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Spiritual Healing in Times of Crisis
with Grandmother Flordemayo
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Healing through Modern Science

and Ancient Wisdom with Rick
Hanson, PhD
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Healing Chronic Autoimmune

Diseases with Peter Osborne, DC,
DACBN, PScD
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Scientific Power of the Mind to

Heal Chronic Disease with Joan
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 1
Spiritual Healing in Times
of Crisis
Grandmother Flordemayo
Nathan: Hello, and welcome to the Healing
Chronic Stress and Disease Summit. My name’s
Nathan Crane. And today we are talking with
Grandmother Flordemayo and Master Mingtong
Gu about healing and awakening in times of
crisis. Grandmother Flordemayo is a Curandera
Espiritu or a healer of divine spirit. As a seer, she
has the ability to see other realms of color, light
and sound. In addition, she has the ability to see
the effects of existing imbalances on the physical,
emotional, and spiritual realms within a person’s
energy system. She was born in Nicaragua and
has offered ceremonies and has spoken on a
wide range of topics from healing with the use
of herbs, to her a more recent project, the Seed
Temple located in Estancia, New Mexico.
Grandmother Flordemayo teaches globally
to share her healings, prayers and to foster
more spiritual understanding among
humanity. In addition, she’s the founder and
member of The Path, which you can find at
followthegoldenpath.com and her website as well,
is grandmotherflordemayo.com. Grandmother,
thank you so much for joining us.
Grandmother: Thank you so very much. I’m
sending greetings to everyone in the four
directions. Thank you.
Nathan: Beautiful. And we’re also joined by
Master Mingtong Gu who is the founder of The
Chi Center for Wisdom Healing Qigong in Santa
Fe, New Mexico. Named Qigong Master of the
Year by the World Congress for Qigong and TCM,
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
Master Mingtong leads, retreats and workshops
internationally with people all over the world. His
website is chicenter.com. Master Mingtong. Thank
you for joining us.
Master Mingtong: It’s so wonderful being with
Grandmother especially in this time and also
wonderful to be with everyone connecting
energetically.
Nathan: Beautiful. So Grandmother Flordemayo
had graciously offered to lead us in a prayer to
open up this conversation. So I’ll hand that over to
you now Grandmother.
Grandmother: Beloved creator, beloved mother,
father, giver of life. Beloved beauty, beloved
radiance of the sacred moment, beloved creator.
As you’re bringing us together this very moment,
this beautiful circle of light beloved creator.
You’re bringing us together men and women
from around the globe at this particular moment.
Thank you for each and every one of you that
heard the call to come together at this very
moment on this beautiful day beloved creator.
It is two-ish. This is the day in which we honor
the spirit of the sacred feminine beloved creator.
According to the teachings of the people of the
center, it is said with this sign beloved beauty,
that you remind us of all of us humans, men and
women, that we must walk in balance with nature.
Beloved spirit of the sacred wind, beloved spirit
of the sacred waters, spirit of the mother earth.
Beloved spirit of the sacred fire. Grandfather
sun, grandmother moon. Beloved beauty bless
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us on this sacred day as we, as men and women,
stand here before you to listen to your beautiful
wisdom, your guidance on this particular moment
right now, in which all of us are being affected on
this pandemic that is happening around the globe.
Beloved creator, embrace us, protect us. And I say
to you beloved mother, father, I thank you. Thank
you for the beauty that you bring to us. Thank you
for the beauty of the moment. Beloved mother,
father, heart of the heavens, heart of the earth. In
the name of the great mystery, I thank you again
and again and again. Blessings to everyone. Thank
you.
Nathan: Beautiful. Thank you so much for that.
So I will start with the first question to you,
Grandmother Flordemayo. What are your greatest
concerns for humanity right now?
Grandmother: My thoughts are for the future,
the children, the future of mother earth, the
future of all life, the future of all that lives. And the
reason that I am putting it this way is because I
have been having visions and dreams, as long as I
can remember. I myself have been in situations as
a young child where I was put in isolation because
I came down with tuberculosis. And in this state
of being in isolation, going through the process of
healing, even now at the age of 70, this pandemic,
what is going on around the globe, what’s
happening to us humans, I still feel what I felt
when I was in isolation and when I was battling
this disease. It takes over not only your physical
body, but also it takes over your emotions.
And that’s what I mean about how I worry about
the children of the future. I worry about the
children that perhaps are becoming sick right
now. I worry about the young mothers and
fathers and how they’re handling this. Because
without the prayers, we’re at a place right now
where we as a human race have been taken
down to our hands and knees. And when this
happens to us as a human, we have no place
other than to surrender to God, to ask God for
help. Not only us, because we’re in that state
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of desperation. The desperation comes from
not knowing how long are we going to be sick?
How long does this last? It’s all not knowing. To
be in isolation for us humans, it is something
that if we don’t have the prayers in us to help us
get through, the meditations, the exercises, the
dialogue with the creator, the dialogue with the
four sacred elements of life, the dialogue with the
grandmothers of the four directions. If we cannot
do this, we could fall into a state of absolute
loneliness and despair.
So we have to support each other. We have to find
a way in which we could connect and get through
this. So I worry about the children. How are they
going to survive after all of this, that journey? It’s
in my prayers, it’s in my daily prayers.
Nathan: Thank you for that. Master Mingtong, did
you want to respond?
Master Mingtong: First of all, thank you,
Grandmother for this beautiful, sacred, profound
prayer. Every time you opening the prayer, there
is so much download, so much opening, so much
connection just happening. I want to invite all the
listener, participant continuously connecting with
our sacred energy Grandmother, helping us to
reconnect again, again. So my concern among all
the concern we all have, including health crisis,
economical stress and losing job, even losing
life and this powerful uncertainty of life, we’re
all facing. And my deepest concern is really the
fear beyond just the virus. The virus itself can
be contagious, can be life threatening, but I feel
the fear is so much brought forefront and it’s
even more contagious than virus. It’s even more
threatening to a balanced life, to the vision that
we have been holding in your heart.
So the wish is really for all of us can move, from
the fear, from a place of survive and a place
of isolation and the place of disconnection
and overwhelming reaction to whatever news,
whatever story, whatever outcome might be.
Is really connecting with our heart, connecting
with energy, connecting with love. So when these
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quality being suppressed, being buried beneath
the fear. Then it takes a greater effort, greater
dedication to reconnect with this part of us. And
not only personally, but also collectively. So I feel
on one hand, the fear is there continuously from
human history, but now it’s brought up to the
foreground. So how we are responding to life in
general, whether it’s from the fear or from deeper
love, compassion, will determine the outcome of
our life, outcome of health, outcome of humanity
in general. So really I feel it’s a great critical time
that we’re not only facing the critical choice, but a
deeper choice of changing that whole pattern of
fear.
Nathan: Beautiful. Thank you for that. It is very
clear to us now and it has been for thousands of
years to our ancestors, but it has become very
clear that our modern scientific community that
living in chronic stress, anxiety, depression or
fear hurts our immune system, it down-regulates
our parasympathetic nervous system, and it can
lead to more chronic disease. And so, certainly,
learning how to deal with the fear that we’re
facing should be a priority for all of us because
learning how to transcend that fear, that anxiety
is going to contribute to greater health, greater
healing, greater longevity. So I guess that’s my
question next for you Grandmother is, what
words of wisdom do you want to share with
people right now who are experiencing that
chronic fear, stress and anxiety every day in their
lives, whether during this time or even beyond
this time?
Grandmother: I’d like to share with everybody
and show everyone a very simple exercise that
has to do with the spirit of the wind, the spirit of
the sacred breath in which we could inhale the
sacred breath and allowing it to come out of the
nose. And so we called this in Spanish [murmúrio].
And this vibrational sound brings you back into
the arms of the mother and brings you back into
the love that we perhaps maybe are not thinking
of, but we need this love right now. Loving
ourselves to help us get through this difficult time.
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
So the way that we do this exercise is we think
of the stillness. We go through that moment of
stillness. And as we gently are inhaling, on the
third inhale, then we allow ourselves to exhale
with the hum. So you let all the breath out of your
nostrils like this.
And so [murmúrio] translates to lullaby. And so,
if you are going to do the lullaby, it goes like this.
What I see when I do the hum is I could see the
energy where if it’s moving rapidly, when I hum
it almost becomes like silk, it moves very softly.
So the more that we practice and we might not
have to do it anymore than three, four, five times,
as long as you do it in a quiet place. First, we
do the hum for ourself and then allow yourself
to bring in your children to hum with you, your
spouse, all of those in the family that you would
like to experience this. And it’s very beautiful to
do it collectively, especially if you are holding
someone in your arms, whether it’s a baby or an
elder, and you get to experience the movement of
the energy dancing together. And it’s a beautiful
sound.
So let’s go back and imagine that at this moment
we have with us, someone that we love. And
we can bring our left arm across our heart and
our right hand across our left and now we could
do the humming. And you could feel how it just
quiets us very gently. Not only you can feel it, but
you can see it if you have your eyes closed. You
could do it quietly and you could do it even more
quietly, almost in silence. It’s really beautiful the
way that you pull the energy in towards you and
you could feel it just kind of smoothing itself out.
It’s very beautiful. Thank you.
Master Mingtong: Thank you, Grandmother.
Nathan: Wow. That was powerful. I was just
imagining like a hundred thousand people
together watching this around the world, doing it
all at the same time. And so nourishing. What a
beautiful, powerful practice. Thank you.
Nathan: Master Mingtong, same question for
 4
you. What words of wisdom do you have for
people experiencing fear and stress right now?
Master Mingtong: So again, when we are
observing from the news, from the collective
energy and big percentage of humanity still
responding from a survival place and from a
fearful place. And I feel one of the important
missing piece is most of us are not aware of that.
It’s like just habit happens. Everybody is doing it
and not noticing the implication of that. So the
first I feel most important is be aware of your
body, be aware how your body is conducting in
this stressful, challenging time. So noticing the
body is carrying the stress, carrying the anxiety,
carrying the fearful pattern inherent to the farm
long history of humanity. So become more aware
of that instead of a disconnection, instead of just
running from habit without knowing deeply what’s
going on. So that is the first most important step.
And when we able to become more aware inside
of us, then we can cultivate further the deeper
potential of compassion. Feeling compassion for
what are we feeling, including the fear, including
the stress, including the pain. So then naturally
feel deeper, tenderness, deeper loving kindness.
So holding yourself in this place with this energy
space of compassion, the love and kindness,
that’s the second step. Then from there, naturally
you deeply activating your own capacity. Able to
take care of yourself better, able to take care of
your family better. Able to take care of life even
in isolation, asking the deeper question, what
is most important in this time? We cannot do
everything right now. Suddenly the busy thing is
fading out. And now the deeper question, now
what? So what is the most important thing you
can do? What is most nourishing? Instead of
complaining about what you cannot do, focus on
what you can do.
Actually, when you focus on what you can do,
then realizing this a really important thing, really
life nourishing, really self-care, self-love, and self-
awareness. From there, you can really taking care
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
of the family more effectively, besides cooking
more healthy good, engaging more in creative
project, doing dance, doing movement. But almost
like learning the new skill as human being. So also
in the community, I think many community now
from a different spiritual tradition and able to take
advantage of the internet. So learn to connect
with each other in long distance. And that’s been
really beautifully fulfilling and healing as well and
deeply contributing to wellbeing of each other.
Nathan: Thank you.
Master Mingtong: Any spiritual practice you’re
doing as Grandmother shared with us and that’s
the time to do it. That’s the time to share. That’s
time to put it into practice, whether it’s qigong,
meditation, prayer, and shamanistic tradition,
whatever tradition, religious tradition included.
With all these powerful tool really sharing
the wisdom. The universal essence is more,
love, more compassion, more healing, more
connection.
Nathan: Grandmother, do you want to share in
addition?
Grandmother: Yes. I would like to share with
everybody that all of us humans, male and female
are children of the divine father and the divine
mother. The divine father is all that exists above.
And the divine mother is all that exists on the
earth. And if we concentrate on the energy of the
above and the energy coming from the earth,
we call it the heart of the heavens and the heart
of the earth. If we envision both of these hearts
coming together, we open ourselves to receive,
calling on the spirit of the beloved father to come
to be with us. And we ask the beloved mother
to come from the earth and to be with us. And
we bring this energy together, little by little, into
the center of our being, coming into the heart.
And once it comes into the heart, it merges and
it starts to expand. And if we could visualize this
expansion, we are there with that infinite love of
the mother and the father.
 5

The thing that I want to remind everybody is that Qigong, the people that I’ve had the chance to, to
we have to practice. With everything that we do, interview for some of the documentaries we’ve
we have to practice. We practice our exercises, done, people always ask the question, how often
we practice our prayer. We continue to practice. should I practice this? And I’ll let you answer that
We could even practice while we’re sleeping. So because you always have a great answer for that.
don’t say to yourself, I don’t have time because
Master Mingtong: I’ll ask people back, how much
we do have time. We have a lot of time right now.
do you want to practice? So right now also it’s
We are in this place where we’re forced to have
important to ask the question, how much we
alone time. And this is the time in which we have
need to practice. And then the next question is,
to do our rituals, our exercises, our prayers, our
how much do we have the time to practice? Now
chanting, our singing, our humming. And if we do
we have plenty of time. So love the subject the
it all together around the globe, we have to do this
Grandmother brought up. It’s really from all the
together, we can’t separate ourselves anymore.
reason, the good reason, the challenging reason,
And so I encourage everyone to think about that
we have more time than ever to practice and
and to do it for the sake of all of us, of humanity,
more reason than ever to do more practice and
because we’re not alone here. We’re all together
also have all the reason now. The time is now.
in this beautiful existence. Whatever it is that we
I don’t have to list all of the challenges we’re all
are learning right now, we will get through it. We
facing right now. The beautiful thing is from all the
have to be positive about it and we have to move
ancient tradition, East, West, Middle, long history
as quickly as the light. We do not have time to not
on the planet earth, all the culture has amazing
do our exercises. Thank you.
wisdom, amazing tradition and it’s been passed
Nathan: Thank you. I love what you said about down, from thousand, thousand years. And now
that. I mean, I remember back in 2007, 2008, it’s become available for all of us through internet.
when I had lots of free time on my hands and I’d And that has never happened before. Before
find myself on the beach meditating for hours on you have to finding your teacher by traveling
end, for days on end. I’d close my eyes and four hundreds, even thousand miles and then you
hours later, I’d open them. And I had all the time don’t know finding the right person or not.
in the world then. And what I find now is I don’t
Then you have to dedicate really big dedication
have hours and hours a day of meditating, but
in order to learn something profound and it’s
through the qigong practices, I’ve learned from
a very different circumstance. So now we’re in
Master Mingtong, spiritual practices I’ve learned
convenience of home. We have all the access
over the years. I do a few minutes when I wake
to the teaching, to the practice. So now it’s
up. I do a few minutes before every interview. I do
really up to us how we choose to spend time,
a few minutes when I am coming home to greet
how we choose to practice, how we choose to
the family. I do a few minutes all throughout the
transforming in our life deeply, in energetic
day, three minutes, five minutes, before bed. And
level, in the conscious level, in the emotional
what’s beautiful about that is it adds up over time
levels. I can say, the choice is up to us and the
and it’s spread out through my entire day. So I just
condition is ripen. So I’m very grateful for all the
love that message that, if we think we don’t have
opportunity we have to make it happen together,
time for these practices, actually we do, we just
as Grandmother. We have to also learn to do
have to make the time for it.
it together. So it’s like connecting in the qigong
And I know that’s something that Master language. That’s one thing, love to be with
Mingtong, you teach pretty extensively as well. Grandmother is on one hand, we might have
And through the teachings of Wisdom Healing slight different language, but the energy behind

