#1 Neuroscientist: How To Manifest Love & Abundance in Your Life!

0:00So I had Dr. Tara on, what was it two, three years ago, the first time that I had you on. 2022, I had you on. The first time I met Dr. Tara, I don't think really many people knew who you were back then. I think it was one of the first kind of interviews that you did. But you've been a neuroscientist for a long time. You've been extremely helpful in the world of moving the world forward, of understanding our minds, understanding our brains, understanding how it all connects so that we can accomplish our goals, so we can manifest better and live a better life. And when I met you, you were in an interesting moment in your life.

0:43You're an interesting moment and you're a completely different person now than when I first met you. You've continued to grow, you continue to heal. I remember you were a little nervous the first time. Now you're like this rock star all over the world doing big interviews and doing all these things. You've got a new book also called The Signs, which is the new science of how to trust your instincts. And for me, signs have always been a powerful thing. Signs, symbols, synchronicities. And I'm always trying to look for the signs and the synchronicities in my life. I don't know if anyone else likes to look for signs and say, oh, this person, you know, someone said this thing to me multiple times in one week about a book.

1:27Maybe I should read this thing. or my wife is telling me I need to come to Summon of Greatness for weeks, maybe I should come. Whatever it is, like you keep hearing these signs, you see certain things over and over again. You're like, huh, maybe I should pay attention. Maybe I should listen more. Maybe I should lean into what that sign is. And I know when we first met, you were going through a lot personally and you were going through some grief in your life. And I want you to share what that was. but before you do, if anyone is going through grief or sadness or loss in their life, what would you say is one of the first things they can do to start healing from that grief?

2:11And then maybe you can share some of what you've been through as well. Okay. So, um, I believe that the most dangerous thing that people can do is suppress their grief and their pain and cover it up with something else. And I think that all of my friends thought that I would just throw myself back into work and that would be the way that I would sort of avoid having to deal with my loss which I will share in a minute um but I just had this absolute knowing that I had to go to the bottom of the hole of grief and feel all the pain if I was ever going to truly heal and so 10 months after I lost my husband I had the opportunity to come on Lewis's podcast so I think you'd invited me before the pandemic but then we couldn't fly and you know had to be live so this opportunity that I've been waiting for for so long the first big podcast that was ever to do I at 10 months usually people are doing quite well after a grief or a loss but then the anniversary is really hard so I thought I could do it um I came to LA I didn't know if I was going to tell you or not I was crying on zoom to a colleague the week before saying I can't trust myself to perform I've lost all of my confidence and like you said I was nervous which I'm not normally.

3:28And we, so you sat me down and kind of like gave me a bit of a pep talk before, and then we finally got into the room and the cameras were rolling and you said, are there any off limits topics? And I think I just blurted it out because I hadn't, you know, I wasn't mentally prepared for what I do in a professional situation. And you were like, oh my goodness, are you going to be okay? And I said, well, as long as we don't talk about it, I'll be okay. But I always had it in my mind that I wanted to come back on your show and show you what I was really capable of because I felt like I hadn't performed that well.

3:59Um, so I think it was a couple of years later, I came back on the show and, um, we still didn't talk about, you know, the thing that you knew about, but I hadn't been public with yet. Yeah. So here I am for the third time. Um, so you, and you had lost your, so now it's been three years since you lost your husband. It'll be four in October. Four years. And you hadn't really started talking about it. I guess you weren't talking about it publicly for certain reasons. But now you are starting to talk about it, right? Yeah, the reason was I never saw the point of sharing a sad story with people unless there was some benefit from it.

4:34And I'm very lucky I've got amazing friends and support around me. So that's one of the other things I would say if you're in grief or loss. Please make sure you've got the right people around you. It makes such a big difference. I literally don't think I'd be here today if it wasn't for my friends. Um, so I then went on this journey of receiving signs from my lovely husband, um, who I knew would never leave me and he's proven it to me now. So he sends you signs? Yeah. Your husband? Yes. Who's no longer with us? Yes. What type of signs does he send you? Um, obviously hearts, but, um, when I, when I met him, I was journaling and I was, I kept noticing this infinity symbol on an advert.

5:19And for some reason, because I really trust my intuition, I had written in my journal, if the person I'm going to marry is already in my life, then I will see three infinity symbols in really unusual places. So then I was walking on the streets of London and I saw an elastic band in the shape of the infinity symbol. I flew to a conference in Turkey. There was a guy wearing a wedding ring that had an infinity symbol engraved in it. So, you know, I was obviously very close to him to even see that. And then I was sitting on the tube, the London Underground, and it was super crowded. I had a seat.

5:52There was a girl standing right in front of me, almost against me. And in the gap between her sneakers and her jeans was a tattoo of an infinity symbol. So I had already met Robin on a plane at this point, but he was pursuing me and I wasn't interested because he was so much older. So I never thought it would be him and then you know he was just like very kind and he like wouldn't go away so eventually I thought I'd give him a chance um so so that story is in the background and now for example I have so many stories like this but one day I was walking between meetings I had an hour so I thought I'd take the chance to get some exercise and I ended up walking past the hospital where he'd been having treatment and in my mind I said to him why would you let me walk this way you know it was so traumatic for me.

6:38I never want to see that building again. You've got to send me a sign. So you're saying this to your husband who passed. You're having a conversation with the husband. I'm just making sure. Okay. Yeah, I would speak to him every day. You're saying, why is this happening? Why are you sending me this way? Yeah. And you've got to send me a sign to make up for it. And by the time I got from University College Hospital to Houston Station, and please Google Maps said it's very close, there was an elastic band in the shape of an infinity symbol on the pavement. and I get things sometimes I ask for signs but sometimes I just get ones that I couldn't expect I've got I've had one recently that is so crazy I haven't shared this before I was with a really good friend who never unfortunately never got to meet Robin we're sitting down at dinner and it was a pre-paid set menu but it had a lot of meat on it and I don't eat meat so she said actually could can I just transfer my credit and take her to the restaurant downstairs and they said no it's prepaid for this restaurant so we decided to stay which was a good move because the food was really good and they did some you know changes for me so I'm talking to her I'm looking at the glasses between us and engraved on the bottom of the glass is RB and my husband's name was Robin Bieber so she and I are kind of freaking out then she says um when are you having the little you know dinner for his birthday remind me when his birthday is so I said September 21st.

7:59So I constantly see 2109 on my phone and on, you know, receipts and things like this. So she goes to put that into her phone calendar and she has this shocked look on her face. And I say, what? And she says that she used to have this habit of putting people's birthdays in with the age that they were going to turn. And so she had her aunt's birthday in on that day, but she hadn't updated it for seven years. And it said 44. And that's my angel number, which means your angels are guiding you. And I liked 11, but I never asked for 44. It kept coming to me. And then I realized it was him telling me that he is like still looking after me.

8:37The next morning, she sends me a screenshot of an email that she got with the title of which is a thank you from Robin. And it was a receipt for a charitable donation she'd made like two weeks previously. And then this is the one that is going to blow your minds. She matches on a dating app with somebody called Robin Bieber. What? Wow. And I've got, obviously I've got the screenshot so I can prove that. Wow. Wow. Now, the thing that we have talked about a lot in our last couple of interviews and we talk about personally is that I see you creating content around us, around manifesting and the science behind it, how you actually have a specific science that you studied on how to do it.

9:23we've talked about on the show a few times, but do you think that you can manifest what you want if you're not willing to go through grief when sadness or loss comes in your life? There's lots of ways I could answer that question. I mean, I think for a long while, I felt like everything I'd believed in, like manifestation and love and abundance, was just shattered. And I felt like I'm not that interested in manifestation anymore. And at first, you know, I wasn't meditating or journaling. I was just trying to get through each day. I will say I've come back round to believing in manifestation in a different way.

10:04I think, whereas before, for example, I would have suggested journaling to hone your intuition, now I'm much more into unleashing creativity and spending time in nature and doing like somatic or physical body therapies like dancing, drumming, chanting, humming to unleash hidden wisdom from the body and then manifest more through having a conversation with the universe through signs. Interesting. Why do you think it's important to kind of hum, chant, drum, dance, be in nature in order to, is that more of getting in alignment with the signs and your intuition or what is the reason for that? You know Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score?

10:49So that book explains very carefully how trauma is stored in the body. So the PTSD circuits of the brain, like the hippocampus and the amygdala, they're not the only place that trauma plays out. And actually, when you're traumatized, the Broca's area of the brain, which articulates speech, gets shut down. So people say, I'm speechless, I don't have words for this, I'm dumbfounded. and that's when his research showed that yoga is better for PTSD than talking therapy or any kind of you know drug therapy and also things like art therapy but I think you don't have to be traumatized you can unleash hidden wisdom through physical movement too do you want me to give you the real like deep science of this yeah please um so serotonin which is commonly known as the mood hormone um over 95 percent of that is made outside of the central nervous system so it's mostly made in the gut and it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier so it has no effect on mood whatsoever.

11:46It has many other functions in the body but the word serotonin itself actually means serum which is like your blood and your plasma and tone. So serotonin has an action to constrict or dilate the blood vessels that changes how much nutrition and oxygen is pushed into the tissues of the body and we believe that that's how trauma and all the intuition and wisdom that we picked up in life that we don't consciously remember is stored in the body. Interesting. So let me make sure I understand this. So if we do things that activate serotonin, then we unleash more wisdom in our body, or what are we doing?

12:24If we do physical activity, it's more likely that serotonin will dilate the vessels, allowing a lot of nutrients and oxygen. Okay. But also, when we are traumatized or we have intuition stored in our body, it's held in certain patterns in the tissues, like the fascia and the muscles. So you're actually accessing those patterns and that's what's giving you the wisdom. It's also from your mind, but what's held in your body, you can't articulate through words. So if someone's been experiencing some type of trauma, whether big trauma or little traumas that have continued over time, but they haven't released those traumas or they haven't released that grief and it's stored in their body, in their cells, they've got a blockage in the way they think around things because of that memory that's causing them to feel tighter or clenched around a certain situation, what is the best thing they can start doing to feel more emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically free just to allow possibilities in their life or intuition to come in or to see the signs?

13:23Because there's been seasons in my life where I felt like everywhere I look, I'm getting signals and signs. And then other seasons where I don't feel like anything's coming to me. Yeah. And I think it's really worth saying that's completely normal. So even when I was like at the height of my manifesting powers, it would feel like for months, nothing would happen. And then it would be like, everything's coming at the same time. And I always say, ask for what you want in that moment, because that's when you're manifesting. And you don't necessarily know whether it's the cycles of the moon or the seasons or your mindset or, you know, what it is, but just take advantage of it when it's working.

13:57And so in terms of that physicality, which I think a lot of us are cut off from, you know there's a real disconnect between our minds and our bodies the first thing I want to ask you all is have you ever had a visceral reaction to something where you've received a piece of news and a shiver goes down your spine or you get goosebumps so that's the start of of learning the language that your body is speaking to you um and so you know I have this favorite thing which I think you enjoy which is when I don't know the answer from modern science I go back to evolution. So our ancestors didn't have spare resources for anything that was just fun or a luxury.

14:34All the resources were for survival. So in that case, why did they dance, hum, drum, chant, make cave paintings? It must be because art and beauty is crucial to human And so we know that we were painting caves 40 ,000 years ago. But 10 and 20 ,000 years before that, we were making... In Southern Africa, they were carving ostrich eggshells, and you know, just for fun, for beauty. They were making necklaces out of shells and wearing them. They were using ochre crumbled from the ground to paint their faces and their bodies. And 500 ,000 years before that, we were making tools that were more beautiful and symmetrical than they had to be to complete the task that they were for.

15:27So it really goes to show that art and beauty and creativity and physicality and movement are very crucial ways that we've always operated. And since the world has modernized, we've kind of like forgotten those things. So it's not really anything new. It's just things, it's ancient wisdom that we really need to remember. Interesting. So I'm hearing you say that art, beauty, dance is designed for our survival. And it also is designed to heighten our experience, it sounds like, but we forget that sometimes. Yeah, because if you think about when we lived on the savannah, we had to access our instincts and our physicality to read the land to read the weather but the beauty of ancient wisdom is that a cloud formation could say rain is coming or it could be a pattern that you recognize as a message from your ancestors and it's just such a beautiful way to live speaking of ancestors do you believe it's possible for us to connect with our ancestors and have like they're with us.

16:30I know some people do, some people don't, but what's been the research and the science around the signs around either reincarnation or connecting with ancestors or people who have passed? What have you researched or personally experienced? I just want to say, because I have been teasing you about this for several years, I'm very impressed with your Spanish now. It's getting a little better. It really wasn't good for a long time. It still needs to get better, but it's getting better. Thank you. I'll take it. And I'm saying that because I want to ask you about your own wife's culture. I mean, Mexican Day of the Dead, need I say?

17:03Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. But in the book, I've researched, you know, the major ancient civilizations, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mayans, the Aboriginal Australians, the Maoris. And in all of those cultures, there is ancestor worship, there is communication with ancestors. When I worked in Aboriginal Australia, I worked with Aboriginal liaison officers, and the very common bird in Darwin is the cockatoo, the white cockatoo. But he told me that when they see the much rarer black cockatoo, they believe that's their ancestors in animal form, just letting them know that they're still around. Wow.

17:43That's beautiful. What have you, I mean, did you always believe that you could connect with people who had passed, or is this more of a recent thing that you started to experience, but also research? um it's definitely a recent thing it's definitely since I lost my husband um it was just you know such a terrible time you saw me like shortly after and I was desperate for a sign and I couldn't I just couldn't believe that he would like completely leave me I could see that he'd had a horrific disease and his body couldn't tolerate that anymore but this was a man that taught me what unconditional love was that told me he wanted to live till he was 100 because he'd met me and so his as obviously his name was Robin and I did start seeing Robins in the garden like all the time like a crazy amount but it didn't give me that much comfort and I didn't really know what to make of it but out of desperation I went and spoke to a couple of mediums and in the end because I'm super independent and obviously I'm all about like expanding my mind I just thought if it's possible then I want to do it myself this is the person I was closest to and that's the journey that I went on that I've written about in the signs.

18:52What about people that think that they don't believe, but they're like, you know what, that's too much for me, or that goes against what I've grown up with, or my beliefs, or my religion, that that doesn't happen. I'm not sure who, but what would you say to someone who doesn't believe that when someone dies, you can still be connected to them in some way, or have some type of relationship, signals, signs, conversations with them? Yeah, I mean, I was brought up in an Indian household where my parents believed in reincarnation and gave like food offerings to ancestors, right? But I also went to medical school in the UK and did a PhD in neuroscience.

19:28So I've always been quite torn in that respect. I've had that skepticism I think everyone should have. The only thing I can say now, since writing this book, is that I have literally had thousands of messages from people. Really? Thousands. People? Yeah. Real people. Alive people. Okay, I was like, okay, real people, yeah. I cut her off before the end of the sentence, okay. People who can DM and email. Okay, got you. People are talking to you all day long. I was like... And I've been taken aback. I've been taken aback by the amount of stories like mine that I've heard. um in my friendship group it's normal to say oh send me a you know send me a whatsapp of a sign or whatever but the number of people who've written to me and included in that is the skeptics i actually had someone this is just one message i hope he's listening that i'm going to say he literally sent me a voice note saying i listened to you on a podcast i was like nah you know this just it sounds really woo woo um i was super skeptical i was walking on the beach whilst listening to this podcast and I came across the infinity symbol on the beach whilst I was.

20:37That's cool. Um, and just, you know, many other people saying, I listened to you. I didn't believe I've never heard from any of my lost loved ones, but I specifically asked for a sign and it came. So that's all I'm asking all of you is just try it. It's not going to harm you. Um, if you've lost someone or it might just be from the universe or God, whatever you believe in, just think of a symbol that means something to you that will feel like it's an unmistakable sign and just ask for it and see what happens. What if they don't see it?

21:14So... Tell me a million dollars right now. Where are you? So give me an example of like, if someone's the most skeptical person who's like, I don't believe any of this stuff and I've heard people say this before and all these things happen to me or I lost someone close to me and I haven't felt a thing yeah I've just felt sadness loss and grief yeah and it's unfair and I'm alone how can someone say I'm going to just give it a try even though I know it's not going to work the most the biggest skeptic how could they try to be open to the possibilities to see a sign what would they what would you start them with think of a sign that's meaningful to them, not like actual physical money, but more of like a symbol, right?

22:01Yeah. And I think there's got to be a more like emotional depth to it. You know, there's got to be a reason that you're longing to see that sign and it would actually mean something to you in a way that a million dollars is never going to make you happy. So for you, it was an infinity sign. Oh, well, it's, it's Robbins. It's the numbers 11 and 44. It's the infinity sign. Um, white feathers are quite universal. My friend who's written a book about it actually calls them the angelic business card. So that's one that a lot of... White feathers. Yeah. Okay. So you'll think, so what would the first step be?

22:33Think of a sign that you resonate with. Well, if it's for a lost loved one, then I like to actually meditate on that person and my memory of them for a while. And then think of either a joke that we shared or a memory that only that person and I would know about and then pick a symbol that represents that. So for example, once I asked for a button that would appear out of place. A button that would appear out of place. Yeah. And, and I also put like some parameters around it. Like I would have to see it three times and I would have to see three signs by 11 PM the following day. Interesting. So you were like, there are structure to the signs.

23:13But that's because I'm quite far along the journey of getting them. At first, it would just be like, please send me a sign. In the next week or something, right? Yeah, okay. For instance, I had forgotten that I had written in my journal that on another podcast, I said that I'd wanted to be an actress, but my father had said, over my dead body. So my father then passed away. Wow. And a lot later, this was when I was like 16, but my father passed away a few years ago. and so I thought well now that you've passed away daddy maybe I do have your permission to said over my dead body um that was the kind of relationship we had I was very cheeky with him but he liked it and so I said if I have your permission now then I will bump into a famous actress um I didn't put any time parameters on it I forgot that I'd written that in my journal I'm the trustee of a charity in the UK and um I helped to organize the Christmas carol concert so I invited a friend we met in the doorway quite early and then people started to come in so this this woman tried to get past us and so I tried to step out of her way but she stepped in the same direction so we literally physically bumped into each other and then she said sorry and she walked off and I said to my friend he's a filmmaker oh my goodness that's Anna Friel I love her um so that story's in the book with her permission and we've now become friends and she keeps saying, I can help you to become an actress.

24:38You know, and I told you, I knew this story. I knew you were going to tell me because we were talking about this. Yeah. Yeah, because you met her. I've met her. Yeah, I met her a bunch of times. And I think she follows me. And her and Martha did a TV show together. Yeah. So I was like, that's a cool synchronicity right there. Yeah. Isn't that wild? It's crazy. Yeah. So when you said her, I was like, oh, what of all the actors? All the people. Yeah, it's cool. Very cool. So that was something you put in there. You met her. Now you guys are connected. And she said, if you ever want to do acting, let me know.

25:05I'm happy to help. But I think the biggest thing for me is I forgot I'd written that in my journal. So when I look back, I mean, even though I believe in this, it takes my breath away every time. That's powerful. You mentioned a meditation. You'll do meditations or you'll think about the person and the memories of the person that you want to receive a sign from. Is there a meditation or a process that people can do? Maybe it only takes a few seconds or a few moments that you can guide us with. yeah there are a few and they're all in the book as well but I just want to preface that by saying part of my journey has been cultivating the art of noticing and I learned that by noticing beauty so that's part of neuroaesthetics which is this field of research I've written about about the arts and beauty so nature for me is the easiest place to do this it'll be like you know the spring blossoms the flowers in LA the autumn leaves on the east coast whatever and I realized that the neuroplasticity set in really quickly because you know i take on a neuroplasticity challenge every year it's normally quite hard and takes a while but with this very quickly i noticed that like 10 plus times a day i'd be saying oh isn't that so pretty and i thought okay my brain's definitely like you know looking for these yeah yeah and finding them so that helps you obviously then to notice signs because your whole saliency network of your brain is just like the filter is less harsh.

26:28And I've written about saliency and habituation in the book too. So I did a few, chose a few meditations to do with our senses. And I'd like to share one now that is to do with the sense of sound and hearing. Okay. So if you'd like to join in the meditation, if you just close your eyes and sit with no arms or legs crossed. and we'll just start with a little bit of breath work just to get you into the zone. So just start by noticing your breath. Don't try to change anything but as soon as you turn your attention to your breath it usually does change. So just notice if the in breath and the out breath are of equal length or if one is longer than the other.

27:18And then I'm just going to count you through breathing in for four and breathing out for four. So inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. And just repeat that for a few cycles in your

27:41mind and then try to focus on making the out breath two counts longer than the in breath so breathe in two three four and breathe out two three four five six and again repeat that for a few cycles it just helps you to let go and now Now I'd like you to take your attention away from your breath and just turn it inwards. And focus on the sound that you can hear that is closest to you.

28:23And now focus on the sound that seems furthest away from you.

28:32try to move your attention away from the closest sound towards the furthest sound

28:43and now turn your attention to the sound that you can hear that is the loudest

28:56and then Then use your senses to locate the sound that is the quietest that you can hear.