Ep 407: The Mind-Body Connection: Rewiring Stress, Sleep, and Fertility
What if so much of what stands between you and your goals, including your fertility, is not physical at all, but the state your nervous system is living in? In this fascinating conversation, Michelle sits down with Dr. Patrick K. Porter, PhD, founder of BrainTap and author of Brain Fitness Blueprint, to explore the profound connection between the mind, the brain, and the body.
Patrick has spent more than thirty years studying brainwave entrainment and how frequency, light, and thought physically shape our biology. Together they talk about how chronic stress locks the body into survival mode, why the subconscious runs far more of our lives than we realize, and how deep, restorative sleep may be one of the most overlooked pillars of health and fertility. They also explore the science that is catching up to ancient wisdom, from the body's energy field to the generational patterns we carry without knowing it, and gentle, practical ways to shift out of fight or flight and into the calm, receptive state where the body can do its own healing work. This is a rich, expansive conversation for anyone who senses that the mind holds far more power over the body than we have been taught.
Key Takeaways:
• Your physiology drives your psychology. When the body is stuck in stress, it cannot reach the calm, receptive states where healing and creativity happen.
• The subconscious runs the vast majority of our patterns, so lasting change begins with awareness, not willpower.
• Deep sleep is a cornerstone of health and fertility. Quality matters more than hours, and the brain does much of its repair work during those deep cycles.
• Chronic stress and the freeze response disrupt the nervous system, while intentional recovery, breath, and relaxation help the body rebalance.
• Modern science is validating what ancient traditions have long taught about energy, frequency, and the mind-body connection, giving us real tools to work with the nervous system.
Guest Bio:
Dr. Patrick K. Porter, PhD, is an award-winning author, educator, speaker, and the founder of BrainTap, a leading neuroscience-based platform used globally to optimize brain health and human performance. For over three decades, Dr. Porter has been a pioneer in brainwave entrainment technology, championing non-invasive, natural approaches to enhance mental clarity, emotional resilience, and cognitive longevity. His acclaimed book, Brain Fitness Blueprint: Integrating Ancient Wisdom and Modern Technologies for Peak Performance (co-authored with former Google wellbeing executive Ruchika Sikri), synthesizes cutting-edge neuroscience with practical lifestyle tools, introducing the Circle of Vitality, a holistic model of how chronic stress alters brain architecture and how neuroplasticity can reverse that damage. His work is backed by over 30 clinical studies and trusted by more than 120,000 users, including elite athletes, corporate executives, and over 3,000 health and wellness clinics worldwide. His contributions have been featured in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and The Joe Rogan Experience.
Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health or fertility care.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Episode number 407 of the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Orvitz, and today we're heading into a topic I never get tired of exploring, the extraordinary power of the mind and the nervous system. So much of what shapes our health and our fertility happens beneath our conscious awareness in the patterns, the stress responses, and the states our body defaults to without us ever choosing them.
My guest today is Dr. Patrick Porter, an award-winning author and founder of BrainTap, a neuroscience-based platform used around the world to support brain health and nervous system balance. Patrick has spent more than three decades pioneering brainwave technology, and his work is backed by dozens of clinical studies and trusted by more than 100,000 people, from elite athletes [00:01:00] to thousands of wellness clinics.
His latest book, Brain Fitness Blueprint, looks at how chronic stress physically reshapes the brain and how we can use neuroplasticity to reverse that. If you've been living in constant stress, maybe struggling with sleep or feeling stuck in survival mode while you're trying to conceive, this conversation is going to be so valuable.
We talk about how to move out of fight or flight, and why deep sleep matters so much more than we realize, and how the subconscious aspect of our minds runs the show until we learn to work with it. So let's get into it.
Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm Michelle, a fertility acupuncturist here to provide you with resources on how to create a wholesome approach to your fertility journey
Michelle: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Porter. It's so nice to have you[00:02:00]
Patrick: Thank you, Michelle. It's great being here
Michelle: Yeah, I love talking about anything, ~~um,~~ that touches the mind, 'cause I think that we're so much more powerful than we have been led to believe or we believe. ~~Um,~~ there's just so much untapped potential in the mind and the mind-body. ~~Um, ~~so I'm very excited to dive into today's topic.
But before we get started, I always love to start with a good origin story, how you got into the work that you do, and just really more of, ~~um,~~ an intro on ~~what,~~ what it is that you do.
Patrick: Sure. This has really been a lifelong journey for me. My dad was a Silva instructor, which is a meditation practice. There's millions of people still doing it today, and ~~we,~~ we did that as a family in the '70s when he found out
Michelle: Oh, Silva.
Patrick: yeah, the Silva, yeah. And he was one of the first instructors, and so I grew up helping him do seminars on the weekends in lower Michigan.
And then they had something there called the Silva Sound, which was a sound they played ~~in the,~~ in the hall while we were doing the seminars, and it would synchronize the brainwaves of the participants to alpha [00:03:00] and made them more capable of reaching deeper meditative states. And ~~that,~~ that first exposure to frequency and how it changes brain structure and how it changes your, our access to the mind ~~and, ~~and all of our creative gifts, ~~uh,~~ just put me on a journey.
But ~~I'm,~~ I'm a geek by nature, so my first, ~~uh,~~ schooling was in electronics. So I went to school first, got my degree in electronics, kept up with my dad, and when I got big enough, ~~uh, or, ~~or learned enough,~~ I guess,~~ and with the age where people would listen to me, he had me start doing presentations with him, and I ~~kind of~~ got bit by the bug and he said, ~~"Well,~~ you better go back to school and get a degree in psychology then."
So I did, ~~and,~~ and then I started a franchise company, ~~um, ~~which lasted about 27 years. I sold that in 2002. ~~Uh,~~ went very well. We had 108 locations. And then in 2014, ~~um,~~ the technology that I helped to invent in 1986 called light sound, light and sound machines. It's a per- first personal one. Clinical ones were around $10,000 at that time, so ~~we, ~~we miniaturized it.
We were building them out of our office from RadioShack parts, and that grew into the business we have today. And [00:04:00] 2014 is when we, ~~uh,~~ took a major leap forward because technology had made such a shift. We were able to put all the technology into a headset, which before it used to be like modularized, like a stereo system.
