Full video transcripts:

Patrick McKeown
0:32

so this is going to be breathing performance psychologists but actually it probably won't be so much breathing but it's going to be all things of the Mind myself and Gerry were giving a tedx talk it was going back maybe 2016 Jerry and you were on First and I was on second so that's when we first met even though your name had come into into my space many times before that so you're very welcome um and as well as just to introduce yourself you're an Irishman you're living in in Dublin

Gerry Hussey
0:57

yeah I'm an Irish man originally from from Galway now living in Dublin and we spent half year in Portugal so half the year in Dublin half the year in Portugal and um yeah I work initially I was a performance psychologist working with professional sports teams uh Olympic athletes and then when I looked at how the mind could be developed and how the brain could be developed and then a critical point in my career was discovering that a lot of people get to the Olympic Games and they get sick and by being in a number of Olympic Villages and seeing how how busy the hospital was and the question I started to ask was why are so many fit people getting sick and for too long people were kind of saying well it's just bad look it's just bad timing maybe they've picked up some bacteria people not washing their hands and it wasn't until I started studying and started working with the lady that was leading the Chinese team and we suddenly realized that immune system the mind the Body Connection so I started bringing that back to my own teams and we started having this incredible run of not just success but like now it was far less illness fireless sickness um and then after years and years of understanding that and and digging deeper into the microbiome the copper and access the mind-body connection and how your thoughts and emotions you know could change your immune system can change your hormonal system I kind of said I have to take this message and bring to the public because it's it's so powerful but unfortunately most of the public don't get it so I've evolved from living Galway to living in Dublin to living in Portugal and I've evolved from being a sports psychologist to a person that's trying to bring this message into greater health and well-being um where we look at the entire human being where we look at the connection between the mind and the body when we look at things and where we can regulate our own immune system our own nervous system um so that's it's been a fascinating Journey I'm still only scratching the surface Patrick and reading your book and as I said yes I have to read the same page 10 times there's so much out there that I'm I'm as hungry about this topic as I've ever been and I there's so much more to learn it's just incredible

Patrick McKeown
3:21

but this is pretty amazing well the first thing that is going I'm going to say it out loud okay you're a godly man but you have a mayor of Jersey up in a big plaque behind her so

Gerry Hussey
3:38

one of my greatest honors because I'm fascinated by them obviously we didn't get wood and all Ireland

Patrick McKeown
3:46

yeah you got very very very close but a great

Gerry Hussey
3:46

I've been lucky to work I think with six teams five of them won in Orlando and one didn't so they all got away there's always a chance to lose a chance I could come back out of retirement if I got the call from Mayo so uh I just think they're great I I you know I I love the style of football they play they don't feel sorry for themselves they don't moan they don't give out they just get on with it and uh I think there's there's a part of that we could we could all do it um why can't they get over the end line which is what we'd all love to see but there's something about your spirit that needs to be admired so uh so that's been very approach

Patrick McKeown
4:25

totally I would agree with you and the gush Mind Body Connection so some people will be slightly aware of it some people make more so than others so in other words if we're eating crap food it's going to affect our especially to focus and concentrate

Gerry Hussey
4:42

yeah absolutely and you know people might might know or might not know that we have a thing called the good brain axis and the good brain access is bi-directional communication between the good up here between the brain up here and the gut one time ago we used to talk about the brain and The Ghost and the heart as if there were three independent centers then that is saying that the goat is the second brain and they work together and now we've discovered that the the heart has this incredible system of finders all around this network of finders that is actually a brain of itself so we now we know now to talk about the tree brains the brain here the brain there the brain here I've never really subscribed to that it's one brain a third of your brain is up here a third of it is in your gut and it's horrible in your heart they all have neurons they all are capable of making decisions and in fact five times more information goes from the good to the brand and the Brain down so even though anything up here is 30 percent it's probably more so when now we look at the the role of the ghost so a lot of anxiety a lot of depression it comes down to very often a guten balance or a disturbance of the microbiome our immune system is in our goal the more we look at the power of the goat we realize it has an impact on everything so yes we should be very aware that you know when we have a nervous thought it creates butterflies in our stomach so we all we we know that stress and tension can create a knot in our stomach but we also need to know the opposite is possible an imbalance in the gut will send a message to the brain that can cause brain frog uh distraction fear anxiety so what we need to learn is that we have one body and one mind both cannot be separated they are not connected they are the wound it is an interplay and one has the ability to take that in or out of aesthetic coherence and that coherence is physical coherence in terms of chemistry and biology and it's also a frequency an electrical so our bodies is one big energy field and when the frequency of the brain up here without the heart goes out of whack so what we're all looking for is a state of coherence a state of whole body whole mind thing and uh and I I think that was fascinating to me so yes The Ghost and The Brain cannot be separated the function of one impacts the function of another

