Mastery of the Mind: Exploring Neuroplasticity, Neurodiversity, and the Art of Self-Directed Cognitive Development w/ Dr. Inna Rozentsvit

Unlock the mysteries of your mind with Dr. Ina Rosensvit, a visionary in the convergence of neurology, psychology, and holistic healthcare. Our conversation takes you on a transformative journey, illustrating how a compassionate approach to patient care that integrates medical, psychological, and social dimensions can profoundly impact healing and rehabilitation. From Dr. Rosensvit's remarkable personal voyage beginning in the former Soviet Union to her innovative holistic practice in the US, we explore the power of family support, the resilience of the human spirit, and the intricate relationship between the mind and brain.

Prepare to be captivated as we examine the wonders of neuroplasticity and self-directed growth. Dr. Rosensvit, with her rich analogies, brings to life the potential for your brain to adapt and evolve throughout your lifetime. We navigate the importance of nurturing our cognitive abilities through continuous learning and deliberate practice. Just as a Magnolia tree flourishes with careful pruning, our neural pathways can be shaped for efficiency and growth, empowering you to architect your own cognitive development and embrace personal transformation.

Finally, we celebrate the diverse spectrum of human cognition. Stories of triumph, like those of Temple Grandin, reinforce the strength found in embracing our differences and the untapped potential within neurodiversity. Dr. Rosensvit and I discuss how recognizing and valuing individual neurological variations can lead to collective advancement and a more inclusive society. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to harness mindfulness and self-directed neuroplasticity, to not only understand yourself better but to also become the master of your own cognitive journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Apex podcast. As always, I am your host, john Olnessy, the CEO and founder here at Apex Communications Network, and if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that I constantly rabbit hole in a variety of different areas, so you know whether it's entrepreneurship, it's local nonprofits doing amazing things for the community, it's people with interesting stories, it's inventors you know, everywhere across the structure or the different shows that you could have listened to over the years. I'm really just a curious person and so I'm super, super excited. Today I'm going to be sitting down with someone that was introduced to me through a friend that I went to Third Nature summer camp with. Shout out to Brian Healthman over at Third Nature.

Speaker 1: 0:51

If you haven't heard of them, you should give them a give them a look, and today we're going to be really diving deep into the brain and the mind and the body and the soul, all of which is you'll find out when you're listening to this episode are slightly different things inside of the way that we look at ourselves. So to give a brief introduction to my guest today, before I allow her to kind of take the reins here, I'm going to be interviewing a physician, neurologist and neuroabilitation specialist trained in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, with an extensive experience in brain injury, autoimmune neurological disorders and neuropsychiatric conditions, as well as their rehabilitation. Please join me in welcoming Dr Ina Rosensvit to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Thank you. Thank you, jan, it was a long introduction.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Yeah, you're so welcome. I mean a long introduction, but I think you know, in the grand scheme of things, people getting that one minute of context going into the next hour of journey that we're about to go on together will be well worth their weight. So A wanted to thank you for coming and hanging out today and B I kind of think that, starting us off, I said a lot of stuff in that intro. Right, you know, physician, neurologist, neuroabilitation specialist. I said words like psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Why don't we just kind of start with how you entered into your field and maybe we can kind of decode some of that for the audience here?

Speaker 2: 2:35

Okay, thank you for asking, actually, because mostly people are interested in one field. But my field is not just one field, it's more transdisciplinary approach to anything to life, to medical situations, to psychological situations, to friendships, relationships. You know, doing various creative stuff, entrepreneurship. So whatever I'm doing, it's always going through a lens, you know. So we're going through different schools. Yes, so I went to medical school. I did some PhD work in biology, like in general biology and how it relates to medicine, and then I did some different hormonal stuff.

Speaker 2: 3:24

That was in former Soviet Union many, many years ago. I don't want to say how many years ago, it would be scary. But then when we came here, you know, over 30 years ago, I went into, you know, like to medicine and to neurology that I loved. And then I did fellowship in neuroabilitation and I was introduced to this field of brain injury that you know. You have to be a collaborator. You cannot be just a physician. You have to collaborate with so many different specialties, with neuropsychologists, with speech therapists, with physical therapists, with occupational therapists, with nurses, with different consultants, neuro-abdomologists, neuro-atologists. You know everything, neuro and non-neuro, you know, and actually everything about one person. So when you think about it, if we go with.

Speaker 2: 4:20

The old way of doing medicine is everybody provides their feedback, everybody gives a diagnosis and then it's a collection of various things about the person that is just one person. So the holistic approach is lacking in Western medicine in general. In old ways, in the time when I was trained in medicine, we had more holistic approach. Now it's more narrow, so everybody goes deep and narrow and you know who falls through the cracks of this between the deep and narrow. The patient falls through the cracks, the family falls through the cracks of things not being covered or these physicians and great practitioners not being able to know what is one step to the right or one step to the left of the field.

Speaker 2: 5:14

So I was lucky that when I was at NYU and brain injury unit I was introduced to a group of people who were, you know, from different specialties and we learned each other language. We learned what it means to have, you know, upper spasticity, you know like in different, you know different disciplines, I mean different things and different approach to rehabilitation. And I also learned that, structuring my day mostly to spend with patients and the families and then in the evening doing my notes and helping nurses with orders and everything, I've learned a lot. I've learned that, you know, a family can pull the person through or can just let the person go and supporting the family, supporting the family that often is stretched out in their resources, stretched out in their understanding of their capacity to actually connect the dots know how to do it with different personalities and different opinions that they have. This requires transdisciplinary thinking and also holistic thinking, and that's where my interest to others other fields got to play, you know. So I've learned psychoanalysis.

Speaker 2: 6:42

You know I decided to do training, not just to get you know like service myself, but to get the training because it worked for me when I had the stressed out situation when my mom passed away and my child got sick with the, you know, chronic condition, I was able, with the help of psychoanalytic treatment, to get to healing part and to healing stage. So I said, okay, why can't I do it with my patients? So I introduced psychoanalytic thought and working with families and with the patients and I decided to start my nonprofit organization because I was not a part of the hospital system anymore but I wanted to help patients who were calling and families were calling. So I decided to start a nonprofit but I didn't know anything about business.

Speaker 2: 7:42

Where I come from, medical business is a misnomer, you know like it's it cannot be business. You know medicine cannot be business. But the reality of life is like here, you know is that it is a business but you don't need to treat it as a business that is a transactional but also like as a business is serving people, you know, with what they need, not what you have. Like I have this degree, that degree, it doesn't really matter if I cannot give the person and the family what they need. So I don't know like should I go further? Or you want to ask me something? Well, you know I like that.

