Why touch is a primal safety signal

What if the missing ingredient in healing isn’t effort, insight, or intensity — but safety? In this episode of Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?, Emily sits down with psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and stress researcher Dr. Dave Rabin for a deep, grounding conversation about trauma, healing, psychedelics, and the nervous system.

Dr. Dave explains why the body must feel safe before real transformation can occur, how vulnerability is not a weakness but a biological gateway to healing, and why many modern approaches to growth fail because they bypass the nervous system entirely. Together, they explore the science behind touch, oxytocin, the vagus nerve, and the body’s innate pharmacy — and why regulation, not catharsis, is what allows change to last.

This conversation bridges cutting-edge neuroscience with ancient wisdom, reframing healing as a process of listening, softening, and restoring trust in the body. If you’ve been doing the work — meditating, journaling, therapy, breathwork — but still feel tense, guarded, or dysregulated, this episode offers a radically compassionate reframe.

In This Episode, We Explore: •Why safety is the foundation of all healing •How the nervous system responds to touch and presence •What “psychedelic” really means (beyond substances) •Why vulnerability is biologically necessary for change •The role of oxytocin, the vagus nerve, and regulation •Ancient medicine meeting modern neuroscience •Learning to trust the body over external metrics

Key Moments: 00:00:00 — Why vulnerability is the gateway to healing 00:04:18 — Redefining “psychedelic” through neuroscience 00:09:42 — Why safety must come before transformation 00:15:36 — Touch as the fastest language of the nervous system 00:22:14 — Oxytocin, trust, and the biology of calm 00:29:08 — Why willpower doesn’t heal trauma 00:36:41 — Eastern wisdom finally validated by Western science 00:43:27 — Self-touch, co-regulation, and restoring agency 00:50:12 — Listening to the body vs. outsourcing intuition to devices 00:57:19 — Building safety as a daily practice 01:04:03 — What real integration actually looks like 01:11:22 — Healing as remembering how to feel safe again

About Dr. Dave Rabin Dr. Dave Rabin is a board-certified psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and co-founder of Apollo Neuroscience. He has spent over 15 years researching chronic stress, trauma, and non-invasive healing modalities, including MDMA-assisted therapy, touch-based regulation, and nervous system resilience. Website: www.drdave.io Instagram: @drdaverabin

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