But because of technology, ~~it's,~~ it's more capable to, ~~you know, ~~especially for today, we have this mental health issue around the world, and we're not gonna solve it one-on-one. We need technology that can deploy it across the world and help people get into their parasympathetic system instead of their sympathetic system, because your physiology does drive your psychology.
And if your physiology's all out, you're all stressed out, then you can't get to those deeper states where you can get the creative answers you need to your life experience. And so that's one of my driving forces. But I continue to research. We have over 72 different research, ~~uh,~~ projects that have been posted on PubMed.
I'll probably mention some of those as we go through questions. But needless to say, we started this with the idea of helping people with pain, and we have studies that show that happens. But then we found out it helped with accelerated learning, [00:05:00] and ~~then, ~~then we found out it helped with weight loss when I was featured in People magazine.
There's just a story. The story goes on and on over 40 years, and I still feel like I'm waking up every day, first day of school, that I'm learning something new because the brain ~~and,~~ and this brain-body connection is becoming such center si- center stage and people realizing that everything is connected to your thoughts.
So in what we call that in neuroscience is the electron transport chain So just so the listeners understand, in science, it's different than what you believe. I don't expect you to believe what I'm going to tell you today. This is science. You can save your beliefs for Sunday morning. But what MIT said is at the very core of you as a human being, you are light because the electron transport chain, basically that spark in the chemical system follows the electrical system.
So your thoughts are what controls your biology, and they even said, "We went as far as saying that we are light." And they referenced a research, ~~uh,~~ project in 1994, so [00:06:00] this isn't something new. In 1994, a group of scientists got together in Europe and studied the human body more like a Wi-Fi network than like a chemical solution.
And what they found out, the conclusion was that we are more electrical than we are chemical. And but so many people out there are looking for the chemical solution when, like I said, the, the electrical pro- ~~are,~~ are basically our thoughts which transform into electricity, which start the mitochondria that create ATP and all these other things.
I could go down the whole chain. It starts first with the way you perceive life, and we can get more into that too, because mindset is one thing, but it's-- you have to really evaluate what you're thinking because what you think about all day long is what you become without knowing about it, because your conscious mind is so busy trying to make daily decisions, your subconscious is running the show.
In fact, Bruce Lipton says 95% of what drives the show is the subconscious. I would say 99% because we're too busy now, where our brain is just full of all the things going on in our [00:07:00] world
Michelle: ~~100%. It's,~~ it's so wild because even if you're, ~~you know,~~ if you tell-- do the experiment of like telling somebody to notice everything brown in the room and then all of a sudden have them close their eyes and be like, "Can you think of anything pink?" And then you can't even think about it 'cause you were just so focused on one thing.
And it really does, ~~um...~~ And we've all been in situations when we hyper-focus on something and that becomes a thing that we see all the time. I know a lot of people, ~~you know,~~ this is a f- the fertility podcast, so a lot of people trying to conceive, ~~um,~~ when they're having issues trying to conceive, all of a sudden they see pregnant women everywhere and it's frustrating of course, ~~you know, ~~when they're trying.
And, ~~um,~~ but it is interesting how, ~~um,~~ just with that alone, like where you're putting your attention, I think it drives, ~~um,~~ it, it has life force. I-- the way I see it is attention has life force. ~~Um,~~ I, I feel like a lot of people have experienced where they feel tension in their body. If they've ever done meditation and ~~kind of~~ focused on that area, they feel the tension, ~~um,~~ the tension dissipating.
The [00:08:00] tension, just focusing your awareness has so much life force. I really do think it's kind of part of qi, ~~you know, uh,~~ from Chinese medicine perspective. And what happens typically is, ~~you know,~~ they've been teaching for so long, is like your attention of the past you ~~kind of~~ carry ~~and,~~ and repeat, or you think about the future.
But when you're present, which a lot of meditation teaches, that's when you bring your life force into this moment and you can really make change.
Patrick: Yeah. ~~Well,~~ your listeners should know in 1994 or yeah, 1994 as well or '92, it was one of those dates. You can go to the NIH website, type in biofield, and you're gonna read that~~ they,~~ they actually acknowledged that the human body has a field of energy that surrounds it three feet, and all illness starts in that field.
~~So,~~ and what they're saying is the same thing, the electrical system, ~~it,~~ it does have life. In fact, MIT proved that our cells at the mitochondrial level are beaming codes to the rest of our body. How many times have you heard of people that wanted to get pregnant, tried [00:09:00] everything, then they decided to adopt, and then within a year or two later they're having their own
baby? That, ~~that~~ tells you that it's more psychosomatic than it is physio- physiological. Now remember, your physiology ~~will,~~ will pace with your electrical system, so if you have fears, doubts, resentment in there. There's a saying that all the issues are in the tissues. ~~Um,~~ but that's not really true. The issues are more like a, ~~uh,~~ a receiving station.
So when I was younger in electronic school, we would build radios and we would go to the store, get a potato. We'd get, like mine was Keener 14, that was the radio station. I put it into the potato as just a little crystal, and then I put a speaker on it. That potato became a radio for that crystal. So you have crystallization of the physical body that manifests through your thoughts, and they become transmitters and receivers.
In fact, MIT also just 22 weeks ago said that we don't even have our own thoughts. We are transmitters and receivers of those thoughts. So we set the rules of the thoughts, but we re- receive [00:10:00] them and we transmit them. And it's ~~kind of~~ spooky because people start thinking, "Wow, this is something ~~my,~~ my weird metaphysical friend was telling me about."
But the reality is that it's science. And they even went as far as saying that when you are meditating or you're having a thought and a quiet mind, your thoughts can reach out 10,000 miles away from the person having that thought. And they actually said in the study that they, it seemed as if they were going into a web, which we would call a consciousness, but it's this universal intelligence, ~~you know,~~ that this, it actually triggers our DNA function.
So~~ I mean, there's, there's so much,~~ there's so much con- interconnection here now that people look at neuroscience and it sounds more like you're reading The Vedas or one of these ancient Chinese books about energy medicine because they're, we're able to measure it now. We have tools now that can actually register these responses in the physiology of the body.
