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The Power of Awe: Easing Anxiety, Burnout and Chronic Pain with Jake Eagle, LPC| 2.9.2023

In this episode, Kristen talks with Jake Eagle, a former psychotherapist for 27 years and now a meta-therapist and co-author of “The Power of Awe, about how accessing flow and the emotion of awe help reduce chronic pain, stress, loneliness, depression and anxiety.

You'll Learn

  • What is the A.W.E method and how it was developed
  • What are the different levels of consciousness
  • How mindfulness helps achieve a higher level of consciousness

Resources

The Power of AWE

For counseling services near Indianapolis, IN, visit www.pathwaystohealingcounseling.com.

Subscribe and Get a free 5-day journal at www.kristendboice.com/freeresources to begin closing the chapter on what doesn’t serve you and open the door to the real you.

Subscribe to the Close the Chapter YouTube Channel

This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is being provided to you to educate you about ideas on stress management and as a self-help tool for your own use. It is not psychotherapy/counseling in any form.

Kristen

Welcome to this week's Close the Chapter podcast, I just finished an interview that may go down as one of my favourites because he helped me open and expand and think of things in a different way, which you know, I love. And I hope you will love just as much, and taught me a practical meditation that really only need 10 to 15 seconds that you can do throughout your day, that will be life changing. I think I've been doing this throughout my life. However, I haven't been as intentional as he is helping me see. So I feel so grateful to share this conversation with you. I recommend listening to it multiple times. So you really are sinking in to the opportunity. He's inviting you into the expansion of yourself, the level of resourcing within yourself that you have to do this is powerful. Before I get into that, be sure to get your free journal if you haven't already. You know I talk about this a lot because I believe in it at Kristen D boice.com. forward slash free resources. And you can also follow along on social media Instagram at Kristen D Boice. Facebook tick tock, Kristen Boice, Twitter, Pinterest, all the social media places. I love it. If you follow along, you'll also get little quote cards, I comico cards, they're really just Instagram posts, Facebook posts, all the posts, but you can post those in your house, you can print them off. To give you some inspiration throughout your week. It's kind of like free quote cards is how I see that. So feel free to subscribe, follow all those fun things. So without further ado, I would like to introduce you to my guest, Jake Eagle. He recently co authored the book with Michael Amster on the power of AR and I'm so excited about this book. I cannot wait to share it with you. But Jake is a licenced mental health counsellor for the past 27 years, he now practices as a meta therapist, exploring what comes after therapy, he totally recognises the value of therapy. And he also wants to expand it's an and and both and the love the and and both your mind your body, your spirit, to different levels of consciousness. And he made this so simple and relatable, that that's why I really think this is transformative. And I shared some examples of how I have used this in my life. And I didn't even know it. And how I am going to use this more intentionally, he goes over the research that this has had on burnout, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. So you'll want to be sure to though if you are experiencing any of those things, be sure to tune into this episode, you may want to listen to it more than once, because it's that helpful. And I'm not just saying that I found it incredibly helpful. And I want him to come and do a training with my team at pathways to healing counselling. I'm going to introduce this to my family and use this in my family system to continue to open and expand our family system and give them a resource that they can use for the rest of their lives. I know I'm making this big, but I found it so helpful. So let me know what you think I'd really love to know and you can get on his website, which he shares at the end of the interview. And I hope you get as much out of it as I did enjoy.

Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. I am so grateful you're joining me for this important conversation today. And I'm very selective on who I think will be a good guest on the podcast. Just because I feel like I really am attune to the audience. And I think this is going to be a very helpful and beneficial conversation for today. So open up your mind your hearts settle in as my guest. Jake eagle is joining me today. And we're going to be talking about the power of ah, N A W E and I love the acronym. I like what it stands for, we're going to be talking about opening ourselves up to higher levels of awareness and consciousness. And I'm so happy you're here with me today. Thank you for joining me, Jake.

Jake

My pleasure. Great to meet you. I've been looking at your website. I think this is gonna be a fun conversation.

Kristen

Yes, I love that. We just made this connection. I said, just making sure I pronounced the name correctly and just like eagle and I said, oh, there's an eagle's nest by our house. And he's like, that's what we call our home. The Eagles Nest. That was like synergy. So I just wanted to share that with the audience too. I'm feeling a deep connection. And then you're in Hawaii. Tell me how you ended up in Hawaii.

Jake

My wife Hannah and I moved here six years ago from Santa Fe New Mexico. Oh, Santa Fe is great till it is another beautiful place. Yes.

Kristen

So you've been a therapist for 27 years.