Patrick McKeown
7:09

yeah it's amazing um and I doubt there's a whole lot of psychologists and psychotherapists and counselors that are actually considering the gush in terms of mental health and I've always kind of we're all in our own little silos I look at breathing for mental health I look at Sleek quality breathing sleep in the mind for me there's that relationship and so say for example your typical teenager and they're eating sugary stuffs what do you think is the worst is it that Sugar could be the worst to throw off the microbiome or is it could be the pesticides or what what factor would you think would be is there is there one single factor or is there money

Gerry Hussey
7:58

no fact if you think of your microbiome it is a balanced Network so it's almost like Amazon it is a beautifully refined and in that refined ecosystem there is an intelligence so as we eat food you know people will know that if you eat food first you've never read before you might feed a bit but then you develop an awareness too you develop a physical connection a brain chem connection to it what happens is we have learned food that nourishes the ghosts we have the gut uh you know and the the ecosystem within the God has to be balanced but it also has to have a rich diversity in it but it has to have Rich diversity of good stuff that it has known intelligence how to break it down how to understand what we have now is so much food that's been fast produced in the lab and sometimes there's chemicals if you read the ingredients in a bag of crystals or like ingredients and a so-called protein bar you realize that the stuff in there that didn't exist two or three years ago so the body has no intelligence of it so when this thing enters the gut the goat says I don't know what this is and if it doesn't know what it is and has no recognition of it then it's going to try to protect itself by by fighting that so all this stuff is put into the gut but the God can't deal with it because it has no intelligence of it it is no awareness of it and what we know now from a lot of Highly processed foods with sugars or salt is they're creating insulin spikes an insulin spikes to create fluctuations in our energy in our mental capacity in our mood when you destabilize the good you stabilize everything and there is all the evidence in the world out there right now is saying that the three biggest killers in the world lack of exercise unresolved stress and processed food so food for me when you look at anything from depression to anxiety to IBS you have to look at stress and food and the same thing it is one of the same thing the brain and the gut cannot be separated so it's I would just look at how processed is my food whether that sugar or salt or all these uh different things

Patrick McKeown
10:09

absolutely people are drinking in terms of um so what you're saying is really bringing diet Back to Basics it needs to come out of the ground or it needs to come direct from an animal

Gerry Hussey
10:18

yeah you know there's a lot of expression if you have to peel it eat it if it comes out of a packet just be aware of it you know we're now living but like even like chickens I love the chickens we eat I think six weeks old I mean that is not healthy it's not sustainable and the amount of life in the food you waste reflects the amount of Life the food gives you we live in a world now where food is being produced far too fast and we're not eating in season so we're eating strawberries in December and there's a cost to all of this there's a cost of this fast food and I'm not just over fast food isn't coming out of a fast food chipper chickens animals are being I mean I see you go home to the west of Ireland now and I see all these slatted houses and you pass them a tree clock in the night time they're all lit up in the category because they've been fortified the cattle are being tricked the circadian rhythms of the cattle are being tricked they think it's night time and they're being you know tricked into this constant state of hunger which means the bodies in the constant state of stress which means their body is in a constant state of cortisol their blood systems the meat everything that we eat and then is is immersed in all these plus how we treat the animals we've no doubt now like America we're moving towards this huge amount of of our hormones where a lot of the animals we because Size Matters and bulk matters and there's a huge amount of hormones in our meat there's a huge amount of pesticides in our in our in our fruits so we have this idea that we can grow the same food all year round and we can grow it faster and faster and faster and we can produce chicken and meat quicker quicker quicker but there's a massive cost and if you want to see what the cost is just look at the hospitals and look at the numbers of diseases that are going up so food can be your greatest medicine or your slowest poison and food isn't meant to be just something that fills your stomach it is meant to be something that gives you sustainable energy and healing it is meant to be healing it is meant to be anti-inflammatory it is meant to be of a second of a certain Constitution that adds to the healing of the body allows cells to repair allows inflammation to be moved out of the body allows new you know systems in the body to be developed today is is counter-intuitive it's it's fast it's it's pesticide it's hormones and we're wondering why when we eat it either a we feed flat well if there's no life in the food there's not going to give you and then we wonder why we feel weird after eating it because it's totally unnatural it's unnatural stuff I watched a documentary you know the guy who did Supersize Me was a Spurlock is his name uh he did one on chickens free-range chickens it's actually worth watching it just came out I'm not sure if it's a Netflix or Amazon yeah but you'll be shocked I love you you won't be shocked but I will shocked