When it was hidden before, it's not hidden anymore, so people can know where they're at physiologically and then start to shift their behaviors or their thoughts or their actions, and they'll see [00:11:00] that their body responds to that
Michelle: What's interesting is, ~~uh,~~ I've been following Dr. Joe Dispenza for years. I
go like now yearly to his retreats 'cause I just feel like I learn something new every time. And also having that experience of being around people, ~~you know,~~ in the same mindset. And he talked about how there's like, ~~um,~~ there was almost like a frequency and energy field for, I think it was uterine fibroids or it was ~~something, ~~something in the uterus.
And they'll find that people who have that specific frequency will ultimately, ~~um,~~ manifest that. And~~ it,~~ it was just-- it's really amazing, like some of the
Patrick: did a great research project where they took the brain cells out of people that were playing Pong. You probably remember the game Pong. And they put those cells in a Petri dish. They put it to, against a computer that was a learning computer. That computer learned to play Pong by playing against someone that knew Pong, and the scientists determined that there is a [00:12:00] frequency or a channel for Pong that the computer actually learned from.
So th-this is not a s- this is science is proving this all out. ~~I mean, we,~~ we used to bring Dr. Dimen- Dispenza in all the time at Quantum University. We just can't afford him anymore. But at the time when he was, ~~you know,~~ he was still pretty popular and a, a big draw. But ~~the,~~ the reality is that when you're around those people, too, most people don't realize that's why socialization is so important and that you're around gainers and not drainers.
Because though when you're around that group and you're meditating, that's kinda like what we did at Silva. People would have these breakthroughs just by being in the room all at the same frequency, meditating, because you're giving off infrared light, and most communication is non-verbal, and they now know that your codes and you're learning from the people in that room, you're building an energy.
In the Bible, when these, when they say, "When two or more are gathered, there I am," he's talking about the quantum field. There's a field of energy that is produced. So when you're in a large group like Joe puts together, you're in a perfect environment to let those gateways open, [00:13:00] and you're safe because you're around people that are doing the same thing, and the brain really wants safety.
If it doesn't have safety, ~~you know,~~ it just shuts right down. So when you're in a safe environment, you have a good leader, ~~you know, ~~and you've got good information, the brain naturally responds. And the nice thing that I learned going to India all these years is that they believe, and I believe it too now, that we are designed for enlightenment.
Our body will actually do it. We don't have to do any special things. We can do all these special things because it makes it easier. But the reality is, if we lived our normal lifestyle without all the stress, without all the struggle, and we were, ~~you know,~~ out in nature and we were doing our things, we would naturally be evolving at a much faster pace than stress.
~~You know,~~ stress is kinda like putting on the brakes and, ~~uh, you know,~~ everybody's got their gas pedal and brake at the same time going, so the nervous system doesn't know how to interact with the field really. It's the field of information that we're drawing from
Michelle: Yeah. And there's,~~ uh,~~ it feels like there's a lot of programming happening in
Patrick: Oh yes
Michelle: especially in the Western world. There's a lot of [00:14:00] programming, ~~um, you know, ~~whether it's marketing or who knows, ~~you know?~~ There's just so much that I feel like that, ~~um,~~ really influences our field as well. That's why it's so important to go within, because when you're connected within, that's when you have access to that divine intelligence
Patrick: Yeah. I think especially too when people are looking for solutions, like they wanna get pregnant or whatever's going on, and they go to a doctor, that's fine. The doctor can rule out if there's anything physically wrong with them. But the reality is ~~that~~ that doctor is only schooled in something called sick care.
~~They're not,~~ they're not licensed. They don't even learn how to do healthcare. ~~It's,~~ it's a misnomer. It's not healthcare, it's sick care. ~~So,~~ th- those people need to find,~~ like,~~ it needs to be both physically and mentally that they go in ~~and they prepare,~~ and they prepare their body, ~~you know,~~ in a way that they are receptive to that.
The body knows what to do. The body has intelligence as well. But if there's some kind of restriction, it might not even be theirs. One of the frightening things that came out of MIT study was they actually proved something the Hopi [00:15:00] Indians said years ago. The Hopi Indians said that seven generations are guiding them.
~~Well,~~ NI- MIT just found out that we have 54 generations. I believe with the right technology, we'll find ~~that~~ that information goes all the way back to the beginning of time, because it's transferred. They've already proved that the fat cells in our body will transfer any piece of information we want from one cell to the other.
~~So,~~ now we have mom and dad's,~~ you know, ~~their beliefs, their makeup, their genetic code, all of that. ~~We're,~~ we're... We didn't come here like one-off. We were generations creating us. ~~So,~~ it could be some generational trauma. I don't think people have to experience it, but they do have to acknowledge that maybe some of the things they're feeling aren't really theirs and clear them, ~~you know,~~ because ~~it's,~~ it's just old garbage
Michelle: when you clear them, you're clearing ~~your,~~ your ancestors
Patrick: Oh, ~~they've, ~~they've proven that. They-- You're also improving your future because the Hopi said that they're also training their next generation because it goes forwards and backwards in time. And so they've actually proven that as well, that, ~~um,~~ with, ~~uh,~~ Clyde Baxter did it ~~with,~~ with a tree, though. He took a [00:16:00] tree, a branch, into the lab, hooked up the tree in the woods to a electroencephalograph, started torturing the branch in the, in his office, and it was registering on the tree.
And he said, "This is why parents get so entwined with their kids, because there's a piece of them there." So if that's why a mother in, let's say, ~~uh,~~ New Zealand can know that her son that's in a battlefield is getting wounded because that communication is there, and some people are sensitive enough that they actually hear the message
Michelle: Wow, that's so profound. ~~I mean,~~ it gets my mind all over the place. I'm thinking even spirit babies, 'cause, ~~you know,~~ ultimately this is just a phase of where we're at, but we're not just this physical body. ~~I mean,~~ we're way more than that. And~~ I,~~ I have a lot of stories, ~~I mean,~~ just because ~~I, ~~I do fertility acupuncture and I have a lot of people coming in, and many of the craziest things happen usually when they start to have that connection, when they make the connection with a spirit baby and ask for [00:17:00] signs ~~or,~~ or open that c- line of communication.
