Ed Harrold and Michael Miletic explore breath control as part of mental and physical optimization, performance, and self-awareness.
Ed Harrold with Michael Miletic. Originally published on YouTube September 8, 2021. Watch the original conversation on YouTube.
Ed Harrold and Michael Miletic explore breath control as part of mental and physical optimization, performance, and self-awareness.
00:00.1 Mm. Hi again, friends. Ed Herald here. Welcome to another edition of our Life with Breath expert series, and boy, do we have an amazing guest here today, and I can't wait to share him with you. So buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Well, hello, everyone. It's great to be with you. Today, we have the amazing Dr. Michael Milatich with me, who is just one of the most powerful human beings on Earth producing positive change in the mind and body. And before we dive in to our experience with Mike, let's just take some time to take a few breaths, let go of whatever's been going on during the day, and
01:02.5 begin to listen with our entire body so we can absorb this valuable information. So if you can, plant your feet firmly down into the earth and just feel the strength of your lower body mechanics and the, and the chain of muscles that connects your hips with your feet. Become aware of your sitting bones and try to roll onto the front of your sitting bones slightly, so that the belly can slightly come forward and the thoracic diaphragm can enter the gut on the inhale. Shoulder blades, we'd like to have them back and down with the chest slightly open. Lots of space between the ears and shoulders, really stretching the trachea long.
01:45.4 Moving your awareness to your face. Release and relax your eyes of any straining or tension today. Release and relax your low jaw, maybe separating the teeth a fraction of an inch and allowing the top of the tongue to rest on the upper palate, expanding the maxilla. Bringing your awareness to your nostrils, and just begin to inhale slower than you normally do. And notice the sensations associated with a slower inhale. Shifting your awareness to your abdominal muscles, the muscles of exhale, the expiratory muscles. Gently begin to draw your muscles back on the exhale, flushing the gastrointestinal tract. Slow-motion inhale, stabilize the mind. Slow-motion exhale, cleanse the gut.
02:46.8 For those of you who are familiar with the ocean-sounding breath or the Ujjayi breathing technique from the yoga systems, add that to your diaphragmatic nostril breathing. Feel the vibration around the thyroid, the vibration around the vagus nerve, and notice it takes longer to inhale and it takes longer to exhale. Less breaths per minute, less energy used, more efficiency in the mind. Now using your mind and this breath, slow-motion inhale, and pause for several seconds, and silence and stop the mind. Slow-motion exhale to completion, defl- deflating the lungs, and then maybe holding the breath out for several seconds. Again, stopping the mind. Silencing the mind. Repeat.
04:01.0 Super slow rhythmic inhale, stabilize the brain. Relax. Hold for several seconds. Release the moment on the exhale, drawing the navel back to the spine, a gentle squeeze of the abdominal core, and hold out several seconds. One more round, my friends. Going as slow as you can, letting con- go of the constraints of man-made time. And then let your body breathe on its genius of the autonomic nervous system. Let it breathe on its own and reboot the systems. Bring yourself fully present, and smile because you're you. There's no one else exactly like you, but we're all basically the same. We're remarkably, extraordinarily average. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale out through the mouth with a sigh.
05:21.0 Ah. Relax and feel, ladies and gentlemen. And boy, do we have a guest for us today. We have Dr. Michael Milatich, who's a former Olympic athlete and prominent physician specializing in clinical neuroscience and metabolic medicine. Dr. Mila evaluates the brain, mind, and body, and brings the latest science and evidence-based treatments to optimize your health. Specializing in athletes, executives, and adolescents looking to reach their full potential. There's a quote in this bio which is really profound. Dr. Miletich stated that, "Real progress depends on finding the why at the foundation of our behaviors and challenges. Most people treat the symptoms, but I see the symptoms as clues to the broader issues that, if addressed, can bring out new levels of energy, connection,
06:25.7 focus, achievement. I partner with my patients, meeting them where they are, and setting goals that they can achieve with the help of my team, and in my practice you are an active participant in your health and growth." Welcome, Dr. Miletich. Thank you, Ed. What a pleasure to fi- finally get together with you. I appreciate your inviting me on. Oh my gosh, where do we begin? Let's start in the beginning. Your youth, super athlete. You must have loved being in your body, the training process, the competitive process. What was it like being a child where you grew up with competitive sports? Actually, there's a little bit of a misnomer among people that grow up as super athletes.
07:22.6 In fact, I talk to a lot of those kids who do, and I think that that's really a blessing and a curse. What I mean by that is the blessing is they excel very quickly, very easily. They're genetically gifted. The curse is they don't learn how to deal with adversity when adversity strikes them. I had s- a lot of early childhood, I would call it, trauma experiences, and I never felt comfortable in my body. So sports was actually a way that I was, uh, that I adapted along the way to, in order to try to gain c- control, comfort, familiarity, and ease with my body.
