NL: Hi everyone. My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. Today on the show, I've got two special guests with me, but before I introduce them to you, I just want to remind you that if you are watching this show live on Facebook or on our YouTube channel, make sure that when the show is over that you click the link below this video so you can take my 30-second quiz so we can figure out what is blocking you from success. But I honestly think that my guests today may shine some light on what may also be blocking you from success. So please help me welcome my guests today, Carol Kershaw and Bill Wade. How are you guys?

CK and BW:  Good, great.

BW: Thank you.

NL:  It's so great to have you here. I want to show the last time that your previous book came out which was Brain Change Therapy?

CK: Yes, that's right.

NL: So this time we have a new book that we're going to be discussing, which is The Worry-Free Mind: Train Your Brain, Calm the Stress Spin Cycle, and Discover a Happier, More Productive You. Now who doesn't want that? It's a great book. I was actually going through it. Very, very easy read actually when for such a like a heady brain subject. But before we get into talking about the book and some of the concepts in there, why don't we talk a little bit about yourselves, like what's your background? How did you get into doing this kind of work? For people that may not have seen the last show that we did.

CK: Sure. Well, I'm a licensed psychologist in Texas and have always been interested in consciousness work and have a lot of experience in bio feedback. We ran a neuro-feedback clinic for the last 20 years as well and we really found that people could make amazing changes with simple things like how they focus attention.

BW: I've got two licenses, one in counseling and one in marriage and family therapy. Also have strong training in zen, spent four years in a Buddhist temple and I've been married to Carol for a long time and we again had a psychotherapy practice as well as doing clinical hypnosis and EEG biofeedback, so we've been looking at consciousness and also brain studies for a long time as well.

NL: Right. So, so The Worry-Free Mind, so is this book specifically focused on stress? Or is it encompassing a little bit more than that?

CK: Yeah. So the concept is that if you learn how to change brain states which involve everything, it involves your emotions, your patterns of behavior, whether you see possibilities or not, then that's a focus of your attention. Then you can do almost anything when you learn how to change your physiology. You can do that with changing your breathing. We teach people how to warm up their hands, you relax your mind as you move into a calmer state of mind, amazing things are possible. So it's really a kind of way of living more than just dealing with stress, I think.

BW: Some of the actions or activities that we suggest are ways interrupting negative thinking or states - over arousal, under arousal - such as bilateral stimulation, taking a walk, some of them are longer term like meditation, deep dive, getting into very, very deep states of theta amplitude, and so we take both of those in terms of steps to create quick results and also long-term results that will help a person pretty inoculate themselves about, against worrying too much.

CK: Right.

NL: Right. So what you have in the book, what you download is so very practical for things that people can apply themselves, but it's not just for a quick fix, it's actually you know what you're doing is is asking people to implement this for like lifetime habits.

CK and BW: Yeah, yeah.

NL: Right.

CK: But they can begin with little things that they don't have to start thinking oh my gosh I have to do this forever, but once they start to see that they really work and work quickly, then people are willing to do them.

NL: Yeah and so we talked before about interrupting those negative thoughts, and I know for some of us we've had these negative thoughts for maybe 40 or 50 years, which are also what is attached to these thoughts, these negative mental images that we have in our mind. So what is a way that we can interrupt those?

CK: Well, we say look you have to work at running your worst Stephen King horror movies of the mind, you really do although it gets so easy because you've done it so long, you have to focus inside to make that work. If you focus your attention outside yourself, you can't keep the movie running.

NL: Right.

CK: And there are also other activities, for example one of our colleagues Les Fimian Princeton developed out of a very ancient meditation tool that Joe Dispenza uses in his workshops. If you focus on empty space, perhaps the imaginary space between your ears, it is impossible to worry. So we tell people to try this and they go wow I thought I had to spend years in therapy.

BW: They realize and experience that they can interrupt the thought by changing the  brain state and that's physiological feeling, it's a sense the one has that the word goes away then they're easier to convince to okay let's take the next step which is to do some things that will keep you from worrying more in the future.