Jake

What inspired you to write the book The Power of Ah? Well, I have been a therapist for 27 years. And after we moved to Hawaii, I was taking a bit of a sabbatical. And during that time, I was aware that I wasn't really enjoying my life as much as I thought I should, because I really have a wonderful life. And so I started to ask a question on a daily basis, which is, am I thrilled to be alive. And at first, I didn't recognise that I was thrilled to be alive. But the more I asked the question, the more I got in touch with how excited I am to be alive, to be in my life to live where I do, to do the work I do to be married to Hannah. And I ended up thinking it was a really valuable question to ask to get people to focus on the things in their life that are wonderful. And when I say thrilled, I don't mean thrilled like on a roller coaster, but thrilled as an appreciative. So I ended up teaching a course called thrilled to be alive. And as part of that course, I asked people to meditate about 10 minutes a day. And half the people actually said they didn't have time, they couldn't do that, which I thought was fascinating. So I asked them to just meditate for a few seconds, 1520 seconds. And what was so interesting is that the people who did that, and everybody was willing to do that, they ended up with reports at the end of the programme that were as positive as the people who were meditating. And one of the people in the course, was my co author, Michael Amster, who's a doctor, he's a pain management specialist. And he and I were both really fascinated by this. So we ended up saying, what's going on? Why does it matter if people meditate just for we ended up calling it micro dosing mindfulness? And so we said, why does it matter if people microdose on mindfulness? So we just did a little pilot study with our own clients. And we got great results again. And when I say great results, what I mean is before the course starts, we have people fill out certain psychological instruments. And then at the end of the course, they fill them out again, and we're seeing really steady progress and improvement. So Michael ended up connecting with somebody who's probably the leading researcher in the world, his name is DAC, or Keltner. He works at UC Berkeley. And he was so impressed with our results. He said, Why don't you guys do a large scale study at UC Berkeley? Well, a few weeks later, the pandemic broke out. And the timing was perfect, because people were so stressed out, and so challenged, and we thought we have something to help them. So we offered a study, it was 22 days long, we met once a week for four weeks, and half the people were doctors and frontline health care workers. And then the other cohort, they were patients. And the results were tremendous. We saw significant decreases in depression, anxiety, loneliness, decrease in burnout, decrease in symptoms of pain, and increase in overall wellbeing. So Michael, and I had never intended to do this, we kind of stumbled onto something that seems significant. And we ended up writing a short book proposal and put it out there without a lot of attachment to it. And we had four major publishers say they wanted to publish the book. And so that's how this all got started. It's kind of taken on a life of its own, it's turned into something rather big, which is not what we ever expected. But here we are. Wow, I'm really curious. Now, when you say you had the folks that kind of did the micro dosing of meditation. And then you had the folks that did the 10 minutes? How did you instruct them, or invite them into the meditative process, because a lot of people don't even know where to begin? Well, initially, I asked people to meditate for 10 minutes a day, and I gave them basic instructions about that. But when half the people said they didn't have time, that's when I said, well just do a 32nd meditation. And other words, take time to connect with your breath, focus on something that you appreciate or you find to be valuable in your life, something positive, and just be attentive to that for 30 seconds. And that's where it began. That's before we had developed the actual methodology. It ended up we didn't even know at the time that what people were tapping into was the emotion of awe. But clearly that's what was happening. And then we created an acronym using the word Aw, A stands for attention. So you place your attention on something that you appreciate value or find to be amazing. The W stands for wait. Okay, what that means is just simply wait a moment and be with whatever it is you're attending to. It could be an object, it could even be a memory, it could be a person, it could be an activity, but just give it your 110% attention. And then the E in the word stands for exhale and expand. And when we have a slightly longer than normal exhalation, it activates the vagus nerve, which helps us relax that put

So this into a parasympathetic state, which is the rest and repair or rest and digest state, very good for us very helpful for our physiology and our emotions. And this is all what we figured out as a result of doing our research that we had found a very quick way for people to access what I now think is probably one of the most powerful of all the positive emotions, it's actually been determined in prior research that aw is the one emotion that can reduce inflammation in the body, because it helps us physiologically in terms of interleukin six, which is what is largely responsible for inflammation. And it's a very under acknowledged emotion.

Kristen

It is we don't talk about it much how do you define or

Jake

think about AW as accessing a state that takes us beyond our normal experience of our world, in a positive way, the original meaning of aw actually had both a positive and a negative connotation. The negative is something where you're terribly afraid, and that had been used for a long time in the Old Norse language. But Michael, and I make a distinction, which is we're talking about the positive aspects of law. And so when we ask people to start this process, and they focus on something that they appreciate, value, or find amazing, we are sending them or they are taking themselves in the direction of something positive. And so we've kind of primed to the person to spend 1015 2030 seconds, focused on something that they value and care about. And so that sets the stage. And then when they wait, and they exhale, the benefits of focusing on those things are experienced physiologically,

Kristen

the integration of the nervous system in the meditative process, do you invite people to notice where they feel that in their body or how does that work with the

Jake

in meditation in traditional mindfulness, yes, I would invite people to stop and notice but with the our practice, we actually don't do that. And the reason we don't is because and hopefully you and I will talk about this, there are different levels of consciousness. And what's happening with aw is we're going into a level of consciousness, that is beyond words, it takes us beyond time and beyond words. And so if I asked you to have that experience, and then to come back and try and describe it, what happens is a you'll take yourself out of that experience, and be you'll diminish it in some way. Because you'll be trying to take something that's sort of remarkable, and crunch it down into a verbal expression, right. And so we don't want you to do that. It's like have your experience, have it fully, and allow yourself to remember it, allow yourself to reflect upon it. And eventually, what was a temporary state can become an actual trait of your personality, where you go through life, and you have this tendency and capacity to notice all around you frequently. We call that spontaneous all.