08:03.3 So I did play every sport possible that there was because it was a way to express what I otherwise couldn't. It was a way to communicate what I otherwise couldn't. It was a way to develop something that I felt, frankly, ashamed of and awkward about. So sports was very different to me. And, yes, underneath all of those layers there was obviously some genetic predispositions because I ended up at a h- at a high level of achievement, but I would attribute that more to the drive, Ed, that I had had, and the driven-ness to deter- exactly what the right way was to connect with mentors, to seek out the best coaches, the best training methods, the best possible
08:52.7 kinds of arrangements that I could make in order to help my training until I finally fell in love with a single sport and de- devoted and dedicated myself to that starting at about 15. So, uh, that's a very, very brief synopsis of how it was playing just about everything there was to play as a kid, and the psychological reasons that went into, uh, the choice I made were quite varied. I loved Olympic weightlifting. I loved the feeling of the bar. I loved the control and mastery of the movement. I loved the explosiveness, the flexibility required, the strength, the power, everything that was, that was there in one sport.
09:38.3 And for me, it was just me against myself. I was only as good as my last workout in my own mind and the way I could recover from it, and it really solved a number of psychological issues. Something that I think a lot of elite athletes end up doing, honestly. You know, w- when we speak of Olympic lifting, it's not something we see a lot of today. Uh, I think folks don't realize it takes a tremendous amount of coordination between the lower and upper body. It takes a tremendous amount of awareness of leveraging your breath and learning how to access the moment, and trying to lighten that leverage as much as you possibly can.
10:18.9 When, when you were working with the, the heavier training programs that you were involved in, when I was a kid training in the '70s, there wasn't any reference that we could go to around breath control or how the breath could help or hinder our training and regimens and, and racing and things like that, competitiveness. Now, in the '70s, when I got in the weights a little bit, some of the Eastern Bloc countries were already way ahead of us in regard to the relationship with the breath and the training. Was your experience something like that? Yeah, very much so. I mean, my, my training was in, uh, uh, in the sev- uh, starting in the '70s, actually the ear- or latest '60s.
11:01.8 I'm dating myself here, but I, I did start young. And, um, very early on, within the first two or three years, fortunately, I w- I got to a level where I was able to access some of what the Soviets were doing. And the Soviets had integrated, like, so many things that put them really light years ahead of where anywhere where we were when it came to Olympic sports and when it came to sports physiology in general. So, um, the most we could do was to try to get ahold of translated Russian publications and see what they were doing. Just as the Chinese try to get our secrets for technology now, we were after everything we could to get their sports technology
11:48.8 and acumen. So yes, breathing was definitely a part and is definitely a huge part of the sport, which we learned early on, both the control of the bre- bre- of the breath, the use of the breath during the, during the actual movements, and then using the breath to sort of switch on and switch off, uh, our nervous system. So very much, uh, some of it was intrinsic, some of it you just feel as an athlete, some of it was things we learned from the Russians. Yeah. You know, there was a lot of se- there still is a lot of secrecy around training protocols. And, you know, a lot of folks, they, they look at all sorts of different training programs they, they look at from their heroes, but they don't realize that that was the training program they were doing years ago.
12:39.6 Yeah, exactly. There, there's so much secrecy ar- around training. You know, I, I never really got that. You know? Like, and no matter any sport that I was competing in, I always shared what I did. I, I... You know, my goal was to leave the sport better than where I found it, and I just couldn't keep my mouth shut because I just wanted to help everyone fulfill their dream. And, you know, y- then you'd bunch up against the people who'd say, "You can't tell people that. You shouldn't tell people that." And I'm like, "Why not? Let's improve the quality of the sport and incru- improve the quality of the training, and evolve from where..." You know, frequency, intensity, duration,
13:20.6 and then maybe adding in some breath control, some balance, and different angles that we can work the body against gravity, and then we can work angles into the mind so that we can always see ourselves organically, that next step of natural improvement occurring on its own. Well, you're, you're clearly a very altruistic guy and, and clearly ahead of your time. Now that we have the internet available to us and we have so many people clamoring to get on to share their training secrets and so forth, we have so much more access to information, as you know. Um, you made a comment I just want to pick up on a little bit ear- earlier about Olympic lifting not being a, a tremendously popular thing in the West.
14:10.0 Well, that's where we have to kind of tip our hats, uh, to CrossFit, and CrossFit has popularized Olympic lifting tremendously. Mm-hmm. CrossFit has become almost an Olympic weightlifting sport. And in particular, and I, I, I'd like to emphasize this too just as our own personal point, women, and women in weightlifting have now become a major athletic force around the globe. And I think we can trace a lot of those roots into, back into, uh, CrossFit and CrossFit training. Which has now become dominated with the lifts, with the, with the O lists. So- Mm ... uh, back to your other point though, I think that the sharing of information certainly across these different disciplines has been incredibly helpful.
14:59.2 Um, now d- uh, power lifters talk to Olympic lifters talk to cross-fitters, talk to strongmen- Mm ... et cetera, et cetera. So just about everything becomes open, and I think there is a lot of, uh, openness now to, "Hey, what did you learn? What do you, what are you aware of? Where can I learn more?" And the people that are really at the top are the ones that want to learn. They're the best students, not the ones that think they have the answers in these things. Yeah. So true. So true. Let, let's shift a little bit to what I believe is the most important muscle out of all the 600 or so muscles, this beautiful thoracic diaphragm.