Speaker 1: 8:23

I like the direction that we're going right now. I mean, I think that just gave us a really great synopsis. I wasn't aware that you had kind of started out in the neuro space and then migrated over to psychoanalysis and more of the. You know this is way watered down, but I'm doing this for the audience right, more or less from the to the biological you know parts of the brain and the rehabilitation of the brain, to how the mind works as a layer on top of the physical brain, right, which is a really amazing leap and it makes sense and we'll get into this. I'm going to tease it right now. We'll get to it here in a little bit, because I do have some follow up questions for Dr Rosenzwitz. But she has a theory that we've discussed called the triune brain, and I think that it's a super, super interesting way to look at things and it's not your theory, from the way I understand, but your interpretation of a bunch of different you know ways that super smart individuals have talked about the brain over the last, you know, 100 years. But before we get into that place. So that's a little sneak peek for you guys. Stay tuned if you're interested in. You know the layers of the brain and how the mind interacts with the brain.

Speaker 1: 9:45

For right now, I want to double click on that section that you just started to go down, which was you know, I am this expert in this field. I'm very curious. I'm constantly learning, I'm open to learning from all of these other transdisciplinary groups of people, but I don't know anything about business, right? What was so? You started the nonprofit and you kind of entered that space. What was that like? Transitioning from being a you know that practitioner into now being kind of a practitioner, entrepreneur, hybrid?

Speaker 2: 10:22

Well it is. I mean, I just was continuing to be who I am. I was continuing to do what I was doing. I just wanted to know in my, in the Russian mind, you have to have a official training in what you're doing. You cannot just like pick it up, maybe you're missing something and you're cheating people off something that you should have provided but you wouldn't because you didn't have the official training. So I did, I did go to MBA school and I finished it. It doesn't mean I learned too much about business, but what I did learn which fits everything that I am doing but now provides me with the business word is a stakeholder analysis. This is what I was doing with families. Yes, I was doing a stakeholder analysis with my neuro recovery solutions, my nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 11:19

I am doing stakeholder analysis. So what I'm doing? I first evaluate the patient, see if the diagnosis that patient received, like maybe a year or five years ago, is still there, or maybe it was a wrong diagnosis and it was now interpreted in new, could be interpreted in new, and then that takes maybe one or two or three visits, it depends. And then I see what is the support system, who are the doctors that the person is seeing what their specialties, what are they doing at this time? What are the providers? What are community programs like for people with multiple sclerosis or brain injury that require ongoing rehabilitation just to keep afloat at the same level? So I'm doing all that research and I'm doing all that stakeholder analysis who can do what and where, and where are the gaps and what are the gaps and who can cover. So I'm not taking over anybody's work or anybody's relationships, I'm just making more connections. If person needs just advocacy or just to understand what the doctor is saying in the very important meeting when they deciding about giving chemo or doing surgery or doing something else or going into hospice or whatever it is, I'm able to be there to know the situation and provide my five cents, which they always say. That says five million, but everybody has their own number, at least a million, and so to make their life easier. That's the main thing.

Speaker 2: 13:10

Even Freud, in one of his writings he said that why do we do psychoanalysis? Is to make the suffering better. It's not to cure somebody the person can only cure himself or herself if it's possible but at least to make the suffering better. Better suffering it's kind of maybe superficially it sounds like very banal, but it is not. It's really what we're doing, because there is no perfect outcome. It's always a price that we pay for being sick or for not having good support system, or for going only without all the routes of being and not want to explore what is possible. So that's kind of the answer. I don't know if I answer your question.

Speaker 1: 14:09

No, I think this is a gold mine. Oh, I want to take it in so many directions I think where I want to go next is. So you just kind of mentioned Freud there, right, and for everybody listening, that, you know, isn't crazy. Familiar with the history of psychology, freud was the kind of looked at as the father of psychoanalysis, right, really, the gentleman that pioneered interviewing individuals and diving into their thoughts, their patterns.

Speaker 2: 14:51

I think he came up with the couch structure, the closing your eyes and yes, so he was a neurologist, yes, and that time he was not able to to prepare the human's brains. The only thing he could work on is is frog you know frog's brains or fish but he was making connections how this part of the body is working for that with the rest. You know part of the body. So the main idea of psychoanalysis is to make unconscious conscious Right, and then when you make it conscious, then you work with what is conscious, then you can work on something when people are having unconscious thoughts and motivations and they are not aware of them and nothing you can do on the surface. If we have time, I can give you a little bit of metaphor, yeah yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Okay, so Freud was talking about our mind is like an iceberg. Yes, so on the surface is all our deeds and all our thoughts that we declare, but underneath the water are those like nine tenths of the actually iceberg is underneath the water, is unconscious or pre conscious things that are not on our tongue yet, not on our conscious mind, and those things work for us. You know those patterns. They work for us until they don't. And what happens is I call it.

Speaker 2: 16:23

You know when I need to explain how the psychoanalytic work works, is that I say that imagine that you are a captain of a Titanic and Titanic is your life.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Yes, and the first time you see an iceberg you never saw iceberg before you will come close because it's shiny, you know, object on the top of the water, and then and then you break your Titanic over that iceberg. Yes, so you made that mistake, you know. Finally you got the pieces together, you put together a new Titanic, you know, and then you're going now and then you're seeing another shining things on the top of the water, and then, if you didn't make a lesson, if you didn't take a lesson, if, if you didn't understand that now that piece can have a nine tenths on the bottom that can thank your Titanic. Then you will have it again and again and again. And that's why good girls sometimes suffer from finding only bad boys and good boys suffer from only finding bad for them, girls. You know so why? Because we're going with our pattern, so-called repetition compulsions, with Freud said, and we are breaking our Titanic over and over and over.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Yeah, I love that. I think that really lays the foundation. I'm really glad that you you took that direction with the metaphor, because I think that sets me up perfectly for where I wanted to go next, which was neuroplasticity and what that actually is and and how. You know it's neither good nor bad, but it's just something that is a function in our brain. So I love that because, you know, now we've kind of set the stage with okay, there is a large portion of our minds and our you know, our being that exists below the surface, right, and whether or not we're conscious of them, those patterns are constantly working.