Kristen

I love this. I like what you're saying about not going back into the cognition of it, like the level of we want to talk about the three levels of consciousness. Have you heard of EMDR eye movement, I'm

Jake

trained in EMDR, I got trained when Francine Shapiro first developed it. And it's interesting, you bring it up, because when Francine Shapiro developed that in a way that was similar, she sort of stumbled upon it, and she didn't really know what it was or how powerful it was. But it is similar in that we had no idea really how powerful this simple methodology is,

Kristen

it just kind of struck me. And then I thought, the difference is, you're not taking people back into the cognition of it. That's right. EMDR can take you back into cognition. I mean, if you're having to rate your level of intensity of pain, or you're having to identify a negative belief, or you're having to connect to the emotion or the body part, you're taking them back into the cognitive thought,

Jake

exactly as you ask them to think about it and put their experience into words and come up with an expression all of that takes them back to the cognitive and there's nothing wrong with that you and I both know, EMDR is super powerful, very, very effective tool, but it doesn't necessarily shift consciousness in the way that we're aiming at with the arm method.

Kristen

Yes. Okay. Tell me about the three levels of consciousness to tie it in so people understand where that falls.

Jake

Okay? So what I encourage people to do is just think about the way we live our lives. And for the most part, we're living them at what I refer to as one level of consciousness that we call safety consciousness. And what I mean by that is we're very oriented towards keeping ourselves in the people that we love safe. We do that by earning a living by getting an education by taking care of the house by taking care of our children by taking care of our ageing parents. All of these things are the busy doing of life on a daily basis, and it all happened is what we're calling safety consciousness. And it's good, it's necessary, it's good to get good at that that's a skill. If we then go up the ladder in terms of elevating our consciousness, we access a state called Heart consciousness. And a lot of people are familiar with this. It's essentially a gratitude practice. So if we're having a hard time with something, let's say we're in a relationship, and we find it challenging, if we just step back for a moment, and we access our appreciation for this other person, even though there may be a tense moment, we just remember how much we appreciate and value them. We literally shift our physiology and our emotions, because they're all the same one in the same, we shift into a different level of consciousness. When we go into a state of gratitude, it completely alters the degree to which we judge and criticise. judgement and criticism go down as appreciation goes up. And appreciation isn't only for good things in life, we can be going through a hard time. And we can still experience deep appreciation and gratitude. And it's really important, we do that, to give ourselves a holistic experience. Because even when we're going through a hard time, for me, my belief is I'm still incredibly fortunate to be here to be alive and to be having this experience, even though I may not have chosen it, it may not be what I want to have happening. But it is part of my life journey, my life adventure. And so I do want to appreciate that. So that's hard consciousness, then we can go further. And this is where all comes in, we can access what's called spacious consciousness. And this is typically done through a contemplative practice, meditation, Qigong, other things like that. And when we access that, we go into a very expanded state, where our sense goes beyond our physical body, we experience connecting with something beyond ourselves. And when we access that state, it's timeless, we lose track of time, there are no words to describe it, although we often try to reduce this to words. And this is what we refer to as spacious consciousness. It's been talked about for a long time, there are many spiritual traditions that teach people how to do this. But what happened is we realised that accessing ah, is probably the quickest way we know of to get into a state of spacious consciousness. And so that, to me is one of the really exciting things about this methodology because no matter what's going on in our lives, with one exception, which is if we're really truly in danger, in other words, if we're in fight flight for a good reason, right, we're being chased by a tiger. But short of that, we have the capacity to access all at any time,

Kristen

which is the good news, because we can access this even in the middle of what we say maybe feels like a crises, you can still access and you're not bypassing, or to make the distinction as some people think you're emotionally bypassing if you're just jumping to gratitude, but not really being with the feelings. That's right, walk me through that.