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit

 6
it is just so same and so amazingly universal. I
say the earthly energy, the heavenly energy, like
Grandmother said, the mother, the father, but the
feeling is energetic.
Then opening from the heart when you’re
receiving the blessing from the heaven, from
the earth and from the mother and father, from
the heavily energy or the fatherly or motherly
energy, then you feel the opening of your heart
opening in the deep place of your humanity and
naturally opening to the life around you. Both
visible, invisible, both physical and intangible. So
expanding our capacity to his longing for love,
longing for healing, longing for connection. So
what I’m trying to say is, all the condition is ripen.
We have everything we need right now to begin
the practice, to deepen in the practice, to fulfill the
deeper longing, deeper vision. If you’re listening to
your heart, you are noticing that it’s bubbling up.
Something is yet to be awakening, opening. So it’s
also exciting time for them.
Nathan: Grandmother, I had a question. I’ve been
asking this internally for a while now, and I’d love
to hear your thoughts on this. What do you feel
or see is the greater meaning or divine purpose if
you will, from this challenge that we’re facing on
the planet?
Grandmother: Okay. So I’m going to answer
that in two parts. First of all, I want to share with
everybody how it was suspicious in the Mayan
calendar today is the day of Eesh, which is the
spirit of the feminine. And the teachings of the
spirit of the feminine is this, according to the
Maya. It is our relationship as male and female
with nature. We are now, as the human race,
on the crossroads because we have fallen out
of being in balance with nature. It has taken a
long time for us humans to do this, but it has
happened. And we have fallen into the thinking
that all of these natural things are forever.
And we’re not thinking that perhaps, maybe
we contaminated too much the water, we
contaminated the air, we contaminated the earth
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
in such a way that it has hurt us. So now we are
standing in the middle of the crossroads with all
the time in the world, with family, alone in our
house, wherever we are in around the globe. And
now we have to think and say, what is it that I
need? Or we collectively, this is a collective effort.
How is it that we’re going to make a turn to make
our existence better?
We can’t take away from something without
replacing. And we have to teach the children.
It’s our obligation to teach the children. And for
us never to go back into this place of depleting
what has been given to us because we as humans
need everything and are very dependent on the
four sacred elements of life, the water, the air,
the earth, and the fire. The fire is that inner fire
of ours, but the fire is also the grandfather sun.
We need the sun to survive all of nature, all of
humanity. And we also need the grandmother
moon. She’s responsible for these beautiful cycles
of life. And so we can’t live without any of that.
We have to start thinking that we are one with all
that exists. And if we fall out of balance with that,
we are going to perish. So collectively we have to
make a decision right now.
Master Mingtong: Thank you, Grandmother.
I feel the same urgency, a same urgency, not
only humanity in the cross room, but how we
are relating to the nature. Our relationship with
nature at a critical time. t’s almost like we have to
decide deeply, not only how we’re living on the
earth, but are we deserving to be on the earth’s
planet? And also I’m holding the vision, think of
the earth as a planet where all life, not only come
together to live, experimenting life, learning from
life, but also really healing from our past. No
matter where we came from, whatever our history
might be, whatever karma might be, I think the
planet earth is a beautiful place to live, but also it’s
a beautiful place for healing, for transformation.
So I feel what we’re experiencing right now a
wakeup call.
Someone had whatever disease, whether
 7
diagnosed or not, it’s a wakeup call in our
personal life. But the collective disease we
experiencing right now is also a wakeup call
for humanity. So again, we not only putting
contamination to the nature, to the environment,
to the life so precious, but also we are putting
so much contaminant into our body. We’re not
aware of that. We haven’t really learned how to
take care of this precious body, this sacred place.
It really mirroring the environment of the earth,
the nature. So connecting with the nature inside
of your body and connecting the nature outside
of us in the environment, the beauty, the magic,
the elements, and the cycle, so on, they’re both
so important, mirroring each other. And this time
right now, if we can cultivate in both the medicine
as well, the external medicine of the nature, then
we have a chance to deeply heal, including healing
this most challenging pattern of fear. From which
all conflicts arise, from which all destruction arise.
From which all depression arise. From which all
problem, including new system issue, respiratory
system issue, even environmental destruction. So
connecting deep within, connecting with nature.
This is both, powerful reminder at this time.
Nathan: Thank you. Well, you’ve both talked a lot
about practice and the need to practice and the
need for us to bring these practices into our lives
every day, whether it’s meditation or qigong or
the beautiful humming that you led us through
Grandmother. So I think this is a perfect time
to invite the two of you to guide us all through
maybe a collaborative meditative practice, ifyou
will. So I will hand it over to both of you.
Master Mingtong: Nathan, just legalizing the
Zoom technology will not allow us to do that. Is
only picking up one sound at a time. So that would
be difficult to accomplish. So I might just have
Grandmother do more humming or whatever
meditation practice you want to share with us.
Grandmother: Okay. So we spoke about today,
the sacred day of Eesh. Let’s envision each and
every one of us, wherever we are around the
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
globe, let’s close our eyes and imagine that we are
walking towards a beautiful image of paradise.
The image that you might have in your heart and
in your mind, and at this particular moment right
now on this beautiful day of Eesh, as a woman,
as a man. That we start to walk to this place. We
start to feel the beauty as we step on the earth.
We could feel the sand. We could feel some of the
green grass. We could feel the warmth of the sun
and the coolness Of the do that is on the greenery
of the plants. Feeling all of this beautiful nature in
our feet.
And as we gaze in front of us, we could start
to see the beauty of the path. The path is a
straight path. It’s a very gentle path. We could
see between where we are right now and into
the horizon. But as we look towards the horizon,
we could see the beauty on the left and the right,
the beautiful greenery of the vegetation that is
there. Different types of leaves, different types of
greens from a very pale yellow, into a very deep
green. We could look around the greenery and
start to distinguish some of the birds, all kinds
of beautiful birds, of all colors of nature. And as
we look closely to the green plants, we could also
see some smaller animals like bugs, like bees, like
butterflies, and they’re beautiful colors,
Continuing to walk softly. We could extend our
hands out in our left and our rights and touch
the leaves, the flowers that are on our path. As
we touch the leaves and the flowers, we could
communicate with them, let them know how
beautiful they are and that we are one with
them. We’re breathing the same air and feeling
the rays of the sun together. Looking into the
horizon, walking down this beautiful path that is
nice and clear, nice and straight. And we look up
at the sky as we’re walking and we gaze at the
light of the day and we see the beautiful clouds.
The movement of the clouds, the gentle breeze,
movement of the trees. And we could also see
the gentleness of the birds flying in the sky. All of
this we are experiencing. And we realize in our
hearts, the beauty that is around us and we are so
 8
grateful. We are so grateful to feel and to see and
to know that we and nature are one. We are one
and the same.
We are the flowers. We are the leaves. We are
the tiny little bugs. We are the birds. We are the
clouds. We are the dew and the rain. We are every
grain of sand in which we have stepped on. As we
walk on this sacred path, Beloved creator, beloved
mother, thank you. Thank you for the beauty that
is within us, in front of us, behind us, all around
us, beloved creator. You as creator of all things,
beloved beauty, you are the light in my heart.
The light that shines on my road as I walk on this
sacred journey, beloved mother. Hold us in your
arms beloved creator, so that we can make it
through this difficult time on this journey that we
are in at this very moment. Beloved beauty, hold
us. Bless us, protect us, each and every one of us
in the four directions. Men, women, children, the
elderly, beloved creator, bless us in the name of
all of the beauty that is around us. Thank you to
each and every one of us in the four directions.
Thank you for the beauty of light. Thank you for
the beautiful circle of light. Thank you.
Nathan: Thank you. That was so beautiful. What
a beautiful world that we can live in when we
envision it in that way. And it gives me a lot of
hope for the future and for our children and
grandchildren. So thank you for that. Well, I want
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
to say a thank you Master Mingtong and thank
you, Grandmother Flordemayo for just sharing
your wonderful wisdom here today. Thank you for
all the great work that you do in the world. And
thank you for bringing this much needed spiritual
wisdom to all of us here tuning in to the summit.
So thank you both so much.
Grandmother: Thank you so very much. Thank
you, Master Mingtong.
Master Mingtong: Thank you for such blessing
journey. We can take together again, again. So
beautiful. Love you.
Grandmother: Love you. Thank you.
Nathan: And I want to thank everyone else
here for tuning into The Healing and Chronic
Stress and Disease Summit. Make sure to share
this summit with your friends and family who
need this inspiration, this wisdom. Consider
adding this summit to your digital library if
you haven’t already. Also make sure to visit
grandmotherflordemayo.com as well as chicenter.
com to learn more about their great healing and
awakening work and how you can implement
some of these practices into your daily life. Again,
I’m Nathan Crane, and I wish you all infinite health
and happiness. Take care.
 9

Healing through Modern

Science and Ancient
Wisdom
Rick Hanson, PhD

Nathan: Hello, and welcome to the Healing Nathan: Thank you for that great analogy. And
Chronic Stress and Disease summit. My name I’m really excited to have you here, very honored
is Nathan Crane. And today we’re talking with to have you here and I want to introduce Master
Dr. Rick Hanson and Master Mingtong Gu about Mingtong Gu next who is the founder of the Chi
healing the brain and the body. And today’s Center for Wisdom Healing Qigong in Santa Fe.
conversation is going to be fascinating, really Master Mingtong received extensive Qigong
looking forward to sharing this incredible wisdom training under Grand Master Pan at the largest
with everybody who’s tuning in here.  Qigong medicine-less hospital in China. 

Rick Hanson is a PhD psychologist, senior fellow at
The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley
and New York Times best-selling author. His
books are available in 28 languages and include
Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just
One Thing and Mother Nurture. As well as his
newest book Neurodharma.
Summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder
of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and
Contemplative Wisdom. He’s been an invited
speaker at Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other
major universities and has taught at meditation
centers worldwide. His website is rickhanson.net.
Rick, thank you so much for joining us.
Rick: It’s a pleasure and it’s an honor. I have a lot
of respect for the wisdom tradition that Master
Mingtong is in. And I really appreciate the chance
to talk with you all about, as you say, ways to
manage and heal chronic stress and illness,
including through taking into account how the
marvelous three pounds of tofu-like tissue inside
the coconut actually sparkles and works every day.
He was named Qigong Master of the year by
World Congress for Qigong and TCM. Master
Mingtong is on the faculty for Esalen institute,
Omega, 1440, and many others. His website is
chicenter.com. Master Mingtong, thank you for
joining us. 
Master Mingtong: Such a pleasure and especially
today with my old friend, colleague Rick Hanson.
And now since we moved to Santa Fe it’s really
hard to see each other in person. So, I’m grateful
to connect in this way online with each other and
also share the wisdom with all of you together. 
Nathan: Beautiful. So, this first question I would
love to, for you to start with, Rick. How are
you personally approaching this time of great
challenge and crisis we face as humanity? And not
only the pandemic that we’re all so aware of, but
also the exponential growth in disease, pollution,
suicide, and disconnection we see around the
world. 
Rick: I think at a personal level three things

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit

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stand forward for me. One is to help myself find
some kind of equanimity with the waves that are
moving through, to feel them, to open to them,
without having them knock me over. I think of
the metaphor of being like a sailboat and a deep
keel in the water is what enables us to handle the
waves and the wind without flipping over. And if
we do get knocked hard, we can recover, and we
can come back.  An opportunity to heal whatever needs to
So, I’ve been really trying to help myself not get
so frustrated, or aggravated, or impatient at little
things and to stay calm, stay strong, stay clear.
That’s one thing. Second, have a lot of compassion
for other people. It’s hard for them. It’s scary for
them. They’re stressed. People are dying because
of this epidemic, they’re losing loved ones, other
issues are occurring as well.
And as a psychologist, I’m aware of the fact
that even with the benefits for others in our
compassion, it benefits us to have an open and
loving heart. It calms the stress reactivity of the
body down and it actually makes us stronger,
more able to be resilient and keep on going.  And by doing that we learn how to take care of
So, that’s the second thing that really stands out
for me. And the third is to really appreciate what
it is still good. What is still helpful, honorable,
respectable, worthy, beautiful, amazing, awe-
inspiring, in ourselves as well as around us. We
were just talking just before we began about at
this time appreciating nature, whether it’s turkeys
or I’m looking over Mingtong’s shoulders at the
beautiful plants behind him.
That is also true, amidst everything else that is
hard or terrible. What is also true that we can take
refuge in and draw comfort and strength from.
So that’s the third thing, I guess, personally, that’s
really been standing forward for me these days.
How about you all?
Nathan: Yeah, Master Mingtong?
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
Master Mingtong: And you stated it all, this is
the most important thing. I cannot agree more
with you and maybe if I say in a different context
right now is, when we facing all the challenges
and all the level of challenges, physical, emotional,
mental, spiritual, but also in a personal collective.
We are given an opportunity to wake up.
heal, instead of avoiding the deeper issues we
have been avoiding in the past. Now suddenly,
everything’s showing up in front of us. So, we
cannot really run away from it, hide it.  Even we’re
home, we cannot hide from the issue. 
Rick: Including the issues inside ourselves.
Master Mingtong: Exactly. So, that is I feel is
an incredible opportunity we have now. It’s an
awakening call, its opportunity for healing, for
transformation, but also opportunity to learn how
we can take care of ourselves more effectively,
compassionately, more lovingly.
each other more effectively, more lovingly, more
compassionately. By doing that, then we can feel
hope that we can take care of nature, earth, the
environment that we’re living more passionately,
more wisely, more connected way. So, I’m saying
the same thing just slightly different language,
different framework. 
Nathan: Yeah, beautiful. I love some of our
experts and wisdom keepers that are part of this
summit, some of the common thread when I ask
the question around, what is the higher purpose
of all this crisis and this pandemic? And Janet Bray
Attwood of The Passion Test, her response was
so beautiful. She just says she believes everything
happens just as it’s supposed to be happening. 
And that can be a very challenging perspective to
accept when we’re losing loved ones or when we

see people suffering, but at the other end of the
spectrum, I completely understand and resonate
with that message, that everything is unfolding
just as it should.
And the bigger question is how do we show up
in the world in the face of these dire challenges,
and loss of life, and stress, and fear, and anxiety?
Both of you have so much wisdom in how to help
support people during this time and beyond. And
so, my next question for you, Rick, is what does
the science show us about the brain and the body
when we practice ancient healing practices like
Qigong and meditation?
Rick: That’s a short question, but it could open up
to a very, very large answer. And Mingtong knows
about a lot of this material as well because you,
Mingtong, live in two worlds, in a way like I do too.
Both the world of modern science and the world
of ancient wisdom, which is also very present in
the world today.
I would say, the short response I would just
give, maybe to summarize it, will be just about
one form of personal practice, mindfulness
meditation. Which can be done in a very secular
way, awareness of breathing 10 minutes a day,
maybe more per day.  bursts of fear. The amygdala gets more regulated,
Really increasingly popular certainly around the
world. A simple practice. It’s not the only way to
meditate. It’s not the best way to meditate. It is
a way to meditate but what’s interesting is that
already we are learning that a regular practice of
mindfulness meditation and maybe some related
practices of mindfulness just in the flow of your
day, change your brain in four clearly observable
ways that relate to what you are strengthening
inside yourself by doing that kind of meditation.  And then the last thing that is a very solid
First is that parts of the brain mainly behind
the forehead that are involved with regulating
attention, helping us to focus, put our attention
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
11
where we want to place it and keep it there
or disengage it from what’s not helpful to
us, anxious, including things such as anxious
rumination or worry.
So, circuits in effect, in the brain that enable us
to regulate our attention and be mindful and
even concentrated, actually get stronger. They
build up. It’s a little bit like working a muscle that
if you particularly work your biceps, the fibers
will get bigger. But if you work a different muscle
like triceps or something like that, those muscle
tissues will get bigger. 
So, second, there’s greater body awareness parts
of the brain that are very involved with internal
sensing of the body which helps us tune more
into our own gut feelings, to know ourselves
more intimately. That also enables us to be more
empathic for the feelings of others. Those circuits
actually build tissue, form connections, blood flow
comes to them on mainly the inside of the brain in
a part of the brain called the insula. So, that’s the
second major neurological change. 
Third, parts of the brain that are involved in
emotional regulation. Calming down hyper
reactivity, big bursts of anger let’s say, or big
a key part of the brain. That’s sort of like the alarm
bell of the brain.
And other related parts of the brain such as the
hippocampus, which calm down the amygdala,
they build up tissue too. Alright. So, people who
practice mindfulness meditation routinely develop
more of this emotional balance, which is always
useful, but it’s especially useful these days. 
research finding in the brain, number four, is
that people who meditate routinely tend to have
a shift in the sense of self. Activations in the so-
called default mode network toward the midline
 12

and the rear of the midline and then spreading to you really enjoy the deeper benefit, as a universal
the sides, decrease and those activations tend to human being. It’s like we all have these capacity
support a strong sense of taking things personally already and yet it takes practice to awakening
and negative self-preoccupations, right.  them, opening them, cultivating them.