Patrick McKeown
13:18

yeah so you're you're a psychologist but you're approaching it very much from the the bi-directional both the mind and also from the gods so one we need to be eating healthy and somebody who is a racing mind and I'm often intrigued with this because I fell into that category I never considered anxiety never I felt it was a lot of the emphasis on achievement and the drive to for a society that we're never here that were always striving for something in the future and getting through the Irish education system I left school initially at 14 but I'll just give you an example I went back one year later getting the living search I felt overstressed always into University stressed in the corporate world stressed and so it's something that's very very pervasive when you approach somebody and they say that they've got a racy mind and they have difficulty quite in the minds do you you would number new use a number of different strategies what would those strategies be um in terms of and also the other thing Jerry is do you feel or do you see that this is increasing you know foreign

Gerry Hussey
14:33

yeah firstly I think you know I have a great mind to ask why my dad my dad used to build all engines and cars and he used to buy old cars that were the engine was gone and he'd buy it for nothing and he'd fix it in 10 minutes and sell it and make some money and I remember that with them and we play car for nothing and the guy God the engine's gone the engine's gone and the engine blew and that and it's it's worthless oh don't worry I'll take it my dad haven't gone in 20 minutes and I said how do you all six because the engine is blown and my dad said the engine is never blown because there's no such thing as an engine Jerry the engine is a term that that describes a number of different things to use the Pistons the cabareta the timing and he said usually what happens is one of those pieces breaks and it stops the whole thing from working but if you can find the one piece that's broken and fix that one piece it all starts working again he said I don't think I've ever seen every part of every engine to blow so and he made me really curious so my mind is gone is it really so what is the mind is the mind in the brain is a brain outside the mind is the mind and the nervous system I feel anxious but what is anxious and where do you feel it do you feel in your gut do you feel in your heart I see anxiety in my heart my heart is racing so something has speeded up the heart so the heart is working perfectly if the heart speeds up it means it's working perfectly but the heart is responding to something so it made me for the first time just like the engine the brain the good brain axis the vagus nerve the skin the microbiome I began to see the body as this incredible thing and I realized that the brain is not the mind and I realized that very often anxiety is simply a sympathetic dominant nervous system so we have a nervous system that can be in a sympathetic or parasympathetic State sympathetic is when someone pulls the government shows in your face in that Split Second you need massive awareness massive attention you need high energy high blood pressure cortisol adrenaline you need to fight or flight and we need a sympathetic nervous system because that's life at times it's unpredictable it's uncertainty and we're con we're faced with adversity but we can only be in that state of chemical electrical arousal for short periods the other side of the nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system and when we're in the parasympathetic nervous system all that energy that was gone from fighting or running the guy with the gun is now put back into your rest digestion your immune system switches off your brain starts producing bdnf your brain starts to redevelop and you're becoming healthier and stronger there's not enough energy to fire both at the same time so for every minute you're in the sympathetic nervous system which is fight for flight go go go heightened cortisol heightened adrenaline fast breathing rate fast heart rate sweaty palms for every moment you're in that your parasympathetic nervous system is Switched Off and your immune system is Switched Off your brain is not regenerating you're not digesting your food so when someone comes in to me and say my heart is racing I ask like my dad why what information is it receiving that's making it go fast because I was did it ever rest before and then say yes did it slow down at some point yes it did I'm going to slow down why you're okay again yes I was so there's nothing wrong with your heart there's nothing wrong with your nervous system and when you're nervous like I can't eat and I said did you ever feel like that before yes and eventually when a path were you hungry again yes there's nothing wrong with you so what we have prior to gives this idea of we label and we medicate we lived Jerry has anxiety but nobody explained to me what anxiety was nobody explained to me about the parasympathetic response nobody taught me that my heart and my gut were responding to my thoughts nobody taught me that you're immune you're you're emotions what shows up in your emotions shows up in your immune system in your hormonal system and in your nervous system so here is me from childhood trauma suppressing it denying it telling myself bottle up get out of the drive forward no wonder my my nervous system was shot so I think we have to become really clever about understanding that your heart doesn't just race your nervous system doesn't just switch on and on your microbiome doesn't suddenly go out of whack there is something that is moving the dials continuously in the brain in the nervous system in the immune system in the hormonal system and what we know now is nothing moves those dials more than your thoughts more than your suppressed emotions and we know now that our thoughts and emotions change your biology the change your Chemistry they change our nervous system they change our genes epigenetics you become your own your own genetic engineer now when I was saying that 20 years ago Patrick I cannot tell you the criticism and the pushback and the kickback I got but thankfully the signs that they're now you can't deny this anymore you want to change your biology you want to change your Chemistry you got to change you begin to change your mind you got to change your breathing you got to change you're a dice you gotta get into cold water immersion connection with nature you got to relieve trauma and it has to be multi-dimensional the answer for me has never been in one place and I've done therapy cold water immersion meditation yoga exercise and I still do them all and sometimes wound is more powerful than the other but we need to know that emotions are in the body so you can't as a psychologist we're trained how to talk from our house which is nonsense because trauma is not held in the thinking brain trauma is emotion and most of our emotions show up on our body as anxiety as a racing heart a sweating as IBS as a psychosomatic illness so we have to move trauma not just out of the brain but out of the body so that's why as a psychologist we use exercise we use boxing dancing we use breath work we use cold water immersion chanting it is a multi-disciplinary approach where we realign reconstruct and redevelop our entire Anatomy