Jake

Well, what's so unique about AW as an emotion is that it can coexist with what we would call negative emotions. So for example, I could be unhappy and experience ah, I could be overwhelmed and experience or I could be sad and experience or Viktor Frankl in his book Man's Search for Meaning, like my husband's. Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary book, and he just had so many wonderful things in it. But there's one scene where he's describing being on a march with all the prisoners who are just in horrific condition, and they're being marched from one camp to another, one concentration camp to another. And in the process, they're able to stop and look at the mountains in the distance, and how magnificent they are. And what he's describing is a state of awe in the midst of tragedy in the midst of horrific suffering. And it is largely what kept him going. He had a capacity to access art. And in his case, it wasn't just a scene of the mountains, he accessed all in his depth of caring about humanity, about his fellow prisoners. He just was alive with awe, while in the midst of a very, very difficult circumstance. And so live to go to hear you. Yeah, it's, it's a magnificent capacity we have as human beings, and we forget. And so our methodology is a way to remind people of that, and just want to go back to the idea of bypassing so what what I'm suggesting is that in a very bleak situation, like Viktor Frankl was, and he wasn't pretending everything was okay. He wasn't ignoring the difficult circumstances or the pain and suffering around him, but he was expanding his capacity to be in a difficult situation. And also remember the majesty of being alive.

Kristen

My word for this year is expansion. This is a beautiful this is here it is. It was an expansion on the physical self. I mean, the external form, it was the expansion of self, in the soul way in the spirit way, and emotions, body thoughts, just an expansion of self. And that's what you're describing, you've used that word, expand multiple times,

Jake

I think the reality is that we have for the most part lived very constricted lives, and the pandemic has made it worse and people have contracted and constricted and withdrawn. And one of the reasons that all was so effective in the studies we did is that it's what's called a pro social emotion. And I remember looking at your website, and I saw that you wanted to encourage people to feel and you said, calm, content, compassionate, and connected, the four C's. And I was smiling when I read the list, because all of those are connected to pro social emotions. When we are more engaged socially, when we feel ourselves moving towards people, we calm down, we feel more content, we experience more compassion. And we're more connected.

Kristen

I love how you made that connection, for folks that are afraid to expand because they have these protector parts, or they had these ways that they've tried to protect themselves from hurt, blame, shame, judgement, rejection, abandonment, and the word expand scares them,

Jake

then I have just a wonderful suggestion, which is, try this for five seconds, look around, find something that you deeply value, appreciate or find to be amazing. It can be an object, it can be another person, it can be your dog, your cat, it can be looking at a photograph in your home, for five seconds, allow yourself to get lost in the beauty of whatever that is just pause briefly and then allow yourself to have a deep exhalation. And this is a way for people to begin to have essentially, I don't know if we would call them baby steps. But to put our toe in the water of beauty, put our toe in the water of intimacy, put our toe in the water of relaxation. And if it's unfamiliar to you, this is a way to just begin to experience what it's like to expand what it's like to let go of our attachment to fear to anxiety to negative beliefs. I'm being literal, when I say five to 10 seconds that a full breath cycle for most people takes about 10 seconds inhalation is usually about four to five seconds exhalation, I'm encouraging people to go maybe five to six seconds a little bit longer. So even if this is unfamiliar, it's just one breath cycle.

Kristen

And that creates, I can do that, I'm willing to try that.

Jake

And when you do that you reset your nervous system. In that brief moment, you reset your nervous system, you break the cycle of what I'm referring to as safety consciousness, which is very focused, somewhat constricted, very driven, consciously and unconsciously, to keep ourselves safe, you break that cycle, you have just a momentary relief. And now you do it again, when I say again, we asked people to do it a minimum of three times a day. But you could also do it once, take a break for a minute, do it again, take another break for a minute, do it again. And as a therapist, I encourage you to play with it when you're working with clients, because it's a very powerful way to help people shift their state. So typically, when I have a client that I work with, and particularly when they're complaining about another person, often it's a partner or a parent, what I'll have them do, they'll want to start talking about the issue. And I'll say before we talk about that, I just want you to take a moment. And then I take them through the on method, have them shift their state before they tell me whatever their story is, before they tell me whatever it is that's upsetting them how they experience some negative emotion before they do that I want them to shift their state because it changes the tone of the conversation. It makes them much much more accessible to their own resources.

Kristen

That's a good way to put the I like how you said that it makes them more accessible to their own resources. Because in EMDR, we spend a lot of time training what we call for those that might not know resourcing, which is the clients are a capability to handle coming back to centre regulating the nervous system so we can handle what might come up. And you're kind of teaching people how to be their own resource throughout their life. And so when they're in the crisis or perceived crisis, they can access this because they've been practising it on a regular basis.

Jake

Yes, and I love the distinction you just made between crisis and for See crisis. So the reason I appreciate that is because sometimes what we think is a crisis is really something that we have labelled as a crisis. We perceive it that way. When you use the arm method and you shift into first heart or then into spacious consciousness, what was the perceived crisis may no longer look like a crisis? Because we're looking at it through a different lens?

