Summary:
- Professional Background: Dr. Yusim is a psychiatrist with a private practice and is on the clinical faculty at Yale Medical School. Her work focuses on bridging mental health and spirituality.
- Book “Fulfilled”: In 2017, she authored “Fulfilled,” which explores the science of spirituality and its paradoxical relationship with mental health.
- Mental Health and Spirituality: Dr. Yusim discusses the concept of fulfillment as living in accordance with one’s soul correction and contribution, and the importance of overcoming life’s challenges to achieve it.
- Spiritual Practices: The conversation touches on the benefits and potential risks of spiritual practices, including meditation, and the role they play in mental health and personal growth.
This interview delves into the intersection of mental health, spirituality, and personal fulfillment, offering insights into Dr. Yusim’s experiences and perspectives.
Transcript:
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people and we’ve done over of them now and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it there are Paypal buttons on every page of the site and we have a volunteers page which will show you some of the volunteer functions that one can serve if one wishes to contribute in that way. My guest today is Dr. Anna Yusim and I have a bio here that would take me about five minutes to read, but we’re a little pressed on time today because she’s a very busy lady and so I’m going to have her give us a synopsis of her qualifications and so on and then we’ll flesh those out as we go along during this interview. So welcome Anna and thanks for doing this.
Anna: Thank you so much Rick. It is such a pleasure to be here with you today and I would be happy to introduce myself and I’m very excited to dig into a lot of different topics with you today.
Rick: Yeah, we’re going to.
Anna: Yes. So I am a psychiatrist on the clinical faculty at Yale Medical School. I also have a private practice in both psychiatry and executive coaching that’s based in four states, New York, Connecticut, Florida, and California. And the emphasis of my work is bridging mental health and spirituality.
In 2017, I wrote the book Fulfilled, which I know that you’ve read, and it was really about the science of spirituality, which is a very interesting paradox because these two worlds are strange bedfellows. It was trying to reconcile and bring them together. And that’s been my work in creating, at Yale, the Mental Health and Spirituality Center, which we’re working to create at present, and in really trying to expand our definition of what the optimal and highly competent, most competent, mental health care entails. And it’s really mind, body, spirit medicine, which you and I can get into today. I worked in the neurobiology lab of Dr. Robert Sapolsky when I was an undergrad at Stanford. I then did my medical schooling at Yale, I did my residency at NYU, I hung up my shingle then and just was a private practice psychiatrist for many years before writing my book, coming on to the faculty at Yale and starting to do many other things. We’re also right now making a film about the intersection of mental health and spirituality and also a docuseries called “Breakdown Breakthroughs” and that’s a little bit about my world.
Rick: great and you’ve led an amazing life, you’ve traveled all over the world, from India to the Amazon, to God knows where, doing all kinds of things, living in ashrams, studying with all kinds of interesting people, and a lot of that is covered in your book, but I just wanted to tell people that you’ve lived about ten lives, you’ve packed about ten lives into one so far, it seems.
Anna: Life is short, you gotta, you know, pack it all in!
Rick: Yeah, really. So let’s do some definitions. So the title of your book is “Fulfillment,” and what was the subtitle?
Anna: “Fulfilled, How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life.”
Rick: How the science of spirituality can help you live a…Okay, so “fulfilled.” So how would you define, elevator pitch here, for how you would define fulfillment? What is it?
Anna: Yeah. So the way that I define fulfillment in my book is a combination of two things. It’s living in accordance with your soul correction and your soul contribution. And so in order to define fulfillment, it is needed to define those things. I’m gonna tell you what those things mean, right?
Rick: – Yes.
Anna: – So your soul correction is that thing which comes up in your life again and again and again, often much to your chagrin and dismay, and despite your best efforts to change it. It’s what Freud often referred to as the repetition compulsion. Those difficult things that plague us, that can cause us great pain but end up being the greatest lessons in our life. So part of fulfillment is being able to identify “no” and work towards overcoming your soul correction. And the other part…
Rick: Before you go, so would that be like, let’s say a bad habit such as alcohol or you’ve been through eight marriages like Mickey Rooney or something like that, you just keep making the same mistake over and over again?
Anna: Exactly, exactly, and there are as many soul corrections as there are individuals, and then there’s a few categories. Addictions, definitely, a really, really big soul correction and this is addictions in all spheres. Behavioral addictions, substance and alcohol addictions, and then there’s psychological addictions, right? Addictions to money, power, fame, all things which are really good to have, but they become an addiction when the more of it you have, the emptier you feel, so for sure. And then improving relationships; For some people, it’s about finding a stable partner, finding love, being able to open their hearts. For others, it’s about learning how to be interdependent or even independent. For everybody, it’s a different soul correction. So that’s one part of the whole thing.
Rick: Okay, so that’s soul correction. So part two.
Anna: Exactly. Part two is living in accordance with your soul contribution. So, figuring out what your gift to the world is and how you want to essentially give it. That which is an encapsulation of your unique talents, abilities, interests, and what only you can give to the world. And of course, there’s many of us who have very similar soul contributions, but that really is what fulfillment is. It’s living and making a powerful contribution while also knowing the challenge of life and that which you have to overcome as part of your soul correction.
Rick: Okay, so it sounds an awful lot like the word Dharma that’s used in Buddhism and Hinduism, that there’s a certain stream which, if you can align yourself with it, a stream for your individual life will be most evolutionary for you and most frictionless and you’ll get the greatest support and success and fulfillment by being so aligned. And obviously there needs to be some corrections, sometimes, to get in tune with that stream and there can also be practices such as spirit meditation, and so on, that can help you get in tune with it. So would you agree with all that?
Anna: I love that. I think that’s such a beautiful way of looking at it and absolutely, we want to be in flow with life, right? And that means so many things. That means accepting life on life’s terms, right? And of course, it’s not to say that we are always gonna want to accept everything. We all overcome challenges. It’s not to say we don’t want to fight for things or to overcome things and to make things better. But to be in flow with life, it’s like a Kabbalistic principle of Mati Velo Mati, being in two places at once, accepting life as it is and then always striving to make things better.
Rick: That’s good, I like that. Okay, now let me throw another thing at you and see what you have to say. So, in the traditions I just mentioned, they would say that even if your life is ideal on a relative level, like the Buddha’s was, he was a prince, had everything going for him, that will not be ultimately fulfilling because it changes. And the Buddha, of course, had a wake-up call when he went out and saw sick people and old people and dead people and things like that. He said, “Ooh, that’s going to happen to me. There must be something deeper.” So what would you say about the notion that you could even be in a jail cell, like Dandi or Sri Aurobindo were, and yet fulfilled because you’re not doing anything, you can’t do anything, but there you are and you’re feeling content despite your circumstances?
Anna: Absolutely. I think that that’s true and at the end of the day, that which we have control over is really the inner contents of our mind, right? And it’s within that space that we can make great, great strides and we can churn a prison into heaven or heaven into a prison. And you know, and this is complicated, right? Because as a psychiatrist, the model of the mind is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model. So there’s factors that impact our mind, our mental health, our brain at the biological level, psychological level, social level, spiritual level. And so, with my clients and patients, I look at all those and see what might be interfering to make it hard for you to live the life you want, to be in flow with life, to be able to make some of your challenges into things that could be much easier to palette.
Rick: Yeah. And what of the notion that in these ancient traditions, they speak of, and even in Christianity Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within you, and Hinduism talks about bliss or ananda being your essential nature, and if you can be in tune with that, then you’ll be bubbling with bliss under all circumstances. What do you make of that?