15:43.8 And when we look at the various responsibilities that it has in regard to the mind, body, uh, connection, it's almost like an organ in regard to the various responsibilities it has to keep us vibrant, to keep us healthy, to keep the mind focused and goal centered. You know, what has been your relationship with the thoracic diaphragm from the, the, your early 70s and now it's transitioned into this amazing mind, body, medicine, uh, practice that you have? What's your relationship with the thoracic diaphragm? That is a huge question, and especially if we go back to that time because back in that day, back in the '70s, no one talked much about the connection
16:25.5 with the br- with our brains and our autonomic nervous system, obviously. But we all knew that we had to, if we were going down and beginning a lift, beginning a snatch or a heavy clean off the floor or something such as that, everything had to be absolutely tightened and our thoraco- Mm ... our thoracolumbar, uh, system in our back had to be tight. Our, uh, our, um, chest, uh, muscles- Mm ... our pectoral muscles, our diaphragm, all of our, our surrounding muscles all had to be locked in. And locked in- Mm ... was a critical, critical, uh, kind of phrase that we would use, kind of a critical, uh, uh, cueing phrase, if you
17:10.6 will. Mm-hmm. And one of the ways of locking in is to begin to use that thoracic diaphragm. So- Mm-hmm ... begin to take the breath and take the inhale that, that's required in order to help you li- lock into those positions. And even in the assistance exercises like squatting, for example, or doing, uh, pulling or other, um, j- jerks or push jerks off the rack or something like that, everything has to be locked into place. Everything has to stay stable so the stabilization a- uh, uh, the stabilization additions that that thoracic diaphragm could add, and needed to add, and were counted on to add to a- maintaining stability, maintaining, uh, starting
18:00.8 positions and s- the solid base. So all of that was taken into account. The other thing that people did sort of subconsciously at the time were, um, sort of similar to the triple inhale kind of things that we do now in order to activate our sympathetic nervous system. So that, that was an important part of it too, right before a lift would begin. So that was always something that, you know, was kind of a part of the overall routine. And now when you say what, what role does it play moving forward, well, that's a huge question because at this point even, you know, I'm a, I'm a neuropsychiatrist, so I treat just about every type of mental disorder, if you want to
18:52.7 label it that, mental state, and, uh, mental states for performance, but mental states also for happiness, satisfaction, and longevity. And whenever you're doing that, it becomes critical, critical and fundamental to train ourselves to monitor through interoception and then manage our autonomic nervous system. So therefore, I teach m- most of my patients, I teach all of my patients, or discuss with all of my patients not to try to sort of figure out their anxiety or their depression. You don't, you don't work top down. You work bottom up. And the way to begin working bottom up is by be- being aware of your breath, and that's where we, that's where I start with everybody, in their bodies n- and
19:41.7 it's, this sounds odd coming from a psychiatrist, a neuropsychiatrist, and I'm also a psychoanalyst because you're not gonna read this in the psychoanalytic literature but- ... be- begin, begin b- from below, work, a- and then, uh, work bottom up, and then get yourself in a situation where you, whereby you do f- or you help people get where you were, exactly what you were doing at the beginning of this exercise today, in this podcast today. Then they can start using their minds. Their minds are then freed up, by which I love your phrase, by the way, of being able to do that. So everything, every single patient I have, um, that's where we start.
20:25.2 That's just amazing and, you know, it really is cutting edge. It's like you're trying to lift the Titanic off the bottom of the ocean when we look at how many folks that you're actually working with and how many folks you should be working with. This bottom up methodology, uh, for rewiring the brain, and this bottom up methodology to kind of relax and feel into the thought forms i- is one of the old Eastern arts that has been used for, for thousands of years, and it's wonderful to hear, uh, that Western psychoanalysts are beginning to trust the body, that, that the body just isn't something to carry the head around.
21:03.5 And we begin to think about that downward vertical push on the inhale, that diaphragm, and strengthening the phrenic nerve. And I think folks need to realize that how that diaphragm connects us with our lower body mechanics, and how much the brain enjoys feeling that connection to the feet striking the earth and the rhythm of how we're walking, and linking that vertical movement down, kickstarting the gut brain and the enteric nervous system, and how the lower lobes of the lungs follow the diaphragm down, and the physiology of the lungs. We know there's all these oxygen rich parasympathetic nerve endings, hemoglobin rich in the lower lobes of the lungs.