What’s going to happen to me? Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
Uh-oh. Other people are mistreating me, oh me,
me, me, me, me.  There’s a place for dealing with
things like that, but we can get a lot of suffering
increasing if we become overly self-preoccupied.
And instead there’s more activation in networks
in the brain that give us a sense of being
whole, being a whole person who has rights
and responsibilities, right. A whole person, but
less of a sense of some sort of entity inside the
presumably conventional unified self inside who,
my precious, right. Always wants more.  the heart, magnetic field and so on. That’s just
So, those are four examples of ways in which
regular meditative practice, as one example of
contemplative practice in general can really help.
And you also tend to get other benefits in other
systems of the body such as the immune system
or the cardiovascular system.
That’s what the research is showing, but I think
it’s confirming what Master Mingtong has known
for a long time and his teachers, and my teachers,
and our teachers teachers, teachers teachers,
going back thousands of years. And millions
of people have known in the world today that
what you practice grows stronger. If you practice
resentment and worry, that will become the habit
of your heart. On the other hand, if you practice
caring for others and respect for yourself, that will
get stronger. Including in ways that are supported
with lasting changes in your own brain.  I went down into the Grand Canyon with a friend
Nathan: Beautiful.  and we hiked all the way down and we spent the
Master Mingtong: So, exciting the way you put
it. Not only making the ancient wisdom practice
so more understandable, so more accessible, but
So, often I use analogy. But you summarize
the benefit validated by the new science, it’s
benefiting these levels, physical level, emotional
level, mental level, as well as the spiritual level. So,
that’s exactly like wisdom healing Qigong is
designed to do. Now not only being validated
by the practitioner, the direct experience, direct
benefit, but also can be understood scientifically
how these things work.
Effecting the brain neurons and the brain
communication with the rest of the body, even
exciting time. That wisdom, teaching these
practices now become available and used to be
secretive. They’re simple, but still from the ancient
traditions that’s only available for dedicated
students, for people who have certain lawyer
access in privileges, or have strong dedication. 
So, but now, suddenly all available and that’s a
good thing and also the way you’re approaching
it, you’re making these practices so simple,
so accessible. And I honor you by your way of
acknowledging this accumulative [inaudible], re-
patterning your brain. Not just like in a quick fix
short cut, that’s unfortunately, the mainstream
still searching for quick fix and realizing to re-
frame your brain takes time, takes a new habit,
and that’s so important. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, if I could use an example from nature.
over Christmas actually many, many years ago,
night down there and then we hiked all the way
up again.  And I will say that carrying a pack up
is a lot harder than carrying a pack down. So, it’s
about a mile down and a mile up. 

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit

 13
And so, as you go down as you know, you see all
these layers and you realize that a layer of dark
rock, let’s say amidst, dark gray rock amidst some
pink rock above and below, this layer represents
50 million years of sediment gradually layered
down.
And then you also realize way down beneath you
is a little tiny thread of water, a river that has cut
through the Grand Canyon over the years. And
that, what enabled all that to happen was a single
drop of water, times countless numbers of drops,
over countless numbers of years. But all of that
was the result of a single drop added up, again,
and again, and again.  little valuable drops that we experience through
And I think about that, Mingtong, when you talk
about that. About on the one hand the ways
in which what we do with a single breath can
actually shift our consciousness, and I’m sure as
well our subtle energies and who knows what
else. And the more, the better. Gradually adding
up over time.
If I could offer a proverb from my own
contemplative tradition going back to the original
teachings of the Buddha. The proverb is, think
not lightly of good, saying it will not come to me,
drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the
wise one gathering it little by little fills oneself with
good.
Master Mingtong: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. Also
making me think of not only we automatically
receiving this goodness when we’re activating
the goodness in your life, but also, it’s really this
amazing accumulative now over generations.
And same time we are contributing to the next
generations to come, when we’re cultivating this
drop, become part, become bigger, even stream,
become ocean. But also changing the patterns
of the past with this new choice, new consciously
patterning, this is directly affecting our next
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
generation. Yeah. And when we’re connecting
with that big picture, suddenly, we feel more
empowered to do something. 
Rick: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And I’ve been
thinking lately about how some of these drops,
so there are the drops that we take in, and there
are the drops that we receive through letting go.
Through letting go of frustration, letting go of little
irritations with other people.
Letting go of the feeling of helpless worry, it
doesn’t help us to marinate in that helpless worry.
So, it’s interesting isn’t it, really, to pay attention
both to the little drops of what we receive and the
what we can let go of too.
Nathan: Maybe you can talk a little bit more
about that, about how stress, and worry, and fear,
impacts the brain, impacts the body, what it can
lead to and why we should be very aware of the
stressors in our life. And then we can talk more
about more specifics of what people can do, but I
think laying a good framework of how it affects us
would be very useful.
Rick: That’s excellent. So, we are strong animals.
We are able to handle stress and still mother
nature’s plan for us is to mainly be calm, and
happy, and connected with others of our kind,
with occasional bursts of red zone stress to get
away from the charging lion.
And this is the blueprint, it is summarized in the
title of Robert Sapolsky’s, he’s a professor at
Stanford, wonderful book on stress, classic 20
years ago, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. And as he
says in his book, most episodes of stress in the
wild end quickly, one way or another. 
So, bursts of stress are okay, we can handle those,
we get through them. Alright, fine. But chronic
stress is not good for us. It gradually weakens the
immune system, as physicians know it disturbs
 14
our hormones, it disturbs our digestion, it wears
on our cardiovascular system, it leaves traces
behind in our musculoskeletal system and it’s
bad for the brain. And it becomes, including the
ways in which it leads people often into a sense of
depression.  So, that when stressors come, we don’t feel so
So, there’s a key distinction between a stressor
and stress. Some people talk these days as if
stress is good for us. No. And I’m afraid of that
kind of talk being used by big corporations who
are really happy to stress the people working for
them, for the sake of more profit of money. No.
Stress, chronic stress is not good for us. And yes,
it is true that there are certain lessons we can
learn through being stressed and through the
worst day of our life. Okay fine, but first there
are other ways to grow then through stress. And
second, most pain has no gain. It’s just pain, right.
Including the pain that gradually wears down the
body. So, the takeaway point here is when you
are really stressed, admit it, tell the truth about it,
face it, be mindful of it, come through it as fast as
you can. Don’t make it worse. Don’t add to it by
your own internal reactions, as best you can. Also,
alongside it look for every opportunity to turn to
what is beneficial and take those drops in, again,
and again, and again.  the stress. In the body, stress is like this energetic
I’m watching Master Mingtong and this gesture
you’re making a lot, we go like this, that feeling in
your body, and in your energy, and in your heart
when you go like that. That’s a drop or a bucket.
It’s a cup full of good things to take in. Look for
opportunities to feel the good and take it in to
help those experiences of opening, or calming, or
connecting with the Earth.
I’m sure you’re experiencing that as well as you
do that. Take those in. And through repetition,
neurons that fire together, wire together. Through
repetition again, and again, and again. As
Mingtong said, we can gradually alter neural
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
structure and function, so that increasingly we
grow strengths inside. We grow calm, we grow
happiness, we grow compassion, we grow love,
we grow wisdom. 
stressed. We’re more able to meet the challenges
of life while retaining a resilient well-being inside
ourselves, as a result of our practices and the
traits that we acquire and develop inside our cells
over time. Grounded in changing the brain. 
Master Mingtong: Thank you. I’m so appreciate
of you differentiating stressor from stress, and
ultimately how addressing chronic stress is like as
you said, the mother nature, give us all this gift,
capacity, to work through the stress. Even we are
observing the animal, in these most traumatic
circumstances, if they are able to run away what’s
the first they do, is really shaking the body. 
Rick: Yeah, that’s right. And also rub up against
someone else of their kind if they can. Yeah.
Master Mingtong: So, it’s just like screaming,
then suddenly the energy is released out.
So, often I say, yeah, it’s normal when you’re
experiencing challenging circumstances, we feel
contraction. But if you contract it for five second,
five minutes, you’re fine. If you’re able to release
that contraction. But the issue is if you contract
for five days, five months even, five decades, then
big problem. 
Rick: Big problem, yeah.
Master Mingtong: Then the life continue appears
stressful anyway, you cannot push life away,
right. But if you continue responding with more
contraction and carry all the contraction from the
past, then become really vicious cycle. You cannot
solve that problem.

So, the way, as you mentioned also, is the deeper
awareness, deeper connection, deeper sentience.
And Qigong takes when as the most important,
more proactive process, is you purposely not only
realizing, feeling the contraction in the body with
more awareness, more kindness, acceptance,
but also remove the energy, you’re opening the
energy.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.
That’s why my body couldn’t help just to move.
You physically moving and you making this sound,
and you’re visualizing the energy opening. And so,
another kind of proactive meditation allowing the
energy to open. And especially right now when
experiencing so much challenges.
Personally, collectively, as a result our energy
system naturally contract, but if we have a chance
to opening that contraction from all patterns, then
we have a chance to move forward with more
health, more loving kindness, more capacity to
meet the challenges. And that is my great hope.
Nathan: Master Mingtong, you’ve mentioned
Qigong a couple of times and I feel like since
I discovered Qigong, wisdom healing Qigong,
through you a few years ago, and I’ve been
practicing it in my own life, I feel like it is that
great hidden secret here in the west that so few
people know about and yet it has extremely
profound benefits for our health, and healing, and
rejuvenation.
I started my own health, and healing, and spiritual
practice about 15 years ago and have been
blessed to study with many different traditions,
and Buddhists, and Hare Krishna’s, and chanting,
and Native Americans, and what I love about
wisdom healing Qigong as you teach, is this
system of health, and healing, and awakening that
encompasses meditation, and visualization, and
subtle movement, and connecting with the Earth,
and allowing our energy systems to open and
awaken.  system through the spine continuously through
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
15
And what I’d love for people who aren’t really
aware of what Qigong is, which I think is majority
of the population at this point, maybe you can
talk just a quick minute about what it is. And then,
Rick, I’d love to hear your experience, if you have
experience with Qigong and your thoughts on it.
And if you know of any science of Qigong as well,
 
Master Mingtong: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I’ll make
this summary sort of in general. It’s this ancient
wisdom based on the cosmology of oneness and
the universe is expression of energy in the most
subtle form of energy. If you can perceive in the
quantum realm is pure conscious vibrational
energy. And when you access the energy,
then you can open whatever old patterns of
contraction. 
So, the methodology, again, is very simple.
You just keep on opening energy, slow the
movement, slow vibrations, slow intentions,
slow meditation. Then the particular method,
what we do is reduce the movement, opening
these weaker areas, often carry stress and the
contraction. One is the shoulder area. Yeah. I’m
just making the movement simple but there’s
more design the movement, you can go through a
routine. 
And the second area is really the hip. You moving
the hip. Yeah. You can do it by standing, you can
do it by sitting, but you do it very mindfully slowly,
not just exercise. Okay, one minute, it’s finished.
Life continues. You really pay attention. You
close your eye, feeling the discomfort, feeling the
body limitation, feeling the energy, connecting,
awakening, opening, flowing again. It’s really slow
meditative movement. 
And then the third area is opening the spine.
Opening the spine and again, and Rick knows so
much of the connection, the brain, the nervous

the central nervous system. All the nervous
system will be branched out connecting with the
entire body including the five organs systems. So,
any kind of stress, any kind of blockages, any kind
of contraction around the spine is causing major
problem in your health. Major problem, emotional
body as well.  energies in the body that Master Mingtong talks
So, these are three area you can starting, pay
more attention physically, energetically, opening
up. And if you’re ready to do more, you can go
to the five organ system, including the brain
energy. One of the powerful way of doing that,
using sound vibration when you say shmm, you’re
opening the energy of your heart.
So, your mind start coming down, start to come
into feeling of your heart, energy of your heart.
Experiencing more warmness of your heart,
openness of your heart, and the love, the joy, is
expression of the energy of your heart. So, that’s
kind of a simple summary.
Rick: Beautiful. Wow. What a lovely summary.
And obviously you, Mingtong, are embodiment
of what you teach. My own background with
Qigong is very limited. I’ve done some. I always
appreciate its value and I remember one of the
last Vipassana meditation retreats I did, which
was led by a very senior Abbott from England
who is in charge of a monastery there named
[Hajan Passina]. And he was a serious Qigong
practitioner. He respects it a lot.  scientifically what people have known for
And so, on this meditation retreat, usually two
times a day he would have everyone stand up
and we were doing our Qigong and all the rest of
that. Mingtong will probably laugh at my form,
whatever. But anyway, we were doing it and it
was really good. And what was striking to me was
how in that tradition, which is the early Buddhist
tradition, now 2,500 years later, it’s very rigorous.
It’s very, they’re light-hearted but they mean
business. And the monks especially, and the nuns
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
16
who practice in that tradition. 
So, it was very interesting for me to see this very
senior meditation master who was valuing so
much the importance of moving the body and
strengthening the body, and working with the
about.
The science part of it, I do not know. There might
be studies about it. I don’t know. There is a very
important scientific saying though, the absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence. In other
words, simply because there’s not yet some kind
of fancy MRI study or something like that, does
not mean that something doesn’t work. 
Evidence of mental change is evidence of change
in the body, including possibly subtle energy
systems that science does not yet understand. So,
if a person let’s say, does these kind of practices
and in the laboratory of their own mind, they feel
calmer and happier, if when they make that sound
let’s say, they feel an openness in their heart, that
is evidence that something is happening. 
And I would just say for myself to finish I
guess that science is very young, especially
neuroscience. It is a baby science. Including
compared to older sciences such as astronomy
or chemistry, especially astronomy.  And we
are gradually, slowly beginning to understand
thousands of years around the world, including
in the first people traditions, you spoke of doing
Native American practices, Nathan. The first
people, the indigenous people around the world
and the value of those traditions too. 
So, we tend to worship science in the west as
the secular religion of our culture and I think
sometimes we give it more authority than it really
deserves or more exactly we, maybe this is a
better way to put it, I love science and I think it’s
 17
really important especially in an era of so much
disinformation and so much of an attack that’s
politically motivated on facts and the capacity to
discern facts through science, and journalism, and
civil society, and the rule of law.  How this, what are you doing, is affecting the
I think it’s really important to respect science,
and on the other hand, I think a lot that there
is a tendency to think that things are not true if
there’s no study yet behind it. And that is a deeply
unscientific attitude. Many, many things are true
that are beyond the ability of science even to ever
study.
For example, if let’s say, Nathan, you love
someone, no scientific study can prove that and
yet in your heart you know if you love them or
hate them. Hopefully love them. So, just because
science doesn’t yet have a study for it does not
mean it is not true.
Master Mingtong: Love this example, Rick. It’s so
amazing. When we think about, it’s a no brainer.
Yeah, that’s exactly why these ancient teaching
practice about obvious ways to experience it,
directly experience it, and discover the deeper
truths, then yes, the science can help us to
validate to whatever degree maybe.
But on the other hand, you can now discover so
much research on Qigong. And at the same time
my impression is all the research work, including
brain research for discovering these principles
behind how meditation effecting the brain, wave
function, cognitive function, so on. It’s really
applying to other parts as well.  Rick: Well, it’s a huge question, Nathan. I’m very
So, indigenous practice, Qigong practice,
ultimately is really awareness, attention,
connection, and deeper embodiment. And so,
how you do that particular method, maybe have a
slight different flavor, different language, different
methodology, but as a result impact on the energy
is very similar in principle, similar approach. So,
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
if we understand that instead of just, oh how
A-B-C-D-E-F-G works, how energy re-connecting
everything, every aspect of ourselves. 
energy connection, then realizing, oh, how it can
improve that skill, improving this connection.
And then we discover more of the science, the
energetic science behind it. Not just the number
behind it. Yeah. 
Nathan: Yeah. I love what both of you said and I
don’t even think we need science when it comes
to discovering if somebody is falling in love with
somebody else. That’s why we call it falling in love,
right. Because we’re falling into the unknown and
into just wild aspirations and new energy of life.
And the energy of love speaking of, is something
that is so extraordinary and so healing, and
something that I know is a big part of the
traditions that both of you speak of and
have spent so many years discovering, and
experiencing, and sharing with others. 
And so, as we kind of wind down here, I think
that’s where I’d love to go for both of you to
maybe talk about, a little bit of how can people
start experiencing more love, greater health,
greater happiness? What are some practical
solutions, especially in a time of crisis, in a time
where people are really experiencing so much
fear and anxiety? What are some takeaways for
people right now? 
interested in what Mingtong has to say about it. I
mean what strikes me first is that we have to feel
what we feel. So, if we push away our anger at
another person it, the saying is what you resist,
persists. In other words, pushing it away or
denying it, it doesn’t really work. If we’re scared, if
we’re worried, we always have to start where we
are. 