Kristen

Is that because you've shifted consciousness levels? Yeah, when

Jake

we shift consciousness levels, what happens is we also it's hierarchical, everything from the highest level down is affected. So I don't know if you're familiar with NLP, that's part of my background. But in NLP, we talked about shifts that occur at an identity level will affect everything below it, for example, they will affect our behaviour, right, they will affect our attitude, where we could have a shift at the level of behaviour and it wouldn't necessarily change your identity. So when you and I are talking about a person accessing, ah, it shifts everything below that it affects their heart centre, it affects their sense of safety and security in the world. Because the experience of awe trickles down it back washes through our nervous system, we call it a neuronal lubricant, I love that expression. So we're using our mind to access a state, which then lubricates our entire physiology in a soothing and comforting way. Because remember, we're focused on something that we value, appreciate or find to be amazing,

Kristen

what I'm kind of envisioning, as I'm processing this myself, because I believe in allowing someone to process what they feel what they're experiencing what their body's telling them. And it's an and and both not an either or, and we can pull in, like you said, first even go to the jaw meditation, and still be able to process now we're able to do it in a different way. We feel more supported more research, we have that emotion, that we can access the jaw that is there to support. It's like they're walking hand in hand together. So you feel Anchorage, there's more anchoring, there's more centering and being able to do the processing, then

Jake

yeah, absolutely. And while you're describing the word for it, that I've heard is pendulum eating. So we're pendulum swing, we're swinging from one side, which is, these are my feelings, these are emotions, I want to get in touch with them. And then the pendulum swings to the other side, whether it's 10 seconds, or a minute or 20 minutes later. And we access a different aspect of ourselves, which could be appreciation or expansion. And as we pendulum as we swing back and forth, often with the help of a therapist, it alters our experience of what it was that we were originally upsetting ourselves about or disturbed by. So that's one way that this can be used, I want to suggest another which is there are times when we have certain feelings, particularly interpersonally. with other people, we have feelings of irritation, frustration, disappointment. And if we use a traditional therapeutic model, you would think I need to get in touch with those feelings. And that may be true. But it also may be true that if we use the arm method, and we take ourselves to a higher level of consciousness, we can let those feelings go, it doesn't matter that my wife didn't close the window in the bedroom, it just doesn't matter. When I get in touch with how remarkable she is and how fortunate I am to be with her, I can simply let that go. And I don't think of that as bypassing if it's a really genuine ability to connect with the passion, the joy, the love, I can let go of some minor criticism I have is you're

Kristen

not suppressing repressing, you're able to shift the level of consciousness to say it doesn't really matter. Which does it feel like a suppression or repression or a bypass? That's right, and denial of how you feel?

Jake

Right? And the key is congruence. Can I do it? congruently? Can I congruently reconnect with, in this case, my wife and really step into my love and appreciation. And if I can, then I don't need to go back and process the fact that she didn't close the window. It's irrelevant. It just doesn't matter.

Kristen

That's beautiful. And I think that's the distinction I want to make for people to really understand the method. You can hold space for both but this is to take you to the another level of consciousness. One thing that I've been working on for years is unattached to outcomes. Yes, right. Walk me through that. When we

Jake

access a state of spaciousness, we actually have no outcomes because we've dropped any sense of time so there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to get done. All of that disappears, and we are fully in the present moment. You And to be there, we need to let go of our attachment to outcomes. But instead of approaching it with our mind, how can I let go, we simply go to that place of timelessness,

Kristen

which is done through the OB method. Right? You can get there through the method really quickly. Yeah, so I had a quick experience just to kind of make this full circle, my daughter had an emergency appendicitis. So I'm in the car, go and you know, it's 230. In the morning, I'm breathing to get myself, I see it. Now, if I'm using the framework to higher level of consciousness, I'm trying to regulate myself, obviously, help regulate her, she's in a significant amount of pain. So this is where I want to come full circle to asking about this, I'm helping her breathe. And at the same time, I'm grateful that I'm present enough to be able to be with her in it. I'm penggiling, I'm trying to manage my own fear of getting her there on time, I'm also trying to just go thank you, we have a car, I'm getting her there, we're in this experience together is that a good example of like, here's my view, a crisis, my experience of it? Yeah,

Jake

that's a beautiful example, I would say what you're doing is you're going between safety consciousness, which is completely appropriate, you got to be paying attention to the road, you've got to be paying attention to your daughter, you've got to really be conscious and aware of what's going on at a very pragmatic level. And then I don't know, if it's simultaneously or more that you're switching, then you're switching into moments of appreciation of your own capacity to manage your physiology, your own capacity to help your daughter. So you're clearly bringing heart consciousness into this, then I can imagine, if you're skilled at it, I could imagine accessing spaciousness or maybe if you're not familiar with it, you wouldn't do it when you were driving. But maybe you get to the hospital, you get her into the hands of people who can take care of her. And then you take a moment to do the arm method where you go into a fully expanded state, the fortune of having doctors in western medicine in this situation, your ability to get your daughter there in time and really go beyond appreciation into a state of awe, which I felt like it did really resets the nervous system,