21:42.4 So that every moment of our life, even though we might be training, could have a therapeutic application to it. So I'm a big believer, especially as far as, like, when you look at weightlifting and the lower body structure and how that can be used not just to produce- Yeah ... you know, limber, a limber body, a strong, toned body, a sh- a beautiful, healthy spine with erector spinae muscles, but the brain responds to that spine. It responds to the lower body mechanics organically and naturally. Has that, has that been something that you've been bumping into in your practice? We're only beginning, Ed, to touch on how critical interoception or enteroception is, and a lot of times that is more of a
22:33.7 reference to what our autonomic nervous system is doing in terms of our, in particular cardiovascular as well as, uh, GI systems, uh, our lungs and so forth are doing in order to inform our brains or talk to our brains about the, the state of our bodies. Um, but also I think it's, uh, the, the point you're adding that I think is also very important, that we, we ought to expand the definition of what we mean by interoception because if we're able to feel like you're describing, uh, the Earth, if we're able to walk around barefoot in the backyard and, and really feel planted, if we're able to take that and move it into our sports, whether, a- and it doesn't matter what the sport is, and
23:21.3 it doesn't even matter if you're actively competing. It can be anything from taking a walk to an NHL hockey player that's out literally on blades. If you're feeling that movement in your body- First of all, you require breath and you require letting go in order to fully feel that movement. Then when you fully feel that movement, then y- you're able to send sensory signaling a- and in my opinion, hormonal signaling- Mm-hmm ... even lymphatic signaling back into your brain. So I- I'm just, I just picked hockey as an example because you're on blades there. You're not even, you know, touching a ground. Right. Although you can feel, if you're a good skater, if you're an NHL, you know, kind of skater, you're feeling the very edges of each of those strides,
24:14.0 feeling where you land, feeling the pressure, feeling the angle. There's a tremendous, tremendous release of not only endorphins, but many other neurotransmitters that the brain then accepts as joy. Mm-hmm. So when I won the f- as an example, when I won the national championship, the easiest, uh, lift was my heaviest one because it didn't feel heavy. I felt a sense of joy in the lift. Mm. I knew that I had hit the positions perfectly, and that's what brings the joy. It's so well said, and it's coming fast down the pipe. You know, when we think of Olympic lifting, it's a lot like the golf swing.
25:03.8 You know, we have all sorts of different drills that we do because there's hundreds of different nerves firing split second, and we wanna dial into this in our training as efficiently as possible. But when we're in competition, we just wanna have that joyful feeling. It's not really a thought. You know, this is competition. You're not really thinking about it. It's in the training where we break down into different drills and try to help the brain connect the dots and try to work with different breathing strategies to stay from the inside out. And when you add that to the work you were just doing with the hockey players, and they have this cross-lateral movement with their arms and legs.
25:46.0 Mm-hmm. And what I found with hockey players is, this cross-lateral movement triggers the DNA, which is a double helix, which is smaller molecularly than our cells, and it has a tremendous effect on the two prefrontal cortexes and how the corpus callosum is allowing both prefrontal cortexes to talk- to each other. So it's almost like the skating motion with a focused breath can take us beyond ourselves right into a flow state. Is, is that something that, that you would say is, is reasonable? I, I think that's a really brilliant, um, connection you just made because if you look at the skating stride, and we'll stay on that for a minute, if
26:27.5 you look at the skating stride, it's now a lateral cross-body. Everything is lateral and cross-body. In fact, um, my son is a professional hockey player in the Carolina Hurricanes organization, and he was describing, uh, training this summer. There's no straight ahead striding that's being trained anymore. Everything- Mm ... is cross-body flow, cross-body flow. And what we can do with that, so this exists on so many different levels and in so many different layers, Ed, because what we do with that then, many a- many athletes get caught in thinking about the end goal. Am I gonna run fast enough? Am I going to score enough points?
27:14.5 Am I gonna, am I going to get enough yards in this, uh, football game coming up this weekend? You know, if you get caught in thinking about that, then you divorce yourself from those parts of your brain that need to be in the moment. Sure. So what become ... So many people, so many athletes that go into slumps, for example, are worried about the next shot. So many other ones that end up, you know, getting too tight are, are, uh, are, uh, regretting the last quote, "bad play" they made. If you're- Right ... thinking in either direction, you stop the process of flow in its tracks.
27:59.0 Right. So many athletes and performers of all sorts that come to me for work, we have to train them to stay in the moment, and you train for the joy and pain- Mm-hmm ... but the joy that comes through tr- uh, through getting through the pain. You train for those moments- Mm-hmm ... and then if you, you need to take that mindset with you into competition even when the stress is u- feels unbearable. You absolutely have to divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on the immediate. Well, we could down- we could download a lot there, couldn't we? That is so brilliant. That is so brilliant.
28:46.5 On one level it seems that we seem like we're awake in the present moment worrying about the next shot when actually we're actually asleep in the present moment and our subconscious brain or our cerebellum has come forward to the conscious brain and has clogged our ability to see this fresh open moment before it actually has occurred. And the power of the subconscious brain to overwhelm the conscious brain is scientifically proven. And how can we keep ... Like, 'cause we need our subconscious. You know, there's no way that you can survive without it, and a lot of it is great. But how do we take some of those lower drives of inferiority or I'm not good enough or it's not gonna work out the way it did last week or Billy always beats me in every race?
29:35.2 What are some tools and strategies that we can give folks to get beyond that negative self-confidence inside? Yeah. Well, the, the negative self-confidence comes about so many times because we can't relax. And so the first thing that I talk to people about that are caught in a loop of this negative self-confidence or questioning or doubting or what have you, s- I don't tell them, "Stop thinking." I mean, that, there are many, many great sports psychologists and I'm not taking anything, anything away at all from the, from the really good ones. But on the other hand, you can't think your way out of anxiety. You cannot think your way out of bad thoughts.