Speaker 1: 18:25

And you know, sometimes it can be working in our favor, sometimes it's working against us in a way, right, sometimes in one phase of life they're working for us in a favorable way and in another season that exact same behavior is no longer serving us in that season. And I've talked to so many people and I know there's so many people that listen to this podcast that you know, sometimes it can feel really frustrating or hopeless, like oh, I'm never going to be able to break this habit, or I know I shouldn't need to be doing this, but like it feels like there's such an uphill climb and I think learning about neuroplasticity and the way that you explain it really helped me kind of digest that. So I'd love to kind of dive into neuroplasticity and self-directed neuroplasticity is kind of like our next topic.

Speaker 2: 19:12

So the neuroplasticity is. Neuro is a nervous system, a brain, a nervous system, and plasticity is the ability to change. That's all it is. So we had that conversation before. That's why you said it. You know it's not the good or bad. Sometimes I hear some practitioners would say like you know, come to me, this is the place where we will use your neuroplasticity. This is the only place I write away would be this way to go to that practitioner, because that means that where the person does not understand what the neuroplasticity is or kind of did not take time to get to learn what it is, so the so. This is the ability to change, and you know so, the ability to change the number of connections between neurons, the number of neurons and the number of branches that the same neuron makes to make more connections. So when we born, there are a certain number of neurons and connections and then, as we are learning life, as we are exploring, they like boom, you know like it's. You know explosion of connections.

Speaker 2: 20:29

I remember my childhood. I was going to, you know, music school and you know playing piano. I was, you know, taught how to play chess. I was taught how to carve wood. You know how to dance, how to sing, how to weave, you know baskets, you know. Like, you know, you know many, many things how to knit, and then those interests you know pruned out, pruned off, you know, and there is something state and something went off. It doesn't mean I cannot learn again how to play piano and I didn't through my young adult life until now but I know that when I come back to it and I stick to it and do like practice every day, I will, I will again play. Maybe I will not play like a you know, like a, you know Bernstein or somebody like that, but of course I will play.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Now, is this word like a statement? I don't want to like get you too far off track, but is this where a statement similar to do you never forget how to ride a bike would come from? Yes, okay.

Speaker 2: 21:37

Yes, yes, since you had it already there before, then you can come back to it on the easier ground. Of course, if you never played and you just started to do it as an adult, this actually can have another you know. Also, neuroplasticity will, will work, but it's actually can be even more productive because now you're using other skills that you had so far, you know, with fine motor and all that, and now you put your brain to hard work. The more hard work you put the brain on, you know, at onto, then the more advances your brain will do, the more preventive falls, hymer or any other dimensions you will have if you're older person. Okay, so the neuroplasticity you know, is, you know, like, so, making connections and pruning those connections. When there are too many connections then it's too crowded. Yes, like, imagine I have Magnolia tree in front of my house. If one year we don't prune the branches, the Magnolia, you know that usually the flowers are like this I cannot hold with both hands. They're very small because too many branches and the nutrition goes to too many branches. But if we prune, you know, then then the Magnolia is like that and everybody comes over and and make pictures, so, so, so that's brain does on automatic basis, just because it senses the need, you know. So, where it's needed to have more and where it's not needed. So that's kind of in a biofeedback, you know basis.

Speaker 2: 23:19

Now what is interesting besides, besides this natural neuroplasticity as a, as a potential, yes, we need to know that there is something like self directed neuroplasticity, which Dr Rick Hansen invented the idea. So the idea was about directing your neuroplasticity the way where you want it. So when you decide that you want to play piano in a year, you want to have a concert, yes, you will put your plan on. If you're a business person, you understand, you know how you make business plans. Yes, like, in a year I am playing piano. So what do I have to do 11 months before? What do I have to do 10 months before the? What I have to have 10, you know, nine months before. So you're planning every week, every day of your life, until that concert. So you're directing your mind to put more nutrition to that particular path, to put more direction to that self directed.

Speaker 2: 24:25

So and people that don't understand that they are suffering from thinking that whatever they, the nature, god for them, whatever somebody gave them, you know, at work, or the family gave them. So they it's all external, kind of external supply. Yes, that's what they can get. They don't see that internally they can build is like self generating machine, you know electrical machine, electromagnetic machine. So this is what they self directed neuroplasticity. That a lot of people don't understand.

Speaker 2: 25:02

But if you understand the concept then you know I can. I can do anything, you know. And I think that what helped me to get in tune with that and accept it as this is what it's true is like my dad, who taught me everything. He didn't have a boy, so because he wanted a boy and a girl, so he had only a girl, and he taught me everything how to fix the roof and how to and how to make preserves and how to knit and how to build like because he was an architect and also an engineer. So he taught me a lot of stuff and he told me that there is nothing that I cannot do if I want to. So that kind of connected to my childhood, because the whole life I thought that I can do whatever I want, you know. So I never had this idea that I can do something.

Speaker 2: 25:58

So I think that this is what I want to put forward for everybody who I work with, with my family, friends, anybody who I work with in with any field, whether it's a neuro, you know coaching, or it's a medical, you know consultation, or it's a mentee or you know in, or just the person that asked advice. You know I'm telling them that this is neurologically based. It's not something I'm just saying because I want to make them feel better. They have those powers and they sometimes don't know they have them and that's kind of that's a sad situation sometimes when people come to 65 years old and they never felt that they can do anything they want, and they just find that out, and it's very hard to find out when you're that older. So I want the younger people to know about this and kind of to to plan their life as per their plan, you know, not by somebody else's plan or whatever they got in the handout.

Speaker 1: 27:03

Yeah, I love that. I, you know, haven't really heard of neuroplasticity, you know, put in the context of, you know, your life as a whole, right, but I think that that is super important for anybody that's that is is listening to this. You know that may feel like they're in a place where they've lived the same six months for the last five years. You know, at any given point there there can be a coming to consciousness type moment and those patterns can change, not to say that it won't be difficult to change those ingrained patterns Because, as you mentioned, you know, the more repetition that your brain gets doing something and I think this is actually probably a great place to transition into the triune brain theory you know, the more repetition that your brain gets in a specific mode of being or an action or a response to a trigger, things of that sense.

Speaker 1: 28:03

And for for everyone, listening in layman's terms, right, basically, your habits, your rituals, things that you do on a daily basis, the way you react when somebody challenges you on something, the way that you react when somebody asks you a question, your belief in yourself, right, the idea of when I go into this interview for this new job interviews make me anxious because I'm an anxious person and then, you know, you kind of go down these rabbit holes. I would love to kind of a. I got a smile and a nod, so that's a plus. So if there's anything you want to add on to the end of my sentence there, feel free. But I think this is also a great place to kind of transition into you know, the triune brain theory and the different levels of the brain and the different ways that you know our brain kind of serves us at those different tiers.