Kristen

okay, because I'm just putting this into like communicating this to the audience. And then I didn't stay there the whole time, I would have levels of awe. I also experience levels of gratitude, joy, and I know that sounds joy, gratefulness, that there were people there attending attuning, knowing what to do. And then I might shift down back into my safety consciousness is that I just wanted to illustrate, does that make sense that people can shift in and out of different consciousness given

Jake

circumstances, and not only can we but we have to, we can't live our lives in a state of spacious consciousness, we wouldn't really get a whole lot done. So we have to be fluid not have to be. But I would say my goal is to be fluid to be able to naturally move through safety and heart and into spaciousness, depending on the context and the circumstances. And as a therapist, and in my own life, the way I use this is that when I get stuck in safety, when I get stuck, feeling overwhelmed, or maybe resentful, or mildly depressed, that's where I intentionally use the odd practice three, four or five times a day, so that I don't actually stay stuck.

Kristen

Okay, so that makes sense. That's how you get unstuck. If someone's in chronic pain, and their pain body is just in their experience of the pain, they experience of a significant, let's say they haven't practised it, and they're currently in pain. And that's your partner who helped write the book sounds like that was his experience when you're teaching this course.

Jake

Right, and he is a pain specialist. So he's working with people exclusively in pain. And what he found when he taught this to his patients over a period of three weeks, is that they were able to either reduce or in some cases eliminate their dependence on medication. That's how powerful it was. However, I also want to be very realistic. I want to make two distinctions. There's acute pain and chronic. So acute pain is we break our ankle and it hurts, and we're in pain, and we need to get help and deal with it. That's not necessarily where this method is so effective. It may be, but that's not how we recommend it. We're talking about people that are in chronic pain, because when we're in chronic pain, it's also known as neuroplastic pain, it's pain that is often the result of the way our neurology works, the way our mind functions, the habituated experience of pain, and that's where the all method can be so particularly effective. And again, when a person is in pain, if you say to them, try this for five seconds, just 10 seconds really go with the jaw. People are willing to relax or let go many people if it's Such a brief amount of time, it's sort of like we've taken away a major obstacle, because the practice is so short and simple. Now, the practice isn't the end. It's not the end of the journey for somebody in chronic pain. But it's a way for them to expand their sense of self and stop thinking of themselves solely as a body in pain. And when people have the experience that I am more than a body and pain is for some people, it is incredibly inspiring. It motivates them to use this practice more and more.

Kristen

Are you doing longitudinal studies? Now that you've put this I'm curious to see such good results?

Jake

The one study we did, we extended it over six months. And what we saw was that it's sort of obvious, but the more people did the practice, the more benefit, they got no surprise, so it relates to dosing, the more you dose, the better the benefit.

Kristen

That makes sense. And talk to me about burnout and anxiety, what you've seen how it's played out, what are some of the challenges,

Jake

they're very, very different, our impact on anxiety was significant. We saw reductions in anxiety that were dramatic. Our results with burnout were not as significant because burnout is one of the more challenging things to shift because a person typically is burned out because they are structurally in a situation. That's super challenging. For example, the frontline health care workers during the pandemic, we couldn't change their context, they were still working 16 hour days, one of the biggest problems is they were sleep deprived. And when people are sleep deprived, burnout is just a natural consequence. So we couldn't change the sleep deprivation, we couldn't change the long hours. But we looked at other studies. And the other study we found that was similar to ours. In other words, it lasted about three weeks, and it only took a few minutes a day, they had a 7% reduction in burnout, we had a 14% reduction in burnout. Now for some people that'll sound small, like, well, is this really worth doing. But this was took a minute a day, because we ask people to do a practice three times a day that takes less than 20 seconds. So it takes a minute, it's free. And this was only over three weeks. What we don't know is what would the effect be over a longer period of time, but we think it would increase the more they do it, the better they feel. And I have my own belief about this, which is that as we access ah, we will begin to reevaluate the context of our lives, we will say, am I willing to work 16 hours a day? Am I willing to be in a situation where I can't get sleep where I can't take care of myself? Or do we start to think maybe I need to make some significant changes in my life?

Kristen

Wow, how did you What about anxiety? What did you see with anxiety studies xiety,

Jake

we saw a significant statistically significant decreases, and people who had mild anxiety had none at the end people who had high levels of anxiety. And this is true with depression as well, people who had significant levels of depression, we saw reductions of 35% in one group, and I think 34 In the other anxiety, we saw significant reductions. And those states tend to be more transitory than someone who's in chronic pain, or someone who is experiencing burnout. And so I would say that our greatest results were around depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Kristen

Loneliness is an epidemic right now, it does share a little bit about loneliness, and what you saw.