30:27.5 Cognitive work doesn't work against bad thoughts because you're doing the same thing all over again and you're influencing something that can't be influenced with thinking. Instead- Right ... this is where I shift into the, into our bodies and I say, "You know, every time you get a, a doubt or every time you get a concern or every time you get a worry are you gonna score or are you gonna play well this shift or the, are you gonna play well this play, instead breathe- Mm-hmm ... and feel your breath and feel, identify where the tension is coming from in your body. Let that go and then just feel what you're doing." So I literally take somebody or try to get somebody to
31:21.3 dissociate back out of all of that talk by focusing and associating and locking into their bodies. To do so- Love that ... you hear about so many people, positive self-talk, positive self-talk. I'm sorry, that's just ... That doesn't work, and it doesn't help and it doesn't create mindsets that can overcome- Right ... the unconscious, which as you properly identified, is where much of the negativity and fears and bad memories potentially may be l- may be residing. Another example- Absolutely ... I mean, you mentioned golf, and golf is a great, great game to think about. How many times do you, does someone just get up, relax, hit a beautiful golf shot?
32:13.1 And then get all excited about the next one. "Oh, maybe I'm gonna birdie this hole, maybe even an eagle." What happens? They shank it. Right. I mean, bec- why? Because immediately they're out of their bodies and into thinking about an outcome. Right. Right. And we're in the future or past. Yes. And we think it's the present moment, and it's not. You know- That's right ... you were speaking about this feeling tone, this feeling tone, and when folks are doing drills and they're trying to unwind or, or figure out, you know, "How did this voice get in my head? I've been practicing this sport for 15 years, and now all of a sudden this voice shows up and he's the new cop on the corner telling me all of a sudden I gotta hop through him for me to be successful."
32:59.2 And one of the things that I like to do with folks in the drills is to just tune your mind into organically what's already happening. So we know that your diaphragm is moving down on the inhale into your gut brain and connecting you to your psoas, which connects you to your rotators, which connects you to your larger muscles of your legs. So if you can just follow that down into the body and, and have a felt sense of the moment before you decide what's gonna happen in the moment mentally, it's a wonderful drill for folks to let them know that they do, they do have tools on the fly that they can use, because you can't fix stress when you're not stressed.
33:42.0 You have to be in the experience. And the more tools that we can share with people that are organically, naturally happening to keep us alive, to keep neuroplasticity growing, to fire off that hippocampus and have new strategies around old ideas, I think we're doing a great service to everyone who we see. You know, Ed, I wanna ca- I wanna pull out one of your phrases you just used and emphasize it, because I think it's critical. Felt experience, and it's felt experience in the present that provides much more joy to the mind than the accomplishment of the goal in the end. And- Mm-hmm ... most people, what, after they accomplish a goal, actually the opposite occurs.
34:29.8 You actually go into a mini state or micro state of depression. Mm-hmm. But when you are focused on that, on that fixed ex- or, or when you're focused on the felt experience of the present, the joy persists. And if we can get those messages across, particularly to kids learning a skill along the way, then you're going to be creating someone that's living in that, in that moment. Mm-hmm. And not p- not teaching kids to overstress about... And it can be anything, from the SATs to their scores at the end of the year in school, to anything at all. We focus on the immediate moment. Yeah, it crosses all platforms.
35:20.7 You know- Absolutely ... whether it's athletics, whether it's scholastic, whether it's a business deal, or whether you wanna be healthy. Folks have to realize it's dark inside these bodies. You know, they can... This energy will respond to your awareness. It's its slave. So I think folks need to realize the power that we've been imbued with, and tools that you have to stay present, and it's gonna unfold the way you choose for it to unfold. If we could talk a little bit about how heart rates... Well, first of all, we know that how many breaths you're taking per minute is gonna reflect your heart rate and blood pressure.
35:57.6 Now, you're huge neuroscience, one of the best on the planet. Could you speak a little bit about how heart rates affect brainwave activity and neurochemistry secretions? Yeah, I mean, there have been some really interesting studies about that, and also about heart rates and the synchronicity with breath rates too. So what we know about this, and n- I think this is, uh, some of the recent studies maybe you're alluding to even, that when we t- when we slow our breaths down, we can slow, obviously slow our heart rates down. Well, what that's essentially speaking to our brains about, it's sending signaling to our brains that, "Hey, you don't have...
36:47.5 You're not in a fight or flight state. You can stay in a state of w- of calm, f- focused readiness." So by... I, I, I see where you're going with your question because breath and breathing regulates heart rate, regulates blood pressure, which in turn signals the brain that we're not in a state where we need to go into fight or flight. What this also does, Ed, is our limbic system, which is our, our, our system where much of our emotion, and you were talking about negative emotion a minute ago, much of our emotion, our anxiety, our discomfort and so on, it's, uh, being generated in our limbic system and, and in our
37:36.1 amygdala in particular. Our amygdala's not getting signals from our heart. Our, our heart's not racing, so our amygdala doesn't fire in the same way. Therefore, we're not releasing the same epinephrine, norepinephrine. Therefore, we're able to keep all of the rest of our, um, sort of intrinsic memory system at work, a- and we're able to access the movement patterns that we have. When you take... W- when you interject a s- a, a stress response into that and you begin to, um, the, uh, the, do the opposite thing, where the limbic system starts firing and the, the posterior singular picks up signaling the, or picks up, uh, signals from the body,
38:27.0 from the cardiovascular system, when the amygdala starts firing, you do the opposite. You uncouple the ability to stay in that flow state that you're describing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Super interesting. Super interesting. And, and, and this applies to everyone across all platforms, which is so important to folks that it doesn't matter whether you're, you know, a young athlete, or a professional athlete, or a CEO, or, or a manager. You know, we're all trying to create the same physiology to help us control our psychology so that we can become most efficient with the energy that we have at any given moment and our level of skills and awareness.