And some of the things that I've seen are just next level. ~~I mean,~~ it's really incredible
Patrick: when I was in clinic, ~~uh,~~ I would do a little technique that would say if I-- we couldn't resolve it in the normal ways, I would do a little what we call simple regression. I'd say, "Go back to the time when ~~this,~~ this, ~~you know, ~~started, when you started manifesting whatever the disorder is." And quite often, people would tell me that this was something they decided before they came, and they were talking with somebody before they even were being born.
I've had people... We weren't doing rebirthing or anything, but they would tell us about what was happening ~~in,~~ in the time when they were being carried in the womb, by the ti- wh- how they were being delivered, what the attitude was about the parents. All of that played a role because our body was already taking in information.
~~You know,~~ that, that information is there. And now in science, we have a way to recognize that ~~or, ~~or at least record it. And what I always tell people, whether it's real or imagined, if it resolves the conflict, that's what really is [00:18:00] meaningful. So a lot of people think, ~~"Well, ~~I'm just imagining it." ~~Well,~~ you really can't imagine something out of the realm of possibility for infinite abundance or infinite space or infinite in...
~~You know, ~~all this infinite intelligence we have. ~~There's, ~~there's probable futures and things of this nature, depending upon what somebody's belief system is. But the reality is that every life's choice has put us down a certain path. And, ~~uh,~~ what I tell people, I actually wrote about it in my first book.
I have a chapter, "I Was Blessed to Be the Son of an Alcoholic." Because imagine if my dad didn't go get help, I'd probably be an alcoholic because I would just do what my dad did. But he got help, so I could look at it like, "Poor me, my dad was an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic. I get these bad genes." But that's not true at all.
I can activate those or not activate them. ~~You know, if,~~ if you're really being honest with yourself and take responsibility and stop blaming, then your body will rise up to the occasion, and especially if you look at life as a challenge instead of a threat. They-- That's one of the biggest factors they found out about your neurology.
When you think of life as a, a threat, they did a study [00:19:00] actually during COVID, and they took people, and they said they interviewed them. And the group that,~~ uh,~~ said that they looked at COVID as a threat over people that looked at it as a challenge. So there's two different thoughts, right? Threat or a challenge.
The people that looked at it as a threat produced 200 times less light. And remember, your body is producing light at the mitochondrial level, and we can record that. There are instruments that can record the light emissions from your body, and it's not Kirlian photography, but ~~they,~~ they can actually measure photon release, and it's in the form of 8, 10 nanometer light.
And so your body is-- Those are the transmission codes. So you actually shut yourself down in those times of when you feel threatened. That's why
Michelle: And your immune system goes down too. You're not as protected
Patrick: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Everything down regulates. So instead of showing up as your best possible self with all your skills, abilities, resources, everything you need, your body says, "Okay, we're in a threat position. We're gonna play dead. We're gonna start shutting everything down." [00:20:00] And that's not what we want today.
~~I mean,~~ it might've been good if we were being attacked by something and we wanted to play dead or something like that, but everybody knows about the freeze respon- ~~uh, I mean,~~ the fight or flight, but most people don't think about the freeze response, and that disrupts the nervous system, and we're getting it way too often.
What I say in my newest book is that the brain we have today was not designed for the life that we're living, so we can't li- we have to change our lifestyle. We have to have more periods of, ~~uh, ~~recovery, more periods of intentional relaxation. We have to learn to breathe. This is-- I tell people your breath is like a light switch to your nervous system.
When you breathe in, you're triggering your parasymp- your sympathetic. When you breathe out, you're triggering your parasympathetic. This is sympathetic is fight or flight for those that don't know that, and parasympathetic is your rest and digest. And if you're constantly in high breathing mode, which means you breathe high in your chest, you can't help but tune into those frequencies.
And there's a saying I have that you are fr- you are what you frequently see, frequency. So when you [00:21:00] think about what do you frequently see in your world, that's the frequency that you're putting out there. So change your frequency like you change the dial on a radio, and you can do that in, in many different ways, but you have to start doing it today because if not, the world actually trains you, and ~~you'll, ~~you'll become like the fish that's getting pushed all over the river instead of the one that's making their own path up the river.
It's still gonna be tough, but ~~you'll,~~ you'll at least have a plan and you'll have the resources to get through it.
Michelle: ~~You know,~~ it's like the algorithm. That's one of the things that, ~~um, ~~one of the best things that ~~kind of~~ could have happened was the algorithm because it shows us exactly a model of how life is. The more you seek for something, the more it shows up in your feed, and then you just, you're constantly bombarded with that, which is probably one of the reasons why there's so much, ~~um, ~~polarization because everybody's reading whatever it is more of that and it just continues.
But in the sense, ~~uh,~~ the good aspect of it, I mean there's good and bad in everything, but the positives is that it [00:22:00] shows us such a model of really how our minds are and where we put our attention and how that creates,~~ I mean~~ the feed is ~~kind of~~ our life.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. ~~Well,~~ th- there's something called the reticular activating system in the brain, and what its job is to do is to make sure you're safe, that there's nothing out of order. So it's always looking around, evaluating your environment, and your nervous system is actually adjusting based on that, and also your DNA is
Michelle: That's like the polyvagal theory.
Patrick: Yeah. And so th- this is happening all the time. And if we look at-- That's why we don't always see what's really there. ~~Um, ~~neuroscience says we make up 90% of what we perceive. So that means that, ~~um, you know,~~ we've been in the-- I've been in this room many times, so my brain goes, "I know how to render this room," but maybe I forgot to render the salt shaker.
And then somebody comes in and you say, "Where's the salt shaker?" And it's right in front of you, and they show it to you, and you go, ~~"Well,~~ it wasn't there a second ago." ~~Well,~~ that's because that person didn't render it, ~~you know?~~ So
Michelle: That happens.
Patrick: are the opportunities that, that I'm talking about. If you-- That's why it's so important.
You said earlier, which was really good, [00:23:00] was people bring their memories on and on, and~~ this,~~ this actually starts in sleep. Because in sleep, when you're in level four sleep, which imagine you're in medical school in 2015, they would teach you the lymphatic system stopped at the neck. But at a, in a sleep study in Denmark, a doctor actually discovered a new part of the human anatomy called the glio-lymphatic system.