Speaker 2: 28:57

Mm, hmm, yeah, so I can add a lot of stuff, but let's go to triune and maybe we'll come to the next.

Speaker 1: 29:03

I like this podcast for hours if we really wanted it to be.

Speaker 2: 29:09

I like conversation to go in a spiral. You know, like I imagine myself in the like Egyptian pyramid. You know you go on the bottom and then you go and you're in the same place because you see the same things on the bottom but you're in a different height and you're in a different experience and a different time. So you're a different person. You're not the same person. That was there like a, you know a circle before and then you're coming to the same place and then you're in the third. You know around and you're a different person with different experience. So so, yeah, so I will go to triune brain. So the before saying triune brain, I just have you know my own kind of perception to understand, like the words, because sometimes we use the same words, we mean we mean different things. Sometimes we use different words, we mean the same thing.

Speaker 2: 30:04

So the brain and mind is a dyad for me. It's not, they're not existing without each other. So the brain first is born when we are in our mom's womb and before we come out, nine months later or whatever months later, you know we already have some mind going because the mom, through the hormones, through the communication, you know, with the outside world through her voice, hearing her voice and other people's voices and different moods, you know screams or yells or love, and you know. And the cuddles, you know the child is getting. The mind, you know so the mind is something that is produced by the brain and it's kind of a.

Speaker 2: 30:56

So if the brain is a hardware, yes, the mind is a software, you know. Like, if you want to put it in a computer terms, you know it's not the same, but it's the closest to what I, you know, can find right now in my mind. And so they don't, they don't, they don't live apart. You know so if somebody's no-transcript dies because of the brain injury or whatever happens, stroke, you know, if the brain dies, that particular mind dies too. Is there no interaction with that particular person. That person is a different person, is just more of a physical body, but not really interacting with the world of themselves. And the same as if the mind is going because of Alzheimer or any other dementia. Yes, then the brain dies off, it's shrinking, it's shrinking, it's shrinking. If you see the MRI or CAT scan of a normal brain with aging and the person that has Alzheimer, of the same age, their brain is like shrunk.

Speaker 1: 32:06

So that's really interesting that you put it that way. So on one side you know you have the brain having some type of physical alteration, whether it's through, you know, some type of stroke or a physical injury, things of that nature, and that affects the mind. And then on the flip side of that, it's not that the physical atrophy of the brain is what's causing the mind to go. You're saying it's the atrophy of the mind that's causing the brain to shrink in a way.

Speaker 2: 32:39

It's going both ways. It's going both ways.

Speaker 1: 32:43

They're so deeply connected to each other that they're getting purple, basically. So you, can.

Speaker 2: 32:46

That is like chicken and egg, you know. So, if you have like, if God forbid, like anybody, like a person has a stroke, yes, and some part of the large part of the brain doesn't work. So physically it gets shrunk because it's no use. There is no need of nutrients and everything that part of work that that that part of the brain did like, whether it's a speech or understanding where you're in space, or memories that part of the brain dies off, so it shrinks. But then the mind also suffers because the mind doesn't have a connection to the outside world on the same level and the same. If mine goes, because you know somebody is depressed or somebody is, you know, not using the mind, you know like there is, you know, no new connections, they are cut off, cut off, cut off self defeating behaviors, yes. So then the brain doesn't need to maintain that value and it shrinks. So it's one triggers the other. It's not one or the other, it's one and the other.

Speaker 1: 33:56

And I think that's why. That's why you choose to use the word dyad Right.

Speaker 2: 34:01

Yes, because they are together. They're not just twins, they're not partners. They are partners, but they're partners that are inseparable. There are, one does not exist from another. It's like in old days, when you marry you're inseparable. Yes, no matter what, for good and for bad. Yes, you know. So that's how mind and brain are, for good or for bad.

Speaker 1: 34:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do they get in as many arguments with each other?

Speaker 2: 34:28

Sometimes, yes, because, because the mind takes you somewhere, you know, on places where the brain is not. Had not been there.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:37

And you know it's difficult and it's like, oh, I don't want to do that work. But then the mind would say like, look encouraging, like if you do that work you will be healthy for 10 more years than you would be. You know, if you, you know you wouldn't do that work. Yeah, yeah, it's a constant reflection. That's called reflection. Yes, so so it's connection to the previous part where we talk about neuroplasticity and what it does and how it brings us to the self directed neuroplasticity, the just be aware, that's what happens the moment in second analysis. And then, aha, oh, now I understand why. Oh, yeah, that's kind of, you know, like when sometimes you get a lot of advice and then, oh, no, that's not for me, that's not mine, that's not my situation. And then all of a sudden, aha, that's what it is. Yeah, that's aha moment.

Speaker 1: 35:34

Yes, so that's awakening, that's awareness, but living on a very, very popular one, for just I keep wanting to like make sure that we're including the audience in the conversation, like, if you're a pretty simple one was more than likely All of us have had, I won't say a parent, but maybe a parental figure, right? So that's like a mentor, somebody that's influential in our life, that has given us a piece of advice over and over and over again and we're like, ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then all of a sudden, your friends tells it to you or somebody else says it, and then, next thing you know, you're like, oh, wow, like okay, yeah, that was there the whole time. How did I not see that? Yeah, and you know why.

Speaker 2: 36:15

You know why? Because your friend. You perceive your friend as a not a judging parent or parental figure that only want to tell you what to do. You compare yourself with the friend as a peer, so you know that that friend went through the same thing maybe hard dating, or maybe switching careers, or maybe the small business didn't go the way it's supposed to go. You know so when they are saying, and you perceive them as they know what they're talking about because they've been there. Yes, in opposed to parental figure that just talks from their position. They don't know your life, it's not connected in your mind.

Speaker 1: 37:00

Yeah Right, so yeah, that's why you can get that from so many different areas and different perspectives and stuff. And then, yeah, you do have that kind of light bulb moment at that aha moment. Yeah, so to kind of so. So they're triad or the three different levels are triune. Brain, when we kind of talked about that, implies three.

Speaker 2: 37:24

So before you're going, you know, there I just want to say so, awareness that I just talked about is the first step. There are moments to be aware, to make unconscious conscious is just the first step. You have to reflect on what you came up with, the idea that you came up with. You have to go back and forth, give and take. You know, to hear this side, that side, look from this, from that perspective. So that's reflection. That's why the reflective journaling is very good, for you know, when you do coaching with somebody or you self coaching, yes, you do reflective journaling, you do do the link, you do Like anything that will connect your new idea with reality. So that's reflection. And then the third part you have to practice. If you don't practice, then all these good idea, those good reflections, they will go in vain because if you don't practice, then you don't make a new road in your mind and you will go the old way.