Patrick McKeown
21:38

yeah this is fascinating stuff um in terms of the cold water immersion or say if somebody was doing bread tooling both are unpleasant yeah how is it working then for the mind in terms of are you getting somebody to do something unpleasant to teach them to be able to cope with difficult situations is that part of it

Gerry Hussey
22:01

has a number of factors so one it can be breaking more lactic acid and we know now that the more we look at at perceived swimming and the incredible health benefits of that but for me what it is Patrick is let's say cold shower is very simple you hit the shower your natural reaction is get out here tighten up and that is your parasympathetic nervous system and people think at that moment which I know a choice but to respond like that because the water was cold but that is that is the gift we have a choice in all of this so as the cold water hits me the first thing I try to do is take a few deep breaths and now I change the stories instead of saying oh this water I don't like it I'm saying this water is refreshing this water doesn't make me come alive and the more I change my brand and the more I change my stories and then I might start to sing and now my body is responding to the fact that I'm singing Because I said well this water would mostly be that threatening his breathing is regulated his nervous system is seems to be okay and he's actually thinking of his two young kids I'm releasing oxen Tolson so this water is no longer a dress so what you do is you create emotional resilience because very often when we're in a heightened state of fear we become conditioned reflexes so we encounter stimulus so we counter adversity and we instantly react but with all the clients I work is what we have to do is create this gap between stimulus and response and and that is a great line from Victor Frankel we can't control what happens to it in life sometimes we're hit with adversity we're hit with a stimulus that is terrifying we run into core Park and the noise is deafening and either you're consumed by that and your biology your Chemistry your immune system is responding to your environment or it's responding to you so what I try to do is put people into uncomfortable environments and get them to become comfortable through their breath through their stories through what they think about they become comfortable and that's amazing after a couple of seconds or sometimes in the show I just start to jog slowly in the shower and I start pretending unboxing and I'm starting to laughing at myself and within 30 seconds of this terrible water that I couldn't bear and I was like I can't feel the water because I'm responding to something else I'm responding to my mind and my mind feels safe it feels balanced it has reframed the water and I'm creating that gap between stimulus and response the water is just water the water's just water it's not going to kill me I'm not going to die my response to the water is either where my suffering or my freedom begins it's reframing

Patrick McKeown
25:00

um so I can just kind of imagine it this way okay there's something that's unpleasant and you're surrendering to it and even though you're surrendering to this one thing that's unpleasant by by doing this you're also training the brain that if there's other rod for our situations that happen that day you're more resilient so it's not just that you're reframing it according to the cold shower how you're training yourself to be able to adapt to if if something happens that day that you're better able to cope

