to really manage and enjoy my life. And I'm getting stronger. And the more we go into the world and do also the three peak experiment and enjoy our time building a business, the more I'm enjoying the process of getting stronger. It means at times I need to, of course, move away, to rest, to recover, to process, to grieve, to cry, to get emotional support, take care of my body. And then I show up the next day, and I show up the next day, and I've learned, and this is a topic that at some point, I'd love to go into more detail, but we've talked about kind of that overexpansion. You're talking about Crisana with the balloon that pops. I've played that out fully. I've played out being in that hypo arousal, right? Being in that more depressive state. And now I've learned how to not only stay in that sweet spot where I can get stimulated and enjoy it and learn and grow, but I'm doing it in a way that I'm staying there without going too high or too low. And it's actually allowing me to learn and become stronger, stronger, stronger. So the things I can take on now are much different than things I could take on a month previously or a year previously or five years. If I tried to do the things I'm doing now, five years ago, it would break me. I would absolutely be destroyed. But I can do it now because I've been through so many of these experiences. So we can become stronger and we're doing it together. It's not an individualistic kind of, I became stronger, but it's really through interacting with the three of us, my partner, Angela, I'm able to increase my ability to not only withstand things, adapt to things, but actually get stronger over time. So I'll repeat it once more, is if you find yourself, the takeaway for you was I'm just going to go into a cave and not interact with humanity and do the monk mode. I don't know. That's necessarily the highest enjoyment and highest way to be in service in life. To be in service is to really, I think, be in the marketplace, to be with other people so that we can all celebrate and support and co create with each other. And so with that, we're going to, in a bit, slowly, start to come to a conclusion on our episode on overwhelm, resilience and thriving. And so I'm going to ask each of us for our last thoughts. So I'm going to begin with Krisana. We've had a very beautiful conversation, covered many topics. What are some of the last things you'd like to share with us before.
Krisana Locke: We close to be here now, very simply, you cannot breathe in the past and you cannot breathe in the future, you can only breathe now. So through the body and the physicality, this is the now. So to have an anchor into the now is to take a breath in and to connect with your body. This is the here now. This is one step.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. Mazen. Closing thoughts.
Dr. Mazen Harb: We underestimate who we are. We underestimate the capability of our nervous system. We underestimate what evolution I had made in millions of years. We underestimate the power of our own consciousness. We don't know who we are and we underestimate it. We, all of us, each one individually, are capable of really taking care of ourselves by really taking back our power, bringing back. Sorry, bringing our power back to us, taking responsibility, owning our lives and taking care of what's happening. We are the masters of ourselves. And then we really have to train to remember that we are the creators of our lives. We are the janitors of our life. We are the maintainers of our lives. Take your life fully back to you. Claim yourself back fully. You have all intelligence and abilities. Remember them bits by bits.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. Now I add my last two cent. So, for me, there's so much enjoyment available to us, like that beautiful, sustainable enjoyment in life. And to me, the way to access that is, and I'll give an analogy, just because where I'm at in my life right now is I'm going back to the gym now. And I went from not going to the gym for a while and I started to feel a lot of aches and pains. I could feel it in my back. Like my lower back was starting to hurt and I could tell, oh, man, I'm atrophying actively by just being on the computer all day. And then I went to the gym and it was difficult, but I was able to get to a point where I can do the movements and do it with whatever, with the bar, it's crossfit. And do that and do repetition, repetition, repetition. So I got to the point where I could do the exercises. In the last two, three weeks, I've started to add weights to the bar. And every week I add whatever, 1020 pounds to my squat. And it's fun, it's enjoyable to have a moment of like, look, I'm getting stronger again. And so I know the gym might not be the most thrilling example, but in life, what is the equivalent? To me? It is we're able to do the things that we always wanted. Do we want to start a business? Well, you'll be able to. Do we want to go ask out the guy, ask out the girl? Well, now you'll be able to. Do you want to go travel and see the world? Well, now you'll be able to because you have the emotional composition. To be able to do these things in life, and that's been the joy of my life, is being able to build my life because I've been able to attend not only to build the foundation, to be resilient, but to go beyond that, to enjoy the process of strengthening or improving or thriving who I am. And so I can take on more novelty, I can take on more challenge. And on the other end of that is a way sweeter fruit. It's way more juicy to actually build a business and to enjoy the fruits of that business than just becoming robust at my corporate job. Just being able to withstand and cope at my corporate job was a huge step and one that I'm very grateful for. But then I went beyond that and now I'm getting stronger and learning each and every day. Building a business, that doesn't mean that every day is amazing and that I'm jumping for joy every day because it can be hard, because sometimes I'm adding weight to the bar and it's tough the first time to lift a new weight, but then over time, I get stronger again. So I'm enjoying bringing these ways of being and modulating and pendulating and being in the marketplace and growing stronger and enjoying some very tasty fruit that was higher up on that tree that I wasn't able to access before. And so my invitation to each one of us is take care of the foundation and then enjoy, bring the aliveness and enjoy bringing that into life itself. And so with that, we conclude our podcast, and we thank you for listening.