Anna: I love that. I think that that’s absolutely true. I think bliss is our essential nature at the core of our soul. And what most people need to do is they have to clear out all the impediments to bliss, and there’s a lot of impediments. And those impediments come from masks that we wear that keep us from being our essential self, of knowing who we really are being able to share and communicate that in an authentic way. It’s also social constructs on the kind of life that we should live. You know, other people telling us who we should be and what we should be doing as opposed to that being something that we’re really able to tap into or being or really into it in a way.None of these things are bad. This is just the society that we live in, of course. It’s not, it’s more just this duality that exists. And so other impediments to bliss are, for a lot of people, you know, the biopsychosocial spiritual model. There are very real biological factors and genetic factors that for certain people make them predisposed to having depression, having anxiety, having OCD, having psychosis that could really make it hard to have bliss. And so it’s working through that, getting the right biological balance. It’s figuring out the social factors. You know, we’ve come through a COVID pandemic, people were deeply depressed and isolated and alone and the loneliness epidemic continues. figuring out how to address that. People feel spiritually empty at times. How do you address that? There’s certain psychological predispositions people may have that lead them to have certain defenses or certain ways of processing life in the world that keep them from this bliss. So I think I completely agree with you. I think our core is bliss and our work is to overcome the impediments to it.
Rick: That’s good. And the language you’re using very much mirrors numerous ancient traditions. who spoke of impediments, that very word, and who said, you know, it’s like we do have this great reservoir of inner happiness, but it gets all shrouded and covered over by various things and they provided all kinds of techniques and practices and moral codes and all kinds of things to help remove those shrouds. And I, you know, I used to have a spiritual teacher who liked to say that we should enjoy 200% of life, 100% inner spiritual and 100% outer material, and that the two were not in conflict with one another, as some teachers have suggested. You know, you don’t have to run off and live in a cave. And in fact, they complement each other. The inner can enrich the outer, and does. And yet, you know, I know people who have been meditating 4 -5 years who still have all kinds of problems. psychological, you know, relationship problems, all kinds of difficulties in their personalities. So I think, you know, it’s not a long… I think in my experience from observation, it’s not usually sufficient for most people to just rely solely on a spiritual practice of some kind. You really often need to supplement it with some kind of therapy or, you know, you can tell us more of the supplementary procedures, but you know, you need more in order to really work out all the kinks, because they can be very tightly knotted and can take decades, if not lifetimes, to untie without some kind of skillful means.
Anna: Yeah, I completely agree with you Rick. I think that that’s absolutely true and that there are so many ways for us to elevate our consciousness, expand ourselves, to work through the kinks as you say, and there’s many, many kinks to be worked out. And my idea is that as long as we are living, there is more work to be done essentially, right? And so that, those kinks can, as you say, exist on so many different levels, including karmic ties, including past lifetimes, you know, whatever people’s belief is about reincarnation, about how our soul is transcendent and we’ve had, possibly, many lives and we’re trying to slowly cleanse our soul of all of the layers and levels of suffering through different experiences in a way that we only can here on Earth in Earth School. So I think that what you’re saying is absolutely right. And I think that it’s also, you know, as you were saying, there’s so many people who are meditating and yet they still have common life problems. They might be avid meditators, meditating for 5 years. And I think meditation is an incredibly powerful tool. It’s an incredibly powerful spiritual practice, but it is one tool, and it will take different people to different degrees. We live in a world with so many different tools, therapy being the tool, psychedelics being the tool, a million and one types of therapies, a million and one types of meditations. And so I think it’s also you see how something’s working for you, you give it six months, you really commit, you give it maybe a few years, you really commit. And if there are still gaps in your own life experience between who you are and who you want to be, then you ask next, “What is my next step?” You either can ask for a suggestion from someone you love, from a friend, etc., or you ask the universe and you open yourself up to the answer to come to you through synchronicity or through somebody or through something. So there’s many different ways to pursue these really important psychological and spiritual ascension processes that you’re talking about, and often for many people, it takes iterations of different processes.
Rick: Yeah, and just to emphasize the point, I had three different friends who were deep dedicated meditators for many, many years, done long courses, all kinds of stuff. They all committed suicide, two by gun, one by fire, and I know of other such cases. So I don’t mean to sound morbid or something, but I just want to hammer the point that it really, if something is troubling a person, or if you don’t even know how troubled you are, but you have a friend who, ’cause spiritual practice can sometimes destabilize a person, maybe we should talk about that. If you see that happening to somebody, you need to intervene and help them in some way. Have you seen that, the spiritual practice destabilizing people?
Anna: Absolutely, that this could very well happen and I’ve seen it in multiple, multiple settings and moreover, as people are undergoing spiritual awakenings or spiritual ascension processes, they often, as you say, can have psychiatrically or psychologically very unstable experiences that could, for instance, lead them to go to an emergency room, be diagnosed as schizophrenic or psychotic and be put on medication. I have a close colleague, Dr. Daniel Ingram.
Rick: Oh, I know Daniel. I’ve interviewed Daniel, yeah.
Anna: Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly. So Daniel wrote “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.” He’s an avid meditator himself and has himself had such experiences and his goal in life is to, through this amazing organization that he’s starting, the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium, the EPRC, to educate other physicians and practitioners about the fact that in someone’s spiritual ascension process, they can have these very psychologically untoward events that could appear as psychosis, etc. And he is teaching people how to work with them without giving people diagnoses or putting them or condemning them to a lifelong medication, you know, ritual, essentially. And so his work is deeply important and very, very powerful. And I think that he is one of the leaders in this field. I’ve had many people come to me either with in meditation practices or after using psychedelics. with psychedelics, there’s persistent hallucinations that some people have. These are very, very real things. Spiritual awakening is not a little thing, it’s a huge thing. It’s a really big thing that can send your mind, body, and spirit into places that you don’t know what to do with. And so it’s so important to have professionals and to know that there are people like Daniel and his organization to help people through precisely that.
Rick: Yeah, you know Dr. Willoughby Britton up at Cheetah House in Rhode Island? She’s another one. She’s a professor up there at Brown and she has this whole organization where people who are having unpleasant or, you know, negative effects from meditation can get help. But you know, my experience on long courses, six months at a time, long meditation all day long, is that your your whole mind-body system becomes like unmolded jello, you know, just sort of very fluid and, you know, people could get kind of a little crazy because you’re undergoing a complete restructuring of the whole of the brain, of the mind, of the whole system, and somehow things have to get a little loose before they can be restructured like jello. And even it’s important to come down from such an experience slowly and carefully because if you were to leave a course like that abruptly, you could be completely out of sorts for months at a time. I speak from experience. So I don’t know why I’m going off on this tangent, but you’re a psychiatrist and I just want to dwell with you.
Anna: I’m so glad you are because it’s a really important topic and you know people think meditation it’s always safe, it’s always good, and it’s always helpful. But as you yourself said, you have three friends who were avid meditators and yet all committed suicide, right? Meditation is a wonderful thing and it helps many people, but there’s many different types of meditation and It could also be quite destabilizing. For instance, someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, right, who’s had a severe trauma and suddenly they’re told to really focus deeply on their inner experience and they do so and it completely destabilizes them because already the symptoms of PTSD include hyper-vigilance when you’re completely destabilized. It includes, you know, reliving of certain events over and over and here you’re telling someone to focus on your inner experience to relive this potentially even more. So I think meditation, you know, I’m so glad that there are individuals at Brown, and I’m sure in many other places, that deal with the untoward effects of meditation practices. And this is not just meditation, it’s actually any spiritual practice where mind, body, and spirit. It’s also with psychedelics, it’s with yoga practices, it’s in churches where, you know, there’s certain churches people speak tongues. There’s, you know, there’s things that happen like the spiritual world. It’s a beautiful world. It’s It’s an amazing, expansive world, and it can also be a world where our spirits and bodies don’t quite know what to do with it yet. And so, crazy things can happen and scary things can happen, and this is where we as psychiatrists sometimes come in.