Gerry Hussey
25:33

it's resistant and in my new book I I talk a lot about emotion freedom and there's no doubt that life creates pain we've all had pain power to you for pain and you know people lose their jobs we both run our our own business practices you tell me that's easy all the time it could be terrifying yeah so emotions come and go adversity comes and unfortunately people lose lose loved ones the children get sick I am the first person to say that life can be painful but there is a difference in pain and suffering pain is the cold water suffering is my Approach my reaction to it and sometimes in life when we're hit with adversity as tough as difficult as it is we are to make a decision that that adversity will Define us for the rest of our lives or it won't and Victor Frankel who was a concentration can sector man probably experienced the most horrendous adversity that anyone could in pain eventually made the decision and he said that every one of us has often the right to be angry and bitter but we also have the freedom not to be I don't live in a perfect world I make mistakes go wrong in my life there's often adversity in my life but I'm never defined by it and it's like a team in crorepark 10 minutes to go over six points down if you focus on the scoreboard if you focus on the time if you focus on your opposition if you've hooked on the last time you were there then that's what's going to happen your future will be a chemical a biological and a psychological reprint of the past now you're suffering but in that moment which I did with a team called belly Garner who fell behind at the last minute of an iron final you take a deep breath I said the game is still on all we got to do is win the next ball and when I take that ball I'm going to take a deep breath a moment by Moment by moment we're going to focus on this plane called w-i-n what's important now so my work I do isn't about Saint people if you meditate your life becomes easier and all your challenges go away what I say is the absent I can't make your life easier I can't make your challenges go away but I can make you stronger I can make you more resilient I can make you believe in yourself more I can make your microbiome your your immune system your nervous system your brain your heart work in a state of powerful coherence so if your life isn't getting any easier then we got to get stronger and I think that is what I love I love that power inside of us it's like that's why I love sport I used to box and and I was getting beaten all the time and I was physically fitting strong why am I getting beaten all the time because I didn't have the composure nobody was training my brain and I realized that the biggest opponent I ever felt experienced was myself and I think for many of us were too hard on ourselves we push ourselves too hard with dysfunctional belief systems we've only resolved Trauma from childhood and we're just beating ourselves up all the time and we don't have any freedom we're constantly trying to please we're trying to be with other people want us to be we're trying to be successful in the world's eye we're trying to be better than my Dad I'm trying to we're trying to we're attached to everything and the moment your happiness or your freedom is attached to something other than you then you're owned by that person you're owned by that thing you have no freedom but when you face an adverse situation and your first reaction is to breathe and to go inside and ask In This Moment who am I what are my values what do I stand for can I bring myself into a state of Regulation I think that's a really powerful way to live your life so I've never once said to people already meditating do this work and your life it gets easier right life doesn't get easier and I don't sit around waiting for life to get easier I make myself stronger Hammer more resilient more than more freedom and certainly when you start to work on yourself and you start to become a better person and you care less about the outcome certainly the business has to take off and the book starts to sell and it's like God this is weird it's like the more Freer I become the more I achieve well it's not like a golfer if a golfer walks out in a teen is absolutely terrified of missing the shot he's going to miss the shot so sometimes what I always say is the right person but the right process never has to worry about the outcome if you're too caught up in the outcome in life if you're too caught up in what other people think if you're too caught up in your past if you're too caught up in your traumas you'll be defined by them all your life and you never really get to witness who you could have been

Patrick McKeown
30:41

yeah the processes are so what you're saying is if you're if your attention is totally focused on something else you're not going to have the attention on the task at hand it's like the guy that's playing the round of golf you may he makes a mess of the first tool but he carries that psychology with him to the second third fourth and makes a mess of every holder after and so by focusing on the process as he's walking from the first toe to the second hole is to be able to put that thinking mind aside to bring his attention onto the breath and it's almost to kind of approach the second world with a with a sense of playfulness that you're taking the pressure off is not pretend that you're giving a you know you have somebody that you don't like and you

Gerry Hussey
31:31

absolutely yeah pretend that I'm giving a so that the other person is happy but at the same time you're not putting pressure on yourself and that focusing on the process though

Patrick McKeown
31:47

well I don't listen I totally get it I think it's great but isn't it just a Pity it's not taught in the likes of schools because I know when I went through the education system you know you're constantly striving to get the result it's all about the result the result the result and there's nothing on having your attention on what you're doing forget about the results as you say the result looks after itself if we focus on the process think