So we knew somehow the brain detoxed, but we didn't know how. Now we know. And so if people aren't getting that deep sleep, then their body gets... And what that does during that deep sleep is spinal fluid, every part of your body is respirating. So that spinal fluid washes over the brain and frees up what's called glia cells.
So think of glia cells like you're at a party and you're shaking everybody's hand, you're greeting everybody. By the end of the night, you're gonna wanna wash your hands because you've touched everybody and things like that. And this is the glia cells they wanna unlock. If you don't unlock those glia cells because maybe you wanna get even with that person, or they made, they hurt you, or they made you angry, or whatever like that, those cells stay stuck, and they become an [00:24:00] energy drain on the system.
And one thing I like to tell people, Michelle, is that when you were born, I'm sorry to tell you, you were the most intelligent you're ever gonna be. You had a 100 billion neurobit processor. You had a brain that was at ei- 18.1 volts. You could think, act, and respond in a way that you could learn a language, you could learn your body s- you could learn to walk, you learned your family, you learned a whole environment from nothing.
And ~~you know, when,~~ when I had my kids, I didn't realize it, but I had grandkids, I'm going, "Hey, they were just a little toddler. Now they're little adults." And then they become, ~~you know,~~ grown people. And the whole thing is if we don't un- if we don't unlock those. So one tip I'll give, because I'm talking about this, is when you're asleep at night, hopefully you're getting one hours of deep, one hour of deep sleep for that deep, ~~um,~~ detoxing, and then two hours of REM sleep to program your life, because your brain does more neurological work when you're sleeping than when you're awake.
So we need that deep sleep, and it's not about time in bed. A lot of people think, "I need to get more time in bed." No The, the evidence is really clear. The best amount of sleep people can get is [00:25:00] six and a half hours, but it has to be one hour of deep sleep, two hours of REM. The rest of the sleep is just to help your body recover, repair.
So if you had an active day, yeah, you might need seven and a half, eight hours, but in most days you probably only need six and a half hours of sleep
Michelle: ~~You know,~~ it's interesting. I found this and I realized after a while that there's real science to it, but I always found that if I had any problem that I was working through and I had no answer for it, I was tired and I was just like, "I can't make up my mind. I can't decide," if I would sleep, I'd wake up the next day and I'd feel so much more clear about it.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, you put that 100 billion neuro processor to work for you. The brain is a goal. It loves patterns and it loves figuring things out, but if you don't instruct it, it thinks what you're doing is what you wanna keep doing. ~~You know,~~ when Deepak Chopra said 97% of what's gonna happen to you tomorrow you know about today, I'm asking people, what are you pretending not to know?
You knew this was gonna happen. You
Michelle: Yeah, this is true. Oh, yeah[00:26:00]
Patrick: in the metaphor that I give people is I say, "Imagine every morning you get up and you find yourself at the start of the 100-yard dash, and you look down the track and you look over at the starter and you say, 'What am I doing here? I didn't train for this.'"
And he said,~~ "Well,~~ you better get ready 'cause it's gonna happen tomorrow. Bang, the race is on." That's the human race. And then the next morning when you wake up again and you look at the starter, he says, "Yeah, I told you yesterday this is what it was gonna be." ~~You know,~~ people need to understand they're being told every day what their tomorrow's going to be if they don't make a change to either their thoughts, their attitudes, their actions, their lifestyle, their foods.
~~You know, ~~the things that they can change that really cost nothing are the biggest changes that can help ~~with,~~ with the health of the body ~~and,~~ and the mindset
Michelle: Amazing. I, and ~~I,~~ I remember one of your courses on Quantum U. I didn't finish the program, but I took some courses and,~~ um,~~ NLP and ~~kind of ~~like really getting in the mind. And for people who are listening and don't know really, like, how do I even get started? I think it always starts [00:27:00] with awareness, 'cause ~~like ~~if you don't even know that you have this pattern, you can't change it.
So how
Patrick: why we say that disassociation as a resource, that's the one that I taught in the course, that's always number one. Because as long as people believe there-- There's a law in psychology that states you can't be a behavior, but people are running around all day long talking about their behaviors as if it's them.
They're the one doing the behaviors. ~~And,~~ and we're not supposed to be human doings, we're human beings. So if, ~~you know,~~ if you can just be in that moment, you will realize and disassociate from that problem. Now, just like you said, when you're looking at the room, it's brown, and then you close your eyes and say, "What do you see that's pink?"
~~And,~~ and that's a good example of what's happening in the mind. As long as they focus on the brown, they can never see the pink because ~~they weren't,~~ they weren't open to it. So that's why the old saying, "Wake up every morning with fresh eyes," ~~you know,~~ and I like to tell, "It's my first day of school." I don't know, ~~you know, ~~every morning you should be a little excited.
You've never been here before. This is a whole new space and place and, ~~you know,~~ the world has been turning at [00:28:00] literally millions of miles an hour, ~~uh, ~~with our galaxy and solar system all this. ~~You're,~~ you're not in the same place even geographically. Even if you wake up in the same bed, that bed has moved at just the rotation of the Earth, 144,000 miles an hour.
So ~~we're, ~~we're moving all the time and-- but our brain will stay stuck in those past patterns as long as we give it energy. So what we did in the NLP course was we taught something called submodalities, which is every memory has... If it has a lot of energy, it'll be in color. We wanna make those black and white.
If it has sound, that's usually associated with a positive memory.~~ If, ~~if there's sound and a negative memory, we need to sh- turn the sound off. If we're still experiencing it, meaning we're reliving it, like when I work with PTSD people, I have to tell them, "It's not happening anymore." But the brain doesn't know the difference between real or imagined.
So if you relive it in your mind, which we call in psychology revivification, then the body will create the corresponding chemical solutions that make it feel as if it's real here, like ~~you're, ~~you're reliving it. And so we have to [00:29:00] put that behind us. And I always say, imagine it's like a, a road sign in your rearview mirror.
At one time, it was necessary to get you down the road, but now it's just a blip in your rearview mirror and you don't need it anymore. It-- You know it's there. And the saying I have now because of a pretty cute YouTube video is, "We don't lose, we learn." And if you can ~~kind of~~ adopt that attitude that you're not losing any time in your life, as long as you take a lesson away from it, your brain will start, continue to upgrade your thinking, upgrading your lifestyle, and getting you the type of life that you really truly are deserving of.