I mean the Buddha began with suffering, the first
noble truth, just the reality of suffering. It’s not all
of life, but it’s certainly part of life and when it’s
part of one’s own life, it’s really important to face
it and to tell the truth. The truth of suffering, to
tell the truth about suffering.
So, I think that’s really true. I think a second
thing that’s really true, that which is also really
supported by research, we can grow more loving.
We really can develop a more loving heart, a more
compassionate heart, a kinder heart, a heart that
is more able to be empathic for other people and
to recognize the being behind the eyes in the
other person.  yourself, especially in this time now.
We really can develop that. There’s research
on deliberate loving-kindness practice’s,
there’s research on the deliberate cultivation
of compassion including for one’s self. These
practices change the brain, they change the body,
they calm down stress hormones, they help to
strengthen the immune system. They really work.
So, the point is, we can each say to ourselves,
I want to become a little less hateful today. I
want to become a little more compassionate
today. I want to rest a little more in the feeling of
camaraderie with other people who are dealing
with this difficult time right now.  accepting yourself, loving yourself, that’s seems
I want to take heart in people like you, Nathan,
or you, Mingtong, or people pushing a broom in
a hospital at three o’clock in the morning helping
others with no fanfare. They’re not famous. They
don’t get paid very well. And still we can take heart
in them. So, I think that’s really true.
The last thing I would just say about this. How can
we, how can we do this, is to make sure that we
are also receiving love from other people. And to
make sure that we are brave enough to open our
hearts and to be humble to receive the care, the
respect, the friendliness, the love even from other
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
18
people, rather than pushing it away and saying
that we somehow don’t deserve it or don’t need it. 
We do need it and we do deserve it. And as
we receive their love, we give them the gift of
receiving their gift, and also, we grow the capacity
inside ourselves to be loving as well. 
Master Mingtong: So, again, love is such, not
only most important aspect of human experience,
most important topic. You cannot define what
love is, just like happiness. But when you feeling
love you know it. When you don’t feel love you
also, you know it. So, in this case, I would say
really starting with loving yourself. Start loving
And even in painful, challenging time, compassion,
self-compassion is really expression, our first step
of self-love and the open doorway to your self
acceptance. Yeah. More you accepting yourself,
the more you’re able to love yourself. More you
love yourself, more you able to connect deep
inside of you. 
Often, I use that knowledge, it’s not just
knowledge, it’s a real experience, is establishing a
relationship with yourself. So, in this relationship
what quality you want to cultivate? Yeah. So,
like a no-brainer if you want to have relationship,
any kind of relationship. But you’re willing to go
inside of you, as Rick beautifully said, you have to
accept your anger, accept your fear, accepting the
part you feel uncomfortable, accept the part that
now it’s tricked by the circumstances. 
So, more you accepting the difficult part, more
you’re able to feel the compassion for yourself as
well compassion, I mean, deeper love for yourself,
then from the process I think it’s more possible.
We can love what it is, in compassion what is
happening now, become more open hearted,
more noticing, okay, I’m feeling the contraction,
 19

but you can love that part of you. So, have a
pause. Have a breath. Have a movement, have a
vibration.  of themselves. So, we need to take care of the
Suddenly, oh I can respond to someone else or
something else in the circumstance with less fear.
Yeah. With more sentience, more empowerment,
with less reactivity. So, I think these changes can
be very tangible, personal. I’m noticing even this
time, we are experiencing so much more love in
this community because of the practice, because
of tangibly we choose to connect with each other.
But also, I’m noticing I feel more love with my
family, with my kids, with my wife. It’s not like,
I didn’t have to force myself to do that. But just
become more natural, suddenly. Yeah. Even I’m
noticing not only we had more time together,
but more kids, like become more intimate with
me, just naturally intimate. Yeah, we’re not really
like making a plan be more loving, it’s just like
naturally happened. And that’s just beautiful gift
I’m observing.  sense.
Rick: Well I think of the proverb from Tibet, if you
take care of the minutes, the years will take care
minutes. We need to take care of the drops. We
need to take care of the breaths. That’s the most
important thing. Not just setting aside 10 minutes,
as Mingtong said in the beginning, do an exercise
and then you’re all done. But rather making it a
part of your everyday life. Really weaving it into
your everyday life. 
And I think one of the most important practices of
all, is to receive into yourself the actual benefits
of beneficial experiences. The actual value of a
moment of calming, or connection, or courage, or
confidence, or compassion. I’m using words with
C’s for some reason, but that’s just a coincidence.
That’s another C word. To slow down, to take
in the good. And there’s this fundamental two-
step process of growing and healing, we move
from state to trait. We move from experiencing
to actually learning or growing in the broadest
 

Nathan: Yeah, I think you both have talked quite
extensively on this really important take away
that I’m hearing, is the importance of practice and
daily practice. And every little drop as you shared
in the analogy from the Grand Canyon, which I’ve
camped down in the Grand Canyon. I have to say
it’s an extraordinary experience.
Every little drop, every little meditation, every
Qigong movement, every little thought, breath, or
thought of love or compassion, it builds up over
time and contributes to our healing, and health,
and happiness, and longevity, and wholeness of
life.  So, it’s very important to slow down and literally
And so, the practice is, really, I think, critical. What
do each of you want to share with people tuning
in about either starting a practice or adding to
their current practice?  you move through your day. My suggestion to
And most of us constantly forget the second step.
We might be experiencing something useful in
the moment. A moment of calming, a moment
of happiness, a moment of gratitude, a moment
of self worth, whatever it might be. We’re feeling
it. But it does not change the brain or the body
in any lasting way. And if we do not change the
body, including maybe subtle energy aspects
of the body, but if we do not change the body
by definition, there is no learning. There is no
growing. There is no lasting value. We wasted that
experience in effect, in terms of any lasting value. 
help your experiences to alter neural structure
and function, because if they don’t, you didn’t
have any lasting gain from them. You didn’t have
any lasting healing. So, that’s very important as
people, I give people to five-minute challenge, like

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit


five minutes. And here’s my five-minute challenge
really quickly here. It’ll take less than five minutes
for me to explain it.  Coming to a sense of calm, and contentment, and
As you go through your day, slow down half a
dozen times a day for some beneficial experience.
It might feel good. It might be more neutral, but
it’s beneficial. Including for example developing
a new perspective on things. Slow down for a
breath, or two, or three breaths. Stay with it. Feel
it in your body.
Focus on what is rewarding about it, what is
enjoyable or meaningful.  And in the process
of that you will increase the conversion of that
experience to a lasting physical change in your
nervous system. Slow down for the good. Okay,
that’ll take you a minute, maybe a minute and a
half each day.
Second, know one thing these days that you are
trying to grow in yourself, whatever it might be.
A little more patience, a little faster letting go of
unnecessary stress or hassle with another person.
Maybe a greater feeling of your own worth, that
you deserve love, that you are a good person
deep down inside yourself, whatever it might be.
What is one thing that you are trying to develop
these days. Maybe because you know, that if
it were more present inside you, if you felt it
more that it would really be helpful for whatever
is challenging you or whatever you’re dealing
with, including old pain maybe from your own
childhood.  minutes 20 minutes, or maybe you are ready for
That gives you a direction, if you know what you’re
trying to grow these days. And the way to grow
it is very straightforward, experience it and then
when you’re experiencing it, internalize it. Take
the breath, take the three breaths in a row, to
take in the good. Alright.
So, now we’re up to about three minutes a day
so far, mas, right. And then the last two minutes
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20
spend at least a minute or two every day really
marinating in feeling at rest. Really coming to rest.
lovingness. Just come to rest. Be like that zebra
who really rests or as Mingtong said earlier, shake
it off and then come to rest. 
These days as people experience so much
chronic stress, so much rushing about, so much
multitasking, so much err, err, err, err. Noise,
noise, noise. It’s like a bee’s nest inside our minds.
It’s so important to help the body and your
whole being spend at least a minute or two a day
in deep rest. So, those three things, that’s five
minutes. Everybody can do that at least and if you
do that, it’ll change your day and if you do it day,
after day, after day, it’ll change your life. 
Master Mingtong: That’s so beautiful. Again,
you’re such a, beautiful inside and make it also so
accessible, so successful. And also, I want to go
to another spectrum, other side of the spectrum.
Yeah. Like creating, on one hand he’s generating
these five days practice integrating your everyday
living experience over time, amazing benefit.
But adding to that is really if you can structure
specifically, okay, first thing in the morning do
whatever beneficial routine. Opening energy,
in Qigong we focus on opening energy, slower
movement, sound, meditation. You focus on
opening the energy, connecting the energy,
then whatever routine of time, just like, okay, 10
30 minutes. Then you have to be specific, creating
a pattern. 
Okay first thing in the morning you’re going to do
it, or last thing in the evening you’re going to do
it. So, often one of the challenges is to integrate
into our life story. We’re thinking, oh, if I have the
time I will do it, then it will never happen. Because
nobody there to force us to slow down, say it’s
time to practice, it’s time to slow down. So, all the
 21

busyness is continued noise. It’s there already.  Mingtong, for all that you both have shared. So,
thank you.
So, that’s is one of the challenges to be aware
so we can consciously say, okay, we’re going to Rick: Oh, and plus I want to thank you, Nathan,
set up the time. First thing in the morning, last for enabling me to connect again with Master
thing in the evening, or particular time during the Mingtong. It just reminds me of the fun we have
day you’re taking break from your work, taking had together in the past and what a pleasure it is
a break from whatever your busyness. Taking to be with both of you.  And I wish everyone the
break from your computer, then do that. Then if very best, who’s had a chance to listen to this or
you’re consistent then you’re creating new habit. watch it.
Suddenly, oh, now it’s possible. I can integrate into
daily everyday living.  Master Mingtong: Thank you again, Rick, for
your presence. Also, enjoy such connection
So, that’s kind of my adding five cents. The again, and lately actually we’ve been doing a
principle behind it is same, the message is same. lot together online. The last one is low energy
So, hope these two can compliment each other as psychology, then Spirit Rock is moving all the
you’re hear us saying differently. events to online, as well. And I wasn’t sure you’re
part of the science of nandu conference and
Rick: Yeah, I think both are really true. On the one that’s just all this opportunity allows to share
hand, going through the day we have so many more, connect more, through this amazing
opportunities and on the other, I completely agree technology, but also the essence of the wisdom is
with you, there is no replacement for some time found really in the ancient time and have a new
of deep practice. Some time of deep practice. contemporary version, allow us to connect more
And what happens over time is when you have effectively. That’s an amazing gift. 
a history of deep practice, then it has more
momentum for you. It really helps you. Yeah.  Rick: Yeah. 
Nathan: Yeah, beautiful. And I want to thank
Master Mingtong: I don’t have any little muscle. I everyone for tuning in here to the Healing Chronic
have energy muscle.  Stress and Disease summit. Make sure to share
this summit with your friends and family who
Rick: Energy Muscle. That’s the most important of need this information and consider adding this
all.  summit to digital Library, if you haven’t already.

Nathan: The energy muscle, and the wisdom
muscle, and the compassion muscle. and the
important muscles, right. Yeah. Well, I want to
say just a huge thank you to both of you for the
great wisdom that you both shared here on this
interview and the great work that you both do
around the world and have for decades.
So, thank you so much. This has been inspiring, a
lot of good practical information. Really appreciate
you being here, Rick. And appreciate you, Master
Also, make sure to visit Rick Hanson, that’s H-A-
N-S-O-N.net, pick up a copy of his newest book,
Neurodharma. You can learn more about the great
work at his website rickhanson.net. As well as visit
chicenter.com to learn more about Qigong with
Master Mingtong. Again, I’m Nathan Crane and I
wish you all infinite health and happiness. Take
care.

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit

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Healing Chronic
Autoimmune Diseases
Peter Osborne, DC, DACBN, PScD

Nathan: Hello, and welcome to the Healing
Chronic Stress and Disease Summit. My name is
Nathan Crane. And today we’re talking with Dr.
Peter Osborne about healing chronic autoimmune
diseases naturally.
go to glutenfreesociety.org. Dr. Osborne, thank
you so much for joining us.
Dr. Osborne: Well, thank you for having me,
Nathan. It’s my pleasure. 

Dr. Peter Osborne is the director of Origins
Healthcare in Sugarland, Texas. He’s a doctor
of pastoral science and a board-certified clinical
nutritionist, often times referred to as the gluten-
free warrior. He is one of the most sought-after
alternative and nutritional experts in the world.
His practice is centered on helping nutritionally
support those with painful, chronic, degenerative
and autoimmune problems using natural
methods.  and lupus, and ankylosing spondylitis, psoriasis
He’s one of the world’s leading authorities on
gluten sensitivity and lectures nationally to both
the public, as well as doctors. He’s the founder of
the Gluten Free Society, the author of The Gluten-
Free Health Solution and the Glutenology Health
Matrix, a series of digital videos and e-books
designed to help educate the world about gluten.
In addition, he’s the author of the best-
selling book No Grain, No Pain published by
Touchstone and Simon & Schuster. And Dr.
Osborne has served as the executive director
and vice president for the American Clinical
Board of Nutrition. He’s on the advisory board
for Functional Medicine University, as well. His
website is, drpeterosborne.com. And you can also
Nathan: So, you work hands-on with a lot of
people dealing with autoimmune diseases. What
are some of the most common autoimmune
diseases you see today?
Dr. Osborne: I mean, people come to me with all
kinds of pre-existing diagnoses. I get people that
come to see me with rheumatological disease
like rheumatoid arthritis, and dermatomyositis,
psoriatic arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease,
celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis.
So, kind of the gambit. Autoimmune disease is
vastly becoming one of the biggest causes of
death. It’s actually arguably the biggest cause
of death. It is the number one cause of death in
women under the age of 65, but unfortunately,
the way statistics are done in medicine,
autoimmune disease, there’s more than a
hundred forms. 
So, instead of saying autoimmune disease
kills X amount of people we say, rheumatoid
arthritis was responsible for this many deaths.
Hashimoto’s was responsible for this many
deaths, etcetera. Unlike cancers where we group

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit

 23
all the cancers together. Unlike heart disease
where we group all forms of heart disease or
cardiovascular disease together.
We don’t do that with autoimmune disease. So,
in my opinion, if we really crunch the numbers
properly, we would find that autoimmune disease
is the, most likely, the top cause of death in
industrialized nations, including the U.S.  This was before the biologics were widely
Nathan: That’s staggering to hear, and I
think there’s still, at least mainstream publicly
understood information, there’s such little
information understood about autoimmune
disease. Yet so many people are experiencing
these diseases. And as you said, there’s more
than a hundred forms of autoimmune diseases.
What are the main causes of most autoimmune
diseases and why have they sky rocketed in the
past few decades?
Dr. Osborne: Well, I think one of the biggest
causes, and what got me into it originally,
was gluten. Gluten sensitivity is a much more
pervasive issue than what we ever believed 20, 30,
40 years ago. As a matter of fact, gluten we only
discovered the cause of celiac disease in 1952. So,
Dr. William Dickey a Dutch pediatrician discovered
that during World War II during grain rations that
all the kids in his hospital with celiac disease went
into spontaneous remission.  were given a book called the Primer on Rheumatic
And so, it was his observation very keenly that led
us to discover that gluten causes autoimmune
disease, in this case celiac disease. But it was
not just his work but additional researchers that
came after him that pointed and shone a big head
light on how gluten can cause many forms of
autoimmune disease. Gluten sensitivity’s related
to a lot of them.
So, my original observation 20 years ago in clinical
practice, I actually studied in the VA hospital in
the Rheumatology department and my fellow
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
veterans were coming in with rheumatoid
arthritis, lupus, of varying different sundry of
autoimmune arthritities. And what I found, what
was frustrating is, everybody got Methotrexate,
which is an anti-cancer medication that is also
used to diminish pain in autoimmune arthritis, or
everybody got steroid injections. 
available as they are today. But nobody ever really
got better. Their pain would be reduced but then
they would be back. And so, what we would see
is people being on his meds for 5 years, 10 years,
their joints would still be destroyed. And now
that we’re sending them over to the surgeon for
full-blown joint replacement surgery after the
medicines destroyed.
And now we’re sending them over to the surgeon
for full blown joint replacement surgery after
the medicine’s destroyed their health. So,
now they were less likely to recover from that
surgery because their health was so destroyed.
Methotrexate destroys the gut lining, that’s one of
the side effects, unfortunately. 
And so, it was a travesty for me and that’s
when I really started to dive into gluten. And I
just, I started doing research on causation in
autoimmune disease because at the time we
Diseases, which is like the Bible of what causes,
and everything about autoimmune arthritis, right.
And so, as I actually read the book, unlike many
of my other intern friends that wouldn’t or didn’t
read the book, but I read the book cover to cover,
highlighted made notes. 
And what I found was, look there were all these
different reasons why autoimmune disease was
happening. There were four fundamental causes.
So, coming to your question. Well, gluten being a
protein found in foods, particularly grains. So, we
know that food can cause autoimmune disease.