Rick: Yeah, and you were talking earlier about removing the impediments, and I’m sure you have both in Eastern thinking and Western does the understanding that we have a lot of stuff bottled up inside, you know. In the East, they call it samskara or deep impressions. the West these are impediments that have to be removed but when they are being removed it can be quite unsettling, quite disturbing, quite scary, even, as stuff comes out. You perhaps could elaborate on that.
Anna: Absolutely and people don’t always know exactly how to remove things because for so many people they would love to be really efficient and say okay just tell me what I need to remove, tell me how to do it, but it’s not a linear process like that. Oftentimes they have to be in therapy for years to be able to make the unconscious conscious, to really bring it to the surface and therefore give yourself more freedom over decisions in your life. So this is a big process, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis. This takes time. There are really powerful processes now, you know, especially with working with trauma, with EMDR, with somatic experiencing, with tapping, with the emotional freedom technique, these kinds of things that are able to liberate traumas from your body, but they don’t work for everyone and they don’t work all the time. But they’re very, very powerful. And I think that this is what we as society are looking for is essentially ways for people to be able to remove impediments more thoroughly and faster and in a way that isn’t super threatening to people. And there’s all kinds of things coming into the pipeline, including digital therapeutics, you know, also making this kind of treatment accessible to everybody and not just to the people who can afford it, not just to the people who fit certain demographic criteria, to really increasing access and equity, especially for the underserved. And you know, that also happens like digital therapeutics and the fact that we have Telehealth now, these, you know, COVID really changed the way that mental health is practiced. And so many more people now have access, but obviously it’s not the same as being in a room with someone, but it also allows people who otherwise wouldn’t have that access to now be able to do this important work.
Rick: And it should be obvious to everybody listening that you and I are both big proponents of meditation and spirituality and all this good stuff, but we’ve been around the block and we’re just sort of throwing out some cautions as well. I just read an article recently about relative newbies going on a course where they’re told to meditate hours a day, and the casualty rate in circumstances like that can be really high. Again, I’m kind of obsessing about this right now, but I don’t like hearing of people cracking up or committing suicide or whatnot. It has to be handled very responsibly and carefully.
Anna: Absolutely, and that’s why this has to be done in settings where there is a lot of help available. And okay, if you’re having people meditate for hours for there to be supervision, and God forbid if something does happen that there’s intervention, intervention in real time. So, yeah.
Rick: Yeah. But okay, so having said all that stuff, I also would like to emphasize, and you can chime, certainly chime in, that a spiritual practice can be the most, the greatest blessing of one’s life. I mean, it can enhance life beyond one’s conception of what’s possible.
Anna: I think that that’s absolutely true as well. I mean, just thinking from a mental health standpoint, right, I’m working to start with Dr. Christopher Pittenger at Yale, a Mental Health and Spirituality center at Yale. And that is because there is robust evidence showing that spiritual beliefs and practices actually improve mental health and well-being in really, really substantial ways. And this includes, to give you some examples, if you attend church services, that actually improves your quality of life with cancer, no matter how severe the cancer diagnosis. Also, you know, the Blue Zones, Dan Buettner’s work with the centenarians, the people who live until 100.
Rick: Oh right, I was just reading about that.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, it’s such, it’s so fascinating. Just reading this the other day and having a spiritual place to go, like a faith, a reservoir, like a church to go once a week, it doesn’t matter what your denomination, but once a week it adds 4 to 14 years to one’s life. So this is among the people who live until 100 and, you know, tons of other data. For addiction, the number one robust predictor of sustained remission from alcoholism is actually having had a spiritual awakening and the two places in medicine where a spiritually based model is the medical standard of care is addiction treatment because in AA it’s a spiritually based model and also in end of life care which obviously as people cross over they’re going to be more spiritual but in the rest of medicine that’s really not the case, so we’d like to bring more of that in.
And you know, with suicide, the most interesting thing we’re talking about is suicide. Now this is really important because church attendance has been found to lower, weekly church attendance lowers suicide by five times in cohorts of hundreds and thousands of people followed over 20 years. And this is a Harvard study that’s been done and repeated. And they ask, you ask, “Why is that? Why does church attendance reduce suicidality? Is it because they have community, they have affiliation, they have positive beliefs about healthy living, they have someone to, you know, if they do feel suicidal, to talk to?” And it actually turns out it’s none of those things. It’s that going to church actually creates for you a moral prohibition against suicide that makes people not commit suicide, which is very interesting, you know? So at the end of the day, suicide is really the failure of my profession. When people commit suicide, our profession has failed. And so, whatever the mechanism, even if this does create a moral prohibition, we don’t want people living in fear, but we also don’t want people committing suicide. Maybe it’s better people live in fear than to commit suicide. So, it’s a very interesting study.
Rick: Yeah. I don’t, I think there are probably better motivators than fear for not committing suicide. I mean, just a real clear sense of what a precious gift this life is and how much progress one can make spiritually in this life by staying in it. Yeah, grab all the gusto you can get, you know, it’s a precious opportunity. Okay, so what you said about addictions and end-of-life fears reminded me of psychedelics, of course, because, you know, that fellow at Johns Hopkins whose name eludes me at the moment, you would have it on the tip of your tongue, but who has done a lot of…
Anna: Roland Griffith?
Rick: That’s it, yes, and who, I guess, himself either died recently or soon will.
Anna: Already passed away, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, I saw an interview with him when he realized he had terminal cancer and he was about the happiest guy you’d ever meet. Just totally blissful, not worried at all. And that was also the effect on many of his subjects in his studies who, you know, for the first time in their lives had a profound mystical experience and completely eradicated. You tell the story, I’m talking too much, you know all this.
Anna: Yeah, I’m not sure the story that you’re going to tell, but Roland Griffith’s work is so incredibly important because he also was one of the psychedelics pioneers that actually reintroduced psychedelics into our academic setting for research purposes. Psychedelics were studied, then they weren’t, and then it’s Roland Griffith’s work that opened that up, and he got the emergency designation by virtue of it being this breakthrough drug, psilocybin being a breakthrough drug for depression, which is an amazing thing. And it also, what he showed was he worked with religious leaders and people have fascinating experiences that deepen their spiritual practices with these medications and he also worked with people at the end of life. And for some of these people, their experience with the psilocybin at the end of life, where many people are not like Roland Griffith but are actually very fearful of death, their fear of death went away and they described it as among the most powerful experience of their whole life. Some of them did. And so, yeah, Roland Griffith was an amazing pioneer. He really put psychedelics on the map and so we’re very grateful for his incredible contribution.
Rick: Yeah, and of course your death experiences eradicate the fear of death too, you know, because you realize that you don’t die. So, when I read your book, which you wrote I think in 2017, and at that point you didn’t mention psychedelics at all, so is that something that you got into either personally and/or professionally since then, or had you been sort of doing it but didn’t want to bring it out in the book?