Speaker 2: 38:33

I call it I 95, you know, in New York we have my 95 interstate and it's a like multi lane. You know road and people like it because it's multi lanes so you can go different speed and all that. But when you get to like that one road and it's only what you know. And then you got stuck. You know, like the tractor trailer you know went upside down or a major accident, and you don't know any other country roads or small exits, then you will stuck there, get stuck there for the rest of your life, you know, for the rest of you know, whatever time.

Speaker 1: 39:12

So the longer it takes them to clean up the accident. Yeah, then you're stuck on highway if you don't know the same.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Yeah, you have to have the practice and the courage to try things that might not need to work for the rest of your life, but you know you can do them, you know. So that's kind of I want to finish that part with the neuroplasticity. Now the try on brain that we know that it's a at the diet. You know, brain and mind it's a diet and we will be talking about the brain, try on brain, but actually we talking about the diet, we just talk about train brain. So the try on brain idea or theory was proposed by Paul McLean. He was a social neurologist. He wanted to know actually how people work in groups.

Speaker 2: 39:57

Usually neurologists are interested in individuals, yes, and individual brains, and not in mental health usually. He was an interesting individual. He was very kind of transdisciplinary, I would say, and although I never heard him talk, but I read, you know his stuff and it kind of like it's, you know, it's a bone for my heart, you know, because you know, because this is something makes sense to me. So he came up with a theory in 1960, but he published only in 1990, 30 years later. Why? Because the theory is so easy, is so simple that none of his high intellectual friends and colleagues thought that this is something worthy of you know, worthy of even discussing. So it never came to light until 30 years later.

Speaker 2: 40:53

But how I see it, and I'm giving my interpretation of the theory, is that he's he's saying that we actually, in each brain and each brain mind, diet. In my language we have three, three levels, and one is like an onion, you know, is an onion peel. So you have the core, which is based on fear, you know, and fight and flight reaction, and you know. So that's a lizard brain they call. The second layer is called mammal or dog brain. Sometimes they explain to kids that is based on feelings, emotions and memories. All mammals are feeding their children with milk, they're cuddling, they're licking, they're grooming them. So that's why it's called mammal brain.

Speaker 2: 41:51

Then the third level is a logical brain, is a human brain, is a really thinker, analyzer, synthesizer brain and the one that can talk. Ok, I don't look at it in terms of practical application, although I do like the onion peel kind of metaphor, but for my purposes I am talking about the three level of somebody's house. The first level is a fear-based. It's a survival. We do need it. We do need it. We cannot just disregard it, because if we disregard it we get a lot of trouble. We can be eaten up by bad people, bad system, bad habits and bad situations, and we can get tested.

Speaker 1: 42:46

I love that you said that right there, because I hear so often from whether it's gurus for those of you that aren't watching YouTube right now, I'm giving the quote fingers gurus that show up inside of my Instagram feed or show up inside of my social algorithms to say your goal is to eradicate your fight or flight response. You don't want to be afraid going in any situation, and I disagree with that so highly for the exact reason that you bring up Because, ok, so what if you're not a major hiker going out into the Big Horn Mountains and you don't need to have fight or flight because you're not going to run into a bear inside of your cozy apartment in your suburban neighborhood? But, to your point, that fight or flight response also protects us or gives us awareness around individuals that could draw us off track opportunities. That may not be the best fit for us. It's a detection system that you can't just shut off and expect positive things to happen.

Speaker 2: 43:43

Correct and all of us have all three levels. So it's not like you have only first level, I have two levels and somebody has three. We all have three levels but depending on how each level is to our liking, we spend there more time than the other. So if somebody, especially people who are traumatized as children on purpose or even without doing it on purpose, but they were traumatized, then they didn't have anybody model them to go to the second floor, to the feelings, emotions and memories, and a lot of these people will go to resort only to live on the first level because it's safe, they survive and that's the main thing for us to survive, us for any species. So we need that. So they live there and at least they are alive. This is how, if the brain, mind Dyat, could talk, that person's entity would say at least I'm alive, that's good enough for me. But if they are able to get to the second level, it takes time to go to the second floor, yes, and that's where they spend some time, where they reflect on their emotions, how it feels and what to do about it. And then they have the memories, they access the memory box and play with the memories and planning something, then they can negate the fear. They can negate the fear but they incorporate the fear level into their thinking, but it's only on the level of emotions and feelings. Now, if somebody is capable to go to the third floor, it takes little time. Yes, it takes the stairs. You take little time. You go to the third floor and that's where you add computer stations, you analyze or synthesize, or you decision maker, putting speeches, putting lectures out. Then you are able to incorporate the first level of work, the second level of work and the third level of work and the response will be the best response your being can give to the world at that time. And going back and forth is like taking stairs when you don't have any gym around. The best thing is to take stairs up and down, up and down. So you take stairs from the first level to the second, talk it out, to the second, to the third, go down, go back, and this way you build your muscles and this way you build your ability to make decisions on your own, without going into one state of being like fight and flight or just people with trauma. They go more for fight and flight.

Speaker 2: 46:47

People with addictions go more on the second floor and they actually, when I was training for probably five years people the addiction specialist, I explained to them everybody has three levels those people who go, for example, addiction like playing cards, for example, and spending time in casinos yes, and those people usually have money. They usually have good positions since they have money to spend there. Yes, and they know that this addiction is not good for them. But in the moment the third floor is shut where they lecture that it's not good for you. The first floor is shut because they don't want to have fear in the moment. So they sequester those parts and they live on that second floor, the lights and women with the nice dresses and the music and the shining in your face and everybody applauding and you're getting a lot of money or not.

Speaker 2: 47:56

And then when that is finished and they lost everything they have, they come back to reality and now they are in fear, or now they're giving you a lecture why they shouldn't have done it. They shouldn't have done it. Now they want to be proponents of going and talking to young people about it, like how going to casinos is not the way to live. But in the moment they want it to be on that second floor and that's kind of you know. And then if somebody likes to live only on third floor because they are not comfortable, that they are fear, they don't want to be fearful, especially guys, they don't want to be projecting like I am fearful person. So they kind of shut down their fear level, they don't want to be touchy-feely or they don't know how to go about it, because nobody really trained them to go there and be OK with the feelings.

