RESOURCES
- Buy the book “UNSEEN SCIENCE of OVERCOMING STRESS Moment-By-Moment” By Andrew Bloch on Amazon
- Buy the book “UNSEEN SCIENCE of TREATING PAIN Moment-By-Moment” By Andrew Bloch on Amazon
- Visit Andrew Bloch’s website “I Hate Pain”
- Find out about Andrew Bloch’s unconventional healing treatments on YouTube. You may want to subscribe!
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
- John Iames Primal Reflex Technique Click Here.
- Visit Diana Forsha on YouTube.
- Find out about Dr. Richard Tan’s “True Balance“.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
01:10 Introduce Andrew Bloch
04:00 How was RPT (Reflexive Pattern Therapy) developed?
09:15 What is the concept of and reason for RPT?
09:45 What is the autonomic nervous system?
14:52 What is AEDP by Dianna Forsha?
20:42 What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?
23:13 What is the difference between reflexive point and reflexive pattern therapy and how did Dr. Richard Tan and the balance method influence the system?
25:07 What is D’Box and where can people go to get RPT?
27:37 What is “True Breath”?
33:00 What is Sympathetic Overtone?
34:03 How are physical and emotional pain related?
38:05 What are the steps in the “True Breath” system?
41:50 What is the Belly Brain Reflex?
51:10 a story about using “True Breath” to control breathing while playing golf
TRANSCRIPT
And he just knew right away he goes “True Breath?” And I’m like, yeah, but this time I’m going to tell you like the secret of it. Like how to really make it work. He said, okay. So I lyed him down and showed it to him, which I’ll show you the technique. So overall, just so he knew how to do it, but I said, this is the biggest difference. every time you’re thinking about what you want to do in golf, you got to do it. He said, okay, and he did it. That day. He shot a 78. He went on, obviously to make the team, the first day, it’s a two day tournament. The first day he was he shot a 73.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode, there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition, Dr. Michael Haley.
I’m Dr. Michael Haley. This is the Dr. Haley Show Podcast. In today’s episode we are again meeting with Andrew Bloch. In a previous episode we sat down and talked about Aloe vera and the history of the Aloe #1 brand by Rodney Stockton who is considered to be the “Aloe Vera Pioneer”. Today, we are meeting with Andrew Bloch the physical therapist, author, and inventor of some unconventional healing systems for dealing with pain. Enjoy the show.
Andrew Block, how you doing Mike? Thank you for joining me on the Dr. Haley Show podcast where, today we’re going to talk about you have an unusual technique for helping people. With pain, among other things. You’re author of a book. It’s got a long title. What was that? It’s. It’s called The Unseen Science of Overcoming Stress. Yeah. And there was something that was tagged on to that moment by moment Moment by Moment. Yeah. Which is really the key to the, to really the whole book is the moment by moment aspect. Okay. When did you write that? That’s about two years ago. And during Covid time period I wrote that. Was it inspired by the stress of Covid being locked up? Yeah, I think it was. It gave me the time frame to be able to do it.
Most of my focus is more, I’ll just say on the physical pain aspect, when when you really come to look at it, pain. There’s no such thing as physical and emotional pain. There. It’s always the same, no matter what. And so Iƒ??ve always focused on the physical side. And most of my systems are based on that. But around 2014 patients start to start to ask me, okay, what can I do at home? And I didn’t really want to start exercising or doing movements yet. So I had to kind of go back and say, okay, how can I influence them and their pain and stress because they’re really all related. Right. Utilizing, a new system that I created.
Yeah. And I’m gonna put it out there. Andrew. I saw it on TV You were on ABC news, NBC news, on on a golf channel. And with this technique where they kind of prefaced by saying to some, this might look like slapping and punching and stretching and pulling and yanking and beating the patients up. Yeah. I didn’t think so at all. I, now I’m a chiropractor and. Yeah. So, we put people in some pretty tough positions and things pop and crack and make a lot of noise. So for me, it’s like, well, that kind of looks almost like what I do. And we get great results. It’s not slapping, punching, pulling, yanking. What are you doing?
It’s a good question. I, I through my life, I’ve had mentors, people that kind of opened up my eyes to a different paradigm, a different philosophy. And one of them was, a gentleman named John Iames And he developed, a system called primal reflex release technique. And that really opened up my eyes to how to utilize reflexes to see an immediate change in someone’s perception of pain. And that fascinated me. And from that time, I kind of went on my own journey, because there was aspects of John’s system that I felt were lacking, and it didn’t, address the whole body. It just addressed individual areas, whether it be knee or shoulder or back. And so I went on, probably about a year or so journey inside myself just to try different stuff. And I guess I’m crazy enough to, to just try things, and obviously they look a little crazy When you do it, for sure. But what I’m really doing is, is working on, a different nervous system than what chiropractors, PT, massage therapists and others utilizing. And so it’s it’s really a different paradigm than the current paradigm that we have in medicine. And not saying one is right or wrong, I think they really inter mesh well. There’s, a, a time and a place for everything. The only aspect of it is there’s really no one that’s in my opinion, that’s utilizing the, the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, or what I call the automatic nervous system to influence someone’s pain or perception of pain to get them to feel better very, very fast.