Jake

Well, what was so exciting about loneliness is that people saw a decrease in perceived loneliness, not necessarily because they were connecting with other people, but because they were connecting with something greater than themselves. So it didn't require that they had contact with other people, although that's great. I mean, we're all for that. It is part of the solution. But this idea, this experience of connecting with something larger than ourselves, can reduce the experience of perceived loneliness, which is really fascinating. And then on top of that, because as a pro social emotion, we're better able to connect with other people.

Kristen

That's a good distinction right there, you're better able to connect with other people as a result.

Jake

And if you think about it, I don't know if you can identify someone in your life who accesses or with some regularity, but generally, if you think of someone like that, they're people we want to connect with. They're sort of rich souls. We want some of that we want to be around that. So when we learn to access or other people are more attracted to us, they want to be with us.

Kristen

That's such a good point. That's so true. I was thinking about substance use addictions. Did you do any research in that? You didn't

Jake

do anything specifically in that area, but what I would say you in general is that most addiction is the result of pattern behaviour. And what we're doing with eyes, we're breaking the pattern, whether it's negative self talk, whether it's contentious relationships, whether it's the use of some kind of substance, we're trying to give people relief, we're trying to give people a temporary break. So they're no longer stuck. And then they can make better quality decisions.

Kristen

I'm thinking about this for family systems. Because I'm a marriage and family therapist, I'm thinking about family systems and how to integrate it in a family system. And with kids, if you have children or grandchildren, how do you integrate this in a family system?

Jake

Well, I'm familiar with the Schwartz's work in internal family systems and love the work. But I get concerned if people get too attached goes back to what you and I said earlier to attach to the idea that I have an angry part or a sad part, I think of it more that I'm angering myself now, or I'm making myself sad now. So I try to take things psychologically and not have them be or feel static. I want to bring motion into the system. And when we do that, it begins to again, it lubricates people's system, it frees up their way of thinking it allows them to feel more well AI helps us free up the system. So whether it's internal family systems, or any other approach to working with individuals or groups, if we remind them that they have this capacity to access different states of consciousness, it just simply makes everything flow better. It doesn't necessarily solve all the problems, but it does make people more resourceful.

Kristen

Well, there's an openness to the system, there's less threatened like things aren't child feels a certain way or thinks differently than them. It's not threatening to the parent. Right, threatening the system, there's a certain level of safety to explore.

Jake

A certain level of safety would be one way to frame it another Have you ever done work with a family system and somebody will say something and you'll make a joke. And everybody has that momentary surprise. It's like, well, this isn't really funny. But you set it in a way where everybody sees the humour in it. And it just loosens the whole thing up all of a sudden, everybody stops being so tense and preoccupied and fearful. Well, I is similar. It's not exactly about humour, but it is about freeing up the system expanding going beyond the tension, the contraction, the preconceived ideas, the judgments, and the fear of judgement. It's a break from all of that.

Kristen

How do you teach kids off?

Jake

Well, kids are really good at this. Kids are just brilliant at it. I think that it's essentially where they live before they start going to school, probably. So it's not so much but right. I think the greater challenge actually is about teens, which is to get them to be willing to take their attention away from things that are not awe inspiring. Yes, you're holding up your phone. Right, exactly. And get them to focus on the beauty that's around them. And oftentimes they don't see it. I laugh sometimes because we live in Hawaii, and we'll go to the beach, and there'll be somebody on the beach watching a YouTube of people on the beach.

Kristen

Here you are on the beat. Yes. Put your phone down. Is that the conscious that what is that as someone's numbing? what consciousness is that that would be

Jake

safety because it's a virtual, it's familiar. Even though I'm sitting on the beach, and in a beautiful environment, it's unfamiliar to me, I'm feeling a little bit out of my ordinary realm. So I'm going to do something I always do. To comfort myself, I'm going to pick up my phone, that safety consciousness.

Kristen

And I think we're living a lot and safety consciousness

Jake

for more than we need to.

Kristen

I'm really excited about this work. It feels fresh, it feels even though there's still some elements have just been around a long time mindfulness and meditation, the piece about the off feels new, the emotion of off feels fresh to be fresh perspective.

Jake

And the piece that I would just encourage you to work with is allowing it to be nonverbal, which I think for therapists is often hard. So we work with people, we introduce a technique or a method or an idea, and then we want to either deconstruct it, or we want the client to talk about it. We want to make sure that it really did what we hoped it would do. But when I work with people and I help them experience a state of awe, often don't say anything like you and I are doing right now. The silence is very powerful. It is very healing. It's very beautiful

Kristen

and That's an important element, I think for all of us to be able to sit a little more in silence. And be Yeah,

Jake

in my work, I use the word witnessing. Instead of acknowledging, which is active. Oftentimes what I'm doing with people in my work and in my private life is I'm witnessing them I am being with you being as present as I can be. And being in a state of awe is kind of like witnessing the miracle of life. And as soon as I try to explain that, I'm going to diminish the experience, I can't explain it. I just know how extraordinary that is.