And so, food was one of the triggers. But in this
primer, in this medical text that I was given and
told study it, read it, learn it, know it, there were
other triggers. Bacterial infections were triggers.
Viral infections were triggers. Fungal infections
were triggers. Chemical exposures were triggers.  ever looking at any of these groups of triggers.
And this was very, very clear across the medical
literature as to what actually caused autoimmune
disease. And what really confused me and made
me frustrated was, the doctor I was training
under never said this is what can cause your
autoimmune disease and they never tested for
those triggers. So, there’s medical testing that can
be done but it wasn’t being done.
What they would simply say is, “We don’t know
why you have this autoimmune disease, but we
know we can treat it.” Which made no sense.
It’s like, I don’t know what causes it but here’s
the magic potion or pill that will solve all your
problems. It never made sense to me, but more
importantly it was irresponsible for those doctors
to say, “We don’t know what causes autoimmune
disease.” When very clearly, we have tons of
medical evidence and research that shows that
that we do know what causes it.  have been the first. We saved that little girl’s life.
So, if I simplify it, there’s four fundamental
triggers. Food is a trigger, chemical exposure is a
trigger, microbial imbalance is a trigger, and some
people would say infection but infections really, in
my opinion, that’s a word that’s going away. We’re
really not seeing that. It was like staph aureus. We
all have staph in us, but it’s when that staph grows
to such a point where it grows out of control and
creates toxins that our body can no longer deal
with.  softballs, this little tiny little girl, quit swelling
So, it’s more of an imbalance than what I would
call an infection. But microbial imbalances are
a trigger. And then the fourth series of triggers
are nutritional deficits. There’s a whole litany of
research on how vitamin D deficiency can trigger
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
24
or contribute to rheumatoid arthritis, and type
1 diabetes, and celiac disease. And so, that’s
just one example, right. We’ve got 40 different
essential nutrients that the body needs to repair,
and heal, and function normally. And no one’s
And that’s where I started in my practice privately,
is I left the VA Hospital very disgruntled because
they wouldn’t allow me to investigate these
triggers, even though they told me to read this
book that said these were very clearly triggers.
And so, one of my very first patients in private
practice was a little girl. She had terminal
rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile rheumatoid
arthritis. She was 9 years old and she had been on
Methotrexate for 7 years and the doctors looked
at her mom one day and said, “There’s no more
we can do for her. She’s going to die, and you
need to go home and get your affairs in order and
prepare for her death.” 
And so, I was like the eighth specialist that this
little girl, they traipse her into my office, and what
makes me mad about it as I should have been the
first. I shouldn’t have been the eighth, I should
She didn’t die. She didn’t die. She’s actually gone
on to graduate from college and she’s out there
doing wonderful things in the world. But the way
we saved her life was we identified those triggers.
And one of those triggers for her was gluten and
another trigger was blueberries, of all things, the
superfood blueberries. 
And so, when we got her off those things her
knees which would swell up to the size of
up. And she had a port in her arm for pain
medications embedded permanently because
she was in and out of the hospital so frequently,
well that came out of her in six months. Her knees
quit swelling in six months. Within a year she was
in full remission and never went back. We never
 25
looked back.  a couple of examples. Gluten, for example has
And that was my Hallmark experience, the thing
to say, okay, these are the things I learned in
the VA hospital about triggers. But this is the
application of actually measuring those triggers
and saving somebody’s life and that’s, it was
at that juncture that I formed The Gluten Free
Society because I wanted this information to be
widely available, and freely available for anybody
who was struggling with any form of autoimmune
disease, but not getting answers from their
traditional medicine doctors.
Nathan: That’s incredible and what a truly
inspiring story and how many, just imagining how
many people could be helped right now that are
not getting the help that they need because they
don’t have the information that you have and that
you’re sharing. So, thank you for that.
And talking about that little girl reminds me of my
own daughter who’s about to turn 10 years old
and I’ve asked different experts over the months
and years to explain what autoimmune disease is
and sometimes it’s very complicated the answer
and sometimes, and I think that’s part of the
problem is people don’t quite fully understand
what this is.
So, I’d love for you, if I were to ask you to explain
what autoimmune disease is in general to a
10-year-old girl, how would you explain it to them? 
Dr. Osborne: So, autoimmune disease is,
generally it’s a condition that’s caused by your
own influence. So, you can eat poorly and the
food itself can cause a disruption in the way
your immune system reacts. What autoimmune
disease is not, is it’s not an immune system that’s
too aggressive. It’s not an immune system that’s
overreacting.
What autoimmune disease is, so let me give you
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
been shown to cause antibody formation against
the intestinal lining causing celiac disease. So, this
protein that starts an immunological response or
an immune reaction that then leads the immune
cells to properly create chemicals to try to deal
with this foreign-looking protein. 
So, your immune systems properly behaving, it’s
not rogue. It’s behaving against a substance that
is acting as a poison to your body and the side
effect of that is an immune response that creates
inflammation in perpetuity, until you find out
what the trigger is.
So, whether the trigger is food, or whether that
trigger is a chemical you’re being exposed to,
or whether it’s some type of chronic infectious
microorganism or microbial imbalance, or
whether it’s just severe malnutrition. And
usually for most people this is why it’s complex,
because you can’t just say all autoimmune
disease is caused by gluten. You can’t just say
all autoimmune disease is caused by vitamin D
deficiency. 
You have to understand that it’s multifactorial
and not only are the triggers multifactorial, the
four different categories of triggers, but a human
is multifactorial. Their variables, their life, their
stress, their genetics. Those are all highly different
from one person to the next.
And so, you might take two people for example,
one person eats gluten and it gives them severe
diarrhea and intestinal bleeding. Another
person eats gluten and they have no intestinal
symptoms, but they start developing brain fog
and neurological damage. Same chemical, right.
Same trigger, different response. 
That’s why it’s confusing, because one size
medicine doesn’t work. One size medicine fits all
never has worked. Just like you don’t grow up and
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want to do what your dad did for a living, right.
You don’t want to grow up and be who your dad
is per se, you want to create and forge your own
way in the world. This is the way most people
work, right. They want to create, forge their own
uniqueness’s.
So, in that regard autoimmune disease, it’s an
equal opportunity destroyer and it’s caused by
categorical triggers. But it’s so complex because
there’s so many different types of triggers that
can cause it and sometimes it’s not one trigger,
sometimes it’s multiple triggers.  never made sense to me. And it makes a lot more
And if a doctor is not trained in knowing that and
identifying that there are multiple triggers, they
might say go gluten-free and I may be right and
that person may feel better, but still struggle with
autoimmunity. I see this all the time. People say,
they come to me, they’re like, “I’m already on a
gluten-free diet, but my Hashimoto’s is still flaring
up and my other doctor doesn’t know what to do.
Is there anything nutritionally we can do?” And we
come to find out, yeah, there’s plenty they can.
They’ve got selenium deficiency and that’s
triggering an autoimmune antibody response.
They’ve got potentially other food allergens, and
they’ve got potentially mold exposure in their
basement and they live up north where the
conglomeration of humidity in their basement is
causing mold to be pervasive throughout their
home, and their reactive to that mold.  women have a greater tendency, that and
So, these are the types of variances if you’re not
trained in identifying what they are, what they
potentially could be, then it’s really, really hard
to get a handle on autoimmunity. Because then
you just become like anyone else and you say,
whether you’re practicing medicine, you can give
medicine to suppress symptoms or whether
you’re practicing what I call green medicine,
which is where you give supplements to suppress
symptoms, which is also the wrong approach.
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
You have to understand where the problem is
coming from so that you can reverse engineer
and change the person’s behavior, change the
person’s environment. So, that that person’s
genetic code can be bathed in an environment
that’s conducive to the expression of their good
health.
Nathan: So, I mean I love your explanation
because the explanation that I’ve heard in the past
of an overactive immune system basically acting
against itself or acting against the body. It just
sense of what you’re saying, which is actually your
immune system is doing its job, it’s just putting a
burden on it because it’s having to deal with these
proteins that you’ve talked about.
So, you also mentioned stress and so many
people are dealing with so much chronic stress
today, and anxiety, and fear. Is stress one of the
triggers that can trigger autoimmune disease.
Dr. Osborne: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I look at
stress, I mean, let’s talk about the different types
of stress and there are different people and some
people handle stress better than others, right.
Generally, men handle stress far better, far more
superior than women and that’s not true in a
hundred percent of cases. But as a generalization,
it is true. And this is one of the reasons why
estrogen are two reasons why women have a
greater tendency toward autoimmune disease.
But there are different types of stress. 
So, the loss of a loved one is obviously more
stressful than, I forgot my lunch today, right. Or
I got into a fender bender is probably a little less
stressful than let’s say somebody going through a
divorce, right. Or a major life changing or altering
even. So, there are certain different levels of
stress.

What I see clinically is that when people have a
huge quantity of stress, that can be a trigger all
by itself or they might have a life of just chronic
little bitty stressors, right. So, they hate their job,
they’re in a bad relationship, they eat bad food.
So, they’re under chemical stress, right. Because
really bad food is a form of stress, only its
biochemical stress. 
And so, all these things that conglomerate and
accumulate over time until their body can no
longer tolerate it. And loss of adaptation, which
is ultimately what happens with chronic diseases,
is our body is broken to the point where it can no
longer adapt.
And so, then it screams at us. When it can no
longer adapt it screams at us with symptoms.
That’s brain fog, fatigue, muscle aches, muscle
pain, inability to go to sleep at night. These are
the ways that our body is trying to communicate,
make a change.  But what else does grain contain? And again, I
And a lot of times people don’t see that, they don’t
give stress the credit that it deserves it. They don’t
give diet the credit it deserves, or exercise, or
sunshine, or sleep. Which are key fundamentals
to health and to modulating stress. So, stress can
definitely be a trigger, but very rarely do I see
stress as the sole cause.
Meaning that that yes, if you live a lifestyle that is
highly stressful chronically, it’s going to be like one
of those other four fundamental trigger groups
that I was talking about earlier. It’s going to be
not necessarily the cause but it’s just going to be
one more thing added up that makes it harder for
your body to heal and repair.
Nathan: So, we’ve got to learn how to manage
and mitigate, reduce the stress in our life, of
course. Including the stress from toxins and toxic
food. And one of the, your major specialties is
around gluten. Does gluten affect everybody
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27
negatively? Obviously, it doesn’t affect everyone
the same way, but even people who don’t think
they have gluten sensitivity, like me. People who
don’t see symptoms when they eat gluten, people
who think that gluten’s doing nothing negative
to their body. Yeah, is gluten the same for
everybody?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah, I would say no. Some
research says that gluten can cause leaky gut
in anyone, but those studies are really limited
studies. They’re done on very small groups. I don’t
think we can extrapolate out such small studies
to everybody in the world. We certainly have a
longevity of history of grain consumption and one
of the reasons I wrote No Grain, No Pain and not
no gluten no pain, is because gluten is one family
of proteins that for an estimated thirty percent of
the population can and has been shown to trigger
and contribute to autoimmunity. Okay. 
think maybe a more discernible question would
be, are grains potentially detrimental to humans
as a whole? And I think the answer to that is
grains have become more detrimental because
we’ve hybridized their growth, we’ve altered the
way that they used to be grown.
So, they’re higher in carbohydrate as a fuel
source. They’re higher in their survivability. We’ve
altered them to survive drought, pests, bugs,
weeds. So, they’re stronger. They’re heartier.
And that means they’re heartier from a digestive
perspective, that makes them harder to digest.
And so, they’re harder to digest, they’re higher in
carbohydrates. They’re very low in omega-6 fatty
acids. They have other proteins beyond gluten.
There’s a family of proteins for example in wheat
called amylase trypsin inhibitors that will shut
down your pancreas.
So, it slows down your body’s ability to digest it.
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And again, remember what a grain is. It’s a seed
of grass. And remember what a seed is, Mother
Nature designed seeds to survive their species,
right. Seeds are designed to carry on the entire
race or species.  a seed protein and no matter what kind of seeds
And so, these seeds have to have some degree
of biochemical protection because they’re not
animate objects. They can’t get up and run away
from your mouth. They have to have the ability
biochemically to protect themselves from being
eaten into extinction.
And so, some of these chemicals are proteins like
gluten and amylase trypsin inhibitors. And some
of these proteins are lectins, which many people
have heard of. Some of these things are the fact
that grains are sprayed with tons of pesticides.  before it was hybridized and manipulated to
And so, we have glyphosate and we have other
things like atrazine which mimic estrogen. So,
if we talk about one of the risks of increasing
autoimmune diseases more estrogen. So, you eat
a pesticide that acts as a pseudo estrogen and
you increase your risk for the development of
autoimmune disease through the consumption of
that food.
So, there are a lot of qualities and properties
about grain in general that are beyond gluten
that are also detrimental to humans that I could
argue that, look, today’s modern grains should not
be eaten. And if you really want to eat grain and
you’re not gluten sensitive, so if you really are not
gluten sensitive and you want to eat grain, you
should be consuming heirloom grains that are,
heirloom grains that are non-genetically modified,
that are not growing with use of herbicides and
pesticides.
And that are properly soaked and sprouted,
because even our ancestors who ate grain soaked
and sprouted the grain because they discovered
very early on that grains were extremely difficult
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
to digest, regardless of their heirloom or organic
status. 
They’re just a challenge to digest because they’re
you eat, whether it’s a grain seed, or whether it’s
a peach pit, or a cherry pit, or any other kind of
seed, they’re all pretty tough to digest on purpose.
Nathan: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you
is what are some potentially healthy grains? You
said organic, non-GMO, soaked and sprouted, but
does that include organic, non-GMO, soaked and
sprouted wheat, quinoa, brown rice, what kind of
grains are we talking about? 
Dr. Osborne: Ancient einkorn, which is one
be a monster of growth would be an example
of a grain. And the proper preparation. Some
people are discovering that you can ferment as
well. So, soaking, sprouting but also fermenting
using bacteria to produce for example,
sourdough.
Again, this is under the, I want to be very clear
that I’m not, because a lot of people that follow
me are gluten sensitive and I don’t want them to
think that this is a carte blanche for me to say,
yeah, eat grain again, as long as it’s organic and
einkorn, as opposed to not. If you are gluten
sensitive, you should not eat grain, of any kind.
Nathan: That’s including quinoa that doesn’t have
gluten.
Dr. Osborne: So, quinoa’s not a grain technically.
It’s a pseudo cereal or a pseudo grain. There have
been a couple of studies on quinoa published
back in 2012 that show that some of the cultivars
of quinoa actually mimic gluten well enough to
create a gluten like reaction in people. This is why
so many people that are gluten sensitive still react
to quinoa when they try to consume it.