Yeah. And I know there’s a lot of similar techniques not so similar. But for instance, when we’re using, tapping, for instance. Yes. Is a lot less aggressive. Yes, yes, yes. But somehow they’re people are getting results. And I believe tapping is actually more connecting the physical and the emotional together, where there’s a thought process going in with what might be related to the pain people are experiencing. Chiropractic, very physical, working with the nervous system. So what you’re doing is probably using possibly similar pathways as some of those can, and I, I do love talking to other professionals because it’s, you this is somewhat a little bit of, philosophical aspect because you say techniques, but I call it a system. And I differentiate a system in that it’s based off a different paradigm. And, our, our paradigm in medicine, when I say our, I’ll say massage therapist, PTƒ??s Chiros, massage therapists, doctors, we have been taught a paradigm. When we see a patient, the first thing we want to do is figure out why they’re in pain. Then we go off of that assumption of why they’re in pain, for PT it’s usually weakness or tightness for a chiropractor, it’s usually a lot about posture. Massage therapist, bunch of knots or myofascial restriction. And doctors usually like an itis. Tendonitis, bursitis, arthritis, something along those that
we can’t leave out. the nutrition. We can’t leave out acupuncturists, because we all have our systems and perspectives. But acupuncture kind of uses a communication system in the body as well. Yeah. And I’ll put acupuncture in there. Because a lot of people don’t really understand also how acupuncturists work, but you could throw them in there just and you could put a nutrition. I don’t put in so much on the nutrition side just because it usually takes a little bit longer, and, and all of those things can be true. Someone can be weak, can be tight. The posture could be terrible. They’re nutrition could be bad. And all those things can be true. But the paradigm is to figure out why someone is broken. So you can work on getting them well. So at the end, I hope you feel better. So from a PT standpoint, let’s just say weakness or tightness. Well God that’s going to take 4 to 6 weeks for them to get stronger or more flexible.
So eventually they feel better. And the problem comes is that it takes too long and the paradigm shift is with RPT is that the whys are not that important. I have no idea why someone’s in pain and to tell you the truth. They have no idea and they should. Nobody has a clue because there’s so many variables. Some you just mentioned nutrition, stress, other things. So no one really even knows why someone is in pain and two people can go through the exact same experience and have two different, so an MRI can look exactly the same of two different people. But the experience is can be completely different. One person’s in the hospital, the other one’s playing golf. So we start to realize that. Yeah.
And from what I’ve seen, too, x rays or MRI’s, it’s a point in time. And if we took that same image at a different point in time, chances are we really wouldn’t see a difference. Only this time you were in pain and that time you weren’t. Correct. And and so the, the, the concept of RPT or the paradigm shift is actually is is not so much to focus on. The why is to focus that someone needs to feel better fast so that they can get well. So that’s where posture comes into play for a chiropractor. That’s where, strength and flexibility comes in. Nutrition comes in. Maybe energy system with acupuncture. That’s where it comes in. But you need to make that immediate shift. And the shift is if you look at the nervous system, we have a somatic or a voluntary nervous system. And then we have an involuntary or what’s called the autonomic I call it automatic. And when you compare those two systems one is a voluntary, where we’re consciously where we lift, we tell our body what to do. And the other is the automatic which is our organ system O’Hara liver, our lungs and all the organs, which works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
It’s it’s an incredible. I mean, just one just your heart is most I mean, it’s it’s incredible. We know like so little in that sense of like really how it works. And so the paradigm shift is actually to address the automatic system to be able to utilize, to assess that system and then make immediate changes to that system. And that’s the difference of RPT. That’s why I call it a system. And it works well with anything else you do. You’re old enough to remember, like the Ritz Ritz commercial, the Ritz cracker, you’re gonna have to refresh. And it was a it was like a it was a slogan saying everything tastes better on a Ritz. Do you remember that? I probably have heard that in 20 years, but they more they wrote it on my brain, so, we were younger and I think that’s almost like with RPT, like everything is better with RPT. Everything is better when you reset the autonomic nervous system, when you reset the system that’s working, even know you’re not aware of it.
I’m hoping that you can reset my system possibly after this. And for those that are paying attention to this, maybe we’ll use it as like B-Roll as we were talking about it earlier. Maybe I’ll be able to dub over some of those images so people know what we’re talking about. Yeah. And in reality is it’s like I can explain, like a roller coaster. You can look at a roller coaster up and down and the twists and the turns, but there’s nothing like getting on a roller coaster, that. It’s an experience type of thing. This is always been a little bit of a struggle for me in, in educating other practitioners as well as just other people. Once people feel it and experience it, there was like, oh, I kind of understand that aspect. So even if you get a little bit like you see different videos, like the newscasts in that aspect, it really doesn’t do it justice. The experience, actually experiencing RPT, if that makes sense. Yeah, I, I do hear what you’re saying myself, probably. I probably have a different perspective as a chiropractor, because when I saw it, I saw what they were describing. But at the same time, there’s something appealing to it. Like, it just looks like it makes sense. And I want that there’s.
Yeah, there’s kind of an I want that. Yeah. And I don’t know why. And one thing I always try to do is get people to tap into that. Knowledge from above. What what is God telling you? Or if you don’t believe in God and you think there’s a higher intelligence and you call it the universal intelligence, yes. The universe telling you, when we go to eat something, we know whether or not we should. Yeah, sometimes we choose to disobey that because we we want to eat it because how it tastes, we know we shouldn’t, our body knows when we need things. Sometimes we make poor decisions and we know we shouldn’t. I shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to. Other times we know we should do it and we do it. We get great results. And there’s something to that. When you see it, it’s like, yeah, that’s for me. I want that.