Gerry Hussey
32:12

yeah I remember all in my school life and I was also because I was an anxious child and I thought that I was I was pretty useless and I thought that my dad wasn't proud of me that so I always needed external achievements to try fill that hole of so I I had to be the best at everything I had to be the best student I had the right answers and I just become obsessed not not with the learning process but with the getting right process so I always wanted an answer and answer an answer and as always had the right answer it was easy so I became this incredible way of memorizing story I didn't really need to understand it I didn't really need to care about it I just needed to memorize it flew through my leaving shirt without even I had zero interested in the super third tone but I was just playing the game but then I started going to studying psychology and I decided to take up with a green philosophy so that's good this could be interesting so I started taking some classes and the very first one delivered by a lady called and power who's an amazing PhD in philosophy which is also one of the chief justices of the European Union she's an amazing lady talk about philosophy and questions and I'm like my journey you need to hear the first class honors on this stuff like and quit the nonsense here what's this just tell me what answer it like what is the antonym and then she was telling philosophy the philosophy of existence I'm like I don't care about philosophy and which is the right answer and then she's saying this guy believed this and this guy believed that now like I don't care Anne just tell me who I need to remember so I can write it down and she kind of knew I was getting agitated and I was like this subjects I've got a lot of waffle of all time like what is the right answer which one of them was rice which was wrong So eventually she could see me in front I was getting really frustrated like this is such a stupid subjective how am I meant to win at this bloody thing and I'll never forget and if anybody was in that class with me you might remember and sometimes people fund their class to listen to these podcasts and geez I remember that but at the end of her very first philosophy lecture she gives an essay and the title of the essay I'll never forget it the title of the essay was what in the last analysis is everything what is she asking me so I put my hand up I said you know what what exactly you asking me like what what I was asking what book what paragraph what chapter just give me the answer she said well what do you think I'm asking you and she said I said I think you're asking what's the meaning of life and she said well I am and I said but how am I meant to know what the meaning of life is and then she said this changed everything she said but surely you know the meaning of your life and for the first time in all my education eight years in National School six years in second School 14 years of age yet the first time someone said to me what do you think who are you what are your values and I went on this incredible journey through philosophy and understanding that there is no objective meaning in life what's the meaning of life it's a stupid question what is the meaning that you bring to life is a better question there is really no objective truth out there but subjective we live in a subjective reality and I was 21 years old and this lady looked me in the eye and said you tell me what your life is about I hide the clue my life is about getting A's so I don't know why it's about pleasing my dad it's about racing and chasing towards something so I can have a house and care to prove what to who I don't know I really went home that night sit and eating my dinner and it was the first time I realized I've never actually taken responsibility for my own life what dreams am I chasing why am I even doing this course why do I worry so much about winning numbers and from that day on I decided I was going to live life on my terms and power changed my life in that one question and I now realize that it's not about rushing towards the end I want to be Olympic champion I will always ask people why I want to be a billionaire why I want to have the biggest breathing business in the world why I want to climb Everest why why do you hoping to find up there I want to run a marathon why why do they hoping to find at the end and we certainly realize that we're chasing all these things that we don't even know why so a bit like my dad when he looked at the car he asked incredible questions before you share something before you go after anything before you do anything ask why why would I do this why would I put my time and energy into this why is this so important to me who give me this dream who give me this idea so the work I do with people is about this so all as much as the biology in the chemistry in the nervous system because the soul is who you are there's never been another part of mccilum with your dreams and your Ambitions and how you manage to set up this incredible Center in guatemara and you're traveling the world is this lady how the hell did you do that something in you something in you brought you to this point how why am I here I can't do what you do you can't do what I'm doing and you work you know with Incredible artists as you said and I'm sure when you see them perform there's an energy there's an electricity their soul is alive so now when we look at the personhood if you suppress your dreams if you suppress your soul if you suppress your identity you're also suppressing your immune system so Mind Body Soul but for too bloody long we forgot about the thought you get one-shotted liar are you living it on your terms what goals are you chasing why are you chasing those when you're eight years old what did you dream of working at are you walking at that now who taught children who has built the stories in your head and who has who has met the things that are important to important to you so would every person I walk with someone presents with anxiety I don't treat the anxiety I treat the person that is anxious and that person no to my clients are the same

Patrick McKeown
38:46

so what methods do you use Jerry to treat anxiety

Gerry Hussey
38:46

it depends on the person because the cause and the expression is totally different the terminology is the same you don't treat symptoms you don't treat conditions you heal human beings a part of healing human beings is to ignite the soul their passion their Drive their subjective understanding of Life their ability to question their ability to learn freedom and autonomy and meaning are not in the outside world Freedom autonomy meaning are something that we have to give ourselves from the inside of it

Patrick McKeown
39:24

Freedom autonomy and meaning and you said you came across that question when you were 21 years of age just plenty of people in their 50s 60s and they've never came across that question one thing made me think about it when we grow up in a village as I grew up and probably as you grew up were very held back by the village because we act according to the perception of the individuals have of us in that Village how do we where would you start with this do you break free from your your environment that you're in do you like to get that autonomy

Gerry Hussey
39:57

oh do you get autonomy it's like if you were in a job and your past doesn't take much of you and you say okay out of here I'm gone and then I go into a new place and they don't have this preconceived idea of you you can start afresh

Patrick McKeown
40:14

and where would you say a 30 year old or any age is listening to this values what are values I'm just looking for some practical tools how do we get to know ourselves