Anna: Yeah, so I had been aware of psychedelics and I had had many patients who had those experiences that I knew, but they hadn’t yet come into the forefront in the same way. I’ll actually tell you an interesting story. So I wrote my book in 2017 and it was at that time, I wasn’t on faculty at Yale at the time, I actually very deliberately chose not to be on faculty in order to be able to be able to do my own thing, to think for myself, to just not feel in any way encumbered, to be able to put forth ideas that could be considered a little woo-woo, et cetera. So I wrote my book, and there was a fear in me by virtue of having really written a book that was authentic and true to me. What if I do get discredited? What if this is too woo-woo, and suddenly, my license and my profession goes? And thank goodness that actually wasn’t the case, and as I was presenting the book at Yale, Bob Rohrbaugh, who was associate chair at the time, invited me, and he was a professor who, I was a medical student at Yale, I was very close to. He invited me to come back on Yale as clinical faculty, and that’s when we started to talk about this center, the Yale Mental Health and Spirituality Center. That was in 2016 and I knocked on a few doors, and it was so clear that, you know, it was not the time for the center. The department was not ready, just wasn’t the time. So then I continued with my life, and I, like about two years ago, was sitting in a Joe Dispenza meditation and I hear this voice and the voice says, “The time for your center is now. Go knock on the doors again.” And I said, “Okay. Well, that’s interesting. So this was this. And so I went to knock on the doors again and this time the door swung wide open. John Krystal, the head of psychiatry, said, “This is a very important idea. Call the meeting with some of the other psychiatrists.” And Dr. Christopher Pittenger, who’s an associate chair of psychiatrists, comes on to co-found the center with me. And he’s been this amazing source of support and also is himself a deeply spiritual person. But what happened in between 2017 and 2022, right? What happened in those five years that it wasn’t the time for the center and suddenly it was? And this is a mental health and spirituality center. I think what happened was psychedelics. Psychedelics came on the picture. Psychedelics started to penetrate our culture and our society and our mental health world in a way that never had before. And psychedelics, as I see it, don’t just offer a novel biological mechanism to treat some of the most treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions. What they also offer for many is a connection to spirit. And suddenly we have a modality of treatment that is very biologically based but also has a spiritual component. And that’s why I think Yale was open to starting this Mental Health and Spirituality Center in 2022 and that it wasn’t the time five years prior.
Rick: Do you see psychedelics as something that one could potentially do on a somewhat regular basis, I don’t know what the frequency would be, as an ongoing spiritual practice, or do you think it’s more of a kickstart thing where you get a deep glimpse that the world is much more than meets the eye and then you get into something more natural and non-chemical to, as a long-term strategy.
Anna: Yeah, and I, you know, I think both are wonderful options and it really depends on the person. And I know lots of people follow, who have had either psychedelics jumpstart their experience or for whom psychedelics are a really vital important part of their spiritual and psychological path. And so I’ll tell you a little bit about both. So psychedelics, they’re wonderful tools, but they are a biological substrate and they can be taxing on the body and you can have withdrawal, you can have side effects, etc. So yes, if you can do this naturally through meditation, through other sorts of practices, through breath work, etc., what a beautiful thing that you don’t have to tax your body in that way. And yet, not all of us can reach those same heights or have those same experiences through meditation and breath work for whatever reason. It’s just the way that we’re wired constitutionally, psychologically, spiritually, etc. Some people can and others can’t. Now, with psychedelics, can everybody use psychedelics? Unfortunately, they’re not safe for everybody. And there are certain people for whom they’re unfortunately not safe. And I’ve certainly had people who have used psychedelics and then become psychotic. And for whom that was like the opening to a diagnosis of schizophrenia that did become lifelong. So those are very, very real things. So unfortunately, psychedelics are not an option for everybody. And also, let’s be clear, there’s many different psychedelics. One might not be an option, another might be. And so you have to also evaluate on a case by case basis with the person at hand, what is right, what isn’t. And you know, I’ve had people come to me with a lot of risk factors and say, “You know what? I have a lot of risk factors. This could be really bad, but I also don’t have any other tools and I’ve tried meditating my whole life. I really need that jumpstart. Can we think together how I could safely have a psychedelic experience in order to see if I could move the needle in my spiritual path?” So I work with people in those ways too. And that’s an important question. It’s a very, I think, fair and honest question. There’s these very powerful spiritual tools and I haven’t been able to reach, you know, what I really want to reach in other ways. Can I try that and how can I do so safely? So I think it really depends on the case and I think both of the things that you mentioned, either a sustained path for the right person or a one-time jumpstart followed by a more natural process are both wonderful things.
Rick: Have you noticed or observed that those who do psychedelics regularly, like every weekend or something for a period of time. Have you noticed any deleterious influence on their personality? Does it make them kind of more unstable, more obsessive, more ungrounded, anything like that?
Anna: I have not. So, okay, I don’t think that there’s that many people in my sphere who’ve had those experiences. I do have people who will do ketamine with a provider on a relatively regular basis for treatment-resistant depression or other related conditions, and ketamine is a psychedelic-like substance certainly, and no, on the contrary, for the people for whom it works, it helps them a lot and actually helps their mood, helps their stability, helps their energy. And I’ve had certain patients who’ve already been doing it in this way for years. And when I say for years, maybe once every two weeks, once a month as they need it as maintenance. So that’s one. Then there are a lot of people that I know that have occasional psychedelic journeys, whether it be with psilocybin, whether it be with ayahuasca. And they have it at times of breakthrough when they need answers to important life questions. This could be once a year, once every three months, whatever people need. And sometimes it’s more closely condensed when they feel as though they really, really need this breakthrough. And there also are people who want to become ayahuasca curanaderos. They want to serve ayahuasca. And that’s a very, you know, depending on who you train with, you sometimes have to go and drink ayahuasca every day for X amount of time, for a month or, you know, every few days for a few months. So there are these training rituals. And there’s, I know people who have undergone that path very successfully and it’s changed their life and they’ve actually become people who now serve ayahuasca. So it really depends and I don’t think that, I don’t have any horror stories of it in my practice and from who I know.
Rick: Okay, that’s good. Do you think that it would be good if these psychedelics, psilocybin, ayahuasca, etc. were legalized nationwide? Or do you think that would be too unregulated and potentially dangerous?
Anna: Well, I think that, you know, the whole idea of the legalization is that in many ways it would be more regulated. We would be able to have it more regulated and it really depends on the nature of the legalization. So what we’re having with the MDMA is going to be a federal legalization process and the way that, you know, this is Rick Doblin’s work, being able to have this very, very potent, powerful heart opener MDMA to be used as a trauma treatment. But it’s not something that you’re going to be able to do at your own home. It’s something that you could do in an office with two trained practitioners specifically to work on your trauma. And this has been Rick Doblin’s life work. So it’s hopeful that by the end of this year, early next year, there will be that FDA approval, God willing, right? And now with psilocybin, it’s more at the state level and there are states where it’s decriminalized and where people are able to do that. And there’s many states where it’s not. So and you know, cannabis is another example. So the legality of cannabis changes over time. And has, like since cannabis has become more legal, has cannabis abuse and addiction gone up? I don’t believe that that’s the case. I believe once things become legalized, you have more controls in place because you’re able to do things at the level of control and there isn’t so much of an underground market.
Rick: Okay, good. I sometimes think that we actually need widespread use of psychedelics, even though I haven’t used them since the 60s, just because society needs a good swift kick in the pants. I mean, meditation is too subtle for most people, or too slow, or something. They need to have an eye-opener. And then maybe collectively even we’ll settle into something more natural after we’ve seen a vision of possibilities.