I would suspect when you were talking about how you had developed it. I would suspect that was you paying attention to a knowledge being given to you. And that’s probably how you developed it. you’re quite perceptive.
And I rarely say this, I definitely, I rarely say it within an interview or within the confines of, science, but you’re 100% right. I’m clairsentient. I feel like, I have, a way of sometimes touching into things that. No, not maybe as obvious to others. I think everyone has the capacity of it.
And I, I always encourage people. But how I did come up with it is just touching into that, and I guess going back to the craziness, crazy enough to listen to what I was feeling, of saying and when I used to, when I first developed it back in around 2011, I used to tell people, I’m just going to smack you around. You’re going to feel better. Or people would say, well, what does he do? I don’t know, is he smack me and punch me. And I felt better. And, it took me a while. And with the help of, some people close to me to say, you need to do a little bit better job of going back and putting more science to it, putting it more like you have something in works. There’s no question about it that it’s quite incredible. I say that humbly because I really didn’t develop it. I was just given a messenger. Yeah, exactly. So I’m very aware of that. I’m very I’m very appreciative and very humbled by that. But the, they encourage me and I went to a, a psychology course, it’s called AEDP which I think is just incredible way of looking at it, the human body and, and interaction. And her name is Diana. Forsha And I was the only PT in, in about 75 to 100 psychologists. And my, my ex-wife, who was, instrumental in me going there, say, I really think it’ll help you to be able to describe RPT because she’s doing a version of that in the psychology world. And she was 1,000%. Right.
And from that, it really helped me to be able to describe it more of a scientific way, in least from what we know, to really help people to be like, it’s not this hocus pocus type stuff, but it actually really is based on the nervous system and how to influence the nervous system. And that helped me to create True breath which is, the premise of the unseen science of overcoming stress is coming up with a, a way of breathing that influences your nervous system moment by moment.
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Okay. So you’re 100% right. Most of the stuff that I develop, I just try to tune in to what my guides and spirits and God try to allow me to. And that that it’s incredible. it seems that we all have that, but not everybody uses it. And then when people start using it, they get more in tune to it.
So they use it more and they use it more and they use it more. And before they know it, they’re, that they they are listening to God. They are following God. They are given every direction. It’s the person that’s driving down the road. And why why are you telling me to turn left? Why should I go down this road? I never go down that road. No one’s there. And there’s someone at the end of the road that needed your help. that stuff happens. Yeah. Society… it’s it’s speeding up, obviously, with all the, the internet and all the technology and I, I do believe that, we’re we’re bombarded. the and the processing system for us is the nervous system that is our, our ability to take in information, our senses and then what do we do with it once it comes in. And this is somewhat the basis of RPT and of true breath and what’s called reflexive point therapy is to influence the system, to kind of take it back.
And it’s even hard for me, even the developer of it, to always be in that space because we’re just, so bombarded with information and taking us away from nature, taking us away from being grounded, taking us away from connecting with other people. And, it’s everything’s very, very fast, like now texting it like you, you don’t have it even in these interactions sometimes. I really love these podcasts much better than a newscast or an interview, because itƒ??s a lot longer of being together. There’s something that something has to be said about just being with somebody and and connecting. And I agree with you. I, I think it’s it’s becoming lost in our society and taking us away from our for, what our possibilities and potential is. The technology. It even the wristwatch I don’t see no I didn’t I don’t have a watch. Yeah, but people used to know what time it was. They didn’t have to look at the watch to know what time it was. You just knew. Yeah. Within a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When it comes to information, we used to figure things out. Now everyone just goes to a phone or the internet, Yeah. Technology has really the alarm clock. You. Why would anyone need an alarm clock? I don’t have an alarm clock. I don’t use an, But I can tell myself what time to wake up. And I will wake up at that time. Yeah. But if I used an alarm, I would become reliant on it.
Yeah. it’s a it’s a deep philosophical question because there’s, tremendous advancements with it. And there’s tremendous potential, like, what is nice is, I can go and look up everything I want about the nervous system. within a few minutes of having a thought about something. So, instead of having to go down to the library back then, I had those encyclopedias, and, it’s so. And you get difference of opinions, which is so nice to so that, there’s a lot of like I say, there’s a time and a place. I, I do believe that the scales are tipped now to us in a direction that is away from, that connection and hopefully at some point in a, in a healthy way, it kind of switches back to where people are actually, want to be with people, want to connect, want to, create that environment. Yeah. around nature. Yeah. Knowledge is increasing, but connection is decreasing. I, I had a friend that I had a statement and he, he said, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. But wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. And name is Norm he is a brilliant guy. And I think we are becoming a lot more knowledgeable. But I don’t know if will be becoming more wise. And this is a little bit scary because what? You start to realize what today. Knowledge today is, is usually vastly different within a few years, but give it 10 or 15 years, it’s vastly different. And and these are things that you knew as truth. But a lot of times that’s just not it. But wisdom in that usually stands the test of time. And so, I really, like I, I try to put things more when I’m working with people to really, focus in on the wisdom as, as opposed to, what necessarily knowledge is.
And that goes into the whole idea of science. Like, what is science now? Like, like, what are these papers? What are they really telling us? Like, we know that I’m not really sure. Like, if, we have a lot more science, but I don’t know if we have or not a lot more wisdom right now. How many other people are practicing RPT? I have a few, disciples. I say, when I first started, I was working to teach reflexive pattern therapy. And what I really come to realize is that, it it was very, very difficult for a practitioner and to to take on a new system. And so they try to integrate it in with their own system, almost like too early. And I found that it was very difficult. To, to teach it because it just was I just had my own philosophy of why I was and I’ll take some might have been myself. when you learn, when you develop something new, when I had, given it to, I felt like this responsibility to want to get out there.