Gerry Hussey
40:31

and to understand that we are social beings and when human beings inherited the Earth it was full of uh you know monstrous giant animals so the best way we had to survive was in a group in a tribe so we have a natural predisposition to be part of the tribe to be part of a community that's why if somebody was in a tribe and it could no longer hunt or they could not no longer be purposeful to the tribe they got left behind and probably eaten so people in order to stay in a tribe with mask injury they wouldn't they would not want to be vulnerable in case together so deep within the human psyche is an unwillingness to appear vulnerable in case the tribe leaves us behind but then there's also a defense mechanism whereby we place being accepted by a tribe almost more than self-expression and on our initial tribe is is our family and whether we like it or not untangling the Dynamics of a family are the greatest work we'll ever do because the ages of zero and eight our brain works on Tata brainwaves data brainwave we can measure the very specific brainwave and it's literally downloading so we learn extremely fast it's like meditation problem with Theta brainwave is there's no thinking brain engage so you're not filtering you're not analyzing you literally believe in everything so so many of our unconscious programs are in place by the time we're eight years old then we have this huge need for attachment and the attachment is to feel loved and our attachment in the brain is certain centers in the brain totally dedicated to attachment so we would manipulate people and environments in order to feel attachment and we will be who people want us to be we will say what we want us to say we will do we will regulate our own self so that it gets accepted and being accepted social acceptance becomes more important than dispersion and then finally when we live in a house whereby there might have been tension or stress a child between these ages of zero net does not have the ability to regulate their own emotions and I hear so many sleep coaches nowadays that you put the child in the car you let them cry and eventually they learn to regulate their emotions that is horse manure a child does not know how to regulate their emotions so what you do is to get suppressed or they get fatigued or they get to a point where they realize are not being heard and not be seen I give up and the child lies in the car quietly because they have lost their voice emotional regulation is when we live in an environment in which emotions can be regulated healthily by our family or our parents and we learn that because we don't have that capability so we're looking for attachment but we're also looking for emotional regulation now if we live in a house where let's say your mom or your dad didn't possess that and they were coming angry or drunk or shouting or then they couldn't hit the motion regulation and not only could we not learn it but our dysregulation was heightened because we were walking on actions terrified what mood my dad's going to come in is he going to fire fly a fire something at me what's my mother going to say or the tension between parents o much of a child's anxiety has nothing to do with the child it's just to do with the environment in which the house it has to do with the relationship between parents so people say to me at times and when you look at my child they're very anxious and that's their perfect yeah but the first plan is I work with you for six to eight weeks and then I work with you and your husband for six weeks because I want to figure out what's going on here because the child's nervous system is responding to something and it's either responding to Something in themselves or responding to something so think of the seed if you plant a seed and the seed doesn't grow very few people dig up the seed and start looking in the seed we examine the the soil the environment so we have to go back and ask at what point did my need for attachment mean that I suppress my own personality at what point did someone tell me door shoulder that don't cry like that don't speak like that in this house and every time we expressed our true self it was knocked down why can't you be more like your brother why can't you why are you doing that nonsense focus on your homework instead why do you want to be playing football and do your homework that's not important every time we expressed ourselves we were knocked down and told to conform so we grew up then with this belief that there is something wrong with our truest expression that there is something wrong with who I am and the greatest way that I can get accepted by Society is to show a less of who I really am and to show more of what gets accepted and that is the suppression of the personhood our soul is being suppressed and we work in a corporate organization that we hate doing a job that we never dreamed about to pay for a house that we couldn't care less about to keep people happy that we don't even know what we're doing so it's untangling all of those parties but the first step is go back to when you're eight years old what was happening in your house what was the emotional regulation levels like in your house what was your relationship with your mum or your dad particularly if you're a male what was your relationship with your dad did you feel enough did you feel loved did you feel he was proud of you and a lot of our sense of being lost and a sense of something is missing and a sense of anxiety of children goes back to those basic attachment needs not never been filled between the ages of zero and eight does that make sense

Patrick McKeown
46:35

well totally totally yeah totally yes it's uh Jesus it's really deep stuff but I think it's great and I think a lot of people are going to resonate with it um because you've been able to simplify it as well which which is so good I'm just conscious of time Jerry um your your new book is coming out it's called the freedom within and that's coming out in November 2023 and you've also a previous book called awakened the power within you seem to like the word within um so people will get that I know they're available on Amazon and how else can people find a little bit about your work like I to be honest which I've interviewed a number of people in Psychotherapy before quite a few and I'm not going to say this is the best one but I think there's stuff that's in here that has been really really intriguing and I think if people are going to get a lot out of it um so well done that was a great conversation for people to hear a bit more about you and your work

