NL: Hi everyone! My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today on the show, my special guest is a very good friend of mine and we are going to be talking about the brain and brain science and how we can take from our mind and create the reality or create matter, you know, current reality. It’s going to be really exciting. But before I introduce who my special guest is, I just want to remind you that when the show is over don’t forget to click the link below this video so that you can download the ebook version of my book “Never In Your Wildest Dreams” so you can read that at your leisure. So please let me introduce my special guest, Dawson Church. Hi Dawson, how are you?

DC: Hey Natalie, I’m doing great and good to see you as always.

NL: As always, my friend. Now, you have a new book out called “Mind To Matter” which we’ll talk about in a minute and you have been a guest on my show before, but for those people who may not have caught the previous show, can you give us a little bit of a background about what it is that you do and how you got to writing this particular book?

DC: Sure. Well, I do research. I also do charitable work, training people to use various tools to reduce their stress levels and shift both their psychological and biological reality. So I teach meditation, I teach EFT tapping, and for the last 15 years or so, I have had a program called the Veteran's Stress Project that treats veterans, free of charge, using these tools to help them with PTSD. And so my mission is to help train people, help them apply these things to really make a big impact on their health and well-being.

NL: Great! So, we were just talking before we started recording the show about how you had a previous, what was the name of the previous book?

DC: It was what is called "The Genie In Your Genes: Epigenetics" and the whole way that you are thinking, you are feeling, your experiences affect your gene expression.

NL: That’s right. And it was quite an encyclopedia of a book because it really did cover everything and epigenetics is a fairly new kind of science. So, what specifically is that science?

DC: Well, we used to think that it’s all in your genes. That our genes share everything from our height, to our eye color, to our hair color, all those characteristics of our bodies and also our minds and experience. We now realize though that only about 15% of your genes code for those fixed characteristics. The other 85% are engaged dynamically based on your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your experiences, and your environment. And so the “Genie In Your Genes” is all about the whole idea that as you change your thoughts, as you change your consciousness, you change your wellness, as you destress yourself, your stress level drops, all codes of genes are turned on or off and have a big effect on your body. That was the whole science behind that and is now becoming a huge factor in people’s awareness, not just psychologically, but medically as well.

NL: Yeah absolutely. So with “Mind To Matter”, what inspired you to write this book?

DC: Crazy thing. It was just a whim. I was doing a bunch of radio shows because my wife in the car plays all of these CDs by Abraham Hicks. And they say your thoughts create your reality. So I had to sit there in the car, which she was driving, CDs playing, thinking, that's a nice metaphysical idea that to a science researcher like me, there is no science behind that and I thought, or is there? So I thought, I know based on research that as our thoughts change, for example, the levels of cortisol in our bloodstream change. So I know, and through my research, that as we change, shift our thinking, shift our emotions, that it directly affects the levels of hormones like cortisol and DHEA, also neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. So I knew that was the case, but I have thought, is there actually a cause and effect relationship between the thought and thing and can I trace every single link in that chain from your thought to your thing, scientifically. So I sent a lot of quest to see if that was true. I interviewed a lot of scientists, I reviewed a lot of studies, and Natalie, I went from being a scoffer about all this to being a believer. I was amazed in what I found. I found studies showing that as our thoughts change our brainwaves change, our brain function changes and that changes the literal physical matter of our brains. And the book is full of histories as well of people who've applied thoughts to things in their lives and seen miraculous results (inaudible words)… show host, didn't believe in meditation, mindfulness tapping, all of that stuff, and he took an 8 week mindfulness course. And this researcher from Monash University measured the volume of each part of his brain before and after that 8 weeks. So in 8 weeks, they measured all kinds of characteristics of his body and his brain. And after the 8 week course, they found that the part of his brain that governs emotional regulation, the ability to actually regulate your feelings, had grown by 22.8%. And that's in 8 weeks. So our brains are rewiring themselves based on our thinking. Our hardware or our brain is reformatting itself based on the soft probe of minds all the time. That's just one of about hundred case stories in "Mind To Matter" that I share. They'll just absolutely astonish you by how much your brain, your mind, your thoughts, your consciousness is affecting your body and the whole world around you.

NL: Right. So you are just saying that he did an 8-week mindfulness course. So what does that look like? Like what does that look like and how does that change our brain function?

DC: Well, for example, things like road rage, things like annoyance with team members around you, annoyance with people in your life. Self radical thoughts you have about your own life, your own body, disappointments you've had, all these things are affecting you. And when we hook people up to EEGs or MRIs, we've seen that their brains tend to process information in certain ways. Now, when, day after day, you, for example, had been getting in to road rage on your commute from home to work each day, and now you practice these techniques and you’re calm. So subjectively, you had this experience that I had this better emotional time now when I'm in the car. So subjectively, you feel better and you've learned to calm yourself. But what you don't realize is that all kinds of neurotransmitters, the hormones are changing in your body. In my research, we show that your cortisol levels are dropping, your levels or immune factors is the one we measure called immunoglobulin, are rising. And as you destress your self, all of these relaxation responses kick in in your bodies. And after a while, those start to change your brain. Because we know from neuroplasticity, that if you pass a signal through a neural bundle over and over and over and over again, that neural bundle gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So if you're passing the signals of fear and annoyance, and irritation, and resentment, and guilt, and shame, and all those negative emotions, if you are using those neural pathways, then your brain starts to rewire itself. You become more and more and more like that. But if you become mindful, if you relax when that pros and cons that you are tracking, and when that team member says something annoying to you, and life doesn't work out the way you plan, you know how to breath, and tap, and relax and release all those negative emotions, eventually, those neural pathways start to shift and all of the neural pathways that govern the emotions like appreciation, like gratitude, like joy, like appreciation, and all of these things start to shift as your emotion shift, your brain starts to rewire itself, and after just 8 weeks, you'll start to have new neural intuition in your brain and then you become resilient. So when bad stuff happens, you are no longer being pulled in to it. You have the resilience, the ability to have that dominance of those good thoughts and those stress free experiences in your life. So your whole life starts to shift when you do those kinds of practices.