Michelle: That's so amazing. I love that. A- and I just love that so much science is starting to uncover things that we've known for centuries,~~ I mean, ~~the ancients have known, which at one point has been dismissed and ~~kind of ~~taken on by new science, but now it's ~~kind of~~ coming full circle,~~ you know, ~~and really
Patrick: And ~~when, ~~when you think about the, when you, yeah, when you think about the new science, I'll give you an example. They've only studied SSRIs for 14 weeks of use. That's all they're approved [00:30:00] for. So how many people do you know that are on SSRIs for the rest of their life? Because... And ~~they, ~~they're the research p- they're now being researched, and they're finding they don't work.
They might work for a few people, but they wouldn't beat the placebo, right? Dr. Joe's really big on the placebo effect, but the reality is the placebo effect is now 40%. Sugar pills would be working better than these SSRIs. Now, we did a study in Brazil with pain. Remember I said we started with pain control.
So we wanted to show that BrainTap could help people, ~~uh,~~ avoid opioid addiction because we have opioid receptors in our brain and we become addicted to them. And so what I s- the, the college wouldn't let me have my group not use opioids. I did pain-free surgery with no anesthetic on my shoulder. They cut it open, put a screw over here in the bone 'cause my dad did it ~~through,~~ through hypnosis ~~and,~~ and trained me to do that when I was a kid.
But w- but I said we can... And I've taught other people to do it too because some people can't do anesthetic. So when-- But ~~what, ~~what happened was they said, "No, they've got to use it for four weeks because that's what it's approved [00:31:00] for." So at the end of four weeks, I told my group, "It's time to stop the opioids."
100% of the BrainTap group is off opioids. It's now been over six months. The other group is still on opioids because you can't have a pill without the skill. The body needs to learn what you want it to do. If not, the brain is an energy hog. It uses 20 to 25% of the energy resources, and it's just gonna take the...
~~If, ~~if you're gonna do its work for it, it's gonna say, "Okay, do the work." Even though it's not healthy for the body, the brain will say, "Okay, I have other things to do here.~~ I don't,~~ I don't need to deal with that anymore, so just keep it coming." ~~And,~~ and pain is a really powerful signal to
Michelle: That's interesting.
Patrick: it overrides a lot of healthy signals.
Michelle: Yeah. And I feel like,~~ um, ~~in general, our nervous system is so heightened these days, and we need something to balance it for sure. And so how does brain... ~~Like, ~~what are some of the things that BrainTap can help other than pain?
Patrick: ~~well ~~mostly ~~we,~~ we have find-- we've done studies on 72 different things, so I won't go through all of them. But [00:32:00] the, ~~um, ~~the main thing is sleep. I think sleep is the cornerstone to all health and, ~~uh,~~ in the body. And if you're not getting that sleep, that's the first thing to fix. And then what you do is ~~you, ~~you do the whatever you need to do, ~~like~~ drink a large glass of water with salt in it in the morning, and all the things you can do, but you've gotta get that brain chemistry back online sleeping deeply.
And ~~with, ~~with BrainTap, that's the number one thing that we do. All of our studies, we use something called the Pittsburgh Quality of Sleep Survey, which is approved for research, and we always show a dramatic change. We did a study in, ~~um, ~~with coal miners in Australia. One of the Quantum University students actually was the one who ran the study.
And what we found out was the average coal miner was in bed 10 hours a day before the study, but we were using something called the Circle Watch or Ring, and it was only recording one minute of deep sleep on average and two minutes of REM. So even though they were in bed for 10 hours, they weren't sleeping. So we had to teach them to sleep better. That's why we have a new program with Dr. Amen's doctor called Sleep [00:33:00] Like a Champion, because it's no longer a luxury, it's a necessity to... for
Michelle: Especially for fertility
Patrick: Yeah. But, ~~uh, ~~three weeks into the study, when we res- we re-scanned them, 'cause it was a six-week study, the halfway point, the group using the headset was already sleeping better than 70% of Americans.
By... And the group that was just using our app, the BrainTap app, in six weeks they were at that same pace. It takes a little bit longer when you're not using ~~the,~~ the retinal flashing because it brings more energy into the brain, and sleep really is a function of energy. ~~You know, ~~you probably heard the expression, "My kids are too tired to sleep."
~~Well,~~ most adults are too tired to sleep, and they think it comes in the form of a candy bar. It's the form of ATP. Light goes into the body through the hemoglobin, and then when it reaches a cell that's about to die, that cell absorbs that photon and starts something called the Krebs cycle. That Krebs cycle, just to simplify it, makes ~~like~~ a little turbine that starts kicking out ATP.
This is the energy that your brain needs. And so you can create that with light. But because we're under so [00:34:00] much synthetic light and we're not out in nature and walking around barefoot and all the things we need to, our brain is really, ~~uh... ~~Dr. Cousins actually said that,~~ uh,~~ the most underprescribed nutrient on Earth today is light, ~~and I,~~ and I believe that because people aren't getting enough light.
They're not getting the right kind of lights. So
Michelle: And we were taught to be afraid of it,
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. And that's craziness. ~~I mean,~~ every-- all life on this planet would die without the sun. ~~So, you know, ~~here we go. So when-- the, the next thing that we work on is sleep resi--~~ I mean, ~~stress resilience, ~~uh, ~~just in general, because everybody's gonna get hit with some kind of stress.
And when Mike Tyson said everybody has a plan till they get hit, you need to have a plan, and that means you need to have daily practices. I tell people, "You don't have habits in your life, you have rituals." So if you think about the rituals, even doing your hair or making your bed or, ~~you know,~~ packing your lunch, whatever, if something's out of order, you get a little agitated because that was your ritual.
~~You know,~~ if the toothpaste runs out or something happens, these kind of things bug you. So what we do is we help you to start to plan your life in a way that's meaningful. There's not a professional [00:35:00] athlete out there that doesn't use visualization. That's why,
~~you know,~~ Tom Brady's group, TBRX, is one
Michelle: They know.
Patrick: ~~So,~~ and then the third thing that we work on is peak performance moments. People have them occasionally, but the reality is that if we upregulate our nervous system, we can have more of those peak performance moments. So that means if you wanna stop smoking, lose weight, stop an addiction, work on PTSD, if you're mind over menopause, if you wanna prepare yourself for birth, we have a lot of sessions for stress-free childbirth.