39:11.5 Well, I, uh, I think that's a critical point because no matter who you are, where you are, uh, anybody that's had small kids that are triggering them during COVID and lockdowns know this. So anybody from parents like that, to people that are under huge presentation and giving an argument in a courtroom, to someone else that may be in the middle of a big business deal, to an athlete, all across the board you're, you're picking up on. What I would even add to that is that this should be part and parcel of an educational curriculum for kids. Mm-hmm. Because- Right ... and I'll, I'll tell you why I believe this to be true.
39:56.1 Physiology t- triggers psychology which allows someone then to be able to m- to, uh, uh, modulate their emotions, to be able to build frustration tolerance, to be able to, um, sort of be self-introspective and self-aware, to be aware of others. Imagine if we took all of that and put that into scholastic curriculum across the board as something we teach our kids. Everything I just talked about has to do with successful problem-solving. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's where that comes from. Yeah, I- So it can be part of parenting- You know, that- ... it can be part of, uh, scholastics, it can be part in sh- in, in my opinion , biased as I am, it should be a part of life
40:49.8 Well, I'm really lucky that, not to the level that, that you do it obviously, doctor, but I've created a huge program, a breathing and, and mindfulness program for Goldie Hawn's, uh, MindUP program for youngsters and, uh, teachers and parents. Oh, my gosh. So that we're all on the same, so that we're all on the same page. All... There's, there's no such thing as bad feelings. There are simply improper thoughts responding to the feeling body. And as kids grow up, energy comes up. Most kids don't wanna act out, they just can't handle the amount of charge that they might have in that particular subjective or objective state.
41:28.1 Giving them tools to stay grounded, stay centered, get a good night's sleep, get the right food. I mean, food is our number... is our first medicine when, when we look to maybe alter perception and behavior. Uh, Ed, you're saying so many important things here. Like, when you're talking about kids and emotions driving thoughts, most people in my field get that wrong. They, they really believe, and this is, you know, partly where the CBT people kind of went off track, although they're now kind of realigning themselves, they believe that thoughts, negative thoughts create bad emotions. It's the other way around. Right. It's always an emotion, often unconscious or subconscious, that creates the bad thought.
42:21.1 The thought is simply a post-hoc response to the physiologic reaction that accompanies the emo- the, that precipitates the bad emotion, quote, "bad emotion." And the, like you say, there's no such thing as a bad emotion, so why not teach a kid how to read their body states? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, really, it, it is our duty to help the next generation, these little seeds, become more self-aware. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the body, the body plays a huge role in self-awareness when you have the most energy, in adolescence, your teenage years. And staying dialed in and, you know, empowering yourself and, uh, and not trying to fit into the cliques just because you can.
43:10.3 And it, and it's a struggle, you know. We all go through it. When you're working with adolescents, is there a certain theme that comes to your office with the boys and girls today? Yeah, I think that's a, you know, that's a very interesting thing, and it's happening- And changing in front of our eyes. Um, there is a much greater degree of pain in our adolescents than there was before. Um, I'm very focused on a, a couple of things, the pain that's hidden but expressed in self-destructive ways. So the, the ways of people, uh, coming in and are cutting, people that are drinking, people, uh, adolescents that are addicted to their phones and then self-isolating,
43:59.4 pandemic or no pandemic. The, uh, alcohol, the drug use, the suicide rate is, uh, phenomenally high right now. The... A- and when I say rate, I don't, I don't mean just, just completed suicides, but even our kids that are thinking about dying, our kids- Mm-hmm ... that think about, "Oh, I just wish this were over. I wish I could end my life." There's so many young kids that have no other ways to cope except to think of removing themselves from the earth. It's heartbreaking. Mm-hmm. And even added on to that, I think in my opinion and in my experience, adolescent males have it even harder.
44:45.5 Mm-hmm. Why? Because males are supposed to bury emotions. They're not supposed to show them. They're never given permission to show them. They're supposed to bury them. They come out in really destructive exterior, external ways of fighting and risk-taking behaviors and, you know, driving and drinking and, uh, you know, trying to prove your manhood in toxic ways, and all of these negative, negative things. Well, that's simply because they've never been taught any emotional regulation. Mm-hmm. And then we expect them, when they're past their teenage years and get off into college, to know how to treat women and to know how to communicate with each other. Come on, that's impossible if we're not teaching them that, uh, from a very early age and moving forward.
45:34.7 So, uh, I, I see a lot of adolescent boys in more difficulty. In fact, uh, Wall Street Journal published this article yesterday. I just happened to be browsing through the news in the morning. The number, the percentage of boys now going off to college has reached 10% less than the number of girls. So our, our adolescent boys aren't even making it to college. Mm-hmm. We've got a significant problem on our hands, and it's not being fully addressed. You know, we're all caught up in this, in these political tribalisms, and no one's thinking about the impact on our kids of our actions. E- except the adolescents and the kids growing up.