And I could come across quite brash and a little bit like, oh, I know something, you don’t know something. And I, I’ve kind of humbled myself over that time. So I’ll take it that I was probably not the greatest teacher I was. I was a clinician. I wasn’t really I didn’t I had to learn to become more of a teacher. And I think that’s a different skill set than being a clinician. And so I’ll take some of it is a lot of my own, lack of teaching. So I had a I have a few disciples, but what I created also is reflexive point therapy, which is a much easier way for people to get great results. And this is based off of one of my mentors and gurus, Dr. Richard Tan, called the balanced method. And his philosophy was that most acupuncturists, weren’t doing acupuncture like, the right way. that the ancients actually created points selection based off herbs, not based off of points, and that his is only based off of where the pain is located.
And I love that aspect. So what he would do is if you had pain in a certain area, he would then, push on an acupuncture point in a completely different area and the pain would immediately go down. And that obviously blew my mind. But that was based off a lot of acupuncture and understanding channel theory and that aspect. So I, I, re-created that. So that’s the that’s the basis for reflexive points theory therapy as opposed to reflexive pattern. Correct. Yeah. And reflexive point therapy I believe was a lot easier for practitioners to learn. it’s a simpler format. So I actually stopped teaching reflexive pattern therapy until people really understand reflexive point therapy. Okay. Because if if the a lot of times with reflexive pattern therapy, you feel better, but the area still bothers you. So you come with a shoulder itƒ??s like well I feel much better. But my shoulder still bothers me. And that’s okay if how to now get rid of the shoulder problem quickly. And so I kind of reversed it.
So now I, I teach reflexive point therapy to eventually then teach people reflexive pattern therapy. That makes sense. Gotcha. So this might be a little corny, but I hate pain.
where can someone go to find out more? Well, I, I, my website is, as you cornily said, is. iHatePain.org And I opened up a nonprofit, and so I wanted something that just. It’s called The Box is the actual name of the nonprofit. But I wanted something where people can remember it quickly so that they can least get access to it. And, yeah, it is kind of corny. But it’s it’s corny the way I put it, I think it’s a great name that, because who I, who who doesn’t hate pain. Yeah. And so, and we used that we had a, we had a site when I had a practiced in Maryland and we had it was I hate knee pain and we focused on these and, and So when people would get rid of their pain, like, I hate knee pain. It was it was just a very good, tagline. people can relate to it and they can express it. And exactly. You said, I hate pain. And then it feels better. So,
that’s that’s the way to find me. Is, is I hate pain.org. And now what was t box or the box. Yeah, I call it the box, which is like Dƒ?? box. A little bit of my New York roots. If you can hear it in my voice and, conceptually is it’s, it’s, I call it a lunch box clientele. So people I want to provide care for people at a very, very low cost, where they have accessibility to feel better fast. And it the lunch box crowd is I people I usually make less than $60,000 a year that they bring their lunch to work because they want to try and save money. So the clientele is that lunch box clientele. And then, what I do is completely outside the box in not only the fees schedule, but the hours and, and the philosophy and paradigms that they’re going to receive. And then they donate in the box. And so that was the whole concept of, of the name of the box. Yeah. And it was kind of kind of like, it was very generic. It’s like, it’s like, what is the box?
I hopefully it stirs some conversation. once someone gets something, they say, I went to the box and what is that? And they maybe start talking to him as opposed to, the pain box or the relieving box or the healing box or something like that. So, but after you the way you explained it, it all makes sense. Yeah. it’s the unseen science of overcoming stress. The, the concept is, is a system called true breath. And true breath is something that everybody can do. See, if you learn RPT I teach RTP, I’m just I’m just like, letting that there’s a system out there. But reality is it’s it’s not going to do you very much good because you can’t do it on yourself. You can’t do a reflex on yourself. This hand knows it’s coming. And so when I developed True Breath, and again, it was kind of given to me. So when I say I developed, I was kind of just, just open enough to accept the information and pass along to others is, is that when you look at the the automatic organ system, there’s only one organ in that system that we have voluntary control of in an involuntary system. So if I said, eat some food and now go ahead and digest that food, you’re like, well, I the whole but digest. I mean, I’m not going to take it from my mouth to my, to my anus. It’s not going to work that way. It’s you hopefully just going to work. But the one organ that we actually do have voluntary control of is the lungs. And so if you look at it from a spiritual God that God gave us access and control of this involuntary system that we just give back. So when we just breathe, we’re basically saying to our body and to our system, just, okay, you do what you think I need to do.
And but the problem with it is you’re only doing it based off your past, if so, if if you were stressed out, say, about eating and you nutrition, you’re just you’re just breathing the same way. You’re just you’re constantly being intertwined in that same paradigm that you have for yourself. So when someone’s looking at pain, the one organ that we can utilize is the lungs and how we breathe. And so what I created and again I say I, humbly is what’s called the belly brain reflex. And I think that would actually be much more, to show, Sure. and to show you that, that actually you can change your protection just by the way that you breathe. And when you decrease your protection, you open up a whole other. It’s like eating a new food. It’s a whole other process of resetting the nervous system. Because when we look at pain, pain is our body’s way of expressing protection. That’s how I look at it. And so when if I put a rattlesnake here, we’re both going to run away, right?