Speaker 2: 48:50

Yes. So they go into this intellectual level, the third level, and they live there and they are OK until they want a mate, until they want a wife, until they want a girlfriend, until they want sex, until they want a relationship. And now they don't have a training. So you remember we were talking about training. You have to train yourself to go to different roads and now they have hard time. They have hard time, they start to doubt themselves, they start to think I'm not good enough, this is not for me, I will just go with whoever wants me. You know they sure change themselves and so that happens all the time. Just because people are not trained to go up and down and enjoy it. You've got to enjoy it, you've got to look at it as not again going to this level, to that level. Yeah, you've got to enjoy. You're still doing it, so it's better to enjoy. The more it's enjoyable, the more it is easy to do.

Speaker 1: 49:54

I love that. I think it's super important, for I know that there's a lot of high performers. I know a lot of you that listen to this show are people that have started from working as a nursing assistant and are now nurse managers. Or maybe you're somebody that I met at a conference that owns their own business, or somebody that is actively trying to make a career switch. But almost everybody that listens to this show continues to tune in because they're trying to take themselves to another level. They want to try to continuously improve in life, and I love the almost I don't want to call it a warning, but just a word of caution that the goal is not to just escape the fight or flight stage and again, like we said earlier on, and just avoid it. Ok, now I'm on the second floor. Ok, now I'm never going to leave the second floor and then, once I make it to the third floor, I'm never going to go back down to the first floor.

Speaker 1: 50:49

If you picture your house like you, follow this logic, like Dr Rosenzitz saying if you have a three-story home, you only ever live on the first or on the third floor of your house and you never go downstairs. Your downstairs is going to get gross. There's going to be a lot of cobwebs. You're going to have to do a lot of cleaning, dust is going to get everywhere. You have to maintain your home, and so is the goal then to kind of we've talked about a couple of different concepts to play into this, having aha moments and things of that nature. Is the goal, then, to know, when you enter into one of the floors of the house and appreciate it for what it is, and then decide, make that unconscious conscious and then figure out do I need to go up the stairs or down the stairs, and where do I need to navigate in the house? Or how do we start to form a kind of a positive relationship with our three different stories?

Speaker 2: 51:41

I think the main thing is to develop curiosity, not to think that you have a goal you know like. If you're an entrepreneur, you want to earn more money, you want your business to be successful, for example, but if it's only thing that what you need is the money, or to have another company or another branch of your franchise, or something like that, then you will be a very miserable person. You will have that. You will have that at some point, but you will be miserable person. So you need to be curious. You need to be curious about, first of all, to think through the lens. How can I help my client to get the best results? How can I get my patient to the best possible outcome for their health? How can I get my mentee to the best you know place in life where they enjoying themselves? You know. So if you look from that perspective, that curiosity, and then curious about yourself, what you like and what you don't, why I don't like that or why I don't like this, let me try, you know, encourage your own courage to take on things that you know. You may be newbie right now and nobody likes to be a newbie. That's why you know we have often stagnant world, because everybody wanna be a specialist. Yes, everybody wanna be a specialist. Nobody wants to start a new. Actually, take a class, take a course, go into program, go into a group that you know that you can discuss things and, among peers, go back to your own self. Right, write a letter to your own self Like what would you recommend or what would you not do or what would you explore if you would be like 10 years younger? You know, those exercises help to enrich all of our floors, to not to live on the first floor but to appreciate it, because it let us live, you know it, let us survive. If we are not alive, then no floors will help us. Yes, right, you know. And then to appreciate and then try them out, you know, all the time, and then it will be flowing, then you will have fun doing it Right.

Speaker 2: 54:10

Trust your intuition, you know. So, if you feel like you're right now like I, feel like one of my kind of magic powers, yes, like we all have like a, we are power rangers. Yes, so mine is like this curiosity, which is, you know, freud called benevolent curiosity, meaning it's not for me to, you know, to put my nose somewhere, it's just to learn something that will be useful for that person that I'm working with. You know and and so benevolent curiosity, and then also the trained intuition. The more you trust your intuition, the more you check it out, the more it becomes trained. And then you come to this mindfulness state where you, your body, will tell you like, even if your thought cannot put anything in words, but your mind will tell you this is wrong, something is wrong. Your God is telling you something is wrong here. I need to look into more. You know, I need to go into, you know, exploration here, and that is important to do. You know, and this is not something somebody teaches you at school or not.

Speaker 2: 55:24

Every parent knows to to give you the.

Speaker 2: 55:28

A lot of parents are in fear, you know, in fearful, you know kind of path, because they, you know, like there's so many things can happen to the child and they don't get to like special school, or they don't get that particular score and now they will not get to college with some kind of scholarship, or they are not performing in sports, and what will happen?

Speaker 2: 55:50

It makes their child feel they are nobody if they cannot like perform in that sport and that tennis or any other sport that they are counting on scholarship for. So you know. So all these, all these things are important for everybody and that's why, when I work with somebody, those are things that maybe not as a they wouldn't hear it from neurologists not the prescription for any pill or any exercise, but this is something to give them to think about and to make them feel they can do it, no matter what you know, and they you know. The ability is there, the capacity is there to start with and it's up to you. If you take it on, if you use your self-directed neuroplasticity, if you use the exercising through your you know, try your brain up and down, if you use other you know, phenomena that we didn't touch, you know today, but you know important in our brain, mind diet to utilize and to know. So you know you're a master of your life, you are that captain of your Titanic and you will not let it break this time.

Speaker 1: 57:06

Yeah, yeah, I don't have, I'm not gonna add anything to that. I think that that was a great way to kind of wrap that section there. I do definitely believe wholeheartedly that awareness around these types of topics and stuff like that could be life changing for a lot of people. So I think the next place that make sense to go and this will probably it's crazy that we've already been recording for an hour, but this will probably be one of our last Pandora's boxes, so to speak that we open up topic-wise. But if you're listening to this and maybe you've been doing chores or you've been working out while you're listening to us and stuff, just to give you a quick recap of where we've been so far, right, we started off kind of hearing about the history of your interests, coming into the field and everything and how understanding the mind and the body is all sorts of different fields that plug together and it requires this sense of curiosity to interact with. And then we learned some of the biology pieces, we learned some of the psychology pieces and it all seems so wide ranging, right, and as much as there's maybe some golden principles or some natural laws or some types of truths that we can find inside of all of that conversation. It still doesn't take away from the fact that multiple times throughout this conversation you've referred to everybody kind of needs to find what works for them right and that we are all very diverse in the way that our brains are structured or how we were set up via our experiences in childhood and all these other sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 59:02

And I kind of want to open the box on the topic of neurodiversity and what that means to you. So I know that listeners to the Apex podcast are familiar with the term. If you guys want another great episode, go back and listen to me. Interview Jennifer Hill. We did a great episode on I believe it was neurodiversity, and then we also talked about the vagus nerve pretty in depth on that episode. So that's a great episode to go back and listen to. But, dr Rosenstern, from your perspective, what is neurodiversity and why are you so passionate about kind of speaking and getting people to understand more about what that actually means?

Speaker 2: 59:51

Neurodiversity is very kind of dear to my heart because I, you know, like all the people, that adults that I work with, they're neurodiverse, yes, and I love my patients and I love their families, and all of them are different. So these individual differences like Dr Stanley Greenspan was talking about children they are with us. You know, we can develop them into something else, but as of this moment, each of us individually different. So you know, some people are perceiving lights or sounds or touch, or when touching your skin they're different from another person and that ignites the mind, brain, you know, diet to respond differently and then the body responses are different. Somebody goes into fight and flight if they have too much touch or too much light coming in and we don't know what's wrong with this person. He's like crazy, like he reacts like crazy, he's like lunatic or something like that. We're judging them. So, and not long time ago I was asked to consult on children with neurodiversity, people who are on the spectrum, who are verbal, for example, but they are different, and then I got in touch with my old kind of passion for listening and reading everything that Dr Oliver Sacks did. Unfortunately he passed away, but I was lucky when I was in residency in Albert Einstein. He was still coming there as a guest speaker, he was still in faculty and he was a odd person himself. He had prozapagnosia, so he could not recognize the faces and he said that we have to take people for what they are. You know, like, without judging. Like he says that he went to shrink all his life. He went to therapy because, you know, he felt like he needs it and one time he shrink went, you know, was on the street and he didn't recognize the doctor and then his psychiatrist did, you know, made a big deal out of it that he kind of neglecting, like he is purposefully, kind of purposefully slash, non-purposefully, not recognizing him, and then he just let it go.

Speaker 2: 1:02:28

But later in life, when he started to work with neurodiverse, with Tourette syndrome, with autism, with different people with different blindness and deafnesses and stuff like that something had to do with neural system abnormalities or pathology he actually learned that he has prosopagnosia. You know he could not, you know, understand he would guess, you know, like it was an experiment they did was one of the interviewers. They showed him the faces of Michelle Obama and, I think, oprah and he was figuring out. You know he said oh, this is like significant person, I think that person is on TV or something like that. And then he was figuring out and actually he was wrong in who this is, you know. But then when they gave him the sound of the voice, then he knew who that was because he used other capacities to recognize, not just the visual. So he was very into it and I, you know, and I started to, you know, get interested, and few times that I was asked to help, I was able to help with children that have high functioning autism, to give direction to the therapist team how to deal with the situations.

Speaker 2: 1:03:52

And it is so much, it gives me so much pleasure to be able to make a difference in these people's lives and then talk to their parents and teach the parents that you know their anxiety, their wanting, their wish for these children to be the same as others is actually killing their own identity. That is not there yet you know, like their own understanding of who they are, you know, not letting them feel that they are, you know, equally important you know, as people and they can contribute, as, for example, one of the well-known autistic person is Temple Grandin. Now she's a zoology professor, but she was an autistic person that you know had issues, you know relating, had issues of understanding the environment, but her mom was putting her on the path. You have to work hard and now she's advocating for families that who have autistic children. You know autistic people themselves. She said you need to put your mind to a hard work and only then you can develop your own special powers. You know that's how all these computer, you know geniuses and a lot of business, small business and then now it's a large business owners. They have different dyslexias autism, you know ADHD. You know every other person now has ADHD symptoms and you know it's all related to anxiety and overload. You know overload of information and not being able to find a path to process it and not, you know not having that assurance that if you use one path then you will be successful and then you can use another path and you can use another path. You know it's too much of processing of information and then when people understand that that you need to give little more time, you need to give a little less of the.

Speaker 2: 1:06:02

You know stressful. You know input and that person is able to perform creatively. They usually have like high creativity profiles but if they are stressed, they're, you know they don't have that idling capacity that you know we should be able to use for in a stressful situation. So all the capacities are in use. So if you have all your engine parts are in use and you don't have one that is, you know, on idling, where you can get on the higher speed or it's a higher gear, then you're stuck. You're stuck with not performing. So I think that understanding neurodiversity helps us to understand humanity and enjoy and appreciate this tapestry of humanity which you know like having all these differences. They make so much sense when they are kind of looked at together, you know, as one piece, like holistically. So I don't know if that was something like I was able to answer the question, but yes, this is where it all started.

Speaker 1: 1:07:17

Yeah, I think you know one way to metaphorically look at the benefits of neurodiversity. Right Is what I think about career distribution, right, and phrases like it takes all kinds of kinds or, you know, different minds make the world go around. There's these different types of statements and stuff that kind of allude to the benefit of not everybody thinking the same way, right, or not everybody taking the same approach to solve a problem. That's how innovation happens. That's how inventions come to be. I was raised with this gentleman named Dr Forrest Bird. My dad was very good friends with him growing up and he invented the, not only the ventilator and the modern respirator but the G suit, and he invented other additional pieces of electronics that went into different devices and, you know, ended up building a bunker in the mountains in Idaho and was this extremely eccentric individual. But I remember growing up and hearing him tell stories about knowing the Wright brothers and his dad working for Henry Ford as an engineer and all of these different types of things, right, and a lot of the time he would say you know I was misunderstood by a lot of people but Because I was willing to be the odd one, I was able to impact 10x the number of people. I always took that to heart and thought about that a lot Is that sometimes, when you are going through processes and you may look around and you say, why am I the only one that is looking at this problem this way? That's not to say that your approach is wrong, and I think that we're taught in schools there is a right and a wrong answer, right. Especially multiple choice questions or stuff like that kind of gets you into this headspace where, OK, if I got the question wrong, I failed the test, right. And then I got into nursing school and I had to throw all of that mentality out the window because their testing strategy is here's five correct answers. Which one is the most correct answer? Right, and that kind of.

Speaker 1: 1:09:39

I had to start rethinking and I look around and I see so many of my friends that are engineers and amazing plumbers and tradespeople and amazing architects and stuff, and sometimes they're not the most sociable individuals, right. And then I have friends that are so charismatic they could sell a pork chop, they could sell an ice cube to an Eskimo, right. But they also, if you try to get them to sit down and look at equations for longer than 30 minutes, they want to jump off of the side of a building. So you have all of these different types of people. They all mold together. Different people are attracted to different types of work, they're attracted to different types of hobbies, and all of those things kind of create this beautiful mixture that allows the world to move around.

Speaker 1: 1:10:24

So if you were listening to that and you're thinking, well, how do these different brains all connect and what are all their different purposes? That's a very narrow way to look at it, but one example is the different ways that people can be attracted to different types of careers and how valuable it is. Imagine a world without plumbers, right? Or imagine a world without physicians. Sure, it would be a drastically different place.

Speaker 2: 1:10:47

Yeah, yeah. So everybody has a value and everybody. If we let people to be creative, we will let people to shine. If we let people to not to be afraid to say what they think, yes, and let them to develop further, that we would have more and more individual that contribute to the whole society, to our lives, to their families, to themselves to be a happier place on this planet.

Speaker 1: 1:11:23

Yeah, I really love that and I think a great way to kind of round out this section on neurodiversity and this will take us into the closing of the episode.

Speaker 1: 1:11:30

If you've been listening with us the entire time, I appreciate you sticking around for this entire conversation Is the importance I just talked about a whole slew of a bunch of different types of people, right, and we've already acknowledged that neurodiversity is a very beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 1:11:47

But something that you said in a conversation about a week ago now it might have been two weeks ago and, for context, Dr Rosenzweidt andI have been working together for about a year on developing her personal brand and you're talking about some other things that I'll say at the ending of the episode here. But you mentioned that neurodiverse individuals, that there's a stark difference between them feeling pressured to perform or adhere versus feeling understood and supported throughout the process, and I think you already started to kind of explain that in the last little bit that you just spoke on there. But I'd love for that to be kind of like the ending place for this episode is how can we help people and or maybe even help ourselves if we are neurodiverse people feel empowered and supported. How do we do our part? I guess how do we do?

Speaker 2: 1:12:50

our part is just. I think it's an interesting question. It can probably take another hour to answer.

Speaker 2: 1:13:01

But the answer in short it will be, I think, to suspend our judgment about what is normal and what is not, Because at least once in our lives at least once, but it's more than once each of us was in the situation or is in the situation or will be in the situation when we do something unusual, out of the character or out of our reach, of our profession, or something unusual and that maybe the beginning that our self-directed neuroplasticity takes us there and we need to not judge but examine why. Maybe it's my intuition takes me there, maybe I just don't trust my intuition, maybe I just don't know what it is. What is intuition? Where do I feel it? I also didn't tell you we talk about triune brain, but I have a quadriune brain theory where, if you don't go up, we assume that it's like first floor, second floor and third floor. But here in New York, in opposed to Texas, we have basements here and we have another floor, that going down. So if we cannot take things up, they're going down to the basement. And what is the basement of persons being? It's his body or her body? Yes, and then if we cannot process something going up to the first, second or third floor, it goes down and lodges in our body and that's where the gut feeling is Something is wrong with this person, something is wrong with this situation. And then you trust it, that it's your mindfulness, it's your gut feeling and it has a value. And it's not necessarily you have to trust it and go with that, but trust it that it makes sense to look into it. So that's what I would say. That is the most important to suspend the judgment, to be curious what is all possible? Because to look at everything as a possibility rather than wanting to give up something.

Speaker 2: 1:15:27

I just had a conversation about dating, yes, and the person is very successful in everything, but not successful in dating. And he's asking me how I drop my patterns. How do I drop my patterns? Because I sound very desperate when I am just feeling time, as I'm missing time and I'm missing the person or whatever. And I say, well, why don't you think not as a dropping your pattern, but to acquire a new pattern, as you constructed it with your self-directed neuropesticity, and take it to the new level or new direction? Then you don't have to drop anything, it will be with you, it will be dragging you there anyway. But maybe you will enjoy the second way, the third path, the fourth path, and then your old ways will be always there, but you will give them space. And that's old me. It's not me anymore because I enjoy that. I enjoy that path. So not changing, not breaking ourselves, but seeing an opportunity, seeing an opportunity and seeing the light rather than seeing the darkness and something that is not possible. So that's kind of what they're like.

Speaker 1: 1:16:54

I like that a lot Suspending judgment and then giving yourself permission to move in that direction. Correct, I think it's a moving way to put that. Well, this has been awesome. So I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to stop by. I always had conversations and I'm glad we were able to dive down some specific rabbit holes and I know that the audience will really, really enjoy. In case there's anybody in the audience that, whether they're a practitioner that's looking to get in some continuing education credits with some of your lectures, or somebody that's just curious about the brain in general and wants to dive more into you as an individual, where are some places online that people could go to find out more about you?

Speaker 2: 1:17:45

I think that my first name and last name in arosancitcom. You can put it in your podcast profile and that's where they can reach out by email. That is right there from the website. I think the phone is there also and then I will get back to them. And so there are different projects. Yes, so I'm teaching at the Psychanalytic Institute, so my classes are there and registrations and everything with the continuing education.

Speaker 1: 1:18:21

And I'll make sure that I include a link to the classes and stuff that's through the Object Relations Institute, right? Yes, yep, make sure I include a link to that in the description as well.

Speaker 2: 1:18:33

Yes, and actually in March we're doing the Neurodiversity Seminar. So anybody who is interested. I had prior seminars on the Brain Mind Diet and Traeun Brain and all the neuroplasticity and other phenomena of Brain Mind Diet. Those were always interesting for people and they had great reflections on those and we will do more of those and I do a lot of free events also through ORI or through other institutions. So, yeah, I think I'm trying to update my website as fast as I can, but not always, but the links are mostly there.

Speaker 1: 1:19:18

Yeah, yeah, I definitely would recommend, if you are whether you're a practitioner or you're not a practitioner, you're just somebody that is benevolently curious Go to the website and check out all of those additional resources. There's some amazing essays there that, if she's written over the years, that kind of expand on some of these concepts and then also links to YouTube videos from all of her sacks and it's just. It really is kind of a plethora of information there. If you're willing to go down a rabbit hole or you're curious about going deeper on a lot, because we covered a lot of ground today, so if you need to go deeper on any of those topics, I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Speaker 1: 1:19:59

For those of you that have not yet subscribed to the Apex podcast, I can see that there are more listeners on a monthly basis than there are subscribers on the channel, so that means that some of you have not clicked that little bell or pressed that button yet. So I'm watching and I want you to make sure that you press that subscribe button or you press that little bell on the YouTube channel to make sure that you get notified when we post content. And that's really it. I'm going to let you guys go. I appreciate you again coming and taking the time today. It was great having a conversation with you.

Speaker 2: 1:20:32

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:20:35

Have a great day everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:20:36

Thank you Bye.