We have sessions that are available for postpartum depression afterwards because, ~~you know, ~~the body changes. ~~We, ~~we have over 3,000 sessions on BrainTap, and we're adding more all the time. We're adding a lot with sports right now because of the big movement ~~with, ~~with Tom Brady's group. But we have-- you know, we're always looking at, ~~uh, ~~what we can do in the clinic 'cause we have 4,000 clinics out there that are using it on a daily basis to help their clients, not just BrainTap.
They're doing like you would do ~~as a,~~ as a practitioner of acupuncture. You would do your thing, and we would do our thing. And, ~~you know, ~~the-- we've [00:36:00] actually showed through photobiomodulation we can open up those gateways with-- that you're opening up ~~with, ~~with that, because we use the ear lights. So we're going through the junction over the ear like, ~~uh,~~ Dr.
Nogier with iridology said. ~~You know, ~~all the meridians, and we can measure those meridians because the body ~~is a,~~ is a factor of light and energy. So if we can get that energy going, the body will heal itself.
Michelle: It's amazing. I think about like how, ~~um, ~~most of modern science looks at cadavers and ~~you can't,~~ you can't see that energy flowing through that. ~~Like,~~ that's the whole idea of really health as seen from ancient medicine, but really, ~~um...~~ But it seems like now things are starting to come around, which is nice.
Patrick: Yeah. What's funny is ~~they're looking, ~~they're looking at the body like if I had this computer and I started tearing it apart going, "Where's Michelle? Where's Michelle in there?" Because it's, you're not in here, you're there projecting yourself through the screen. But they're l- they're looking, ~~you know. ~~So it's like they could tear this computer apart all day long, they're never gonna find you in there.
~~You know,~~ this is just the mechanism that brings it into our perceptual filters [00:37:00] so we can perceive it, but ~~it's,~~ it's energy and vibration. Everything in the known universe is light, sound, and vibration. ~~So, and,~~ and our senses from sight to sound to smell to kinesthetics are all observing that vibration, and then we're translating into this meaning that we give it.
Michelle: And it sounds like what you were talking about before, it really comes down to, first of all, the identification. And so how we identify really with our thoughts or like our perceptions, and that identification becomes, ~~um,~~ y- ~~you know, ~~it sort of imprints that into us and our experience. And what you were saying, almost like observing, ~~kind of like ~~separating yourself, disassociating with that, that's where you get the freedom, and then you can choose.
~~You know, ~~once you're aware that you're identifying with something that is not who you really are, because I think~~ that ~~that's the biggest thing. The second you identify with it, it's you are making that you
Patrick: Yeah. ~~The second,~~ the second technique, just so they understand, it's not just one technique, there's 13 of them. But the second technique is you already have the resources. [00:38:00] All unhappiness stems from unfavorable comparisons. So you already know the solution, you're just not activating it. So if we get-- We call it the resource generator.
So you already have a resource. ~~Like~~ if a friend came up to you and had the same problems you have, it's much easier to give them solutions because they're the one that's gonna have to go do them. But if we ~~kind of~~ treated ourself the same way and said, "Hey, look, this acting this way or thinking this way isn't working for me.
I need to change something." And then be willing to be wrong first. ~~You know,~~ my, ~~uh--~~ One thing Richard Bandler said was, "Anything worth doing well is worth doing terrible at first." Most people think they gotta be experts because of social media. ~~You know,~~ nobody posts all their failures. ~~You know,~~ like those guys who do all those weird things with the balls, bouncing them, and then you go read about it, it says, "They tried this 1,304 times before they got that one video to put on YouTube."
Now they got these little kids out there all frustrated trying to do the same thing that don't have the time to bounce that ball a thousand times. But so we have to be realistic that our, our-- We learn best through our mistakes until we do it [00:39:00] right. Just like learning to walk. If anybody's seen a child learn to walk, typically after they learn to walk across the room, they don't fall down anymore.
Their brain ruled out all the failures, and they had a lot. They had thousands of them, if not a million of them. They fell down in every way, but the brain says, "You know what? That didn't work. This one does." But as we grow older, we start to put too much meaning ~~on the, ~~on the failures.
Michelle: Take it
Patrick: feedback.
Yeah. So if we can just look at it as feedback and say, "Okay, that was feedback. ~~We'll,~~ we'll see what's g- what's going on there, and then we'll move from there."
Michelle: Yeah. It's like, ~~uh,~~ knowing that the world's actually working in your favor and even the mistakes are in your favor rather than happening to you.
Patrick: ~~Mm-hmm. Right. ~~Yeah.~~ In,~~ in fact, they even say that in the Bible where they say, "All the ill and all the things that are look like they're working against me are really working for me for my good." ~~So,~~ and that's ~~kind of ~~like a, a statement that a lot of people use today is that ~~this is,~~ this is earth school.
~~You know, ~~whatever you need to learn, it's gonna show up, and if you try to avoid it, it shows up in different ways.~~ So, you know, ~~in, in-- [00:40:00] I always tell people, "Think of it like you're in a cube and everything you can handle is in that cube." ~~You know,~~ but if, and once you start handling everything in that cube, the cube gets bigger.
Your life doesn't get easier. ~~You know, ~~a lot of people think, "Oh, my life is gonna get easier. I don't want any stress." But stress is how we learn and grow. We build our capacity through stress. But the problem is, if you don't have recovery, you need to have periods of recovery because think about working out
at the
Michelle: that's true.
Patrick: ~~When you,~~ when you work out at the gym, ~~if,~~ if we just exercised all day long and built our muscle or tried to build ~~our muscles,~~ our muscles would atrophy and they wouldn't grow, they would diminish. Those muscles grow because of the periods of 72 hours between lifting those heavy weights. It's the recovery that builds it.
The same thing's true ~~with, ~~with meditation. And just a-- If you do Tai Chi or yoga or anything like that, or when you're working out, there's a pro- that's proven that now because ~~you're, ~~you're triggering something called BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor, miracle grow for the brain. If you could take 10 minutes to relax, your body [00:41:00] starts to produce more acetylcholine, which binds at the muscle connection, meaning that you will build more muscle by taking 10 minutes after a workout just to relax your brain, because then your brain gets the time to organize all of that new information, that stress that it just felt.