Probably. Yeah. But we really probably only have to go about maybe a foot or two because rattlesnakes are going to chase us. Right. But we’re probably going to go ten feet to maybe ten yards. Some people a mile right. Anything more than two feet is over protection. You didn’t need it. Now, if I put a rubber rattlesnake here. But I made it look real, your response would be, well, if I thought it was real, it might be the same. Exactly the same, right? Because you can’t. If you don’t know the difference, you can respond exactly the same in the in the real world. I’d hold it up and say, Mike, look its rubber. Youƒ??d laugh, youƒ??d come back in the room. Unfortunately, we don’t do that for a nervous system. So we in my concept, we walk around life thinking everything is a real rattlesnake, when most of the time it’s just rubber. But we have no we have no way of holding that up. And I look at true breath as a way of resetting the nervous system so that you can actually say ƒ??oh, that’s just rubber.
I don’t really need to react that way. Or if I did, I don’t need that much. I can go maybe three feet. I don’t have to go ten feet. I donƒ??t have to go a mile? I might go two feet, but it’s a lot better than going, ten feet, seven feet more or a half a mile away. And so true breath is our ability to utilize our God given access to our involuntary magical automatic system to make moment by moment changes transformation, however you want to look at it. And that’s really the key. So when you look at it like meditation, like people do in mindfulness and doing meditation, which again, I’m I’m a big proponent of, but it really misses the mark because it just takes too long. So people sit and they do mindfulness for 15 to 20 minutes. Again, not mocking. I think it’s beautiful. But two hours later when they have to go make a decision on something, it’s usually they’re not in that blissful state anymore. It’s kind of the it’s taking over and the way that we work now with so much stress going on, itƒ??s usually lost by the time they even got to work, with traffic and their boss and deadlines and everything like that.
Kids. So we need something that we can utilize moment by moment. And that’s the the concept of true breath. And the difference of true breath is utilizing reflexes. The belly brain reflex, to actually make immediate shifts or transformation in your autonomic nervous system so that you become less protective, just like holding up a rubber snake. It’s reminded me a little bit of people that are stuck in the reptilian brain thinking, being brought back to the, I think, cognitive possibly, which is more like the the balance… the fight or flight. there’s a barrier in the room. Yeah. Versus now that’s not a real bear. I don’t I’m okay. I don’t have to, I’m not going to starve.
I don’t have to catch my food. I’ll be okay. Yeah. that whole fight or flight and the survival fear that people get wrapped up in, it sounds like possibly a way of coming back to reality. Well, yeah, because you look at the autonomic nervous system, those are two things. Fight or flight, which is more sympathetic rest and relax and digest, which is more parasympathetic. And the problem is, is that for most of us, we’re stuck, in the sympathetic overtone, they call it. And there’s different psychological, there’s Peter Levine’s work and other people that are looking at somatic therapies. So it’s very, very interesting in the, when you say that someone is in pain, right.
If I’m in a physical pain, I go see a physical therapist, chiropractor, massage, physical medicine. If I’m in emotional pain, I go see a psychologist. In reality, there’s there’s no difference. They’re always the same. There are always I shouldn’t say the same there. There’s always physical pain and emotional pain. So I mean, if you’re sad because someone passed away, you also have the physical body is also taking a toll. If I sprained my ankle and it’s just a physical aspect, there’s a lot of emotional toll of how much pain I’m in, what the response I’m getting from my parents, I want to get back to sports, whatever. There’s always there’s always both. Now in the psychology world, I think they realize that and they start to actually utilize much more, of the body of the physicalness to help with the emotional side.
I think in physical medicine, we’re really, really lacking in that aspect of looking at because we, we don’t know how to make those shifts quickly because we believe it’s either cognitive therapies or other stuff, more talk therapies or that aspect. But RPT whether it be reflexive point therapy, true breath or our or all the access for a a physical medicine practitioner to actually work on, let’s just say the emotional pain of life. And so I agree with you that, these play a tremendous, connection that people that are in pain and that’s where you go on to the onto the nutrition side, onto the aloe side, on the nutritional side.
I mean, those all play a tremendous point, because if someone has an increased sympathetic overtone meaning if I put a rattlesnake there, right, a real rattlesnake or even rubber, but you think it’s real, are you going to be able to digest your aloe or anything else easily? No. Well, inside the body it’s all going to get shut down. It’s all gets shut down. So when people say like, you could tell someone all day long that nutrition is important and all the wonderful knowledge and wisdom around it, but if they don’t have access to their nervous system to put them in a parasympathetic state, to put them in a rest relaxing digest state, they’re just they don’t get the benefit of it. my journey is to is to incorporate both so people understand that you have access to this, this incredible nervous system and utilizing it moment by moment, it opens up a whole new world to you. And I’ve had just incredible stories of people like, they come into you with pain of neck pain, but they come out and tell me, I’m going to let They, I went through a divorce that I know I had to go through, like I finally did or I finally did something or I can’t, I don’t know, something about it. But all of a sudden, this and they tell me this story and I was like, it just makes me feel so beautiful and so, so great that, they came in, for one thing, but because they understood and had access to the nervous system, it not only helped with their neck pain, but really the I’ll just say maybe the underlying if there was more of an underlying reason, to, to help them, like you were talking about God, and spirit, saying make a left turn. you could say that a lot about people in pain, that people come to you in pain because God wants you to recognize something about yourself. He wants you to make a different decision in your life, but you’re not able to, And so from a deeper philosophical area, I think true breath gives you that ability to touch your nervous system, to kind of just shed a little bit more light, whatever that might be.