Anna: You know, personally, I agree with you and I think that it would be a beautiful thing for more people to have those experiences that show them what is possible in life, those awakening experiences, whether through psychedelics or through meditation, breath work, etc. So many practices, like if this was something that was a natural part of our culture, that We This is part of what I’m doing is, you know, our model currently of psychiatry is a very
mind and brain focused model with two primary modalities, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, right? Psychopharmacology treats the brain, psychotherapy treats the mind. There’s many psychotherapies. Some of them treat the body as well, somatic therapies. What often is missed is the body and the spirit in the mind-body-spirit model of a whole person. And this is what my work is, is to bring the body and the spirit back into psychiatry. And so, you know, to help people have these spiritual awakenings and connect with the spiritual part of themselves. And then with the body, it means many different things, including the food is medicine movement, nutritional psychiatry, healthy sexuality and pleasure, longevity and fertility, exercise psychology, connecting to nature, all of those things that are so vital to mental health but often overlooked in traditional psychiatry.
Rick: Well, it’s a good sign that you’re talking about this stuff and doing this stuff because you hear stories about how doctors go through medical school and psychiatrists go through their training and they never hear about these things and maybe doctors get a half hour lecture on nutrition or something, you know. And I mean, I remember lecturing on meditation to a group of doctors in Orange County, New York, I think it was back in about 1973, and I was showing some scientific charts about reduced metabolic rate and lower blood pressure and this and that, and pretty much everybody in the room started screaming at me, like, because they thought it was just this bogus, hocus-pocus nonsense. And they had a huge slab of meat on the table that they were eating and they’re drinking and this and that. Finally, like at the end of the whole thing, I was a little shell-shocked and a very sweet Indian doctor came up to me and said, “I’m so sorry about my colleagues, you know, they just don’t understand this stuff and, you know, what you’re doing is…” But it seems like it’s become a long way since then. It’s getting much more mainstream.
Anna: Absolutely, absolutely, completely agree. Yes, and thank goodness for that. Rick: Yes. Yeah, so tell us about, more about what you’re doing up at Yale. Yeah, so we are creating a Mental Health and Spirituality Center. It’s not a center yet. It’ll be a center when we have the million dollar charitable contribution we need to create a center, but we’re certainly creating the infrastructure for the center now. And what it’s going to be is research, clinical work and education around this area of mental health and spirituality. Our top three research projects that we have are going to be, I mean we’re going to have many research projects, there’s so many subjects at that interface, but the top three, the first three that we have are with Dr. Al Powers. He’s actually a schizophrenia researcher and he studies voice hearers, but there is another…
Rick: He studies what?
Anna: Voice hearers, individuals who hear voices.
Rick: People who hear voices, I see.
Anna: Correct. Yes. But there is another group of people who hear voices who are not plagued with schizophrenia and actually are individuals who have much more control over these voices and can use them in the service of humanity. So this is your psychics and intuitives.
Rick: Yeah, people like Edgar Cayce or whoever.
Anna: Exactly, exactly. And so Al’s work thus far has been using the psychics and schizophrenics as the control group. But what we’re gonna do with Al is be able to use them actually as the experimental group and learn more about the processes of voice hearing. They’re clairaudience, clairsentience, clairvoyance, claircognizance, all the different ways of receiving intuitive information. So that’s going to be one of the first projects. Then we’re going to be studying the spiritual side of psychedelic use because Yale, Yale is a very neurobiological institution. Neuroscience is at a premium there and everybody’s studying what the biology and neurobiology is, but nobody there is studying at present the spiritual side. So we’re going to be able to bring that in with Dr. Pittenger. And then the third project is with Dr. Mark Potenza and Lisa Miller at Columbia. She runs the Columbia Spirituality Mind Brain Institute. And this is going to be looking at the neural correlates of spiritual experiences. So where exactly in the brain does spirituality reside? And there’s going to be so much more work. We want to also do work with energy healing for cancer. There’s a ton of other projects, but these will be the first. And eventually all of this work will lead to improvements in clinical care, educational opportunities, getting an endowed chair, like really creating and making this a key part of the fabric at Yale.
Rick: Do you think spirituality resides somewhere specifically in the brain or do you think it’s a, you referenced Jill Bolte Taylor in your book and I’ve interviewed her and she has this Whole Brain Living book and she talks about a fully developed personality as being a flourishing of four major areas of the brain. And so, do you think it’s a whole brain development as opposed to like some little part of the brain waking up?
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is mind versus brain, right? And like, what really is spirituality and how do you define spirituality? It’s like, and where does it reside? These are beautiful questions.
Rick: Yeah, how do you define it?
Anna: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. So, my, so there’s many different definitions. I often define it as a connection to something greater than oneself, which could be for some people to God or a collective consciousness or even a set of transcendent values like hope, love, trust, and perseverance. Or it could be a connection to Mother Nature. Whatever is greater than oneself and enables and oftentimes that greater than oneself is indeed transcendent and beyond the self, but it can also be intimately inner and deeply personal and subjective as well. But whatever that beyond the self is, it’s often concerned with questions of purpose, meaning, and values. So, this is a combination of my own definition, also the definition of British professor of
theology Christopher Cook. So, I combine those, my favorite definition of spirituality. And you know, your question as, yeah. So, I’ll stop there and I’ll let you take it from there.
Rick: Oh, that’s good. Mm-hmm. spirituality and mental health. In a way, I think of, you know, someone like the great spiritual giants of history, you know, Buddha or Jesus or, you know, people like that as being the fully mentally healthy people and the rest of us are like unhealthy to varying degrees by comparison So, you know, if the goal of human life is to grow to higher and higher levels of spiritual development, then we’re all sort of subnormal or abnormal or something until we have reached that full spiritual development. Which is not to say we should just put life on hold until we reach it, because living life is part of reaching it. But what do you think about that perspective?
Anna: I love that perspective. I would personally agree with that perspective. I think it’s a beautiful perspective that we can all strive to be like the Buddha, we can all strive for enlightenment, we can all strive to remove our samskaras, to work through our impediments to be the best version of ourself and how many people actually do that, right? If that’s normal, you know, probably normal is much more who we are and it’s a state of relative suffering with, you know, punctuated by also pleasure and punctuated by goodness and hopefully as many positive experiences to counterbalance some of the suffering and the challenges that we face. And you know, it’s kind of the question of what is the purpose of life and why are we actually here? And they ask that question oftentimes, and you know, the Plato and Aristotle, one answer was to live a very purposeful existence, and the other answer is to be happy. And so what does it mean to be happy? Does that mean to maximize pleasure and minimize pain? Sure, we’d all love to do that if we can, but there’s another definition of happiness, and that is working through and committing to the best possible life that you can, even with the challenges, even with the pain, because there’s something very meaningful and purposeful in overcoming and really aligning with your best self, really aligning with the best life. So, a combination of both purpose and happiness.
Rick: Yeah, I just picked up on the phrase how many people really do that. I think that perhaps in our society today it’s a tiny fraction, but I could envision a society in which a fairly significant percentage of people had done that and imagine the transformation that would bring about in terms of the world at large. Our technologies, our environment, our social systems, our economies, all those things, which are, I think, always a reflection of the mentality of all the people who make up the world. But imagine if that mentality were highly enlightened, for the most part, what kind of world we might have.