It will make meanings of it and make your body do it. But some people jump right up after yoga, or they run out to their stressful life right after working out. Just take a few minutes to listen to some relaxing music, not rock music or something like that, but something relaxing that would calm you down.
Do some breathing exercises, and you would find magic will happen with your workouts.
Michelle: Yeah.~~ It's, ~~it's the yin and the yang. If we're constantly yang, ~~you know,~~ and we don't have that balance, the counterbalance, we need it. ~~I mean,~~ if ~~you, you know, ~~all of nature has that. It needs the opposite forces working together.
Patrick: Yes. ~~Mm-hmm. ~~Yeah
Michelle: So for people who are interested and, ~~um,~~ wanna check out more about your books ~~and,~~ and everything that you teach and also BrainTap, how can they find you?
Patrick: ~~Well, ~~[00:42:00] you're gonna share a link with them so that they can get a 14-day free trial. ~~I,~~ I always say that's probably the best thing to do. When they do that, they'll also get a link to one of my other books called "Thrive in Overdrive." It's a full book, but it'll be a PDF. You can put it on your Kindle and read it.
It'll explain the technology to you in doing that. Now, the, the app is 14 days free, so once you sign up, you don't get charged till the 15th day. 70% of people that do that will buy that app. And what the-- what I want them to, I challenge them to do is notice your sleep, and if you have a sleep metric like an Oura Ring or a WHOOP, notice your sleep 'cause 90% of the people that do that report back they've had their best night's sleep during that 14 days.
So that's-- So you can try it on yourself. You can be what we call an N of one, research project of one. And then if you like that, we also have a headset. The headset works in similar ways, but it uses light. And the reason light is important is in the research we've done, and we studied about 40,000 brains, is that when you close your eyes and meditate without light stimulus, that's why a [00:43:00] jyoti meditation or meditating to a candle works so well, is because that candle flickers at 10 hertz frequency And it brain, the brain syncs to alpha.
But we can sync to any brainwave frequency we need because it's an LED, and we have an algorithm that does that. And the light in the ears will give more energy to the brain to do the work. And what we find, fortunately, over the, these 40 years I've been doing this, is that most people don't have the right balance of brainwaves.
So what we do, the, the headset and app are gonna start to train the brainwaves. So I'm gonna give three tips to the listeners to understand why they might wanna run over there and do that. In the morning, your brain needs a brainwave called SMR, sensory motor rhythm. This is between your wide awake state called beta and your daydreaming creative state called alpha.
Now, this is what, where all your cognition comes from, all your classical memories and things like ~~that~~ that you need. So we train that in the morning. We call it digital coffee. It only takes about 10 minutes, and that wakes your brain up. And now, and if you can do without your coffee for two hours, it [00:44:00] even works better because coffee dysregulates the brain.
I'm not against coffee, but not in the first two hours. And then at 2:00 in the afternoon when your temperature drops two degrees, because it does for everyone,~~ it's, ~~it's a factor of the circadian rhythm. If it drops two degrees, everybody thinks they're hungry or thirsty or whatever. You might be hungry and thirsty, but the reality is that your brain is just rebooting.
So that's when you need to do a 20-minute session. Now, if you can't do it because of work or because of lifestyle, do it sometime in the afternoon. That's a 20-minute total reboot. So think of it, your brain almost like an old-time computer that when it stopped working says, "You've got too much in RAM.
Reboot." ~~You know, ~~the same thing's with your body. And we've done studies that showed that workers get 26% more work done when they do that during the day. And then at night when you go to sleep, what's really important, because the brain now has been regulated for uptime, ~~uptime,~~ uptime during the day, that you now train your brain when it's time for sleep to down-regulate.
So we have delta sessions. Now some people just listen to those. They put them on in their room and they get results. They don't even put on earbuds or ~~our,~~ our headset. They just put it [00:45:00] on,~~ they, ~~they download the session, put it on airplane mode, play the session, and it puts them into that deep sleep cycle so they can wake up the next day with energy
Michelle: So people can get the benefits just from the app alone, but then if they really wanna accelerate it, they get the headset, and the headset increases the light and it'll start to really, ~~um, ~~amplify, ~~um, ~~the energy that gets you into a certain brain state
Patrick: Yeah. Usually when people come to the clinics, they'll do it at least two to three times a week at the clinic level. But you-- I mean, if you're doing it at home and ~~you, ~~you'll have access to the app to listen three times a day or five times a day, whatever. ~~Uh,~~ I don't recommend more than three times. You don't really need it.
You need-- And you need to do the session for the timing. It's not like meditation where you just do the same meditation whatever time of the day. These are different brainwaves that need to be trained at different times. That's why we call it brain fitness, because our brain needs to be able to modulate for morning activities, afternoon activities, and sleep time activities.
Michelle: Interesting. And I'm sure that also helps adapt to,~~ you know,~~ you were talking about adapting to stress and ~~kind of~~ like [00:46:00] knowing how to prepare for it and to shift, ~~uh,~~ from different states.
Patrick: Yeah. ~~Mm-hmm.~~ Exactly
Michelle: ~~Well, ~~thank you so much, Dr. Patrick. This was such a great conversation, and of course, I could nerd out about this topic for hours 'cause I'm just so fascinated, and I love that you really do put together so much research, and you've done so over the years.
~~So, I mean,~~ all of that helps us all to grasp something that seems so abstract, ~~you know,~~ like the mind and, ~~uh, ~~the power of the mind. So thank you so much.
Patrick: You're welcome. I'm out to better a billion brains and you're helping me reach those people, so
Michelle: Awesome.
Speaker 2: So that concludes today's episode. You can find all of the links mentioned on the episode notes. If you're enjoying these episodes, please take a moment to share and leave a review. Reviews mean everything to podcasters, and I really enjoy hearing from my listeners. You can find me on my website at www.michelleorbitz.com.
You could also reach out to me on [00:47:00] Instagram, and I love getting DMs from my listeners. My handle is @thewholesomelotusfertility. I thank you so much for tuning in today, and I hope you have a beautiful [00:48:00] day.