To really help you to, for different possibilities, different opportunities in anyone’s life. How does true breaths work? Well, true breath works. I mean, not necessarily. How does it work? Physiologically. But what what’s the what’s what does a person need to do? So, most times in meditation when you meditate, well, it’s usually the first thing you do. Well, for me, if it was me. Yeah. Because I was always taught that, meditation is like emptying your brain out. So I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, saying, well, how am I supposed to get rid of all this? how do I empty it out? And I’m filling it with the thought of how do I get rid of it? Which is the hundred percent?
You did exactly what most people do, which is common. As soon as you say meditate, which is a rest relax aspect, you close your eyes. So we do the opposite. You keep your eyes open because life happens with your eyes open now with your eyes closed.
thank you for listening to the Dr. Haley Show Podcast. This month we are including some content about the founder of the Aloe #1 brand Mr. Stockton. And to commemorate him use the coupon code XXXX for $25 off your purchase of $200 or more at haleynutrition.com That’s XXXX for $25 off your purchase of $200 or more now through the end of October 2024. Now, back to the show.
So I want to change your perception with your eyes open, not closed So that’s the first thing you do. That’s a little bit different. You’re going to keep your lips closed, tongue on the roof of your mouth. Because when you talk with the roof of your mouth, your, your, your there’s a lot of, chakra aspect they talk about. There’s a lot of, ancient wisdom that’s wrapped around the tongue on the roof of the mouth.
And what that does, I believe that has an autonomic, aspect that causes you to be more relaxed, because if you’re running away from that snake, you’re not going to be like your tongue on the roof of your mouth, right? Right. He’s going to be taking as much as you can through your through your mouth with the tongue as low as I possibly can. So we’re doing the opposite, weƒ??re starting to say, okay, now we’re going to put ourselves in more of a relaxed state. You’re going to breathe in through your nose. And when you breathe in through your nose, there’s a whole aspect of is that’s how we do as a, as a child, there’s a lot of immune response. This is how when we’re when we’re babies, this is how we’re not developed. We don’t have an immune system when we’re born. We have a bunch of prior patches, a lymph system, and we have to learn what’s good and bad. And so we have all the sinus cavities and all the, the, the, the nasal passages is to help us to learn about that. So there’s a lot of aspect, just breathing through your nose.
And when you breathe through your nose, when your mouth is closed, it’s kind of goes back to, like, when, people are eating, you shouldn’t really be talking when you’re eating because you’re taking more oxygen in into your mouth, and you really want to be taking in through your nose, so you breathe in through your nose. And the big key to it is that all the air goes into your belly, no chest at all, because when you’re running away from a snake, where are you breathing? Through your chest. Where do most people breathe? If you look at people on the really, I’m an observer of people. It’s something that I just, I love to do. I can sit on a park bench to just watch people all day. I’m one of those type of people. You’ll notice that most people breathe through their chest. They naturally will be in every once in a while their taking, big sighs, if you have to make decisions, if you ask them a question, they’ll take a big sigh before they do it. And they’re doing that is because they’re setting off their sympathetic nervous system, because that’s how they make choices. So the big, big key is, is breathing all the air through your belly. Okay. Once you breathe all the air (in) through your belly, you want to hold it.
And at this point your brain starts to come in and your brain is saying, okay, philoso… So, physiologically, oxygen is now getting converted to CO2 and your brain is now saying, okay, time to breathe out your CO2 and what you’re telling now you’re taking back control your brain. involuntarily you’d be breathing out. You just will be saying, no, no, no, I’m taking control of my life. I’m taking control of the wheel I choose not my mind, not my brain. I’m choosing in this moment what I want to do. And so, almost like a spoiled child, you do the opposite. Instead of breathing out, you try to get more air in. And that’s what I call the belly brain reflex. And then you hold it until you feel like, okay, now I’m going to release it.
And when you do that, you now have taken back over the involuntary nervous system just for a moment. But that moment is really transformational in that time period. And as you practice more of it, you’re standing in line. You’re frustrated because you, you got to wait in line traffic. Your husband or wife, relationships, work. When you start to utilize true breath in all of these aspects, it starts to become natural for you. You start to then breathe through your belly. You start to have a, a more grounded presence. And I think that’s for me is like something that, a lot of patients will say to me and I take it as a really huge compliment. They’ll say, you just you feel so they patient and you see like so grounding that aspect. And I and I really attribute that to the wisdom that I was given about true breath with this ability of, of, of being inside my belly. Because if you look at a baby when they’re breathing, what do they do? Their mouth is closed or to the nose, they’re just in and out of their belly, which I’m going to show you now. And you can see, and they’re in a state of complete bliss because they don’t have all the bullshit that we have been going on in our minds and in our heads. But eventually that 5 or 6 year old starts to, shift. I call perception versus reality, well, when we’re born, our reality makes our perception.
if I take a pencil, this is not a pencil, it’s a dart. And I pick my nose with it. as a baby, it’s anything I want to make it. It’s a flying saucer. It’s whatever. But then all of a sudden, around 4 or 5, six years old, your mom or dad said, no, no, no, that’s not something to throw in the walls. It’s a pencil and it’s for writing. And not only that, though, it’s not for writing anywhere. It’s only to write on this little white piece of paper, and then all of a sudden, your perception becomes your reality. And this is interesting enough. Patterns come in around 5 or 6 years old. So when I’ve tried to look at younger people treating, usually around three and four and sometimes five, they don’t have the pattern, but they start to develop the pattern around that time where I think there’s a shift from reality to perception to perception to reality, and I’ve worked with people as old as 102.