46:20.1 They feel it, they know it, and they know that when they see the west burning or the east flooding, they know that we're not thinking about them. Right. Right. But they also know on a micro level when they're just being taught to suck it up and go forward, and that's not a message we can keep giving our young men anymore. Yeah, they are super aware. They are super aware. They are. Far more than their parents are. Yeah, and, and the, and the sensitivity that they have around this awareness, I think one of our goals is to get them comfortable with that inside their skin, that you are dialed in, and you do know the truth, and you deserve the truth, and how can we support you and
47:09.4 build this little bit of bridge so we can get you where you are, to from where you are to the other side, young man. So many young men are, have this sensitivity, and I love that word because sensitivity is a, is a gift. It's a superpower. It, it enables- Right ... you to be able to be aware, gives you the capacity to be, uh, for awareness. You're feeling more, you're feeling more in yourself, you're feeling more in someone else. But if you, if you're also taught from the time you're a toddler or maybe even an infant, if you're taught to shove all that stuff away
47:46.6 and bury it and not allow yourself to use the strength inherent in your sensitivity, then you're really, you're really in an emotional straitjacket. So that has to be- Ooh ... undone, and we have to go back to using your sub- y- your sensitivity as strength. One thing I noticed around sensitivity, it, the, the folks that are gifted with it, and folks are, are being born with an all-time high of sensitivity as far as what I can see with who I work with, sensitivity is something you're gonna carry with you the whole ride. And it's not like you're gonna be able to turn it off. You're gonna have to find a way to work with it and the gifts that it brings.
48:30.8 It's not like something you, you know, you learned in school, and it was applicable then, and you go off to vocation, and, and y- and you kind of forget that. This sensitivity is a, is an alarm system that's been gifted to you so that you can remain on true north, on your path, live your dream. And getting guys to buy into that, i- it- it's a little bit of a process, but I think your technique of bottom-up learning i- is wonderful. I think the technique of being in the body is wonderful. How you interact with the mind and the brain is wonderful, 'cause these are heart-based kids.
49:10.1 They're real- they really care, and they wanna get it right. They just don't seem to be able to connect the dots, doctor. They haven't had anybody to explain how to do that, Ed. They haven't had anyone, including, including many parents, that are able to understand a, an adole- and, and I'm gonna go back to using boys as an example, to understand an adolescent boy's needs. In fact, there's another study that I quoted somewhere else that I don't r- I don't have the citation with me, but I can look it up, that a crying boy- A crying infant, male infant, uh, is responded to much m- more slowly than a crying female infant.
49:53.7 So there's, there, there's an entire lifespan of not having th- the emotional sort of, first of all, attachments built, you know, back to safety and connection, right? And th- and then those emotional attachments that allow for being able to understand. There's no greater feeling in the world than being, uh, connected and then understood. Mm-hmm. And then- Right ... to be able to be validated within that, within someone's struggle or within someone's pain. And then, I mean, that's how you develop resilient kids. It's not by saying, "Man, shut up and man up." Yeah. You know, if you can't trust yourself, you certainly can't trust others. No.
50:40.9 And, you know, having the ability to self-regulate, create adaptivity mindsets where the brain can switch gears as we move through the various choices that we make, uh, during life and, and then having healthy brainwave patterns and having, you know, good food in our body and alkalining the gut and, you know, having a relationship with our breath and how the breath, the length, depth, and pace of the breath is gonna reflect our ability to either be comfortable in the present moment or be in the war department, you know, resisting the present moment. You're, you're a true integrator. To, to wrap... Well- You're a- ... you know, I think about, I think about what you were saying earlier on in the interview and, you know, so much of my athletic career, looking back on it, I was really
51:30.4 using it to fit in and I used it as escapism. You know, I was creating artificial mindsets and thinking that was the real world when I was in my body, and I, and I was young enough that I could pull it off. But when I stopped, I began to realize, man, I am really rigid mentally. I judge everything outside of me as, as good or bad, like the whole world revolves around me. And now I, my body can't do what it used to do, and now I have to adapt to this whole new world where I have to be compassionate, I need to be forgiving, I need to let things
52:04.4 slide, and I'm like a deer in the headlights. You know, such a good point because sports and athletics and movement become so, so much of a haven away from things. And it's one of my h- strong hypotheses that I've posted a lot about that h- very, very high success, high achieving, um, athletes and professionals in general, and I a- also have a, uh, a Navy SEAL buddy that has said the same thing, the, the higher the achievement level, the greater the correlation with childhood trauma. Mm-hmm. So the sport, the activity, the motion, the mobility becomes a haven away from our pain. Mm-hmm. But the problems begin with injury, with illness, with the need for retirement, with age .
53:07.8 Then what do we do? Mm-hmm. Then you're talking about your journey where you had to then count on yourself developing as a full human and developing your full humanity. And you... But that's a very rocky road, uh, in order to get there because you no longer have that haven that you can rely upon, and it's a very, very painful mourning process to let go of that and move into something else. Yeah, it, it's a very painful process when we, when we rely on athletic training to stabilize our perception of ourself in the mind. It's almost like a drug addict coming off drugs or an alcoholic coming off of alcohol.