NL: Right. So this is fascinating because you know, I teach a lot of daily practices. In my words, I say, raising your vibrations. So putting you in that higher, that elevated emotion as long as possible. But what you are also saying is it’s not just that. It’s also cortisol levels and hormones and a whole bunch of physiological changes that are happening within our body at the same time.

DC: I'll give you one simple example. So those things happening at the same and they have effects of a time. So when you are practicing mindful, practicing tapping, practicing breathing, practicing centering, grounding, all of these things all the time, your body starts to shift. And I mentioned that this particular TV host that his part of his brain responsible for emotional regulation, it's called the dentate gyrus, grew 22.8% in 8 weeks. All those hormone shifts, these things start to drastically change the whole way your body works. You're much healthier and over time, the results are so much better. So one piece of research is, one of the many in the book, shows that optimists, people who are happy and optimistic and explain the world in hopeful perspective. Optimists live on average 8 years longer than pessimists. So if you're miserable and you have seen the world through dark glasses rather than rose-colored glasses, then that's taking a toll on your health. And you have 8 years left to play with your grandchildren, travel the world, serve in charity, and do all the things you might have otherwise done. So takes a big toll. That's just one study. If you don't know how to regulate your stress, if you are emotionally reactive, if you're angry, all those things wreak havoc with your body over the long term and you have a much less healthy life and a much shorter life. 

NL: Right. So I can imagine that you have a lot of case studies in the book. What is probably the most fascinating? A almost memorable story that you can share with us?

DC: Well, one of those have to do with money. And, (laughter), I laugh because this story is so outrageous. Everyone loves science that just giving you statistics and numbers and facts and figures isn't enough. Books had to have lots and lots of real-life stories from people. And they are stunning stories of how they manifested from mind to matter. The whole last half of the book is doing this outside of ourselves. The first half of the book is all about doing it in our bodies for our health. The whole last half is how we affect molecules and atoms and the material reality around us. Often over long distance. And these wild stories, one particular one is tricky though because we have a mutual friend, his name is Raymond Aaron, and he was the co-author of the book, "Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul". And Raymond teaches classes and we love classes, we love retreats. At the beginning, he asks people "What's your goal? What would you like to have manifest in the retreat in the next 7 days?" So, Raymond was teaching the workshop by telling a story in the book, and 1 guy stood up and said "In the next 7 days, I want to manifest a million dollars." Now, Ray didn't say anything, but inside he was thinking, give me a break. This guy wants to manifest a million dollars in 7 days. This guy had a stem cell company. He did stem cell research. And the book talks a lot about stem cells. And other fact that stem cells are really important in medicine. And this guy had been plugging away his stem cell company for years and years and years, he was pretty much broke. And having a million dollars in 7 days was just out of the question. And that was Ray's self talk. Raymond never said this to the guy but he just thought well that's an impossible goal. Then it got worse because the guy next to him, stood up and said "I also want a million dollars in the next 7 days". (laughter)… Now Raymond is saying "Oh No!". 2 impossible foolish dreamers! Anyway, the last day of the retreat, the stem cell guy stands up and says "I'm going to tell you, the guy next to me, his dad is an investment banker, and he made an introduction for me the next day with his dad. His dad got so excited by my stem cell company and my research, his dad agreed to raise $100 million in an IPO for my company." $100 million for my stem cell company. And that was his story. The guy next to him stood up and said, "Yeah and I did introduce this guy to my dad and he did raise a $100 million for him and I get a 1% finders fee." (laughter)..

NL: Boom!

DC: There are just wildly outrageous stories like that in the book. And they will just make your head spin. There are historical stories from a long time ago, there are modern-day stories from today, there are historical stories, there are medical stories, there are sports stories of people who did the impossible. So you begin to realize, our consciousness is powerful and as we fill our consciousness with positive ideas with inspiring thoughts as we tune in, as you say those elevated emotions, that things really start to shift in the world around us too.

NL: Yeah, now that is exciting. Well, I can't wait to get my hands on the copy of the book. And you and I both have done some work with our mutual friend, Dr. Joe Dispenza, which we've also witnessed a lot of how the power of our mind can actually change our physiology and change our reality and change an ill from our bodies. So you know, I think you and I have plenty of proof but I really highly recommend that if you are watching this show that you get your hands on Dawson's book. So where can we send them Dawson to be able to connect with you and to do that? 

DC: Go to the website, mindtomatter.club, it’s not dot com and not dot org, it’s dot club. Mindtomatter.club. And there you’ll get a whole bunch of bonuses in addition to getting your copy of the book from your favorite retailer.

NL: Wonderful, so guys, that’s mindtomatter.club is the website. And the banner link will be to the side. So you can click on that and go directly through to that. So Dawson, thank you again for being with us today and sharing this information and best of luck with everything.

DC: Natalie, thanks for inspiring me and millions of other people too. Thank you.

NL: Wonderful. So, guys, I encourage you to share this video. Please let's get the word out by using the Twitter and the Facebook share buttons on this page. Like I said, Dawson's link is to the side there and don't forget after the show's over click the link below the video so you can download my ebook version of Never In Your Wildest Dreams. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously, and love without limits. We'll see you soon.