And as you get older, you, I think closer to the end you start to lose the pattern. And I don’t, I don’t have studies, just my own stuff. I find it quite interesting. And we gave away that power. We gave it away from the baby and, and this is normal. This is what trauma. This is where everyone has trauma in their life. This is normal. This is God’s way of saying get out there. What are you going to do? Like, how are you going to fulfill your own life? This is free will. Like get out there. some people, there’s some thought about. There is no such thing as free will. I don’t believe that. But it’s kind of like, get out there. What are you going to do? So part of it is we we someone have to give that away. The breathing aspect and being in this blissful state all the time in this because, we have to we’re plagued. we have to get out there. But I this is an area where now you can differentiate, especially, in stressful times where we want to use the sympathetic when we really don’t need it.
A lot of it was like I say, rubber snakes, they’re not real snakes or we’re not going to die if we sit in traffic. if we if the boss really… we’re still going to be fine, But we put it like it’s a real snake. And so once you do that of eyes open, lips closed, tongue on the roof of your mouth, breathe in through the belly. Hold it. Wait. Try to get more. Even though nothing is there. So that’s the big key. It’s not a step you don’t want to take. A little bit and then a little bit more. It’s maximum everything you got. Hold it and then try to get more like you’re drowning. Hold it. Breathe out through your mouth. You do that two times and then you do about five, maybe eight times just breathing through the belly, in through the nose. Very just like you were when you were a baby. And the great thing about True Breath, why makes it moment by moment, is that you could do it anywhere and everywhere. Unlike meditation, you need a nice space, beautiful music. And again, I’m a big fan of it. It’s not like I don’t. I don’t think it has a time and a place for it. It’s great, but that’s the wellness part. People need to feel better fast. So true breath is the it’s ability to feel better fast. And then you can work on your wellness, whether it be nutrition, whether it be getting acupuncture, stretching, flexibility, postural work with chiropractors, whatever it might be. And so that to me is something that you can do anywhere and everywhere. And it it’s very transformational in your life. If I want to dig in deep in true breath, get the book right. Yeah. The book is a great way. when I say a book, It’s funny, like, people write a book about stress. It’s like this big, like, it’s stressful enough just to read it. like, I don’t have three hours, a day to read this. So it’s a very, very tiny, tiny e-book. And the reason I did it like that is I, I just want people to be able to easily utilize, true breath and be able to, gain access to something very quickly.
I didn’t go into the science. I didn’t go into the involuntary nervous system so much. I didnƒ??t go very, very deep. I try to keep it very, very short. Sweet to the point. So people can utilize it. Nice. And I saw it is available on Amazon. It is is it also on your website? iHatePain.org? No. The iHatePain.org is really focused towards providing right now I’m just in Boynton Beach is providing access to, I guess Palm Beach County. Maybe maybe Broward also in Dade, but is to provide access to people that, that don’t make a lot of money of that are working and struggling in pain. Got it. And and where they can come to a place, that’s accessible and incredibly affordable. the charges is minimal, based off of income and, so that I really focus in on that aspect, not so much in the teaching, the RPT, the true breath and that aspect. So it’s kind of two separate things. Okay.
As you were talking about True Breath, I’m reminded of one of those singing shows. It may have been American Idol, or it was one of those where the singing coach, or expert or professional was with their student and actually had them lay down on the ground on their back to learn how to breathe with their belly and express their voice from the air coming from their belly instead of their chest because of the tension that would be expressed in the voice when they’re chest breathing instead of belly breathing. I forget it was probably American Idol, I don’t know, I didn’t see that one, but I have seen many times where people talk about it because you think about the diaphragm, and its relation to breathing. And if you’re breathing sympathetic, you’ll have a different tone in your voice. It’s a little bit more of a sharpness and a little bit ƒ??I got to get it out thereƒ?. And when you’re breathing for your belly, it’s kind of more of a relaxed. And I am definitely not a singer. I’m the worst singer you can ever imagine. But I can imagine if I was a singer, that would be vitally important. But what’s what people don’t get is, I work with a lot of NFL guys, PGA professionals like a lot of professional athletes over my time. Obviously, if you can help people with pain, you’re somewhat well sought out, especially in that world where, pain is a really big limiting factor for them.
And when I would teach this professional athletes, it was, you would do it in times where you wouldn’t think like you’re on the free throw line. Golf, which is such a mental sport, golf is transformational if how to control your breath. It it’s it’s a it’s unbelievable. like a quick story, I’ll say is I had my son, he was, a senior in high school, and, he was on the golf team, and he’s he’s a good golfer, but he never broke 80. And he had the talent to break 80. And they had a good team. So he they take the top five guys to go to states. And he was just worried about being on the on the state team battling the guy for five and six. And we were out well, maybe two weeks before that. And he was throwing his clubs. He was having a very bad day on the drive and, and he was quite upset, like, he was just emotional, like even cried was because it was it was big for me wanting to make the team and matter a lot to him. And so the next day we’re going to go play golf. And, and he I said, I really don’t want to have a day like that, because it’s I want to have fun is like, not it’s okay, Papa.