53:49.8 You know, the body is great, it's wonderful, uh, but it needs to be respected. There needs to be boundaries there. There needs to be self-respect there. And then that will just naturally and organically come up into our mental states. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree with you, and I w- you know, you're, you're kind of making a parallel between... I mean, there is a parallel between d- the drivenness and the, and the, the need to continue to perform at a high level and the addictive qualities to that. I, I certainly felt that. I certainly felt, still do to this day feel the remnants of it. I mean, if I, you know, miss a day of fitness or m- i, i- if something else is starting to hurt in my body and I can't do what I wanna do,
54:36.4 there is a real feeling of withdrawal and, and, and, uh, you know, sort of a, a state of mindful sort of depression at that time. So it, it, there is a parallel between having to, and this is- Mm-hmm ... a difference between when people are, are our age or people that have been injured and lose their careers and so on, this is what you have to face. Yeah. And you know, human life is brutal. You know, it's a part- human life is a participation sport all on its own. You must participate on this planet or you will be forced to participate probably in something that you don't, you would prefer not be involved in.
55:18.6 So injuries, one of the thing... I used to hate injuries. But then after a while I began to notice that that physical injury would make me mentally slow down. And in that, like I couldn't walk as fast from my house to the car. And initially it was like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna be late for work." But then I began to realize, why am I objecting to walking slower, number one, because that's the reality of it right now. And then number two, my mind would begin to have new ideas around not fully integrated emotions and thought forms about the pace I was living my life.
55:58.0 So the injury was actually, when I could take myself away from it, it was actually a gift that was rewiring my mind, my perceptions. So you, the injury prevents you then from the dr- or takes away your drivenness. You can't physically run to the car- Right ... and get- Right ... to the next place on time. And that goes back to our, our sort of, uh, our, our mindset of achievement and, and, um, the achievement mindset, right? And away from the present moment mindset. If, if you're, if you, if you, if that's taken away from you then you slow down and if you don't get caught up in your own sort of self-pity
56:39.5 during that time of, "Oh my God, I can't run to the car," Right ... uh, and you're, you're forced to stay in the moment you can become creative. Right. So creativity can't exist in the midst of urgency and it can't exist- Right ... in the midst of the addiction of having to replace something with something else. Creative thinking, what do people talk about? I, I cr- I have my best creative thoughts when I'm in the shower. I have my best creative thoughts right before bed. I have them as I'm going on a walk. Well, why is that? It's because I'm not driving myself towards something and all the other body brain systems aren't overly active.
57:18.0 It allows us to be able to really experience ourselves and experience the creativity that our brains can generate. And if we can trust our minds to do that then we've got another power to tap into. Oh gosh, that is so well said. You know, to wrap this up, I like to work with folks and I, I speak of two major nerves. Number one, the phrenic nerve, the motor nerve of the diaphragm which gives us energy. And then the vagus nerve, our ability to self-regulate, our ability to chill out, resiliency, adaptability. Can you explain a little bit about the relationship between our awareness with the energy of the phrenic nerve and our ability through breathing and other techniques to amplify
58:07.4 our vagus nerves qualities? Yeah. That's a absolutely great question and it's a fundamental question to teaching, uh, bottom up- uh, treatments, right? Uh, or regulation. And by being aware of our phrenic nerve and the, uh, well, w- we're not really aware of our phrenic nerve. We can't be aware of, uh, uh, uh, of a motor neuron, but we can be aware of the effects of the motor neuron, which is always the, uh, what the end plate of the motor neuron is, is the muscle, right? So we can be aware of our diaphragm, and we can become aware of our thoracic diaphragm and the movements it's making, and therefore aware of our breath
58:48.4 rates. Now, once we become aware of that, and this can be c- this should be practiced as second nature all day long. I, the breathwork I give my patients, I don't tell them to do it episodically, I, or sporadically. I tell them to make it an all-day-long practice under different, all kinds of different conditioning, uh, conditions. So when we are, when we become aware of our diaphragm and become aware of our breathing going too quickly, increasing the frequency, back to your other point about increasing cardiac fre- uh, beats in, during cardiac frequency, then we can go into our breathwork, and then we can take over with our
59:28.6 vagus nerve and our, our breathwork. We can take over by signaling through our vagus nerve in order to settle down our entire body-brain system, and that's the, that's the circuit that I think we ought to be teaching that we're talking about. So awareness, constant awareness, constant practice, and then, uh, uh, once we're aware of something, uh, picking up on the signaling, and then once we pick up on the signal, we can intervene through these methods. Wow. I, I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing an hour of your just beautiful wisdom and awareness and scientific knowledge and your athletic experience.
60:17.6 I mean, you are such the real deal, and it, it's been a wonderful hour of my life, and I can't thank you enough, Dr. Michael Miltich. Ed, it's been absolutely my pleasure. At any time. Look forward to talking more in the future. Thanks for the work you're doing. You're making a real difference out there. Don't ever forget it, doctor, and as always, go be great. Thank you, Ed. Take good care. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, buddy. Bye-bye.