Episode 2: Out of Our Minds

Mind Your Body: The Power of Mindfulness with Dr. Zev Nevo

In this episode of 'Mind Your Body,' Dr. Zev Nevo introduces the importance of awareness and mindfulness as fundamental skills for achieving optimal physical health and well-being. He discusses how mindfulness — present moment awareness — allows us to truly experience and observe our thoughts, emotions, and sensations without reacting to them. By recognizing that we are not our thoughts and understanding the difference between emotions, thoughts, and feelings, Dr. Nevo emphasizes the significance of conscious breathing and neutral observation. The episode delves into how mindfulness can help downregulate the amygdala, increase feelings of curiosity, and serve as the foundation for happiness. It also highlights the profound impact of attention, explaining that mindfulness requires practice and is essential for controlling our responses to life's challenges.

00:00 Introduction to Mind Your Body
01:26 The Importance of Awareness
04:30 Understanding Mindfulness
07:11 The Role of Emotions and Thoughts
09:58 Practical Mindfulness Techniques
11:24 The Impact of Mindfulness on Stress
13:09 Mindfulness in Daily Life
17:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

About Dr. Nevo
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LINKS:

• Body and Mind Pain Center
• Mind Body Rehabilitation
• Substack

Transcript

Episode 2 | Out of Our Minds

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Mind Your Body. I'm your host, Dr. Zev Nevo, and I am pleased that you're joining me today. The title of today's episode is "Out of Our Minds." This episode is going to focus on as an opener, the importance of awareness. And yes, this is another episode on mindfulness, but I think it is duly important to, discuss this as being aware in the present moment is absolutely a necessity for any of the work we're [00:02:00] going to talk about moving forward.

Yes, this is a lot easier said than done. And this, as simple as it sounds, has been a very challenging endeavor. for myself and for many others, but I will start with saying that we are not our thoughts. A lot of people go on, with their lives on almost an autopilot, and are really a victim to the thoughts and beliefs and perceptions that they have and a lot of the voices, telling us what we can or can't do what we are or aren't are not our own.

We just have quite frankly, lost the ability in many cases to tune into this frequency and really have interoceptive awareness of what is transpiring in our bodies. What exact thoughts and emotions we're actually having. A lot of times, it just takes less energy to give in to our default modes that we have, our conditioned [00:03:00] responses, our habits that we have ingrained.

Because they become neuroplasticity.

But we're not our thoughts. Our thoughts can be quite impactful emotionally on us. However, it does not have to guide our actions and our perception of our realities. Joe Dispenza says , "we are not attached to emotions. We become attached to the brain circuits connected to these emotions", and I agree wholeheartedly.

So why do we call this podcast Mind Your Body? I once heard the difference between emotions, thoughts, and feelings described as so: emotions is energy in motion. Thoughts are the language of the mind and feelings are the language of the body.

So our state of mind follows a pattern of thought, and this informs how we feel. [00:04:00] And the more we focus on this, the larger it expands. But it does come and go. It doesn't stay with us permanently, and that tells us that our state of mind isn't a trait and something that defines us, but rather it's a state.

It's a state of being, and as a state of being, it's something that can be shifted and altered towards something that is more productive for us. So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is described as present moment awareness, which is basically just being aware and living in the present and tuning in to what you are seeing and hearing and feeling and throughout all of our senses, really tapping into connecting to what we're actually experiencing and getting out of our minds, getting out of our heads [00:05:00] and, this capacity to pay attention to our thoughts and our emotions and sensations that we have and perceptions or stories that we tell ourselves.

Tapping into our internal conditions and the external environment is important to do but in a non reactive way. We really want to attend to what we're experiencing without tapping into the emotional aspect of that. We don't want to react to what we're seeing or feeling or sensing. We don't want to have any judgments.

Think of a stenographer in a courtroom. His or her job is essentially to document what's being discussed. And just get it all down, observe it neutrally, without judgment. None of that, none of the bias or opinions of the stenographer need to be documented [00:06:00] in the record. This is actually referred to as metacognition.

Metacognition is our awareness of our thoughts. And, it's a very important skill to build. It's not easy to do for some that have for so long been stuck into the habits that they have, but it's a really worthwhile skill because it allows us to take time for any kind of adverse or non adverse thought or feeling or situation that presents to us in our daily lives to bypass our emotional centers in our brain, the area of the brain called the limbic system, where, mood and memory, get stored and allow it to reach our prefrontal cortex.

The areas of the brain that are [00:07:00] considered our logical brain, our rational brain, where we can have responses to what we're presented with, and this is a very vital skill to develop. So one of the ways that we can tap into this is really to understand : "where is our attention?"

Are we focused on our past? Do we live in a sense of resentment? Do we feel like we are troubled by how things didn't turn out based on what we deserved? Do we relive traumas that we experienced consciously or subconsciously? Reliving those traumas that have occurred in the past bring them into our present and cause us to suffer again and again.

Are we worried? Are we anxious? Those two things are really present when we are focused on [00:08:00] concerns for the future. And it stems really from our attempt to maintain control. We are not fond of uncertainty. And we like to be able to predict what's going to happen. And the more uncertainty there is, the more anxiety provoking that can become.