I’m not going to go, I’m just going to do my best. But I said, do you want my help? Because, with kids you can’t just you can’t just tell them what to do. You got to somewhat ask them if they really. And and then he said, yeah, I do, I said. And he just knew right away he was true breath. And I’m like, yeah, but this time I’m going to tell you like the secret of it. Like how to really make it work. He said, okay. So I let him down and showed it to him, which I’ll show you the technique. So overall, just so he knew how to do it, they said, but this is the biggest difference you got to do it every time you thinking about a shot, every time you’re thinking about what you want to do in golf, you got to do it. I said, you might do it 300, 400 times today when we play, because obviously you’re playing golf. You’re thinking all the time about it. He said, okay, and he did it that day. He shot a 78. He went on, obviously to make the team, the first day, it’s a two day tournament. The first day he was he shot a 73 in tournament play. He was ninth in the state of Maryland. And the second day he shot a 79, at he still. Did True Breath. He still played better than he ever was. And he ended up shooting 14th, placing 14th in the state of Maryland in golf. And he knows. And he and I put him also on the ice tub because I’m a they I’m a big proponent of, of cold immersion and the same philosophy of work on the involuntary nervous system.
And both of those things really shifted, his ability of being more relaxed because golf is such a golf is such a sport. Between your ears, like, you can have all the skill, you have skill levels, but every skill level, it’s incredible. When you get to the level of excellence where you’re good at your sport, the the biggest thing to take you to another level is work on the involuntary nervous system. I could see where that sympathetic tension would, you throw out the club head off that much and the ball’s off that much 100%. When you think about golf is so crazy, a guy in professional level could win a tournament. I mean, play unbelievable, win a tournament the next week. He doesn’t even make the cut. How is that possible? And it only can be explained, in my opinion, through the involuntary nervous system, because when he gets home, he is routine is a little different. People treat him a little bit different because he won. He has a different mindset, the involuntary nervous system about himself and, might get a little bit lazy at some time, maybe a little bit more pressure, like, oh, I got to do that again.
And he didn’t even know what he did in the first place to do it, because he was swinging like he always does. But something in that, in that time period shifted. He gained more confidence. He breathe a little bit differently. He felt differently about himself. Now the whether it was relationships or not. And golf to me is the one sport that you take a lot of variables out because no one’s going to tackle you. You’re not going against somebody else. So at a professional level, golf’s a very interesting sport. if billiards, other stuff. Yes. Darts of course they all concentrate on that. their breathing is very, very important. But golf is one of the major sports that I have seen very, very little talking about how to improve your involuntary nervous system to dramatically increase your results. And, I have an anecdote with my son. But just understanding physiology and understanding, psychology and understanding the physical medicine aspect to me, there’s no greater and stronger way to to make that improvement. Fast. Of course, you want to be stronger and more flexible. Your posture, all those things are variables. What’s kind of interesting? Well, I’m going to learn and practice true breath and head over to Top Golf. If I can. Now, this is interesting. Is, you, skill wise, always comes into play. But when you do that, you you if you do it, you might not have as much of like your judgment on yourself. And so I’m always curious. I’m obviously I love more at the higher levels because you take out a little bit more variables, like, I don’t know how well you play golf itself knows you.
My family has a very natural, really, really good swing. But none of us have ever taken the time to really perfect it. And get it. I mean, I could I could probably break 80. If you take 2 or 3 strokes off each hole. Exactly. I get 18 mulligans. Absolutely. Which is perfect. My best wood is, at one that has an eraser on the end of it, and it’s perfect And, golf is for fun and, and I, I talk about it from, like, but something that you seem very, very good at, whether it be in your business or educating or what you’re doing in life to help other people like something, like, hey, I’m really good at this. Like, this is the part I know I’m good at. I then and you say, hey, when you come up to stuff, do the do true breath and and then see, okay, how that actually pertains. I wonder how it’s going to affect my drumming if you’re, if you’re a good drummer, I can tell you right now, there’s no doubt about musicians for sure. And because music is all about feel right, like what really makes a great drummer is not someone hitting that. It’s actually the feel of it’s it’s like this. It’s this. We call it pocket. Yeah. It’s like it’s and it’s sometimes I’m sure really hard to explain or teach at the higher levels, like because, you listen to drummers.
I listen because I don’t really have a musical ear. I’m like, oh my God, that’s fantastic. That guy’s great. And then they play something else. I’m like, I can’t tell the difference. But a musician can say, oh my God, this guy is so much better. And I will say, absolutely, absolutely. The involuntary nervous system plays a tremendous part of that. In how in how you play. So, yeah, for sure. I’ve got some studying to do, some learning. Yeah. Just experience. that’s the good part about it. It’s easy to do. You could do it anywhere. You don’t need any equipment. It’s just simple, It’s it’s like. It’s so crazy. Sometimes I’m just. I feel so blessed that, like, I was able to touch in and and share it, because, mindfulness has become such a huge thing. And I’m, I’m a nice proponent of it. But the problem with mindfulness is it’s just like exercise, like everyone knows what to do, but doing it is a different a different animal. And so mindfulness, is, is it. It takes it takes a lot longer to, to work on. So I would say, do the opposite, work on your breath. And then start the journey of meditation on mindfulness or other stuff like that. But if you really want to see like transformation. Work on the involuntary nervous system is the fastest way.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make Sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone go ahead take a screenshot, and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on www.drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley On other radical health topics, be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are www.drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.
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