So, I would say quinoa would be one of those
consumed with caution. Same thing with
amaranth and buckwheat, which are also pseudo
grains or pseudo cereals. They’re not technically
grains. I would say proceed with caution for
several reasons. The proteins are very similar,
as well the potential for cross-contamination of
these food items is also very, very high.
Some studies show that 42% of these products,
even though they’re labeled gluten-free actually
contain enough gluten cross-contamination to
create inflammatory damage in a person with a
gluten sensitivity issue.  Forty of them were more toxic than gliadin. So, if
Nathan: Right. Yeah, I know that’s definitely a big
issue nowadays. And what do you wish people
understood about gluten that maybe most people
don’t understand at first?
Dr. Osborne: I’m glad you asked. Gluten is an all
grains. So, if we’re talking about what are grains,
what are the grains, right. Wheat, barley, rye.
Those are the three classic grains that when we
say gluten-containing grains, those are the ones
that are inclusive of that.
But oats also contain a form of gluten, even
though you can go to the store and buy oats and
they say gluten free on the package. One of the
types of gluten found in oats is called avenin.
And avenin can be toxic to people with gluten
sensitivity. Corn has a gluten in it. Rice has a
gluten in it. Triticale, teff, sorghum, millet, all
have forms of gluten, but they are legally labeled
gluten-free.  Dr. Osborne: So, my experience with
And so, it’s because in the United States, anyway,
the labeling laws only declare gluten-containing
grains to be wheat, barley and rye. And it’s
because there’s a misnomer in the definition.
When we say gluten, first of all understand
that gluten is not a singular term, but when the
labeling laws are referring to gluten, they’re
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29
really referring to a protein called gliadin which is
unique to wheat, barley, and rye. 
But gluten is a family of about a thousand or
more proteins that are found in all grains, not
just wheat, barley, and rye. And many people
with gluten sensitivity react to these other forms
of gluten just as toxic, as a matter of fact, there
was a research study done in Australia, I think it
was Bob Anderson and his group. Bob Anderson
et. al. found 400 forms of gluten that were not
previously discovered.
I could say, what do I wish people would know, it
would be that people that are being told they’re
gluten sensitive, I wish they would understand
that to be truly gluten-free they need to be grain-
free. Less they get exposure to other forms of
gluten that create an inflammatory response that
might be very similar or even subtly different than
the one they experience when they eat wheat,
barley, and rye.
Nathan: Yeah, that’s huge. I mean, I didn’t know
about the fact that gluten includes a family of
a thousand different proteins, and there’s all
different kinds, and it’s in basically every grain. I’ve
never heard that before, that’s fascinating. I think
it’s important for everyone to understand, and
that kind of leads to really the next step is, what
are some of the main dietary steps that people
should be taking if they have any autoimmune
disease or gluten sensitivity or not?
autoimmunity, I’m going to speak of my
experience just because I think based on my
experience, everybody I’ve ever seen with
autoimmune problems has been gluten sensitive.
And that’s 20 years of practice, thousands and
thousands of patients.
So, does that mean that we can extrapolate my

experience to the world? No, it doesn’t, but that’s
my experience so I want to share that with your
audience, because if you’re watching this and
you’re struggling with autoimmune disease and
your doctors have said diet doesn’t matter, I’d say
the first step you could do is go grain-free. Just
do that one thing and give it two to six months
and really commit to it, because you might find it
completely saves your life or changes your life to
such a radical degree of improved health that you
would have never imagined any drug could have
ever done that for you.
So, that would be one thing I would suggest
because it’s free. It doesn’t cost you, that advice
is free. It doesn’t cost you anything to go gluten
free. It doesn’t cost you anything to not eat grain,
other than a little bit of time educating yourself
about what else is available to eat. The other thing
I would say would be if you’re really struggling to
find an answer, know that you don’t have to be
the do-it-yourselfer.
Don’t be the person that goes to Home Depot
to build their own stuff when it comes to
your health. Get with a qualified doctor who
understands autoimmunity and have somebody
that can guide you through this process, because
maybe you are gluten sensitive and maybe going
gluten-free radically transforms your health, but
maybe it does it to a certain level, but you’re still
struggling, right.  other types of bacterial or other infections.
And so, there may be some of these other triggers
that you’re dealing with that you don’t even know
because food allergies are not always acute. You
don’t have to eat a food and your lips swell. That’s
not how obvious food allergy is. Sometimes food
allergy is the reason your joints are stiff all the
time is because you eat something that you’ve
been allergic to and you’re eating it consistently
enough that it creates just a slow, steady state of
chronic inflammation. And these things can be
tested for.  Dr. Osborne: Both. We do it, I work with people
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30
So, get with that a doctor who understands these
triggers and get some objective testing done so
that you can transform your life through diet
and lifestyle. Because I can tell you this, in all the
autoimmune disease I’ve ever seen, I’ve never met
a case of autoimmunity that couldn’t get better
dramatically so with diet and lifestyle change,
without the need for medicines. And I know that’s
a bold statement.
But look, I’ve seen more than 10,000 people over
the last 20 years, the vast majority of them with
various sundry forms of autoimmune disease,
including very rare forms of autoimmune disease
like erythromelalgia, which it’s twelve cases in
the whole world, get better, right. Get better and
overcome their autoimmune problems when they
were told that they couldn’t do it.  
When they were given information that said you
will have this for the rest of your life. You will
need this drug for the rest of your life. You have
to understand many of the drugs used to treat
autoimmune disease cause cancer and the last
thing that you want is to trade one illness for
another, and during that process of medicating
yourself reduce your quality of life because that’s
what many of these drugs do. They reduce your
quality of life. They sap your energy. They suck
your nutrients from you, they damage your gut,
destroy your immune system, predispose you to
 
So, again, my advice is get with a qualified
expert who can objectify what your triggers
are potentially and then share that experience
with them and work the diet, work the lifestyle.
Because that in my experience is really where the
magic happens with autoimmune disease. 
Nathan: Do you work with people remotely or do
they have to come to your clinic?

all over the world. Many of them fly in but many
of them do digital phone calls with me. So, I’ll
work with anyone who has a true desire to get
healthy and get better. Who I won’t work with is
somebody who’s on the fence, “Ah, I don’t know
about that gluten?” I don’t want to work with
people like that. Either you’re ready to commit or
you’re not. I want to work with people who are
committed.
Because my mission, Nathan, is I have a mission
of saving a hundred million lives. I mean, that’s
our hashtag save a hundred million lives and I
can’t do that in my clinic. Obviously, I only see
about 350 people a year new in my clinic, but we
do that through No Grain, No Pain, we do that
through glutenfreesociety.org. That’s our ongoing
mission.
So, there’s well over a thousand articles and a
thousand hours of free information that my team
and I have produced over the last 10 years to
help people get access to this knowledge, toward
the endeavor  and that goal of saving a hundred
million lives.
Nathan: Are there other things aside from
removing grains from your diet that people
should be doing in addition to help heal
autoimmune diseases?  walk and still type. Move, if you have a computer
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. So, there are seven really
solid fundamental things that you can be doing,
that you could apply tomorrow, or you could
apply today, right. Number one is just eat real
food. Okay. The stuff in the packages, the stuff
in the boxes, the stuff with label terms you can’t
pronounce without a biochemistry degree, that’s
not food.
And so, if you can recognize that and understand
that you’ve probably been, we’ll call it, we’ll
say you’ve been victimized by good marketers.
Because the green box that says healthy choice, is
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31
not a healthy choice. Hopefully that’s not a news
flash to any of your audience, but just eat real
food is rule number one.
Rule number two, sleep. You can’t heal without
sleep. Some people tell me I’m a night person. No,
you’re not. Biologically you don’t have infra-vision,
you can’t see at night. You are not a night person.
You have evolved into being a night person, but
when you don’t sleep minimum between 10 p.m.
and 2 a.m. you disrupt your cortisol rhythms, and
you increase your risk for developing diabetes,
inflammation, obesity, bone loss, heart disease,
etcetera.
So, getting sleep between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and
preferably longer on either side of that. And my
advice is go to bed when the sun goes down and
wake up when the sun comes up. If you live in an
ideal world that would be the ideal sleep pattern.
So, sleep is important. 
Number three, you’ve got to exercise, you’ve got
to move. We live in a society where most people
work at a computer and so eight hours of their
day is spent sitting without movement. The body
is not designed for that. The body is designed for
motion and movement. So, get a desk treadmill,
it’s something under your desk where you can
desk job have something where again, where you
can allow yourself to move. Take periodic breaks
but implement some degree of exercise. 
And exercise, you don’t have to go join a Cross Fit
gym. Some people love that, I do, I love the Cross
Fit. But the average person really just needs, they
need to be focused in on maintaining their muscle
mass as they age. It’s the number one predictor
of an early demise and loss of quality of life is loss
of muscle as you age. But losing muscle as you
age is not a function of aging, it’s a function of not
exercising as you age. So, don’t let doctors tell
you you’re supposed to get achy and painy as you
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get older. That’s really, that’s not true to a large
degree.  get a filter. Save yourself some money, don’t buy
There will be some aches and pains with age but
not to the level that you can’t function, it shouldn’t
be to that level. So, move, get exercise, good
activity.  Look up Tabata, T-A-B-A-T-A, Tabata style
workouts they’re four-minute workouts. If you’re
one of those people that say, “I don’t have time
to exercise.” If you don’t have four minutes to
commit, then there’s nothing anyone can do for
your health. So, look up Tabata style exercises and
start implementing it, it’s a real simple strategy.  curtain off gases, your carpet off gases, the wood
So, again, I mentioned food, I mentioned sleep,
I mentioned exercise. Number four, sunshine.
It does matter. Sunshine doesn’t cause cancer,
sun burning causes cancer. Very big distinction,
but very important distinction. Don’t go out long
enough to roast your skin, but go out every day
and don’t avoid the sun for fear of skin cancer
because solar radiation only causes skin cancer
when you get what’s called a minimal erythema
dose repetitively over time.  can’t always mitigate everything, you don’t have
So, meaning if you go out long enough to burn
and you do that frequently enough, you will
increase your risk for developing cancer. But
if you go outside every day and you just get
sunshine, you will increase your ability to make
melatonin, which fights cancer.
You will increase your vitamin D, which also fights
cancer. You will regulate your cortisol, which also
fights cancer. You will reduce your risk of cancer,
of heart disease, of diabetes, of obesity, of bone
loss, and a plethora of other chronic degenerative
diseases including autoimmune diseases just by
getting sunshine.
home and you’re drinking city water, you should
water in the plastic bottles. You’re going to get all
kinds of phthalates in those plastic bottles. Those
are artificial estrogens. They will increase your risk
for autoimmune disease. 
So, drink clean water. A good RO filter, a good
reverse osmosis filter, is a really cost efficient way
to filter your water in a very, very solid way. Get
yourself an ultrafine HEPA filter to filter the air
in your home, your paint off gases, your shower
installation that you have on your floor off gases,
even natural green building products off gas
volatile organic compounds that are toxic to your
body. 
So, filter the air in your home and minimize
your risk. And then the last thing that I will say
is mitigate your stress, manage your stress. And
the best advice I can give you on managing your
stress, because life throws curveballs and you
control over everything. God’s in control.
But what you can control are your relationships
and your passions. Live your passion and you will
be happy in your life. If you live a job that solely
sucks your soul away every day you go in, your
stress will never be properly managed, and you
will basically be doomed to an ill health. So, follow
your passion, follow your heart. Explore things
that excite you.
Explore relationships that are healthy for you
and that are exciting for you. And these are ways
that you can mitigate stress in your life. So, those
seven fundamental factors are things you can
apply right now that they won’t cost you a dime.

Then we have number five and six, which is drink Nathan: That’s huge. I mean, seriously, you just
clean water and breathe clean air. Now, you can’t dropped a huge bomb of health and healing right
control the air as well as you can control the water there in just a few minutes. And I really want to
and if you don’t have a filter on your system at encourage everyone to rewind this and listen to

Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit


that again, and take good notes, and do what you
can to implement every day what Dr. Osborne
just said. Because this information he’s sharing is
critical to the foundational health of our lives, our
longevity, our happiness and fulfillment.  health begins, it begins by understanding the
I mean, you obviously through your work, your
website’s, your consultations, your books, allow
people to go much deeper into this, which I
encourage people to do, but the very least these
are things that just require some discipline and
implementing some daily habits to implement
these things, and it is life-changing. I’ve seen in my
own life and in the thousands of people that I’ve
worked with over the years and it works. It works.
So, don’t just speed on past this on to the next
thing of your day, take a moment and really take
in what he just said because it is true wisdom,
and advice, and practicality right there. Looking at
your book, No grain, No pain. What’s the chapter in
that book that you feel is the most important for
people to understand?
Dr. Osborne: The very last chapter. Well, I’ll say
the very first chapter and I’ll paraphrase what
said there, is that all progress begins with the
brutal truth. People live in a world today, we live
in a society today where it’s okay to lie. It’s okay
to lie to not offend somebody or to not hurt
somebody’s feelings. And that is a myth. If you
don’t start from the premise of being honest with
yourself, so here’s what I mean by that, Nathan.
People come to me all the time and say, “Hey,
I’m pretty healthy except...”  and then they go off
and they rattle off three or four medications that
they’re taking, and three or four of what I would
consider to be very serious and life-threatening
problems, that they don’t really consider to be
that serious because there are other doctor has
minimized the importance of how deadly those
different problems are.  So, that’s green medicine. And again, it’s a better
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So, start from the premise of being honest with
yourself. Self truth leads to forward progress.
The last chapter of the book is about functional
medicine. If you really want to know where
fundamentals of what functional medicine are.
What are those fundamentals? Very simply put, is
that you are in the driver’s seat. No doctor has an
ownership over your health, right. No doctor can
grant you good health, including me. 
The only person that can grant you good health
is you. You have to be willing to pick up the
torch. You have to be willing to be honest with
yourself, pick up the torch of knowing what you’re
doing, identifying what you’re doing that could
be contributing to your illness, and then moving
forward in an intelligent and organized way so
that you can alter the fundamental outcome of
your health.
So, if you read the last chapter, it’s all about
functional medicine and what really truly what
functional medicine is. Because there’s another
thing I get, is a lot of people say they’ve been to a
functional medicine doctor, and they haven’t. They
come to me because they’ve been to six functional
medicine doctors and I’m the seventh, right. And
so, what they’ve actually been to are doctors who
weren’t really functional medicine. They were
green medicine. They were alternative medicine.
They were integrative medicine. It’s not the same
thing.
Giving you magnesium so you can have a
bowel movement, doesn’t treat why you don’t
have a bowel movement. Giving you so much
magnesium that we pull water into your bowel so
that you have diarrhea every day, so that you can
have a bowel movement, doesn’t solve why you’re
not having a bowel movement. 
option than going and buying an over-the-counter

enema or something else to that nature, but
it’s still not, remember we want to get to the
root cause of why the problem exists. And if we
fundamentally understand that and we can solve
that, then you don’t need the magnesium.
You don’t need the laxative. You don’t need the
medicine or the green medicine, because you
now have an education, and that education that
empowers you to make meaningful changes in
your lifestyle. So, that your body can have the gift
of what it’s supposed to have, which is awesome
health and flourishing in your environment.
Nathan: Yeah, so true. And I just want to take
a moment and just thank you so much for all
the incredible work that you do, have done,
and continue to do. Putting out so many great
resources, consulting with thousands of people
and helping shared this important truth with the
world. So, thank you so much for doing that and
thank you for being here and sharing with all of
us.
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
34
Dr. Osborne: Well, thank you. Thank you, for
putting on this summit and helping spread this
information. I know it’s a daunting task to put
something together like this. So, thank you for all
your hard work and your endeavors as well.
Nathan: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. And I want to
thank everybody for tuning in here to the Healing
Chronic Stress and Disease summit. Make sure
to share this summit with your friends and
family who need this information right now. And
consider adding the summit to your digital library,
if you haven’t already. 
Also make sure to visit. drpeterosborne.com. It’s
D-R Peter O-S-B-O-R-N-E.com, to get his book, No
Grain, No Pain, you can schedule a consult with
them, you can even join his free newsletter.
Again, I’m Nathan Crane, and I wish you all infinite
health and happiness. Take care. 