And especially when those of us who have experienced pain, for example, feel a loss of control, a loss of predictability in life, this can lead to a lot of the ongoing anxiety that we tend to feel. And using strategies like mindfulness is so helpful to combat this, not necessarily to distract from pain or from anxiety or from any emotion, [00:09:00] but really to start to develop an appreciation for why emotions are there and recognize them, allow them to be there, but then observe them with a sense of

and a neutral sense, and that's really the key. That's really the take home message. Because when we do that, a lot of the suffering or negative, reactions that we sometimes have to these thoughts or emotions, tend to just dissipate because, we are bringing our awareness to a present state without tapping in to the reactivity of the emotion.

So we want to be able to respond and not react. We want to pivot the focus of our attention in a neutral mode. Being aware of our [00:10:00] thoughts, our body, and our breath. Our breath is considered to be the intermediary, the connection between our mind and our body. And once we have that awareness, we want to anchor our awareness to our attention.

 We want to start to notice our thoughts with a sense of clarity. Why is this helpful? Number one, this helps to downregulate the amygdala. The amygdala being a part of our limbic system, which activates our physiologic stress response to both physical and emotional, actual and perceived threats.

It's the part of our brain that reacts to stress. It also helps us to start to increase feelings of curiosity and wonder and insight. These are wonderful, emotions and feelings to have. Kind of what we have when we're young. And a lot of us [00:11:00] lose the ability to tap into that as adults.

And being able to tap into senses of curiosity and wonder and insight can be tremendously beneficial for us combating a lot of other negative emotions as we'll talk about in later episodes. A lot of people consider mindfulness to be the foundation of happiness. So we know that stress, both

distress, negative stress and Eustress or good stress, you know, a transition in our life, like getting married or graduating or moving, have similar physiologic responses in our bodies. The only way we can discern the difference is when we're mindful of what we're feeling in that present moment.

So we want to think of awareness like going on the scale. So when you [00:12:00] step on a scale, you're going to see a number which represents your weight. And the number just appears. There's no emotion or judgment behind the result. It just is. And it's not easy to do. I think that in order for us to be successful in practicing mindfulness, We have to lower the stakes, right?

We have to not try to establish that attention by not thinking of X, Y, or Z. Because in those cases, it usually becomes a futile attempt. And the key is really to practice. mindfulness as if you're starting a new exercise and you need to build up endurance. So you really want to get reps here so that we can start to build those new neural connections in our brain and create a habit of being able to very quickly tap into [00:13:00] the ability to be mindful, which will be a very, very useful strategy.

for a lot of the work that we're going to be doing down the line. I onceattended a lecture on stress management by Rich Fernandez, PhD, and he says, "the object of attention is not as important as the process of attending." Usually we need to practice mindfulness because we're stressed and we need to relieve stress and again, we talked about stress sometimes being developed from a loss of control.

So we try to control everything. But the funny thing about mindfulness is that it only works when we don't try to control it. When we practice mindful awareness, we're choosing to be present and choosing to turn off thoughts of the past and the future, . Our mindset and our beliefs have a tremendous [00:14:00] impact on our behavior, our actions, and our emotions.

And in order to undo self limited beliefs that we have, we need to be able to pay attention.

I once read a book that discussed conscious breathing as a tool to achieve mindful awareness. The author describes that the basic condition for being happy is our awareness or consciousness that we are happy. For example, when we have a headache, at that time, we're really aware that not having a headache is wonderful.

However, how often, when we don't have a headache, are we happy now because of that same thought? We have to remember, at times when we're feeling good, or we're not feeling bad, that the lack of having a headache is very pleasant. And this really [00:15:00] taps into gratitude, a very important emotion,which is a direct counter to shame and a lot of, other emotions that can keep us trapped dark places.

One other analogy I'd like to give is when we watch a movie. The movie often has a background soundtrack. There's some music in the background. Usually when there's a scene, where the dialogue is reaching a crescendo, the music will speed up or create this anticipation of what's about to happen.

When somebody's walking in the dark and, um, you know, that spooky music comes on or in state of triumph, we'll have triumphic music playing, celebrating the, success of the victor. And [00:16:00] sometimes the music may not even match what's actually happening in the scene. The music is put there to accompany the movie, but it's not directing the way the movie is playing out. In any case, the purpose of the music in the background is not to take over the entire movie.

The music is there to support what's happening in the scene. But what should we pay attention to? I think primarily we should be paying attention to the dialogue.

Similarly, our reality is the actual dialogue of our movie. The emotions, our thoughts, these are just the background music. It's meant to make us feel a certain way about what is taking place in our reality. This definitely can be appropriate as an adjunct. However, we must not stop paying attention to the dialogue and just get lost in the music.

In the book, [00:17:00] "Headache in the Pelvis", the authors had a great quote, which is: "controlled attention is the joystick of the nervous system.", And we know that where our thoughts lie can even control physiologic responses in our body by impacting directly our nervous system, which can thus impact lots of other systems in our body.

So it all starts with attention. We need to pay mind to our thoughts, our emotions, our perception and our bodies. It's all important. So let's get out of our minds.