Anna: Absolutely. I think that would be the most beautiful thing. And there are many individuals who, like David Hawkins, you know, he wrote Power Versus Force, and they have books about the avatars of our world. And that actually, we don’t need everybody to be at that level. We jus We just need a few people to be at that level and carry the rest of us, because when people are at very high consciousness, it permeates the rest of the world. The same, unfortunately, when people are very low consciousness. So that’s one part of it. And then there’s the Maharishi effect, when there are a number of people meditating together. That also reduces crime in a city, elevates consciousness. So there’s beautiful things that we can collectively do. And of course, each of us has our own purpose. And also, each of us has our own sort of destiny and what is possible for us. Not everyone could be the Buddha, if they did everything within their power to be it, even if they meditated all the time, did all the practices that the Buddha did, used psychedelics when they needed to, had the best therapist, I feel like our life course and our destiny is on some level, you know, like we can affect it, there’s free will for sure, but not everyone can be the Buddha.
Rick: No, nor would we have a normal world if everyone were because, you know, he was a specialist in what he did, but you know, we also need enlightened doctors and garbage truck drivers and whatever else people need to do in the world to make it run.
Anna: Exactly.
Rick: Yeah. One thing that concerns me is, you know, you can reflect on societies like, you know, Nazi Germany or China under Chairman Mao or, you know, various other societies like that, where it seems like a large percentage of the the population has just gone mad and horrible things happen. And I’m somewhat concerned about something similar like that to that happening in the US. But I mean, do you ever think of that in terms of sort of the mass psychology of nations and how spirituality could somewhat ameliorate that trend?
Anna: Yeah, I think that you know unfortunately right now we have a time in our society with the greatest polarization we’ve ever had. People don’t know who to trust, we don’t know what is true, what’s not true, there’s so much fake news, there is so much misinformation. There are essentially like facets of reality. You wouldn’t think that we were living in the same world. data to understand what’s happening to understand the COVID vaccine. Is it helping us or is it actually hurting us or is it a combination of both? And it’s a very, very concerning difficult place that I don’t think our nation has ever been before. And you know, this is in a way when you don’t know who to trust when you don’t know what’s true, how are you like, what, like, how do you make your decisions? And, you know, is going crazy just a part of that, is that just, are we all going a little bit collectively crazy? And how do we get out of this, how do we recognize what is true? How do we go back to starting to be able to trust authority or to at least have our own authority to know what the facts are? I think what you’re talking about with collective, like people going collectively crazy, I think that fascism and dictatorial regimes are certainly, you know, when control is at a premium and you really have so much fear of uprising and that your only way of controlling your people is not at all democratic but fascist and dictatorial. Yeah, people are going to go crazy because no one wants to give up their freedom and we’ve seen examples of what happens in communist countries or in dictatorial regimes and it’s not good. So we’re doing our best to give people a voice and for people to sustain their freedoms.
Rick: That was very well put. You were born in Russia, weren’t you?
Anna: uhuh.
Rick: Yeah, it’s like, but like these things you just mentioned, you know, are they really, like COVID vaccines for instance, is it really a matter of opinion? Or is there actual data that gives us a pretty clear understanding of their efficacy?
Anna: Absolutely, absolutely. There is definitely data. And then there is also like both sides and both sides saying that here’s the data and here’s the data. The data is super, super helpful for COVID and here’s actually the data of all the people that have been hurt by the vaccine. And this data is often suppressed by this side. And so there’s like a whole, it’s like, you’re exactly right, there’s data. But I don’t feel that we are necessarily being shown the whole picture. And that there’s a lot of professionals who are very well trained, very highly accomplished in their field, who are saying certain things that the government may not want to hear and so unfortunately aren’t being fully acknowledged. And I think people’s freedom of speech has oftentimes been limited in situations like this.
Rick: What I would love to see is for there to be public, well, TV shows with panel discussions in which opposing sides discuss these things very respectfully with Robert’s rules of order or whatever without shouting at each other and were allowed more than like two minute soundbites and that they could just really argue their positions. And that it was like a, this used to be done in ancient India with philosophical debates, you know, someone like Shankara would debate with his philosophical opponents and the big crowd would turn out and it would be like an event for the people. But we need that in the public stage these days because there’s so much polarization and siloing, as you said, and people hear, only hear what they want to hear, and so we become more and more divided.
Anna: Absolutely and I think that that’s exactly what happens. The polarization and siloing creates essentially echo chambers because what we’re being shown by the internet and what you know comes up in all of our searches is things that essentially mimic back to us other ideas like us and other people like us and so we become increasingly more and more siloed, polarized, etc. and we’re not often exposed to these other views and we see the other views as threatening. And I completely agree, some open dialogue with this kind of mentality would be so beautiful and it almost seems like there’s such an ideological divide now in our country that to have something like that is challenging and ruffles a lot of feathers and I hope that one day that won’t be the case.
Rick: Yeah, and I hope that you don’t consider this irrelevant. I’m bringing it up because I’m thinking about collective mental health and you’re a mental health professional and I think that collective mental health is a big deal these days.
Anna: Yes, oh I think this is hugely important Rick. So okay, so you know this idea of the one-on-one therapy sessions that we have in our country, what a luxury and what a beautiful thing that we have that and can afford that. In the majority of the world, people can’t afford or have access to a therapist or a psychiatrist or a provider one-on-one. The level of care that’s needed for people overcoming trauma, for instance, after the Rwanda genocide, there was no possibility that there was going to be one-on-one care. And this is also with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion. one-on-one care is often reserved for people who can afford one-on-one care, who have insurance, who can pay out of pocket, who are in areas where they have ample transportation and where there’s a lot of psychiatrists, therapists, etc. to be able to have that. There’s plenty of people in rural regions or don’t have those resources or who don’t have insurance or who would feel too ashamed or stigmatized or wouldn’t even know the first place to go to find a therapist or psychiatrist who don’t have access to one-on-one care, much less access to any care whatsoever. And so two things about that, number one is the collective healing like you mentioned, to be able to heal through groups and through our societies. So at Yale there’s many initiatives for instance with churches and they have the black church there and oftentimes in disadvantaged areas with mental health issues, the first place that you’re going to go to if you have that area, if you have that issue, it’s not to a psychiatrist because you probably don’t even know how to do that, it would be to your church. And the churches then intercede and intervene. And churches are a place for amazing collective healing. That’s number one.
The other thing is for indigenous cultures, right? And ayahuasca ceremonies, et cetera. The majority of work with plant medicine isn’t one-on-one also. In our country it is because that’s what Western medicine is. But in these other communities, ayahuasca, et cetera, often and peyote and a lot of very healing medicinal plants, this is collective healing done in groups. And We’re essentially taking these very powerful rituals and catering them to our mental health and our just medical system, but we often remove the collective power of healing. So I think what is happening more and more in our country is that we’re looking to the collective to heal us. And there’s an amazing psychiatrist at Yale, AZA Allsop who’s actually starting a collective healing center that’s going to be a joint collaboration between Yale and also Howard University. And I’m being approached by a number of people wanting to do ketamine in group settings, wanting to have for people to be in ketamine is a legal medication used for certain indications, but people want this to be done in a group setting because the power of collective healing.
And there’s a beautiful documentary that was recently made by psychiatrist Geeta Vaid together with trauma therapist Bessel van der Kolk, that was ketamine done in group sessions, with psychodrama, people being able to work through drama and theater, the dramatic reenactments, some of their traumas. So I think that, and I’m so happy you brought this up, it’s not at all irrelevant. I think it’s hugely important and really potent and powerful and I hope that we have more of it. I’ll say one other thing about collective healing. There are certain types of trauma that we have that only collective healing can heal. There is Jack Saul. He is one of the founders of the Trauma Survivors Program in New York City at Columbia. He’s done a lot of work, especially with a certain kind of trauma, which is the trauma of having… It’s like a moral trauma, having carried out unspeakable acts often, not through your own volition, but because you were, for instance, in war and had to kill women and children or had to kill, and then you come back and you’re carrying the moral decrepitude of these actions and you don’t know what to do with them. And the healing for that, which Jack Saul has found, is actually the other people who did not go to war being able to come into community with the people who did, and the people who went to war and are carrying this, share it with the people who didn’t go to war, and the people who didn’t go to war are able to take some of the burden off of those people in this collective healing space. And there’s something really powerful about that. This is another place of trauma collective healing specifically.