Scientific Power of the
Mind to Heal Chronic
Disease
Joan Borysenko, PhD
Nathan: Hello, and welcome to the Healing
Chronic Stress and Disease Summit. My name’s
Nathan Crane. And today we’re talking with Joan
Borysenko about the power of the mind to heal
the body. Joan Borysenko is a world-renowned
expert in the mind-body connection. Her work
has been foundational in an international
healthcare revolution that really recognizes the
role of meaning and the spiritual dimensions
of life as an integral part of health and healing.
Doctor Joan Borysenko earned her Doctorate
in Medical Sciences from the Harvard Medical
School where she completed post-doctoral
training in cancer cell biology. She returned to
Harvard medical school to complete a second
postdoctoral fellowship this time in the new
field of behavioral medicine and under the
tutelage of Doctor Herbert Benson, MD. She was
awarded a Medical Foundation Fellowship and
completed her third postdoctoral fellowship in
psychoneuroimmunology.
In the early 1980s, Doctor Borysenko co-
founded a mind-body clinic, became licensed
as a psychologist and was appointed instructor
in medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
Her years of clinical experience and research
culminated in the 1987 publication of the New
York times bestselling book, Minding the Body,
Mending the Mind which sold over 400,000 copies
and is available today. I encourage you to take
a look at it. Her website is joanborysenko.com.
We’ll have a link for you as well. You can go to
her website, find her books online. And she’s
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
35
the coauthor of 16 other books and numerous
audio and video programs, including the Public
television special, Inner Peace for Busy People. As
well as the new PBS special that I was grateful to
be a part of helping produce, called Ageless Living.
She’s the founding partner of Mind-Body Health
Sciences, LLC, located right here where I live in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Joan, thanks so much for
joining us.
Dr. Borysenko: You’re very welcome, Nathan.
This my favorite topic.
Nathan: You certainly are qualified and have
lots of experience and wisdom to share on
the subject. So I want to dive right in. I have a
question I’ve asked a few others, but I’d love to
hear your perspective, what your research and
your experience tells on this particular question,
which is, why is it that more people are more
stressed out and experience more chronic
physical disease now than ever before in human
history?
Dr. Borysenko: Boy, that’s a really interesting
question, especially because here, at least in the
United States we always think we have the best
healthcare system in the world. And when the
pandemic swept through, we realized, there’s
always things that you can do about that. And I
just want to say, we have very good healthcare for
people of privilege and what we’ve discovered is
not so good healthcare for people of color. And
for people who live in poverty, it’s quite a difficult
thing. So when I talk about why the world is more

stressful now, for all of us, I want to say poverty
is always a tremendous source of stress. Lack of
education is a huge source of stress in a lot of
elements of the culture here in the United States.
And then, when we’re just talking in general about
people who are fortunate enough to be able to
eat, to educate their children, there are a lot of
things that are creating stress, Nathan. These
range on the one hand from food choices.
We all know about food deserts. Many people,
even who have a middle class lifestyle, can afford
to feed their family, still are eating an awful lot of
junk food. And that’s a whole other topic because
my business is the quote mind-body effect. It’s
also the body-mind effect that, what we eat, what
happens to the microbes in our belly affects our
mood and it affects our resilience and our ability
to deal with stress. So that’s one really big topic.
Another thing of course, is the fact that in the
United States, there is really an epidemic of
loneliness. And what’s important about loneliness
is that people can be lonely while surrounded by
other people. What the research shows is, if you
perceive that you’re lonely, if your sense is people
don’t really hear me when I speak, I maybe sit with
my spouse or my roommates and we can watch
TV together or cook a meal, but there’s no real
intimacy there. I don’t really feel seen. That really
is a tremendous stress on the body because we
are we’re mammals, we’re social animals.
And the way we regulate our nervous systems
is partly by ourself. We can learn to breathe.
We can learn to be mindful. We can learn to be
present. But largely, it’s our ability to connect in
a meaningful, intimate way that really helps both
parties regulate their nervous system and cut
down on the stress response. So food, loneliness.
Another part as just the way that our society
begins to look at success. So you look at social
media and how many likes do you have? There
are people whose sense of identity actually hinges
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36
on that. And particularly for adolescents and
young adults who get a lot of their socializing on
social media, there is the sense of judgment. The
sense of am I going to measure up here? And then
of course there’s bullying and these are enormous
kinds of stress.
Then I would say there is just the incredible stress,
worry and hurry of the modern world that, so
many of us are so busy. We were not configured
to be machines that work eight or 10 or 12 hours,
seven days a week, because we used to have
weekends, Nathan. Do you remember that? Actual
weekends. And before that, we had a concept
called Sabbath. On Sunday, if you were Christian
or Saturday, if you were Jewish or Friday, if you
were Muslim.
And it was meant because no matter how
beautiful the things you do and how many of
them, if there are no pauses in the music, if there
are no rest stops, all you end up with is noise. And
we live in a culture with way too much rush, hurry,
and inner noise. It’s like the to-do list may never
get done. That’s how it is for so many people.
And then in addition to the rush and hurry, we
have the sense, not only of comparison on social
media, but of what does it take to be “a success?”
All of the things that seem to be necessary for
people to feel that they’re living a meaningful life.
Basically there’s too much stuff, too much clutter.
And in all of this, what have we lost? Let’s think
about that. You and I were just talking about
nature before we began. And now what we realize
is that nature is one of the ways that human
beings regulate their nervous systems. That’s
why there’s been interest in things like Forest Bay
and my goodness. Going outside, being in the
forest, turning off the noise of the devices and
everything. Trying to gather our attention and
just being present in a simple way with nature.
We really need that connection with nature.
Because once again, it’s like connecting with other
people. We are animals, human animals, but
the connection with nature is how our nervous

system was configured from the beginning of
time, that’s how we evolved. And we don’t have it
so much.
My goodness, I could go on a long time, but
I’ll mention one or two more things. I think a
tremendous amount of stress these days has to
do with divisiveness and lack of civility. It used
to be, if there was a problem, people would get
together to make that problem. And we’ve seen
both sides of that recently, like in a pandemic
situation and we’re bound to have more
pandemics in the future. There was so much
divisiveness and in times of uncertainty, people do
things like look for conspiracy theories because it
gives you a perceived sense of control. What we’ve
got now with the erosion of like facts that we can
check and be present too, with everybody having
their own opinion and trying to make themselves
feel safe.
And let’s face it. We all want to feel safe. And this
world is very uncertain between overpopulations
mass migrations of human beings, climate
change, dictatorships, people fleeing and looking
for refuge. I would say that we are living in terms
of modern times, at a time which literally is
probably the time of the sixth great extinction on
this planet. And the planet will survive, Nathan,
and probably the cockroaches, but with more and
more storms coming and global warming people
are anxious. And that leads to chronic stress.
Uncertainty is one of the big creators of stress
and stress and turn this one of the big creators
of illness. Now I think we should say something
more positive before everybody just faints.
Nathan: First, I want to thank you for that
because that’s the most comprehensive overview
of the causes of stress that I’ve ever heard
anybody share when I’ve asked that question.
So thank you so much. There’s a few key points
that you mentioned that I want to address.
And then I do want to go into basically where
you were headed next, which is the mind and
its relationship to the body. But a couple of
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37
things you said that really stuck out for me is
the loneliness that people experience especially
being quarantined for example, as we were. I’m
introverted by nature and I I’ve heard from two
other people who’ve told me they’re introverted
and when they heard about the quarantine
coming, they’re like, that’s going to be kind of nice
actually. I don’t have to see so many people all the
time and they were looking forward to it. I can’t
say they were looking forward to it, but they didn’t
think it was going to be that bad for them.
And speaking with one woman recently and a
man just a little while ago, they both recognize
how important human connection really is. And
even that introverted, that they’re missing that
human connection, even feeling that sense of
loneliness. So it’s that applies for everybody, no
matter what your nature might be, introvert,
extrovert. The importance of having deep,
meaningful relationships. I’m sure you know of
the long-time Harvard study on Happiness, that
they’ve been following since early 1900s. And they
attributed happiness and I should say longevity
too is having deep, meaningful relationships. And
that can be one or two relationships.
Dr. Borysenko: That’s right. It’s not a matter at
all of quantity. It’s a matter of quality. We all have
to know there’s at least one person who has our
back, somebody who cares deeply for us, that
we can rely on. And without question loneliness
is probably the biggest source of stress for any
individual at any time who is lonely. And one
of the biggest variables in terms of longevity,
if you’re lonely, the fact is, you’re going to die
sooner. And it’s a sad thing.
Nathan: So finding somebody you can trust,
you can confide in, you can consider a friend or
an ally or a colleague it so important. Mending
that relationship with your brother or sister
or somebody, that’s been hard to do. I mean,
it’s worth it to have somebody in your life that
is a meaningful relationship to you. You also
mentioned about social media and identifying

with how many likes we have. And that’s a tough
one for so many of us, I think, because every time
you see that like, it’s a little hit of dopamine. It’s a
little hit of I’m socially accepted. Somebody likes
me or likes what I’m doing. And so, we get so
addicted to that. I know even it’s still something
that I deal with from time to time. If somebody
comments a real nasty comment on one of my
posts or videos or things like that, I really have to
work for a couple of minutes. Sometimes it takes
five or 10 minutes now to just like bless them and
let it go and not let it affect me.
But sometimes that subconscious part of my ego,
is like respond and help them understand your
point of view. And then the part of me that’s like,
it doesn’t matter, let it go, that kicks in and finally
I can let it go and it doesn’t affect me anymore.
But how much we can depend on other people’s
opinions of us for our own happiness and energy.
Dr. Borysenko: Well, we do. And part of that, I
just want to point out, there’s kind of a common
humanity. We all have a nervous system. And
that nervous system developed with what
neuroscientists now refer to as the negativity
bias. And that is, we’re always scanning to see, is
there danger over here? And in modern life when
somebody says, I really don’t like what you did.
It’s a dangerous signal to the nervous system. And
what will happen in spite of how mindful we have
become and how philosophical, it will take a few
minutes to deal with that. We can learn to deal
with it as you have, but we’re always going to have
that sense of, my gosh, I’m on alert. And the fact
is, if our ancestors hadn’t had the negativity bias,
we wouldn’t be here. And so, part of how we have
to learn to deal with the stress of modern life is to
install the good inside of our nervous system so
that we’re not constantly slavish to the negativity
bias.
And I’d like to just say a couple of words
about that, and also mention a really fabulous
researcher who happens to be a good friend of
mine, whose name is Rick Hanson. And Rick wrote
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38
the book called Buddha’s Brain and many others.
But when he talks about installing the good here
is something that any listener can do that doesn’t
take any time. Because what I find in modern
life, is you can tell somebody if you just learn to
meditate, you’ll do better. But the great majority
of people say, learn to meditate? Sit there for 20
minutes once or twice a day? I hardly have time
to go to the bathroom, let alone meditate. So
installing the good is something that we can learn
instantaneously that takes virtually no time. So let
me demonstrate. Today, there are of course, lots
of things on my mind drawing my attention, but
every once in a while, I just wake up and become
present. Outside my window right here, there’s a
little gentle breeze and there are some leaves on
the trees and blossoms. And there are some red
berries left from a different season, but still on my
trees.
As I look at that, I can feel my whole body lighten
up, just the color of the green as I’m looking
now at those trees. And I find my whole body is
relaxing as I’m focused on something beautiful,
the breeze and the leaves, so beautiful. And if
I focus on that good feeling, just talking to you
about it and I’m following it and my body, and I’ve
talked about it now for 10 or 20 seconds, guess
what? My nervous system is actually creating
new connections in my brain. New synapses
are forming, new neural networks. And I’ve
installed the good. And if I can do that four or
five times a day, there was a bird that just flew.
He was so beautiful. I’m installing circuits of
joy. I’m hardwiring myself for a deeper kind of
contentment and happiness. And for years before
we knew the neuroscience, I’ve been doing a really
wonderful exercise before bed that I learned
from a Brother David Steindle-Rast, who’s both a
Benedictine monk and a Zen teacher. A very cool
guy. He’s probably 90 by now. But what he said is,
look for one of these beautiful moments during
the day.
I’m actually seeing your face today, Nathan, made
me happy. I haven’t seen you for a while. And so

I’ll use that as one of the moments of goodness
that I’ve installed during today. And then before
I go to bed tonight, when I’m tired and before
bed, we’re trying to relax, forget about the day,
get ready to sleep. I’ll bring back your face and I’ll
bring back how wonderful it felt to reconnect with
you and feel that in my body. And I’ll try to stick
with that for maybe a minute. And if I’m lucky, it
will put me to sleep. I’ll go to sleep, think about
this, I’m having now not only installed the good
and circuits for the good, but recruited the circuits
that are already there. Circuits of joy, circuits of
relaxation, circuits of presence. And by doing that,
it’s so much better than going to bed, watching
a murder on television or rerunning your to-do
list or thinking about all the things that you wish
you’d done differently during the day. Getting a
good night’s sleep like that and changing your
brain is probably the simplest hint, the simplest
tool I have for people to dial down their stress
levels and dial up their happiness levels.
Nathan: My gosh. What’s amazing about that
is, as you’re talking about the berries and you’re
talking about the different things that are lighting
you up, it’s lighting me up at the same time. So it’s
infectious in a good way.
Dr. Borysenko: And that joy is contagious. It
really is. And when somebody is not happy and
stressed out, we all know that’s so hard to be
around somebody like that. And you can’t talk
people out of feeling stressed. Sometimes you can
listen to them, but sometimes if you just share, we
may be having this problem and that, but boy, the
magpie I saw in the tree this morning. And then
elicit from someone else, something like that, that
does uplift everybody. Just think what it’s like, it
doesn’t have to be a bad day. You’re having any
day. And there you are maybe checking out at the
supermarket. This happened for me during social
distancing in the supermarket, people had masks
on and there was this one person without a mask.
And I looked at her and she smiled at me. My
God, a smile lights you up from the inside to see a
stranger suddenly, putting their attention on you
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
39
in that beautiful way. It’s just so lovely. I pulled my
mask down so I could smile back.
Nathan: That’s awesome. My gosh, I love to hear
that. Well, we both know Master Mingtong Gu
who’s a qigong teacher here in Santa Fe. I know
you know him well and I study and work with him
as well. And one of the very simple practices of
setting the chi field, you know, that practice? I do
that. I do a very condensed version. You could do
it in five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Before
this interview, I did about a three-minute version
of it. Before every interview and phone call I do
that practice as my, I love the term of installing
the good into our nervous system because that’s
what it’s doing. I do it before I go into a difficult
conversation or before I have to make a big
decision, or if I’m stressed out about something.
I use that practice. It’s one of my go-to practices,
which is basically closing your eyes. It’s like a
three-minute meditation, if you will. You connect
to the earth, to the heavens, to the energy. You
visualize opening your heart and think about
things you’re grateful for. Start tuning into positive
emotions.
And as soon as that feeling starts taking over
your body, it’s like whatever anxiety or stress that
was around you or in you is no more there and
it’s gone. And I love how it can be as simple as
you said, as just noticing the beauty around us,
could be a qigong practice, a short meditation,
but remembering to do that multiple times
throughout the day, installing the good, what a
difference it would make in our levels of stress
and as well as supporting our healing. And that’s
kind of where I want to go next with you is,
you’re truly an expert on the mind and the body
connection. How the mind can create disease and
how the mind can also help your body heal itself
of disease. So maybe you could talk a little bit
more about that.
Dr. Borysenko: Well, yes. I want to go back to
something that happened to me when I was
probably six years old, that really peaked my