Gerry Hussey
47:44

um I'm Jerry Jerry Hussey so my Instagram I think is Jerry underscore Jose or the sole coach they call me because I'm fascinated by the soul and identity and why we are who we are uh my wife is a pharmacist who spent 10 years training as a pharmacist and then 10 years in in community pharmacist I had to walk away because she said we're treating the wrong thing we're not addressing Med we're lifestyle we're not addressing suppressed anger or not suppressing and she has become an incredible mind in everything we spoke about so the tourists have a company called Soul spaced and it is looking at everything we've talked about so sourcebest.ie is our website and we have an Instagram page called Souls base as well and we run events we run one day events we run Retreats we run um and my this is my life mission and this is my my life mission as a child who grew up highly highly anxious the two suicide attempts by the time I was 14 went from Doctor to doctor to doctor nobody could tell me what was wrong and it eventually one pediatrician said to my mother if you want my honest opinion he's making this opportunity doesn't have to go to school is a moment in my life at 14 I knew my mission I knew my why I knew what I was here to do because for me there are so many children and people out there who are desperately looking for an answer and unfortunately very often the answer is in in in in in in in medicine there is a role in medicine and some medicine is life-giving and life-changing and I always supported and promoted that but sometimes the medical is is not enough because if the root cause is psychological or emotional or it's a good imbalance or the nervous system and balance that they're breathing imbalance can't chemically make yourself healthy so I'm not saying chemicals don't work I'm not saying medicine doesn't work I'm saying but it has to be multi-disciplinary and it has to look at form it has to look at suppression of the identity it has to look at unresolved emotions it has to look at how we're moving emotion physically out of the body it has to look at the blood and and the genetics and how our mind our body emotions changes all of those so a lot a lot I'm trying to do is share this message with the board I don't believe in binary thinking I don't believe that the answer is all here or all there I don't think it's all in Western medicine I don't think it's all in where what I believe is an integrated conversation where everybody respects each other when medical doctors are working with psychologists nutritionists breathing experts we all have this wound wound agenda how do we create a holistic approach to Human Health and Wellness that stops this ever increasing sickness in the world how do we give people a real chance of help and happiness how do we get them to utilize the power of the natural systems within the human body

Patrick McKeown
50:45

so you know there's a place for everything and I said I wanted the beginning of my journey I still think there's so much more I need to know I'm blown away I'm as I said I'm reading your book I'm just blown away by it I'm reading books and good diversity and Blown Away by them and listen to quantum physics try to explain the Resonance of the human being and the Resonance of the cells in the body and the electrical frequency that's moving around the body and what happens when that gets suppressed and I don't think the answer isn't any one of these things but the movie at least you you mentioned the lovely word about curiosity and playfulness be curious about who you are be curious about why your heart is racing be curious about why there's not in your stomach be curious about the environment which you grew up be curious about the words you use the stories you tell yourself knowing that the only person that can perpetuate a thought or an emotion in you is you so be curious be open don't be dismissive and release all agendas other than the agenda of increasing health and happiness well Jerry it's a pleasure and uh thanks so much for that and I would really encourage people you've got a great insight there is um to check out Jerry's books especially those of you who are international a lot of our people are overseas Jerry but certainly your books and do you have any online courses by the way that are

Gerry Hussey
52:18

we have a number on the website you can look at we're about to create some new ones as well so um yeah they're all there and so is their study we will see so and a bit like yourself Patrick you know what this the overnight success and 20 25 years at this so we're trying to upscale the business to meet the demand now we're for a long time ago people didn't want to hear this and they didn't so you know with so much stuff coming online over the next year or two but but listen thanks for helping me out it's always a pleasure I am totally Blown Away by your work and the success that you have as a Wester Ireland man I think it's incredible I think your book is incredible and I said to you before we even come on air I would love to do more work on this with all my clients because I think we've a lot of stuff fairly right one of the areas we haven't right Patrick is is is is breathing we're okay but the more I read your books and the more I do more research is the more realize we're definitely missing a trick and I'm not just saying that if I thought your book was what was you it's mind blown and it has changed my my total understanding of it I think it's people like yourself Patrick that do things quietly you're not here to offend anyone you're not here to upset anyone you're just here to bring amazing signs so you inspire me and and the fact that you're from the west of Ireland gives me a little bit of a kick and say well if he can do it you can do it so continue to your incredible work it's amazing grace we're all doing the best we can do today let's uh I'm gonna bring it to a close and thanks so much