NL: Right.

CK: The key is to interrupt the movie every time you start to see yourself or feel yourself going into it, stop, change your attention.

NL: Yeah.

BW: Yeah you're not getting paid for these horror movies.
 

NL: Exactly. We've been talking a little about brain states, so let's break that down a little bit it into what that actually means so we can understand how we can actually change that into something more positive.

CK: Yeah, so it's where you're focusing attention that's all it is. It's a matter of if you focus attention on your internal movie you keep it going and that is you're practicing, you don't mean to, but you're practicing the worst possible future. So the worst possible future I suppose is always a possibility, but then what's the difference between the possibility and the probability that it’s going to happen? The key is just interrupting it. That means take your mind away from it. See most people think if they worry, they're going to be in control of the future.

NL: Right.

BW: Brain states really correlate with what is your frequency. What's the dominant frequency that's going on. We have brain states. Delta which is very slow, talked about four cycles per second. Theta about seven cycles per second. Alpha by 11 cycles per second.  Beta is higher than that and then Gamma which is very high. And we produce all these frequencies all the time but with each brain state dominance, so Delta is related to sleep. Theta is very, very deep almost a REM state, very deep relaxation. Alpha, kind of a hypnagogic state. Concentration with Beta. A person who’s doing different things at those times and learning how to shift so that you actually learn to change your brain state by shifting the frequency, dominant frequency and that really relates to different feeling that you have.

NL: Right. Yeah, so I know you address in the book the difference between concern and worry. What is the difference between the two of those?

BW: Well, there are a lot of things to be concerned about: your health, economy, your kids, all those things deserve our attention. To be worried about them is to be stuck in a kind of a spin cycle so that you're not doing anything. You're over aroused. And we learn with musicians and athletes, if we get them back in the zone state, then they were able to - whatever the level of functioning was - they were able to get to peak performance. That's true for all of us. And so if we can have a person stop worrying, they can be concerned in a creative way or in a positive way and solutions tend to come much more easily.

NL: Right.

CK: And this is, sorry, really, really true also for entrepreneurs. We were just invited to go to Mexico and do a workshop for entrepreneurs using these principles and particularly for people in business you have many things to be concerned about. You can flip over into obsessing if you don't really manage your mental states.

NL: Yeah, I mean look at the US right now, with the change of government. There's been a lot of changes with it. With a lot of things that are happening in the company, sorry, in the country and some people are okay with it, some people are in a state of outrage and some people in a place of helplessness.

CK: Yes.

NL: So they think, what's going on here? So how does this kind of work kind of apply to those situations?

BW: Well again, we all have opinions about how the government should be run. Very few of us are going to find ourselves in the situation with the government doing exactly what we want 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days out of the year. Even people in the same political party don't always get along. If a person can be in the zone, if you will, then they're more open to finding creative solutions. Team with people who disagree with them so they can find areas of commonality, find areas that they can work together with, even though their major differences, and being able to do that whether you're in politics or you're a voter or there are things each of us can do in a creative way that can make some kind of a difference. The thing that doesn't help is to spend a lot of time watching the news over and over and over again or be on Facebook posting and tweeting all your rants that doesn't accomplish anything but keep you in the bubble that you're already in.

CK: Yeah, we like to say turn off your announcement on your phone. When it says breaking news it means the latest thing to be worried about. If you keep up with all that you know so taking a break from all that is really helpful.

NL: Yes.

BW: I think people do, they can do more creative things. You could join political parties, stuff envelopes, petition, all sorts of things most people don't do. I mean most people don’t even vote and then they find themselves worried about situation and they're stuck. So we want them out of worry and into concern, so that…here's our cat…

NL: (laughing)

NL: She’s gorgeous. As I was saying, when I talk to our community, it's like because people are feeling frustrated and helpless and alone don't get stuck there.

CK: Yes.

NL: It's okay to feel it, but it's like but then first of all, what you're reading may not be true.

CK and BW: Right.