Rick: That’s beautiful. It’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard of that. I mean, obviously, even if there were unlimited funds, there wouldn’t be enough people like you to provide one-on-one, you know, therapy to everybody. So there have to be these collective things.
Anna: Absolutely. I really feel like that’s where healing is going. And there’s something so powerful about, especially we also have a loneliness epidemic, right? So people, it’s wonderful to be able to heal alone. luxury to be able to have one-on-one therapy and healing, but it also is something really beautiful to be able to heal collectively together and to have our own loneliness ameliorated in the process of healing.
Rick: Yeah. It would also be nice if there were some way of introducing spirituality into the schools. It’s a touchy issue because of the church and state issue,
Anna: Yeah, definitely.
Rick: Stipulation and everything. There’s a lady named Kavalee Morgan whom I’ve interviewed who has introduced very beautiful mindfulness programs out in Oregon or Washington, one of those states, and kids, you know, she has a documentary about it and all these kids who have been cutting themselves or going through all kinds of really serious issues are just flourishing as a result of that program. So obviously, that’s the time to catch it when kids are young and enable them to develop spiritually as they develop in every other way.
Anna: Exactly. I couldn’t agree more and indeed there are more and more programs. So at Yale they have a Center for Emotional Intelligence that was created by Mark Brackett together with the current president of Yale. And it has a rollout program called RULER which essentially teaches children about meditation and emotional intelligence. And this is something that’s rolled out now across many schools and programs across the United States and also now it’s going to be rolled out in Britain and I think many other countries. So there are interventions at play and I think people are recognizing that the data and the science really supports that this helps on so many levels. This is not just, you know, go teach people meditation to be spiritual. This has real data for the children’s emotional regulation for their capacity to achieve in school of getting along with their peers, all of those things for even what, you know, they are at home afterwards.
Rick: Yeah I heard somebody on Bill Maher’s show a couple weeks ago talk about how the epidemic in depression and suicide among teens coincided precisely with the introduction of the smartphone.
Anna: Absolutely. This is what Vivek Murthy, you know the Surgeon General, says basically that social media is a huge huge contributor to the suicide epidemic, to the mental health crisis, and that they’re now like limiting, trying to limit as much as possible, students’ access to smartphones in schools and things like that and really encouraging parents to get smartphones at later ages, but it’s a very real effect.
Rick: Yeah. You were telling, I think it was before we started the recording actually, you were talking about, we were talking about Greece because you got stuck in a traffic jam because of the Greek parade.
Anna: That’s right.
Rick: And you mentioned the oracle at Delphi who said “Know thyself.” Yeah. You know, there’s something about the smartphone, which is this hypnotic device that absorbs you into what other people think as opposed to turning within and knowing oneself.
Anna: Absolutely, absolutely. Right? On one hand, the smartphone is everything all in one and you can be so incredibly productive and be so in certain ways connected and yet at the same time just like you said so disconnected, disconnected from yourself, disconnected from others because you can essentially be on your phone, right? And there very much is the phone addiction or the addiction to your smartphone because there’s very strong dopamine hit of every time that you get your, you know, you check your text message or send a text or, you know, get an email. And it’s constant. It’s constant. So I think for people to have limits around that, for some people it works great to have access more often than not and for other people to be able to really limit that and create the right boundaries to be able to really connect with your family, with your friends, with yourself as you say.
Rick: Yeah. often thought, and there’s actually a quote from Einstein in this but I can’t quote it, but that the technological development of the world is out of pace by far with the personal or subjective or human development and that they really have to kind of, the human development has to catch up or else we’re in serious trouble. And as it is, we’ve already created atomic bombs and destroyed the environment and all kinds of other things. And now we have, you we were talking about cell phones, that’s a big one, now we have AI that’s just going like wildfire. So what do you think about that, about the exponential pace of technological development and what you would like to see or that we need to see to counterbalance that in terms of human development?
Anna: Absolutely, yes. I feel like Moore’s Law, that the amount of information we’re able to store in a microchip has like exponentially increased and therefore our technological capacities have increased and you’re exactly right that we don’t have a commensurate Moore’s Law of consciousness, a commensurate exponential increase in consciousness. We’re certainly trying and we’re certainly trying to use the technology to elevate our consciousness both biological technology like psychedelics and biotechnology, meditation apps, etc. and just giving people tools and resources. You want to expand your consciousness here’s what you can do but human consciousness we don’t have you You know, it’s not just science plug and play. There’s many, many more complicated steps as to how to really grow as human beings. And I completely agree that, you know, what we, that we need something if the technological pace continues, which it most likely will. And this is where people, you know, are like, well, what do you do with where AI is going and what are the proper safeguards? And like how do we use our consciousness and how do we actually, you know, enable people to grow in the way that they need to grow and to expand in the way that they need to expand so that the technological process, progress that’s happening is something that only will help humanity as opposed to toppling humanity or leading to the destruction of humanity, God forbid, you know?
Rick: Do you and your colleagues at Yale and elsewhere ponder these questions?
Anna: Yes, I have many colleagues with whom I ponder these questions. I spoke at a UN summit on AI and mental health, along with a number of other people, including a chaplain from Scotland and some just really beautiful souls. So we’ve been thinking about that. And I have Singularity University in context there with whom we’ve been thinking about that. There’s a lot of people, contacts of mine, in actually the AI hedge fund world that are thinking about that, that are thinking about these very big questions and creating the right safeguards and investing in the right technology that’s going to enable us to flourish as a society and civilization. So I’m thinking about that in many different spheres with many different people.
Rick: I have a feeling that, you know, there is a kind of an upwelling of collective consciousness and of awakening around the world that is not as obvious as these technological and external things and it’s certainly not as obvious as the wars that you see on the news every night, but that it’s, that nature is responding. It’s like there’s some kind of saving grace going on that, you know, might just save the day in the nick of time.
Anna: Yeah, you know, that’s been the case constantly, right? We are still here and we’ve all, you know, with all the prophecies, the mind prophecies, the world’s coming to an end, COVID, you know, we’re still here and we’re still kicking and we’re trying to make the world the best place that it can possibly be and mitigate the problems and increase human thriving and flourishing. And is there a collective consciousness that is helping and guiding us along the way? God willing, I very much hope that’s the case. And I think the collective consciousness is a product of all of us, you know, making good choices or those of us who are making good choices bonding together to be able to move the course of our world forward.
Rick: Yeah, most of those ancient prophecies say it is gonna get rough, but there will be a renaissance or a sort of a collective awakening on the other side of that roughness.
Anna: Exactly. It’s like we don’t have a choice, right? If you hit rock bottom, you hit your dark night of the soul as individuals and as a collective. The only choice we have is to awaken or to die, right? If we want to be, we need to get to the other side and we need to like see the world anew and expand ourselves and like let the old parts of us be taken and the new parts of us to thrive.
Rick: Yeah, and I bet you one thing you do as a therapist is you give people hope. You know, you give them the hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that they can get through this and that things can get a whole lot better and that this won’t last forever, this rough thing they’re going through. And we can extend this to the collective as well as the individual.
