Untangle

Today's guest is Dr. Greg Wells a Physiologist, Scientist, Author, and renowned health and high-performance expert. He has dedicated his career to studying the science of human limits and developing practical strategies to help individuals and organizations perform at their best, even under the most challenging circumstances. He’s even worked with Olympic athletes. But his most important work is with those of us who simply want to optimize health every single day. His guidance in this interview relates to protecting and optimizing our Mitochondria, which affects every aspect of our lives. It’s a really interesting way to look at how we can have some agency over our mental and physical health so we can live our best lives. Note: Use discount code UNTANGLE15 at choosemuse.com to order your Muse Headband. Show notes: We get our energy from mitochondria. These are tiny structures inside our cells that break down the foods that we eat to create energy. They're in our muscles, our brains, they're all over the place. We need our mitochondria to live our best, healthiest lives. Our mitochondria are damaged by stress, but they're really responsive to lifestyle activities so there's infinite potential for them to get better. We produce 2 billion new mitochondria every single day. These enable us to think, move, be creative, play music, build relationships…almost everything that is fundamental to life. As little as three minutes of exercise a day can stimulate the production of new and better mitochondria that make us able to have more energy to navigate our lives. When we do things like meditation, our mitochondria become stronger. He is a big Muse user and loves it. Mitochondria are also a common pathway to different diseases like cancer, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases. When they aren’t working properly, they can even be responsible for depression, so even our mental health depends upon healthy, high-functioning mitochondria. Also important to creating a joyful and meaningful life are social connections, people, pursuits, and purpose. A strong focus in these areas can have a profound impact on longevity. Flow plus meaning is the best predictor of “Magic Moments.” Resources: Drgregwells.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4X NYT best-selling author, the hilarious and poignant AJ Jacobs, spent a year following every commandment in the Bible, to see what would happen. He then dove deep into gratitude by traveling around the globe to thank every person who had helped produce his morning coffee. In an incredibly interesting conversation, he shares his witty and profound insights from these experiments, and also teaches us what it takes to accomplish the things we want in our own lives, and gives us techniques we can use to motivate ourselves towards our goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is all about behavior change. Dr. Allison Grupski, PhD and Clinical Health Psychologist specializing in weight management and eating behaviors is the Head of Behavior Change at Weight Watchers, referred to as WW in this interview. She shares many of the behavior change strategies she’s used to drive real-life behavior change for millions of people. Change can be difficult, especially when it’s tied to deeply engrained habits. And, when it comes to eating and weight management, it may be even more complicated given the many factors that influence us. Her thoughts on disrupting routine behaviors as a way to shift habits are fascinating. You won’t be surprised to know that she includes meditation in many of her workshops and meetings. She also shared the top five behaviors that help people reach their healthy weight goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Dr. Tobias Esch. He is a primary care physician, pioneer in holistic general medicine, and expert in the neurobiology of happiness. He shaped mind-body medicine and integrative health in Germany and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 300 scientific works. His background is in primary care, neurobiology, and positive psychology and his work focus has been on promoting good health, patient activation and behavior change. In this interview we dive into his Happiness Model, and what he calls the U Curve of happiness which is both surprising and fascinating. The good news is that happiness can be shaped through practice. Life satisfaction and happiness are both deep feeling states, but he defines them differently. His wisdom is cultivated through a rich blend of neuroscience, medicine, positive psychology, mindfulness, gratitude, stillness, and acceptance. He believes in listening deeply and connecting with his patients to uncover what might be beyond the obvious. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest Shannon Harvey is an award-winning Australian health journalist, author, and filmmaker. In her film (and now a book, My Year of Living Mindfully), Shannon committed to meditating every day for 365 days. She enlisted a team of top scientists from around the world to track everything from her stress hormones to her immune function to her cellular aging and gene expression to her subjective wellbeing. Overwhelmed with insomnia, autoimmune disease, and a family history of mental health issues, Shannon was highly motivated to find a way to address the challenges she faced, and those we all face with the growing epidemics of stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction. The results were surprising! She hopes that the film will spark meaningful conversations and help all of us feel more grounded and calm as we face the inevitable challenges of being human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is Oliver Nino, Energy Healer and Author of the new book, Spiritual Activator: 5 Steps to Clearing, Unblocking, and Protecting Your Energy to Attract More Love, Joy, and Purpose. He discusses his 5-step energy detox program that helps to remove negative blocks and emotions. The detox process, he shares, can help remove feelings of being stuck, ease relationship issues, and help deal with feelings related to lack of abundance, purpose or confidence. He also shares how he’s helped people with anxiety, depression, and an overall feeling of unhappiness. We’re energetic beings and we get affected by all kinds of energy, more than we’re ever aware. We may ‘feel’ something and even find it hard to explain what it is we’re feeling. Energy, like air or oxygen, is invisible. Every one of us, he says, is naturally wired to clear our energy fields. This takes us to our natural state— often where we’re closest to our soul. His goal is to help people restore their energy to optimal levels and to unlock our natural healing abilities and intuition. Meditation, as you might guess, is one of many tools. And…a Reminder: check out Muse at choosemuse.com. Use Untangle15 for your 15% discount off products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy has the potential to help us overcome our fears and learn from the contents of our subconscious. Dr. Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), is at the forefront of this research and advocacy, and working with the FDA to bring psychedelics to legalization. He shares beautiful insights about the mind, fear, war, and how he sees that psychedelics can save us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Master Somatic Leadership Coach, Trauma Psychologist, and Mindfulness Instructor Chris Johnson. In her book, The Leadership Pause, she shares how to quiet the noise of the daily hustle so you can hear the still-small voice of purposeful curiosity that lives within you. This spaciousness breeds more wisdom in both work and life. She shares how mindful awareness can lead to clarity of heart and mind plus increased resilience AND help you to be a better, more natural leader with a clearer vision and a deeper connection to yourself and others. She says…”It’s all about the pause.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is Dr. Emeran Mayer, a Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Physiology, and Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is a world-renowned gastroenterologist and neuroscientist with 35 years of experience in the study of clinical and neurobiological aspects of how the digestive system and the nervous system interact in health and disease. Today, we discuss his bestselling book, The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health. The book combines neuroscience with the latest discoveries on the human microbiome with lots of insights on the biological link between the mind and the digestive system. He shares the science behind the mind-gut communication pipeline…and discusses how we can harness the power of this connection to take charge of our health and listen to the innate wisdom of our bodies. Our favorite quote: “The time has come for us to empower ourselves to be the engineers of our own internal ecosystem and our bodies and minds.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brilliant choreographer Alonzo King shares how finding stillness is key to fueling our creativity and intuition, cultivating the relationship we have with ourselves, and tapping into our natural state of joy. He finds stillness and his own inner voice through yoga and meditation, and inspires his dancers to use heart and mind in addition to the body. Encore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices