The #1 Thing Impacting Your Sleep More Than You Know & How To Overcome It

29:50I'm just going to think of it as something that's far away, and I won't actually let myself get absorbed into it. That's the second step. Now here comes your meditation step. We know that the brain has very limited attentional capacities at any given time. I can only attend to so many things in the room. I don't have infinite attention. It's the frontal and parietal regions of the brain, the front and this part that's involved in attentional capacities. Have you seen that YouTube clip of the, you know, there's somebody playing with a ball and then there's a clown going, moonwalking. and then you don't notice it because you're so focused on counting the ball.

30:34So attention is very limited, right? It's what magicians do very well. It's light of hand, it's perception, it's grabbing attention here and something else happening there. Absolutely. So I wanted to incorporate that by hijacking your attention to something positive. So it goes something like this. You focus all your attention on something extremely positive like God, your mom's face, your niece's face, whatever brings you a joyful memory, you bring it to light, you bring it to mind, and you think about it in an intensely focused manner. So it's a kind of a focused attention meditation. Now the powerful thing about this is that not only are you redirecting your attention away from thinking about monsters and all the memory parts of the brain, all the grandmothers talk about monsters hijacking the experience you are sort of shifting the focus of the emotional core of the brain to something positive and we actually know that there are circuits in the brain from the emotional part that goes to the visual part and they can tell you what to see in the world literally meaning that if i have a fearful mindset if I have fear centers in my brain bubbling away it can affect what I see in the world versus having a very if you're very calm soothed in a very relaxed positive mindset it can also affect your world and worldview and so in that way I'm trying to also bias the visual parts of the brain so you have that as well so you focus on something extremely positive and then a fourth step will be to then what's called a muscle relaxations.

32:26You don't try to move or try to act out the paralysis sensations. You kind of stay in a mindful, non-judgmental thought, you know, mindset about that. You don't really do anything. You don't try to move or try to become agitated. Oh, I'm going to scream and I'm trying to try to do that. You know, I'm just going to stay mindful and just let it slide kind of. You do these four steps during the sleep paralysis experience. And as you say, we were very fortunate to see a 50 % reduction in sleep paralysis. Now this was a small pilot study. We always have to start small and then build up, but it was very promising.

33:03That's great. So the four different things is mental shifting or mental restructuring, just a kind of like rewriting the story, what I'm here to say. If you've experienced this in the past a few times. How can you rewrite the story, reshift, restructure mentally what has happened to create more meaning from it and less fear from it? The second one, creating emotional and psychological distancing, which I think is really powerful. It's almost like compartmentalizing in a way, but allowing yourself to not be attached mentally or emotionally to the experiences. Third thing, focusing your attention on joyful memory, positive moments.

33:39So instead of focusing on the fear of it happening again. What if this happens again? Put your attention on your mother's face, a joyful moment with your family, a loved one. And the fourth one is like not being clenched in your body, but saying, how can I fully relax and rest and be peaceful? Body muscle relaxation. And it's something that happened to me when I had sleep paralysis, maybe for the fourth or fifth time, instead of living in fear around it, I decided to fully relax when it happens. Yeah. Supposed to like screaming with nothing coming out. Yeah. I just said, okay, this is happening.

34:15It's scary. Let me relax. And I was almost able to come out of it quicker and not live in the fear of it. Yeah. And I haven't had that experience since I did that the last time, maybe a few years ago. Yeah. I haven't felt sleep paralysis since then. How many times have you had it? Maybe five or six maybe that I can remember. Maybe a handful, not like 40 or 50 times, but like a handful of times. Maybe it was a little more, a little less, but probably five or six times. And the last time I remember not trying to scream or move to wake up, I was just like, I'm going to relax and almost enjoy the moment.

34:54Like ride the wave. And by riding the wave, I started to be able to move my hands and I kind of just gently woke up eventually. Right. Knowing that I've always woken up, I'm not going to stay stuck like this. So it's almost like I trained my prefrontal cortex captain to say, let things come back on slowly, then you can take back control when it does, as opposed to overriding something that is, you know, creating paralysis in you. That's a great point. And it kind of makes me think of, so the reason why I came up with the fourth step of not trying to move, it's kind of, It has to do with the fact that when you are in a sleep paralysis and experiencing this, your motor parts of the brain, there's a strip of tissue here in the brain that's involved in movement.

35:47Normally when I'm awake, I move my hand from A to B in space. I send commands from the movement parts of the brain, the motor cortex, down to the brain stem, spinal cord, and I move. now during sleep paralysis this is you send many commands to move baland move but it's not working but it's not working because you're paralyzed you're saying you have a simultaneous signal saying don't move and that's that's that's overriding that movement signal right it's interesting it's very interesting so you're saying move baland move but there's no but you can't move now at the same time when i'm normally when i'm awake and i move and i move my hands around I want to make sure I get this right You have what's called a proprioceptive feedback meaning as simply there's feedback coming back from the skin joined muscles Telling your brain how to build a sense of a ballon how to build a sense of a Lewis that comes about from act Believe it or not in the skin and muscles Sending feedback back to the brain and to that parietal that multimedia studio to I told you about before it's telling you oh create a sense of the land based on the information coming back right now that part of the brain obviously is not it's not it's not getting feedback because you are not moving you are you aren't moving you can't move so you're paralyzed so there's no way to create a sense of a self in other words you're sending commands to move but there's no feedback coming back from the a moving body because you're paralyzed.

37:23In other words, there's a gap there. And that gap, the brain is trying to fill in with hallucinatory movement. And I always want to make sure this is clear, because when I tell this during lectures, people sometimes, you know, can, what are you talking about, Balanda? I want to be sure. The brain hates any incongruencies, any gaps in information. and whenever there is a gap, whenever there's any incongruency there, it will fill in the blank, sort of like Google auto correction. It will sort of, when you put the first words of like SO, it will finish soccer, for example. The brain does the same thing.

38:02If it has a gap, a lack of information, there's a lack of information, it will fill in the blank. And so that's why we believe that you might see your legs fly up and down and you see your limbs shifted in space. And I want to avoid all that. And that's why I tell people, don't try to move. Because you don't want to have all these mismatching signals in your brain trying to create the story for you.

38:30It's so fascinating. Because as someone who loves to study these ideas, more so not as a researcher or scientist, but as a human being who's trying to live my best life and trying to lead my life as an example for the people around me to live better, hopefully, and live more harmonious and fulfill their dreams and have beautiful relationships and have a healthy lifestyle. wow, that's what I'm coming from. And as an athlete who's always looking for the edge and thinking of how can I train my mind and body to perform in the hardest of conditions, in the highest pressure moments, how can I make sure that my mind and my emotions don't get the best of me and I'm more calm instead of chaotic, all these different things.

39:21I'm always looking for the edge. And by no means am I perfect at it, but I'm always trying to improve. something you shared just now really is interesting for me where you said the brain hates incongruencies and there is this there's a world that so many people live in where they build a self-image of self you've been talking about self-image a Milan a Lewis an identity where the image and identity that people build most people is so limiting around what how they think what they believe and how they feel. And the stories that they tell themselves are the stories they believe that others tell themselves about themselves.

40:06And when we are, when you said the brain hates incongruencies, I believe we're all created to do something beautiful. We're all meant to live in alignment of self. But when we as human beings say, create a limiting self image, and say, I am stupid. I am ugly. I am not smart. I'm not good enough. I'm not talented. When we build a self-identity and self-image, mentally implanting these ideas in our being, it limits us. And the brain is incongruent with that. Somehow we're believing, we're trying to believe it, but I believe we're all built to be more beautiful and more empowering and reach a higher self-identity rather than a limited identity.

41:00So I'm curious as a neuroscientist, how can we start to train our self-image and self-identity to be more empowering and reach a higher version of ourselves versus a limited identity and limited self that is out of congruency with ourselves, which keeps us small? How can we start to build this? This is a big question, but I'm fascinated based on your research, what you've come up with or what you've seen. It's a great question. And I want to answer this. I'm trying to answer this in a fashion where I... So I'll talk a little bit about myself. So I came... I'm Kurdish, I told you. I'm originally Kurdish from Iraq, grew up in Copenhagen.

41:48And And my parents were actually refugees. They escaped the war in Iraq. And my mom, terrible traumas. You know, she would, her grandfather died in front of her, had a heart attack. And it was horrible. The body, so the way it happened was one day my granddad just came out. And they had like small rooms. They didn't have a lot of rooms. So it's just like one big room. In Iraq. In Iraq. He just came one day, he just came out and said, look, called my mom, said, look, go call your mommy. Go call mommy. And mommy would come in and he said, forgive me for anything I might have done in my life. I think I'm checking out, you know.

42:35And so right on the spot, he died from a heart attack. Wow. And my mom, 11 years old, loved her, loved her dad. Like her dad was the best. Okay. her brother, her older brother rushed into the room saw her, saw his dad lying dead they had a tumultuous relationship so he was shocked and traumatized by that so he took a glass and smashed it into his head in utter shock now blood was gushing from his head, my 11 year old mother was watching that looking at my mom that was shocked too and and my my grandfather was just lying there dead dead now at this point in iraq it was like you know during covet there was like quarantine they couldn't go out because of all the wars or often they would tell him the people don't go out until four or five four or five a.m next day so the body was just there oh man so they couldn't take him anywhere so my mom was witness to this as an 11 year old as an 11 year old growing up without and And then brought without a father in Iraq, seeing her father die like this.

43:49My father had a similar story. His dad also died when he was very, very young. He had to do hard labor, very, very hard, traumatizing background. Now both of them came to, escaped to Copenhagen. First went to Bulgaria. I was born in Bulgaria. Did they meet in Bulgaria or meet in Iraq? They met in Iraq. And then they escaped together? They escaped together. Actually, my dad was called into, you know Saddam Hussein in all the wars and all that? Saddam's army was calling my dad to go fight for him. Wow. He wouldn't, he said, I'm not going to do that. And so he escaped. Actually, it was good he didn't do that because that group of people that, you know, they were supposed to go and fight, they all died from an attack, from an air attack.

44:36And they all died on a bridge. So he was supposed to be among that group. Came to Bulgaria. I was born, came to Copenhagen, obviously we had to start all over in a ghetto-like area. That's where I grew up in a very tough, hard neighborhood. Refugee camp initially, then seeing the worst things. My best friend was shot at, stabbed 13 times. My neighbor was shot in the head, all these kind of things. Now I do research at Harvard and lecture, but I came from the worst of worst. I literally came from the worst. Now, I think that, so obviously you can overcome that, and a lot of people do, so I'm not the only one.

45:19It's not like I'm special, but we do have, and now I'm going to sort of weave into science here, we do have something called epigenetics. And that's if you had trauma or your parents even had trauma, that can affect you down the line. In your genetics. In your genetics, so let me give you an example. In your nervous system. In your nervous system. So for example, there was these ladies who witnessed, they were pregnant, and they witnessed 9-11. Obviously, some of them developed PTSD trauma from witnessing and seeing the attack. Horrible. You passed that down to your children. You passed that down to your children.

45:55So the children that were born and obviously didn't witness the 9-11, they had cortisol changes similar to their mother signaling trauma from the experience, right? You had cortisol systems damaged and out of balance. One example. Another example, you may know this experiment too. Rats that are exposed to a certain smell, for example, and then you give them an electric shock, their kids, their babies, will fear that smell even though they haven't had that electric shock. Interesting. So we know that. They smell it, they're just going to be... They're going to be agitated and reactive. And it turns out even their children...

46:41Wow, that's kind of interesting because you pass that through your epigenetics. Epigenics. So inside the gene, there are certain methyl groups and atoms that sits on genes and turns genes on and off. And so depending on our trauma or our parents and our grandparents' trauma, that can be passed on. And so you have all this, right? Beyond this, the brain of a child, right, is the synapses in a baby's brain. There's about 50 % more synapses. Synapses are simply the connections between neurons. You want to have a lot of these synapses, and then you want to be able to shape your brain as well as possible.

47:18So a baby's brain is extremely plastic. It can change in various ways. And if you have a lot of trauma in your childhood, if you are raised in a poor neighborhood and you have like, you know, that can affect how the brain of a child then develops. Limiting your potential, you know, as having a less, you know, less effective brain growing up. Now, I was lucky my mom and dad were very warm. they took good care of me so even though it's like kind of a buffer so even though i was in that refugee camp my mom was always hugging me playing with me i was very loving parents so it kind of you still have the the trauma in your epigenetics yeah it's kind of a mix right from the whole trauma from their experiences kind of like sleep paralysis you know the captain trying to like control but you had the other guy the trauma paralysis you're like ah i feel loved but It was a mix of that, right?

48:12Interesting. Yeah, so I had that. But there was the epigenetics, but because of the love, and you know this from rats, by the way, rats who lick their babies more, they will be more resilient towards stress later in life. Interesting. So by having those... Having more love and affection. Love and affection, caring for the child and all that. Wow. I was liking that way. The brain is extremely malleable and plastic. It can change shape based on these epigenetic commands. And so... It's almost like everyone has experienced some type of epigenetic trauma through their parents. Oh, yeah. You know, we all have been passed down some type of genetic trauma through generational.

49:00Right, right. Like no one had three generations of perfect parents that were like healed and calm and relaxed and loving. There was trauma somewhere that's been passed down through generations. And it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility to start to notice it and create awareness and say, how can I be the one to break the generational trauma? If we choose to live a better life, if we want that, it's not our fault, but it is our responsibility. It's our responsibility. And it's hard work. It's hard work. Exactly. It's hard work. And so, and it brings me really to what my research in recent years has been focused on, which is neuroplasticity and the fact that the brain can change.

49:41The brain is extremely malleable. You know, that we thought like 20 years ago, we thought, well, you're born with a certain brain and that's it. It can change maybe in childhood. So we know that, you know, the baby's brain is more, is more, is more malleable, is more plastic, meaning it can change shape more. You can grow more synaptic connections. But we now know that until you die, the brain can change. If you had a stroke and your left's complete, you know, so the brain, everything on the left side commands the right, and everything on the right commands the left side, for example. So if you have a stroke to the left hemisphere, your entire side can be paralyzed.

50:20But we know now with extreme training and rehabilitation, you can actually do a lot of progress, much more than we thought was even possible a few years ago. Point of all this, knowing the principles that can make your brain change is vital. Knowing what's involved, it can help you reach your potential. So, for example, there's a chemical in the brain called acetylcholine. acetylcholine. It's sort of the attention neurochemical. It comes about in a part of the brain called the Lucas... I forgot the name, escaped me right now. It's in sort of in the middle part of the brain. It produces these neurons that create this acetylcholine, and and it's attentional.

51:15So whenever you focus on anything, acetylcholine turns on. And you need that for neuroplasticity. By the way, if you just go around in Hollywood and greet people and just, you know, you won't have a lot of neuroplasticity. Why? Because you need acetylcholine. You need to be hyper-focused in order to have neuroplasticity. So this is a key factor, by the way. That's why whenever you break a routine, whenever you do something novel, whenever you sort of, for example, me coming to this area right here where you are it's kind of i haven't really been here before it's novel so i have actually a lot of neuroplasticity my brain is changing a lot and it's becoming more malleable because everything is novel i'm paying attention to figure out where am i going i don't know the directions and this exactly and it came about because the brain says look i whenever i encounter novel thing novel things i better write it down because it's important for my survival that's why you have a lot of neuroplasticity when you travel because your brain needs to know the new roots and everything.

52:14So attention is important for neuroplasticity. So if you want to have a more plastic brain, a more malleable brain, do new things, challenge yourself by doing novel things, and that will trigger the nucleus basalis. That's the part of the brain damage, nucleus basalis system. And then you will have a lot of plasticity. So that's a key factor. Okay. This is a side note. You don't have kids, right? No. From all the research you've done as a neuroscientist, studying the brain, dreams, neuroplasticity, if you could give parents three pieces of advice when they have kids, from the moment they come out of the womb for the first few years, what are three things you would say, whether it be from a neuroscience standpoint or just a practical personal standpoint that if parents did these three things they would give their kids a much better chance at a better life later on deep question i would say first of all give them affection hugging caring taking sort of being physical with with children we know that when you touch just by merely touching you have a lot of things like oxytocin and a lot of and a lot of these neuro endorphins we call them and and neuropeptides are involved in neuroplasticity as well it's very very good to have a lot of that so being affectionate around your children hugging them kissing them it's very important a baby's brain we said has about 50 more synapses but what happens though in a baby's brain is there's something I'll call a pruning process, meaning that the brain of a child is hyper-connected.

54:09So everything is almost connected. Everything's flirting with everything. There's connections everywhere. And so as time passes, there's a gene that says, look, we don't need all these connections. I'm only going to take what the brain is actually using. So it's kind of a use it or lose it brain. So whatever I'm not using, whatever skill I'm not using, it will just shave it away. So you want to definitely optimize for using the brain in various ways. So you kind of don't just shave off all the good connections. So stimulate, stimulate, stimulate. This is what you want to do. So stimulating a baby's brain, hyper-connected in this way.

54:52So you want to stimulate them. affection we said i'm assuming not stimulate through like screens and ipads and cell phones but no other ways right in other words that's like that's a great that's you can stimulate with an ipad all day long that's the wrong kind of stimulation exactly that can lead to addiction and too much dopamine in the brain and too much of uh addictive circle cycles you don't want that so what type of stimulation should babies be having intellectual it could be emotional stimulation It could be teaching them how to interact with other people. So, for example, nowadays people are becoming less good at human interaction.

55:29We're becoming like robots. You know, we don't know how to read facial expressions, emotional cues. So we actually have neurons in the brain called mirror neurons, or some people call them perceptual action neurons. They're involved in, you know, what is Lewis thinking of right now? What is his agenda? What is he up to? I can sort of do mind reading. These are the medial part of the prefrontal lobe. And these neurons can be titillated and activated and the circuits can become strengthened by us engaging with other people and learning. Like during the COVID era, I'm pretty isolated generally as a scientist.

56:10I don't do enough social interactions, but especially during COVID. When I came out of COVID, I couldn't interact with people. I was just like, how do I do it? How do I, you know, I was just completely handicapped. Like a Sheldon from Big Bang Theory kind of scenario. You can train these circuits and the more you use them, the better you become. Gotcha. Okay. Stimulate? Yeah. So you stimulate in that way. What would be the third thing? Physical, I would say physical exercise. So we know that when you do physical exercise, when you go out and do sports, when especially cardiovascular type exercise.

56:49Obviously, you don't want to take your kid to the gym and start lifting weight, but we know generally cardiovascular exercise is the type of exercise that can lead to the growth of certain proteins called neurotrophic factors, like BDNF, GDNF, just fancy names for fertilizers in the brain that will cause the brain to create more synapses. So generally, not only for kids, but for all of us doing more of play and exercise, running for kids. Take your kid to the playground and let them run around. They obviously do this a lot if you just allow them to instead of sitting on the iPad. I would definitely encourage that.

57:33Teach them things. Take them to the zoo and let them Show them different animals What is this animal? Stimulate their brains intellectually Make them curious and passionate too It's not only the brain It is the brain but it's also thinking about How can I make How can I convey passion to my kid? So for me The way I became passionate about the brain Was the fact that I had mentors They were extremely passionate about the brain And fascinated about the brain And so that fascination and passion, you know, was passed down to me. So you do that with your kids. You know, you show them interesting things, take them to the museums and take them to the zoo and all these kind of things.

58:17Yeah, yeah. Can be a passion. I like that. Can be a passion, yeah.

58:24A lot of people are curious about this idea of lucid dreaming. Can you explain what lucid dreaming is? Yep. What causes it? And it is something we can control. Very interesting. So lucid dreaming is the state where, so you have, and I just want to maybe take you to this because there's a whole line of, so when you start, when you initially sleep, you enter sleep, you are in stages one and two. And during this stage of sleep, the brain waves are sort of slow and big, and your things are very just kind of coordinated, and you have these big waves. You enter REM sleep, you have these wakefulness waves.

59:14It's called better waves. Go like this. They have these quick waves. And this is characterized, this is the same kind of waves you have when you're wakeful. So it's kind of the wakefulness waves as well. So the brain, when you are in REM sleep and you're having dreams, the brain looks very much like a person who's wakeful. In fact, if I was to eavesdrop on the activity of neurons during somebody who's in REM sleep and somebody who's awake, the brain would look indistinguishable. Their brains look very much alike. Now, during REM sleep, you have vivid and lifelike dreams, as we said. But occasionally, what can happen during dreams is that the CEO, your captain of the ship, can become prematurely activated inside the dream.

1:00:02In a lucid dream. Inside the lucid, inside the dream. And that makes it become lucid, you see? Now, if you're not fully awakened from that, this is, I want to say, so the difference between sleep paralysis is that it's become so much awake that it kind of wakes you up. That's when it becomes sleep paralysis, which is another borderland state between wakefulness and dream. And wakefulness and REM. During lucid dreaming, you simply have this CEO becoming partially awake. But you're still asleep. But you're still asleep. So that's when you are... It's like the opposite almost of paralysis. Almost right.

1:00:42Almost opposite, exactly. Interesting. Now, so when you have this, the CEO of the brain, because it's active during the REM and the dream world, that's when you start becoming aware of yourself. But you're still asleep, but you're aware that you're asleep. This is important because, Lewis, when you are dreaming in REM sleep, this is this part of the brain. It's called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a mouthful. These are the regions out here on the sides of the captain and the CEO. This part of the brain is involved in things like knowing that I'm aware of myself, a sense of a logic, a sense of a serial thinking, of a sense of a me, Balan, being in the studio.

1:01:27There's a wall. There's all these things. Those are activated when you're awake, right? Those are activated when I'm awake. They're turned down. When you're asleep. When I'm dreaming. But then they become partially active. For some reason, that's when you have lucid dreaming. Interesting. That's when you have lucid dreaming. And we actually know the more it activates, the more this part of the brain... Wake up. if absolutely if it's it's fully activated you start waking up but the more it activates even without waking you up the more lucid you become so and so some lucid dreams you merely are aware of yourself dreaming this is the sort of not the highest level yeah but then you have certain lucid dreams where you can fully control the scenarios those are the crazy ones where you i'm flying around and i can tell myself where to go exactly these are the the most extreme examples But that's when the prefrontal cortex is very activated.

1:02:22And so that's what lucid dreams are about. So about 50 % of people will have had one of these experiences. You become aware of your surroundings. Typically, it can emerge if you see some crazy person that you think, oh my God, Shakespeare is in my dream. What is Shakespeare doing? I'm not supposed to meet Shakespeare right now. And then that can tilt you to become lucid. so those are the triggers of lucid dreaming um they're very vivid in the sense that they are more vivid than a normal your normal dream is already very vivid and lifelike and all that but this is even more crisp so you you have that as well people often engage in as you imagine erotic fantasies and sexual fantasies and flying is very common um so this is what lucid dreaming about?

1:03:11Do you have any lucid dreams? Maybe a few where I'm like more aware of it, but not something that happens frequently. Right. But something I am curious about also is my wife Martha has premonitory dreams. And I don't know if you've studied this at all, or if you're, have you ever had any? Oh yeah. But she'll have dreams where she'll tell me, like she has a dream book where she writes down her dreams. And some of them are just, I guess meaningless. Maybe there's some meaning to them, but they're just like, okay, this weird dream, I'm flying or this or whatever. But then she'll have a dream where she'll say, it doesn't happen often, but she goes, there was a different quality to the dream.

1:03:51And it's not lucid dreaming. And it's not just a normal dream. And it's not a nightmare. She calls it premonitory dreams. And whenever she has this, she wakes up, she writes it down. it is so vivid but it's almost this may sound weird but it's almost a signal to what's going to happen in the future and for whatever reason every dream she's showed me in the past that she's written down of this quality comes true and who knows if it's her mind that's influencing her to go manifest these things but some of them are predictions of what's happening in the world and it's almost like she's like there's a spiritual quality to it that's hard to express there's a a light being quality to it that she knows when it's happening and it's almost like a premonitory predictive dream yeah and i don't know if you've studied that or if that's a phenomenon or if there's science behind that but i'd love to hear your thoughts oh yeah is that lucid dreaming is that premonitory dream is that some spiritual intuitive connection.

1:04:59What is this? Exactly, exactly. So this is like... Have you heard of this? Oh, 100%. I hear it all the time. I hear it from students. When I lecture, I hear it from myself. I have these dreams myself. Like premonitory dreams. Premonitory dreams. Premonitions, yeah. So they're common all around the world. And they have been in cultures, have talked about this throughout history. So people in various places. I mean, prophecies and prophetic dreams and Joseph in the Bible, you know the story. And Ron, he saw his moon star and the moon was bowing and all that. And so this have been, people have reported this throughout history.

1:05:38Now, what are these? Is it the brain? Is it, what's going on? It's a spiritual connection. It's a spiritual connection. Now, I tackled this because this gets into some of the craziness where I need to be careful between science and spirituality. but I'm answering this in this way. I'll say that I personally have these as well, and I don't talk about it often. Do they come true? I feel like they come true. I feel like I have a dream of certain things that might happen, and they sometimes come true. Some scientists will say you're just biased. You selectively remember certain things from the dream and you think like you know that then comes true and all that but look for me subjectively it feels very real and who can deny you of your subjective experience people have had this all over the world people have this how can you deny them their subjective truth and this is what i always emphasize the fact that you can't deny you can't use science as a way of just you know denying people what seems subjectively real to them a real thing.

1:06:52I mean... There's medical miracles all the time. People are like, I can't explain how this cancer went away. Science can't prove this, but it happens, right? I'll say this. We have no scientific evidence, obviously, of being able to predict the future. It's full stop. It goes beyond the realm of science. Anything supernatural goes or spiritual goes out. But it doesn't mean it's not true. And in quantum physics, an atom can be in two places at the same time, I think, right? So it's like, how can it be in two different places at the same time and two different moments at the same time of time? So it's like, how are we able to do this?

1:07:32Look, I've been fortunate to work with and know some of the greatest dream researchers that we know, and they will tell you what's going on in the brain. I will tell you, this is my area of focus. And we know these parts of the brain turn on, these turn off. These neurochemicals are hyperactivated. These are not. But that doesn't mean that a spiritual world is not true and that you cannot have premonitions of the future. It's simply not. We just don't use it as we don't. It's not in the science books. It's not in my scientific articles or anything that I write or my books or anything. there's nothing about that kind of thing there but people still experience it and i experience it yeah and i and i believe it so what my scientific colleagues can believe whatever they want i you know as long as you're truthful to the science doesn't matter but but i'll tell you this i i do feel like i do feel these and i do believe in these things and and there's nothing i'll tell you there's nothing in science that can negate the fact that you can have these kinds of dreams But just don't count on them for winning the lottery.

1:08:43Sure, sure, sure. Now, do dreams have meaning? And can our environment and our external world influence the quality of our dreams? Oh, yeah. So, definitely. So, dreams do tend to have, they seem to have some meaning. And let me answer the meaning question second. can we have influences from the outside world? This is the, let's answer this first. So first of all, having a lucid dreaming, having a lucid dream, for example, or just having any dream with any person you want to meet in your dream, you can do a dream incubation, meaning you think about it during the day. So I've had that before. And you influence the dream of having that.

1:09:25That will influence. So exactly. So you go to bed. I once, I wanted to fly like Peter Pan. So I was like, I was a kid, you know, Balan fly, Balan be Peter Pan fly, Balan fly. And I ended up flying. At night. At night. So you can incubate, or I want to meet this person, or I want to become lucid. So you know we can do this. The more you put your attention on something during the day, the greater chances you're going to influence it at night. 100%. You're biasing the circuitry. So this is one point. Second, when you are inside the dream then, and you are, let's say, you are in a cold room, and you're dreaming, first of all, that you are, let's say, you were dreaming that, just a regular dream, first of all, it can be anything.

1:10:07You're walking about in Glendale, for example. You're walking about there. And then in Glendale, suddenly you feel like it's cold. Well, that could just be that the room in the place you're sleeping, the window is open and you're feeling cold. So things can spill over into the dream. Or if there's like a smoke from the neighbor's barbecuing, for example, that can also come into the experience and you feel like maybe there's a fire in Glendale Yeah, one of the hiosas is on fire. So we know this. This is a well-known phenomenon that things from the outside world can influence the actual dreaming state.

1:10:44So we know that. Then what's the meaning? How does the brain create meaning out of dreams? It's a very deep one because, first of all, you have some of the creative networks in the brain that has to do with creativity becoming hyperactivated. It's called a default mode network and whatnot, but it's just a creativity part of the brain they're also active when i'm daydreaming during the day it's kind of yeah things are very um spacey and all that we said noradrenaline of the part of the brain that's involved in focus attention shuts down during dreams so things are even more spacey and bizarre and exploratory so you have that yeah we said that during uh the dream state i'm coming to the punch line during the same dream state you have parts of the brain involved in a sense of balance.

1:11:34It's called the vestibular system. It's sort of habit on both sides of the brain next to the ears. It's involved in a sense of balance. That part of the brain also becomes hyperactive. And that's why you feel like at one moment you're here, then you're on a spaceship and things are just floating and crazy. That you have. Emotional part of the brain is 30 % more active. You know that. The CEO is down. so things are logical. You have that. Hippocampus, memory part of the brain is hyperactive so you remember all the craziness. Now this biases your brain, this state of all these centers being active and this being deactivated, it just puts your brain in a state to think in a certain way and that will influence the narrative.

1:12:22You cannot avoid having that influence. This is the actual theory about how dreams are based on the state of the brain and you'll have dreams in this way. So that's the meaning. The meaning is the brain is trying to make sense of all these centers being active at the same time, the memory part of the brain influencing things, the environment, your hormonal state from the last few weeks. All this will bias what you're dreaming and make you dream about certain things. But at the same time, it could still be, and this is where I'm going to do the spirituality again, And it could still be some spiritual influences as well.

1:13:01So you don't want to close that gate completely. But I'm saying there's a brain baseline state that makes you dream in a certain way and be more inclined to have certain visions and see certain things. But at the same time, there's so many other things that could be going on as well. So that's the sort of the meaning part of what dreaming is all about. you know the yeah wow and why do some people not remember their dreams where others remember everything it's a good question so one of the ways you can make yourself remember dreams more is by having a big glass of water so before you go to bed then i'm isn't that gonna make you wake up in the middle of the night because you have to pee now exactly maybe not right before but a little bit yeah yeah that's exactly the point when you're having a big glass of water you will have more fragmented sleep so your sleep will be more choppy and then you just wake up and you're more likely to have you remember your dreams more because you wake up during the REM stage of sleep and you have more chance of remembering your dream remember so so the way dreams work is that during the entire night during all the stages of sleep you dream during the REM stage and you have like four cycles of complete uh of where you go through different stages and where REM is sort of about a 25 of this time so the more you go in and out of REM the better chances you have you you're remembering your dreams overall now why certain people remember their dreams more i think so creative people tend to remember their dreams more perhaps they are active activating more of their creative networks during the day as well so they're just more in in in sync and in tune with their creative minds.

1:14:54So those I would say are, and so some people just don't remember their dreams. They may not be as, I want to say creative, they could just be - They're not activating as much. Those centers, exactly. Yeah, that's interesting. What is one thing you wish everyone knew about their brain, their brain health, to live a better life based on your neuroscience research?

1:15:26Okay, that's, I would say, avoiding stress. Stress and cortisol, obviously you need cortisol, cortisol is important, but too much cortisol can inhibit some of these growth fertilizing factors we call BDNF and GDNF, these things that the brain uses to grow new synapses and connections stress directly dampens that so having a lot of cortisol too much cortisol to the to the point that you can't sleep well that will directly make your breast brain less plastic yeah improving sleep understanding that sleep obviously is a phenomenon where you have all this these crazy dreams lucid dreams sleep paralysis but you also have deep sleep deep sleep is the stage before REM that's involved in things like memory storage generate sort of replenishing of the cardiovascular system the auto the immune system the blood blood pressure regulation glucose all this happened during deep sleep sleep the stage before REM skin rejuvenation hair you want to you know be pretty for a photo shoot or something you know you want to this is all in deep sleep so you don't want to neglect deep sleep and you don't want to neglect sleep overall so having that is is crucial meaning taking care of your sleep having good sleep routines good sleep habits sleeping at the same time each day and waking waking up at the same time is a good way to keep your circadian clock so in the brain and the hypothalamus part of the brain a little region that's involved in you have a biological clock they're involved in setting when you feel awake and when you feel asleep so having good sleep routine and habits reducing stress exercising regularly is crucial cardiovascular especially but also strength it's good for your brain social connections getting out away from those laptops and those ipads going out and meeting people connecting with your family your parents gratitude to your parents what they've done for you all their sacrifices loving them deeply that kind of gets all the endorphins and the oxytocin and vasopressin all the love hormones to make your brain and nervous system more healthier, optimized.

1:18:12Avoid loneliness. It kind of goes with the social interaction, but just loneliness is horrible, man. We didn't come about to be alone, and a lot of us think our AIs and all that are humans. They're not humans. Thank God and connect with people. Here's a question for you. how bad is social media use for people's brains? Obviously, there's some benefit for social media to get a message out and there's entertainment, but when it's overused, what is it doing to our brains and our brain health as a neuroscientist? It does a lot. I mean, first of all, all these Ferraris and all these mansions you're seeing, I mean, 90 % are not real.

1:19:01I mean, you shouldn't feel bad about yourself wherever you are in life. If you don't like life, people will portray a life for you that's not real. So a lot of anxiety and depression, people feel they're not enough. They don't feel complete. They feel like the sense of gratitude, which is important for just brain health and nervous system health and mental health, kind of goes out the window when you just kind of completely engage in this completely irrational social comparison with people that you just feel like everybody owns a Ferrari and you don't. And so therefore you are not good enough.

1:19:44Forget all that. There's so much more to life. Go out and touch the grass, get some fresh air, you know, And so that's a huge part of it. Second, I would say these social media platforms were intentionally designed to be very addictive, creating behavioral addictions, making you just crave likes and crave social attention. Nothing wrong with that. you know having you know using that for social connection but you can become addicted and just feel like that's the only thing you want to do and the addicted brain it's a it's a brain that it gets dopamine addiction basically in a nutshell is when you get dopamine from one source only and when you're not having that source the amygdala the fear part of the brain and the emotional part of the brain are screaming for more of that drug and then the more of that drug you have, the more you need in order to get fulfillment and get the addictive cravings off.

1:20:52And so I would say addiction is another part of it. So those are the main two things, the social comparison and the addictive aspects. It's not real. I mean, so much of it is not real. People are forgetting what life is all about. And I think that's the problem with social media. It can be dangerous. And some people You know there's actually a genetic component to addiction too. Some people are just more likely to become addicted to drugs. So actually knowing where you fall on that scale is great. Is there a test you can take to see how addictive you are? No, but I'll tell you this. So a study that was done by my mentors when I was at Cambridge, they did early studies when they would have people look at their genetics and then they would see who would become, and then measure their genetics and look at their lives 20, 30 years later or something.

1:21:48It was a very long, long study. They found that certain people were just more likely based on the genes to become drug addicts and addicted to stuff. Wow. So there's a genetic predisposition that has to do with part of the brain calls. I don't want all these names, but it's sort of nucleus accumbens and the dopamine parts of the brain. If you have certain receptors more than other receptors, you are genetically predisposed to become more addictive. Now, I can tell you this. Personally, I have that addictive personality. So if I use social media a little bit, I suddenly find myself clicking and clicking.

1:22:24All of it. Yeah, you're all in. I can't. So I know for my own self that I have to be careful. So I think it's, although you can do certain personality tests or see a shrink, you kind of know if you have that. Are you the guy that just takes a cookie and then you can't stop? I'm all in or I'm all out. That's why I try to be all out of the bad stuff and all in on the good stuff. That's me, right? That's me too. It's like my crutch is sugar, right? Exactly. And I can't just do once in a while. It's like once in a while becomes, all right, this is all day today. Now this is like a weekend. Now this is like a month.

1:23:01Right. And then I either need to be all out or I'm all in. Exactly. And that's just kind of how I learned to manage my life. Right, right. And maybe once in a while I can do it to kind of manage it, but it's really I have to put my attention on the healthy habit of eliminating certain things. Right. Or it's just hard to manage balance with certain things that are more addictive for me. Yeah. And I'm glad that I've never gotten into alcohol or drugs or smoking because I'm sure I would have more of an addictive personality with that. So I've just been zero for all of that. Never been drunk or high.

1:23:35And so for me, it's like, you know, just trying to know where I'm at and living in accordance to that. So it seems like you fall in that genetic disposition for sure. Probably. I mean, I've been doing this show for every week for 12 years. I have an addictive behavior to doing something good towards this. So I try to put my energy into the good things as opposed to the negative things.

1:24:00I've got a couple of final questions for you. This has been fascinating. I appreciate it. Of course. I'm curious, why did you decide to pursue the field of neuroscience? Was it because you were having sleep paralysis? Was it for some other reason? So I think for me, it was my sleep paralysis experience definitely triggered my quest for wanting to understand the brain and how we can certainly see ghosts in our bedrooms, what's going on. And that really took me on the journey to wanting to understand things and get out of my little bedroom there in the ghetto in the poverty-stricken neighborhood and go out there and study the brain and traveling to various countries.

1:24:45I went to Egypt initially and then came to the U.S. and went to England and all that. So my own sleep paralysis definitely affected me. But also wanting to give back. My parents were so good to me. They sacrificed so much for wanting me to have a good life. I saw my dad work in a pizza shop an entire life and have no college education, just kind of working away in the pizza shop. And I wanted to give back. I saw them and so I needed to work hard. And so that was what really pushed me. A sense of purpose, wanting to give my parents a good life, but at the same time being utterly fascinated about the brain.

1:25:26So those were the two things. That's cool. That's cool, man. You're doing good work, man. I want to acknowledge you, uh, belong for doing the research, sharing the research and trying to educate so many people on a complicated thing, which is the brain dreams, neuroscience. Like it's hard to understand these things, let alone understand day-to-day life. So I acknowledge you for going through the, you know, the challenges and the pain you've gone through to want to say, how do I find solutions to this pain to serve others? And you've been doing a great job with it. You also have a great, uh, course out on Peterson Academy, Jordan Peterson's online academy.

1:26:05And people can go to petersonacademy.com and check out Intro to Neuroscience. You've got a course there that teaches more about neuroscience, dreams, understanding this deeper. So if people want to go there, we'll have that linked up as well, petersonacademy.com. Go to the courses section. You can see Baland's course there. You're also on social media, Baland Jalal, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all these different places where you're sharing more content, where people can follow you there. How else can we support or follow you? Do you have a website as well? Yeah, I have a website, Belangelo.com.

1:26:41It's not very active on it. Social media is your spot. I would say so, yeah. Okay, cool. Awesome, man. Well, there's a lot of great content online that you're sharing. Thank you. I've got one final question before we wrap things up. You've shared a lot of great truths already and insights, and I'm going to be a dad here in the next few months. So that's why I was asking you about like, what should we be teaching our kids as a neuroscientist? But I'm curious, final question for you, what's your definition of greatness? Yeah, that's a deep one.

1:27:17I'd say definition of greatness is kind of what you're doing, right? It's showing up week after week, right? And that's why I have to acknowledge you as well. You come up week after week doing these great shows, and I've enjoyed watching your show over the years. I'm very insightful, and that's what greatness is about. It's excellence. It's putting in your heart and brain into all that you're doing and following your heart and passion, not being afraid of being who you are authentically, which you're a master at and not closing yourself off to the world and having an open heart. And so I think that's what greatness is about, being truly yourself.

1:28:07So I think that's greatness. Well, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it, man. Appreciate it, man. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward.

1:28:42I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

1:29:19And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.