Anna: Absolutely, absolutely. I feel like you’re exactly right. This is what I do for so many people is to give them hope, especially in the darkest of times. And the reason I can give them hope is because I’ve seen in all of those cases, whether you’re suicidal or in a deep depression or were just diagnosed with cancer or undergoing a divorce, those things are bad and horrible and painful. It’s all true. And people get through it and they get to the other side and they kick their cancer and they get to the other side of depression and they treat their depression and they’re no longer suicidal. And one day it’s the last time they ever feel suicidal. And so this is a reality that I have taken so many people through. So I have very real experience personally, but also we know that there are things that work for depression, for anxiety, for all of these conditions. And there’s also ways there is, you know, the Institute of Noetic Sciences has a database of essentially all incurable diseases. And there’s a beautiful book called Spontaneous Remissions, a spontaneous remission, which was actually written about people with spontaneous remissions from cancers. I was actually just giving a talk about this the other day. And so I’m going to tell you, there’s plenty of people who have had spontaneous remissions, even from cancers that were considered incurable. And there were nine factors that were found to be the factors that ultimately led to these spontaneous remissions. And I’ll tell you what those are. It’s so funny, I had it in my pocket because I was just giving a talk about it the other
day. And that included a radical diet change, taking control of your health, following your intuition, herbs and supplements, increasing positive emotions in your life, embracing social support, deepening your spiritual connection, releasing suppressed emotions, and having a strong reason to live. So those nine factors in this beautiful book, Spontaneous Remissions, were the factors that were ultimately responsible for, or the difference between the people who did have spontaneous remissions and didn’t. There’s no guarantees, of course, in life, but these are the things that you can do to really increase the likelihood of that.
Rick: And you spoke about getting to the other side of cancer, but even if you get to the other side literally because you don’t beat the cancer and you die, that’s not such a bad thing. I mean, if you listen to all the near-death experience, you know, people who once they have one of those experiences, they totally lose fear of death and, you know, are kind of looking forward to it in a way without actually, you know, trying to hasten it.
Anna: Exactly, exactly, right? You can completely have like death anxiety is one of the four key existential issues, right, of life. There’s four main ones and death anxiety is at the top of the list. If people get a hold on their death anxiety, the nature of life changes completely. And you know, my favorite author on the subject of death anxiety is actually Dr. Irvin Yalom. He’s a brilliant existential psychiatrist and he writes a lot about death anxiety. And one of the things he writes is the people that least fear death are those that have the least unlived life within them. It’s people who live life fully are the ones that don’t fear death. If you don’t, you’re always wondering, are you missing something, are you regretting, are you… those are the people who fear death much more. So one of the antidotes to death anxiety is living your life fully.
Rick: Nice. Well, we have about five minutes left and we could probably go on for five hours, but…
Anna: We could, I know, Rick. And next time we will.
Rick: Yes. Love a marathon. So are there any key points that you want to make sure to mention that we haven’t had a chance to touch upon.
Anna: I think you’ve asked me such beautiful questions and I love what we’ve shared. I’m happy to share anything more, but I feel like you’ve done just a beautiful job.
Rick: Okay, so how can people connect with you? You have a website, you have an Instagram and things like that, a YouTube channel, so I’ll put links to all those things on your BatGap page, as well as your book. And so far your Miracles book isn’t published yet, but you’re…
Anna: It’s not exactly, so my first book was Fulfilled, on the science of spirituality, and that came that in 2017, my book that I’m working on right now is on the science of miracles, with the miracle being defined as something highly beneficial yet statistically improbable. And the question of the book is, what can you do to increase the likelihood and prevalence of miracles in your life? And so, it’s going to be a scientific exploration of that.
Rick: Talk about that for five minutes. We have that much — do we have that much time? Is that cool?
Anna: Sure, sure, sure.
Rick: Alright, let’s talk about miracles for a few minutes.
Anna: Absolutely. And so, what is — so how do you define a miracle, Rick? What is a miracle to you?
Rick: To me, even the big ones like Jesus walking on water or whatever, I would say are not violations of laws of nature, they’re just utilizations of laws of nature that are not commonly understood. So, you know, a jumbo jet would appear to be a miracle to somebody in the 9th century who couldn’t imagine such a thing, but the jumbo jet works by virtue of laws of nature that we understand very well now. So, I think that ultimately, people at their core are one with, or are, a reservoir of tremendous potentiality and intelligence, and that if one could reside there consciously, then one could potentially have mastery over laws of nature that people ordinarily don’t, and that could result in their ability to do the kinds of things that we’ve heard about throughout history as miraculous events.
Anna: I love that. I think about things precisely in this way as well, that the potential for miracles actually is within each of us, and it’s about us mastering ourselves and essentially coming into resonance with the laws of the universe that obviously are there because you wouldn’t have miracles if they weren’t. We just, they’re just not normal, and they’re outside of, you know, the standard deviation. There are a few standard deviations beyond, but somebody’s doing it, so how do you do it? And this is why it ties so beautifully into the book on spontaneous remissions called, you know, Radical Remission. And it was these like, what exactly do you do? What do you do to get a spontaneous remission from cancer? There’s no guarantees, but here’s nine things you can do because the people who did have spontaneous remissions, the majority of them had these nine things. And the things are very human things, radically changing your diet, increasing positive emotions, things like that, things that are accessible to all of us.
Rick: Yeah, and there’s things like, you know, people about to get into a serious car crash and all of a sudden they find themselves on the other side of the thing that was about to hit them. Something like that. There are these really far out things that you hear about. And, yeah, I think that there’s a lot, there’s, what is it, that Shakespeare line, there’s more to heaven and earth than you’ve dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio, or something like that.
Anna: Absolutely, absolutely. Right, there’s so much more to the world and I think that’s it. You know, ultimately, like coming into Residence of Miracles is really living the mystery and recognizing how much we don’t know and being open to learning it and wanting to learn it, having that deep desire, asking for that from the universe, from whatever your universe is, whether it’s your God, your divine self, whatever that is, having that deep desire for that and then being open to how that comes in. So I think that that all is a part of this process.
Rick: Well, I hope that’s a popular book. I think it’s, I don’t know of any other books that have been written on that topic. Of course, we’ve all heard of Miracles, but I don’t know if there’s any book which is specifically focused on it with a scientific angle. So it should be interesting. When do you think you’ll get it published?
Anna: I think within about another year. I’m going to write it for about another year. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. Okay, great. All right. So I’ll let you go. You’re a very busy lady. I think you
said about, you had about 5 meetings today already or something.
Anna: t was a crazy day, but it was so wonderful. This was such a treat, Rick. It was such a pleasure to do this with you and I look forward to next time.
Rick: Yeah, we’ll be in touch. There’s a number of things we need to follow up on.
Anna: Beautiful, I love that.
Rick: Okay, thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. I think my next interview is with a guy who lives in Tahiti who is not a spiritual teacher, hasn’t written a book, doesn’t even have a website, but he had some kind of profound spiritual awakening. And I I love those stories, you know, because it shows that such things can happen to anybody. You don’t have to be anybody famous or remarkable or anything like that. That was one of the founding motivations for starting this show, is to give everybody, to empower people with the knowledge that they too can have this.
Anna: I love that. I love that that’s your next interview. I can’t wait to hear that interview.
Rick: Good. All right, thank you, Anna, and thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. We’ll see you for the next one.
Anna: Thank you, Rick. Bye-bye.
Rick: Bye-bye. Thank you.