NL: Well, if it's something that really upsets you, then try and find the truth and then find out what is a solution or some action you can take that’s actually going to help towards a solution.

CK: Exactly.

NL: Because we're talking about worry, talking about frustration and all these negative emotions, and so should we be avoiding them at all costs? Or is it important that we actually feel them?

CK: No, I think it's important to let yourself have the feeling. The key is don't sit there. And then beyond that, we've written the book in a progressive kind of way.  Once you've learned how to interrupt worry, you can learn also then how to use the flow state - being in the zone - to really keep yourself going out of the state of worry. So we were in Scotland this summer with our choir and we did this sort of fun thing called the…

BW: Bungee bounce.

CK: Bungee bounce where you're wrapped up in this vest and you're bouncing up and down springing up, the ropes are tied way high up and so it's kind of thrilling and we only did it for three minutes, and then we did this personal experiment, we tried to have a worry for two hours. It was impossible.

NL: So it sounds like some of the techniques and tools that you give people in the book like physical, mental, like a whole bunch of things so that they could really apply to anybody?

CK: That's right, yes

BW: Yes, we have case studies so they can look at the case study and see how it may apply to them and also this, for everybody not just academics or psychologists or mental health professionals or spiritualists like monks.

NL: Right.  So can you share one of the those case studies or someone that you worked with and some of the results that they got?

CK: Yeah, one of the things we found that’s so powerful, I had a woman that just, we've had, we dealt with lots of people with anxiety over the years, and some of it is trauma-based and so forth, and they totally forgot how to relax until they forgot what that even feels like. So what we had them do is tell their story and then we took them down to the deep state right above sleep and let the person hover there 10 or 20 minutes without speaking to them and if they really get fully relaxed, sometimes you have to teach people how to do this because they obviously can't do it very easily the first or the second time, but after a while, amazing things happen. This is so cool because when you get into that state, the brain releases a chemical named anandamide, which is a Sanskrit word for bliss and it's actually very close in chemical structure to marijuana. So you don't have to go to Colorado or California, I guess now or get it illegally. Your brain will produce it for you.

BW: And when people do that, we did this with EEG biofeedback first, because it gave people feedback in terms of hearing running water, crashing waves and so on and so forth, and after a while the brain mirrored and went into a theta state. We also found that what would happen after certain number of weeks of doing this is psychological issues changed. They began to look at things differently because they weren't worried in a consistent state, a hyper-arousal or rather being depressed,  then they were able to see things from a better vantage point one step beyond that and their understanding of what had happened from a psychological point changed without ever having to talk about it.  

CK: So personal awareness and intuition that our innate abilities really if we get the mind clear, just blossom and your life transforms when you get into states of mind like that.

NL: Yeah, I agree. So guys I can't recommend this book highly enough, The Worry-Free Mind. So if we have people that wanted to connect with you guys or they wanted to purchase a book where can we send them to do that?

CK: Well, they can get the book at Amazon and our website is drscarolandbill.com, without punctuation, drscarolandbill.com and if they'd like to get on our mailing list, we send out a monthly newsletter with little brain tips like we've been talking about and we do workshops around the country and sometimes out of the country as well. So we'll have all of that on our website if they're interested.

NL: Wonderful! So guys I encourage you to click on the banner around here that to make sure that you go through to the website, jump on Amazon, purchase the book because like I said, it's a very easy read and it's also very practical tips that we can do and when you're in that, in that zone stable in that flow state like everything becomes easier for you, like everything in life becomes easier and I know that I talk about it quite a lot with our community but I highly recommend that, that you seek out the book. So thank you Bill and Carol for joining me again today. It is great to see you again.

CK: Thanks.

NL: And guys don't forget that you can click on the link below this video if you're watching this on Facebook Live or in our YouTube channel so you can take the 30-second quiz to figure out what's blocking you from success. And if you're watching this on mindmovies com, don't forget to leave your email so we can send the Manifesting with the Masters video e-course for free. So until next time remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. Thanks guys, we'll see you soon.

BW: Thank you.