interest in all of this. So it was Sunday dinner and
my mother was a renowned baker. She made the
best desserts. And my uncle Dick was over for
dinner. And he had this thing about cheese that
was well known. He just despised cheese. And my
mother had made a cheesecake all covered with
ripe strawberries and glaze and all of that. And
he didn’t realize there was any cheese in it. He
didn’t know. So he ate a piece of that cheesecake
and it was so delicious that he asked for another
piece and he ate that again. And then he said to
my mother, “Lily, I’ve never tasted anything so
good. What is that cake? I’d like to give the recipe
to my wife. She could make it.” And my mother
said, “Oh, it’s a basic cheesecake.” And I actually
watched him start to gag and then throw up his
whole dinner on the rug.
And when you’re six or maybe even older, that
makes a huge impression on you. My mom and
I were talking about it later and it was clear, he
didn’t throw up from the cake. He threw up from
some perception in his mind. The word cheese
was a symbol of something that was upsetting
and that was enough to create this really
astonishing, physiological reaction. And that’s
so very true. You can fast forward to when I was
a graduate student at Harvard Medical School.
I was in the physiology lab with my lab partner
and I was so stressed out back then, I can’t begin
to tell you, Nathan. I had headaches and one of
the places where stress hits a lot of us is in our
gut. I had what I would call like migraines of the
belly. And I would start to vomit and the pain was
terrible. I’d have to go home. I had that and I had
a strange immune dysfunction.
Of course, stress really affects immunity. What
would happen is I’d get colds all the time, but the
colds would turn into bronchitis or pneumonia.
To the point where my doctor, who was a cool
young guy, wasn’t that much older than I was
said, “Hey, you’re a young woman. You shouldn’t
have this.” He said, “I’m only seeing this kind of
immune dysfunction in like old men who’ve been
homeless and on the streets for a while.” That
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
40
was not a good perception actually to implant
in me. And I was complaining to my lab partner
like, “My God, I’ve got all this stuff wrong with
me. I’m like 23 years old. What am I going to do?”
He took one look at me, went like this and he
said, “You know, you said you have a very strong
mind.” And I thought, “What do you mean by
that?” And he said, “Your mind cannot tell the
difference between reality and between what
you’re imagining. And you’re always imagining
that you’re not going to measure up, that other
people are smarter than you are.” He said, “I know
you. I’ve known you for like all semester. And it’s
these things you’re imagining about dread and the
things that could go wrong that are causing these
problems in your body.”
He was a black belt. And I can’t remember what
form of martial arts and also a practitioner of
yoga. Yoga was where back then, it’s not like
now where there’s yoga in every strip mall. You
had to look long and hard to find a yoga class or
any information about yoga since there was no
internet then either. So he said to me, he said, “I
have a couple of names. I want you to track down
a yoga teacher.” And he said, “What yoga we’ll
teach you,” he said, “It’s not just about getting into
various positions. The original definition of yoga
is learning to control the modifications of the
mind, so that your mind doesn’t run away with
you.” And he said, “As soon as you begin to learn
to witness your mind and say to yourself, wait
a minute, I’m not like going to fail this exam. I’m
just experiencing anxiety. Let me take a couple of
deep breaths and get back to what I’m doing.”
He said, “As soon as you can do that and make
some awareness of what you’re thinking about,
and then something like take a couple of breaths
to back off, to notice what you’re thinking, to bring
your mind somewhere else, your stress levels are
going to drop way down. And your mind is going
to say good things instead of bad things. And
you’re going to get better.” And within six months
I really took this to heart. And this was now 50
years ago. I took it to heart right away. And within
 41
six months, almost all of those symptoms had
disappeared, Nathan. And I knew I got to share
this with other people. So that was one of those
chance encounters, one might say, that was
meant to be that really set me on this course.
Nathan: What a beautiful story. And more
importantly that you listened and you pursued
what you felt was the right thing to do. Which led
you into this incredible field and profession where
I know you’ve written so many amazing books
and speak on so many stages. And have been
able to help so many people, who are interested
in understanding this more, how our minds can
both cause disease by our stressful thoughts, by
our continuous anxiety, by the underlying low
grade flame of resentment or fear, that eventually
can turn into cancer or arthritis or some other
form of a physical disease. And on the other end
of that spectrum, of how we can allow the body
to enter into its natural state of healing by taking
back direction of the mind and doing these things
you’ve been talking about. I can talk to you about
this for hours and I’d love to. I’d love to just ask
you a hundred more questions.
Dr. Borysenko: We’re just getting started.
Nathan: I know we’re already kind of winding
down on time here, but I want people to get as
much out of this as they can. And I know your
books go into so much more detail, your events.
So I do encourage people to go to your website,
joanborysenko.com and pick up a copy of her
books. See the events that she’s doing throughout
the year. Go deeper into this subject. But what
would you say to people who maybe have a sense
of this, they understand this, they do know that
the mind is directly related to causing dysfunction
or causing health and healing in the body. What
are some steps people can take to embody that
and to support their own healing journey?
Dr. Borysenko: Yes. First of all, I do think that
some kind of what we call a contemplative
practice is really important because our minds are
chattering, they’re going on all the time. And the
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
first step toward managing your mind is always
awareness. You’ve got to notice. What we know
now from a neurological point of view is some
of the details that point to why did these ancient
practices like meditation or yoga or qigong make
a difference to the mind. And, for example, just
in terms of awareness, what the neuroscience
tells us, for example, you find yourself trapped
by an emotion. The emotion could be fear, it
could be anger, it could be that kind of paranoid
feeling. It could be a deep sadness, whatever
it is, sometimes we can’t even name our
own emotions. So the first step is to think to
myself, okay, I’m really feeling something that’s
distressing. What is it?
It’s amazing how sometimes people can’t just
notice anxiety, they’ll notice, my God, I’m in a
flurry to do this or to do that or I’m losing my
concentration. That’s anxiety. And if you name
it, it turns out this is an amazing finding. If you
name it, the anxiety will decrease. If you name it,
the paranoia will decrease. Whatever it is, there’s
something about that that comes down the limbic
system of the brain, where these kinds of feelings
are coming from. So that’s awareness; name it to
tame it.
Nathan: Before we go to the next step, I just
want to mention something that you just shed
light on for me that was really fascinating. It was
a few years back. I had this really challenging
situation I was going through. I won’t get into the
details right now, but basically I was in a bout of
depression for probably somewhere between a
week and two weeks and I didn’t really know it.
And all the sudden I had this kind of aha moment
that was like, I’m in depression. And I hadn’t felt
depression, I don’t know how many years before
that. Probably 12 more years before that. So I
wasn’t super familiar and all of a sudden I said,
this is depression. I know about depression. I
can get a depression. And all of a sudden I had a
solution that I was working towards. And within a
couple of days, I was totally out of the depression.
But it took naming it to get to that level. So what

you’re saying is so true and so critical.
Dr. Borysenko: It really is. It starts with
awareness. And, for example, let me give you
a mind-body study that’s recent, that looks at
perception. Because all of these things, it’s like
how you look at the world. Is the glass half full?
Is the glass half empty? Do you see yourself as
a good person or are you always ragging on
yourself? These are perceptions. And they make
a huge difference in terms of your stress levels
and your health. So this is research on aging. So
what can I say? I’m 74 years old and definitely in
the aging part of life. And this was a recent study.
It’s just about a year old that came out of Yale
University. And the researchers there had been
doing studies like this for the past 20 years. But
what they found was this, that people who had
a positive perception of aging and I have a very
positive perception of aging.
I’m thinking this is like the best part of my life. I
have more wisdom. I have more good friends. I
may have a few aches and pains here or there,
but I also know a lot about how to keep myself
happy and healthy. I just feel like what a great part
of life. That’s a positive perception of aging. I’ve
got friends on the other hand who are dragging
around, who kind of have let their posture go. If
you’re dragging around like this, guess what, that’s
your body, it notices. If you hold yourself up, be
normal. You can tell a lot about perception just
from how people hold themselves. But I’ve got
friends who have a very negative perception. The
best part of my life is over. There’s nothing to look
forward to. People get more illnesses. It turns
out that people who have a positive perception
of aging do live seven and a half or eight years
longer than people who don’t.
What’s also very interesting is the researchers
looked at a subset of people who had multiple
copies of a gene that codes both for heart disease
and dementia. And the question is a lot of people
would say, my God, I’ve got this APOE4 gene. This
is the end of me. And within that group, excuse
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
42
me, I get so excited, people who had a positive
perception of aging, even though they might’ve
had that gene did not get the expected amount
of heart disease or dementia. Was kind of mind
over genetics because we know a lot now, Nathan,
I know you know a lot about the field called
epigenetics and that is epigenetics what controls
your genes. Genes can be silent or they can be
active. Some things activate your genes. Some
things repress a gene. It’s an amazing thing that
a positive attitude about aging can repress the
activity of a disease producing gene.
And we’re finding out more and more about how
it is that we can really look at our perceptions
and change them. And one of the things that I’ve
been interested in for a very long time is simply
questions about the meaning of life. I worked in
a big Boston, Harvard teaching hospital during
the AIDS epidemic, before we even knew about
the HIV virus. And I could get a sense right away.
Some young men said, okay, this is a big challenge
and I’m probably going to die from it. Because
back then, if you lived two years, that was a long
survival period because there were no treatments
yet. We didn’t even know what caused it. But so
many of these young men said, okay, death is
certain for everyone anyhow. What I want to do
with the rest of my time is really think about what
is this life about? What is this journey? And then
there were some people who thought, my God,
God has leashed this disease against me because
of my lifestyle. And other people who certainly did
not take it personally or theologically, but said,
okay. My life has been short, let me review it. Let
me look at it. What do I think this journey is all
about?
And when we have a positive sense of meaning
and every human being makes meaning, that of
course changes everything with regard to our
life. And that’s why I’ve been so interested in
the spiritual dimensions of life. Like are we part
of a larger consciousness? What is the context
for living this human life? What is a human life
well lived? And of course it’s a mystery. Nobody

knows for sure. Is there something that survives
this body at death? But what I know is that if I
can hold a larger perspective that this universe is
meaningful and that somehow the consciousness
itself is kind, that helps me. And we all have to
take a look at our basic beliefs and what we think
of and recognize that, not only just that affect our
values and our ability to extend goodness to other
people on ourselves, but it affects our health very
deeply.
Nathan: So inspiring. And I love that you brought
up the positive outlook on aging. I don’t know if it
was the same study or not, but it is probably last
year I saw this study on the brain and aging and it
was with people who had an association in their
mind with being younger. So these were people
in their 70s and 80s that they studied their brains.
But how they looked at themselves was, was
as a younger person. They did things that they
thought young people did. They did activities that
they thought young people did. They didn’t call
themselves, I’m just getting old. They didn’t use
some of those idioms or those phrases that we
learn from our parents or grandparents and that
attribute to thinking that old is bad or old means
this. They always thought of themselves as feeling
young and healthy and vital just like you do.
And what they found was these folks who they
studied their brains, their brains were actually
functioning the same as a 40-year-old’s brain,
which was really amazing. Whereas a lot of
people in their 70s and 80s their brain is already
degrading, it’s degrading significantly. There’s
Alzheimer’s that’s kicking in and dementia and
none of these people had those issues. So the
positive outlook on our lives and on aging, I
think is so profound. And I just want to invite you
Joan, as we finish here, I mean, this has been
really insightful and inspiring. You have so much
wisdom to share, but is there anything else, any
final words of wisdom, hope or inspiration you
want to share with people? Especially people who
might be dealing with loss or tragedy from this
pandemic or fear?
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
43
Dr. Borysenko: Yeah. What I want to say is this,
just in terms of resilience, I’ve written quite a
lot about resilience and thought about it a lot
for myself and patients that have gone through.
Here’s just a couple of quick pointers. Something
like coming out of the loss of a loved one or being
ill or losing a job or having a financial and reverse
all of these things, you will get over them. And the
question is, will you come out of them stronger
than before or will you come out of them more
anxious or depressed than before? So here’s the
arc of transformation. Here’s what happens, the
difficulty event happens. Let’s say that you’ve
lost a loved one. And what happens then is like
life stops. It’s not the same life as it was before.
It’s like falling down a hole. And you enter a
place which is sometimes thought of as the time
between longer and not yet. You’ve lost for old
life, you don’t know what the new life is going to
look like and you’re in the place of uncertainty.
I think of all the people now who are in a very
uncertain place after the economy or knowing is it
safe to get on a plane or go to work or whatever.
We’re living through on certainty. What happens
in uncertain times as people start to clamor for
control, and sometimes you can’t have control.
So here’s what you need to do. You have to say,
what do I have control over? I have control over
maybe some aspects of my routine. Maybe I have
control over what I eat. I have control over, do I
call this person or not today? And to let go of what
you cannot control and focus on those few things
that you can control. This liminal period, this time
of great uncertainty is also a time when people
traditionally find mentors of one sort or another.
And one of the great wonderful things about this
time, people can go to summits online, like this
summit. I’m talking to the converted. You know
how many good resources there are and many of
them without cost. And that’s a wonderful thing to
take advantage of that. Learn something new.
The other thing is to recognize that in liminal time,
when you’ve had a loss, whether it’s the loss of
income or the loss of health or the loss of a loved
 44
one, and we’ve all had the loss of certainty, grief
is the first response that you will have, And we
have to stop and grieve. We live in a culture we’re
like, this bad thing happened. I want to go back to
work tomorrow. Well, you know what? We have to
stop. When you lose something, it’s really a good
thing to take a little time to reflect. What was it
that was so very precious to you about what was
lost. And to really the best we can be thankful
for what that was. And then to let yourself feel
the feelings, but name the feelings. Here’s the
grief. There it is. Let me feel it. It’s there. It will go
according to its own time. But for this moment
now, now that I felt it and named it, can I take a
couple of breaths?
And say, the grief is there. I’ve lost something
precious. This is true. Now I have to put one foot
in front of the other. What’s that one thing I can
do right now to have a little control? Maybe right
now I need to call somebody and just say, this is
how I’m feeling. Maybe I really need to get outside
the house and get out into nature for a minute.
What can I do to comfort myself and make myself
feel better? You have to extend kindness toward
our own selves. And that I think is often the
missing thing. If when you feel grief, you start to
go into a negative spiral. It’s like, now this terrible
thing has happened. It reminds me of 64 mistakes
I’ve made and regrets I have. That’s not going to
help. Acknowledge it. Think about what’s precious.
Think about what you can do in this moment to
give yourself comfort, because that’s what all of us
deserve.
Healing Chronic Stress & Disease Summit
And grief, this too shall pass. All things pass. The
pandemic will pass. This will pass. Always in the
old, the new, the seeds of the new or being born.
And even during times of grief, we can already
see so many silver linings that have come out
of the pandemic. And it’s up to us to install that
good and to increase that good in any way that we
can. And yes, the bad is there too and we have to
grieve that, but we can’t stay stuck in it.
Nathan: So beautiful. I love how you’re able to
take something that can be complex and often
misunderstood and make it so practical and
relevant for all of us right now. So thank you so
much, Joan. Thank you so much for all the great
work you do. And thank you for being here with
us, sharing your wisdom. And this has been
wonderful.
Dr. Borysenko: Thank you, Nathan. Many good
wishes for you and your very beautiful family.
Thanks for doing this.
Nathan: Thank you so much and thank you all
for tuning in and listening here to the Healing
Chronic Stress and Disease Summit. Make sure
to share this summit with your friends and family
who really need this information, who need a
boost of hope and encouragement and positivity.
And make sure to visit joanborysenko.com. That’s
J-O-A-N B-O-R-Y-S-E-N-K-O, joanborysenko.com.
Pick up a copy of her books. Join her newsletter
and check out her upcoming events. Again, I’m
Nathan Crane, and I wish you all infinite health
and happiness. Take care.