Kristen

How did you come up with AWS, the acronym? I mean, how did you come up with AW as the

Jake

Well, I had read Michael Pollan's book, I think it's called change your mind or changing your mind or how to change your mind. It's a book about using psilocybin and how powerful that is therapeutically. And it's a great book. And in that book, he uses the word off 40 times in a 200 page book, he refers to off where he time, so I was in my consciousness, but I had never thought of it formally, I'd never investigated it. Then we did the first study, and people would share their experiences and their experiences were incredibly similar to what Michael Pollan had written about when people were having trips on psilocybin. And these were supervised this was not casual use of a drug. This was supervised use of psilocybin, people were having remarkable experiences, fundamentally of expansion, and expansion of identity. And this is an interesting part, as our identity expands, our ego gets smaller. So as my sense of self is I'm accessing the universe, the world beyond me, I start to feel smaller, I feel less self importance, less self indulgent, less preoccupied with myself, and this is an enormous relief. This is part of what was happening when people were taking psilocybin supervised trips. And that was the connection, realising he was talking about all and what we were doing was stimulating something very similar, but without the drug. And it was in brief, brief spurts.

Kristen

This is so just I'm so excited about the work you're doing. I really am just this feels just so connectable to me feels like it makes sense to me. I can go Yes, that makes sense. Oh, I Yes, I've had those experiences where I had both, I kind of had this sense of awe. And I like how you framed it with the three levels of consciousness, I can relate to that. So you've made it

Jake

relatable. And it's simple therapy, I always valued any kind of intervention or method that had a certain elegance. It's not complicated. You don't have to work hard to figure this out. It's pretty straightforward.

Kristen

That's what I like about it. My nervous system goes, Ah, oh, yeah. I don't need to be in my head about it. Oh, wait, what was step one? What was step two, it feels like there's a flow to it. Yes. So I like that. Do you have the meditation on, someone can go to YouTube or download it, or

Jake

I'm not great at this part. But I believe on our website, which is called the power of odd.com. I believe there is a meditation there. If it's not up yet. It'll be up in a few days, there's a meditation, that's the sweet meditation. It's called The Art canvas. It's a meditation that allows you to look at your life as a canvas and identify moments of awe throughout your life. It's really kind of sweet. So that's there. And then there are practice what we call experiments. There are practice experiments, I think there's a dozen of them now, where you can go and be guided or instructed about ways you might experience a when you're showering when you're eating, when you're walking, when you go to bed. And most of them are about waking up becoming aware of your surroundings. And really finding something to appreciate and value

Kristen

makes me think of our full circle conversation with the eagle. Anytime I pass by and I see the eagle on the branch. I'm an AW, I literally I'm like, I just stand there in awe and that, but the embodiment of this conversation has been like for me, too. So I'm so grateful for you.

Jake

Well, thank you. It's really nice to connect with you. I appreciate your presence.

Kristen

Thank you. I am highly recommending this book. I think this if we can get this out to more people. We can change the level of consciousness and how we feel at the end of the day, how we feel about ourselves about each other. I think there's an expansion that can happen. There is

Jake

I'm glad you said that because it's a good reminder every morning I go outside and I do an odd practice it takes between 30 seconds and in Minute. And every night before I go to bed, I stand out on our deck and I look at the stars. And I have another experience of all before I go to bed and I feel like I really prime myself both before my day begins and when it ends, by putting myself into a much healthier physiological state.

Kristen

Yes. I appreciate you sharing that because I can visualise myself doing that, like, Oh, yes, that's an invitation for me to experience this all in my daily life. One thing you said I want to circle back to that just popped up for me is sleep deprivation. And that can be a barrier to the ah, so one of the things I'm guessing you're encouraging is making sure you're getting sleep. You're drinking fluids water.

Jake

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know that anything can make up for that. And even if something could make up for it, I wouldn't recommend it. I think that getting enough sleep is so fundamental to health and well being. And I think as a culture, maybe it's even beyond our culture. I think we're both sleep deprived. And we're all deprived. And if there's a correlation there, I've never thought about it. But there may be another words, maybe if we weren't awed, deprived, maybe we would be less likely to be sleep deprived. And if we were less sleep deprived, we'd probably be more capable of experiencing or

Kristen

I think that spot on makes a lot of sense. That's been a life changing conversation. I rarely say that. It just feels like it has. You've opened me there's an expansion that happened during our conversation. My word for the year. Yay. I appreciate you and sharing. So thank you so much. Is there any other information you wanted to share about where people can find you if they want to know more about you and your work?

Jake

I don't think so. I think that the website, the power of our.com is probably the place to go. If people do have questions and they want to email an email to info at the power va.com. We'll come to both me and my co author, Michael, and one of us will respond.

Kristen

Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time and energy is a absolute powering opening conversation. Thank you