#1 This week I bring you Dawson Church, PhD, who in my eyes is a bit of a legend! His work is on the forefront of health and transformation and I highly encourage you check out this podcast and his work.
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About Dawson: He is an award-winning author whose best-selling book, The Genie in Your Genes, has been hailed by reviewers as a breakthrough in our understanding of the link between emotions and genetics.
He founded the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare to study and implement promising evidence-based psychological and medical techniques. His groundbreaking research has been published in prestigious scientific journals. He is the editor of Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, & Treatment, a peer-reviewed professional journal and a blogger for the Huffington Post.
He shares how to apply the breakthroughs of energy psychology to health and athletic performance through EFT Universe, one of the largest alternative medicine sites on the web.
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Links & Resources For Dawson Church:
www.dawsongift.com
www.eftuniverse.com
TRANSCRIPT
Guy: Welcome to the guylawrence podcast. I’m your host Guy Lawrence. After building a successful health company and a number one podcast, I decided to do something deemed a little crazy. I let it go. Set a new destination called the unknown and use. My heart as comfort each week I sit down with great minds as we explore topics beyond conventional health, wealth, and wisdom to inspire and ignite that passion that’s within us all to create the life we truly want. So my question to you is, are you ready to let it in?
Guy: Hey guys, and girls welcome to another episode and I’m your host of course, Guy, Guy Lawrence. And this is where we have conversations beyond conventional health, wealth, and wisdom to make ourselves a better person as we get through our day and each week. And boy, have I got a treat for you today? Uh, my special guest is Dawson church and I’ve been looking at his work for many years and he definitely slots in the realm with, um, you know, dr. Joe Dispenza, Bruce Lipton, Greg Braden, uh, even Tom Campbell’s and so forth. And, uh, if you’re not familiar with Dawson is an award winning author whose bestselling book the genie in your genes, which is a fantastic book, by the way, I highly recommend it, uh, which was hailed by reviewers as a breakthrough in our understanding of the link between emotions and genetics. And we get into a conversation more around EFT today, which is tap known, also known as tapping.
Guy: And I must’ admit, I’m very familiar with the term, but I didn’t know the work that well. So I kind of hit them from every angle and it’s just mind blowing what Dawson has to say around our emotions, how we hold them within the body, you know, and how we look at work from an energetic level and also a matter to matter level like the physical level and everything in between. And, and it was just fascinating and he speaks in articulate everything so well. Uh, so sit back, enjoy. You’re going to get a lot out of this. Well, I certainly did anyway. And of course, if you do enjoy it coming, now, let me know your thoughts back on. Instagram’s probably the best place to get me, which is guyhlawrence. Instagram story messaged me, whatever, let me know what you think of the show.
Guy: I’d love to hear from you as I, as I putting out these episodes. And the last thing I need to ask of you is to leave a review and subscribe hit the subscribe button as well for this podcast. If you’re enjoying the show, of course, please do so because it makes a great impact impact on our rankings. And I, it helps me just get the word out there as I want to get this message, a new podcast out to as many people as possible and just a little tip, open the podcast app, and then go to the search function on the bottom right hand side, then type in Guy Lawrence podcast, and then scroll, click on that, scroll down. And then that’s where you write the review. Um, so you have to go through the search engine to leave it anywhere. Let me know that you leave a review as well. I’d love to give you a shout out on the podcast for doing so anyway.
Guy: Let’s go over to Dawson Church, enjoy!.
Guy: Dawson! Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on
Dawson: Guy. It’s a great pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Guy: I’m very, very, very, very excited. Uh, I can’t tell you enough, man. I’ve been looking at your work for a while. So to have a conversation for the next 45 minutes, uh, is going to be fascinating. So I’m really intrigued to see where it all goes. Now, mate, just for our listeners, I just wanted to ask you if I was a complete stranger at a cocktail party asking you what you did for a living, what would you say?
Dawson: Well, I’ve always found that question a little bit baffling guy, because I do what I like and what interests me and I have tended to shape my activity is based on what I’m drawn to. And so there’s no really neat answer, I suppose, at fundamentally, I’m driven by a passion for seeing people heal. And I, it affects me. It moves me when I see people suffering from anxiety, from depression, from traumatic stress. I’ve done a lot of work with, uh, with people suffering from PTSD, whether they’re war, veterans, Australian war, veterans, US Vietnam war veterans, um, a lot of work with people in places in Africa, like Rwanda, genocide victims, um, and um, seeing people suffer and then what can I do to help them not suffer? And so I, I do various things. I, uh, write books, I conduct scientific studies. I teach workshops and classes. I give keynote speeches, but the common thread to all of it is that I so want to put techniques that prevents suffering in people’s heads so that unnecessary suffering is removed. And that’s the big overarching goal I think of my life.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful. And that’s clear to see from the outside looking in, I can say that was Dawson and, you know, the thing that fascinates me, fascinates me about all this work and, and you’ve mentioned that they’re, you know, unnecessary suffering just to, just to give you a little bit of my background. You know, I grew up in Wales, I played a lot of rugby. I was very good at drinking beer after the game. And you know, that was the kind of place I was in. And then I got into the fitness industry and was in that for 10 years. And it was all very much about sort of counting calories, weight, loss, training, um, car bloating, you name it, all these things. And that kind of fell into the health industry from the world I was in. So I’m in this fitness industry. And then I stopped podcasting and stopped putting, wanting to explore more because things weren’t lining up to what I was sort of told and conventionally had beliefs around. And then from their doors,
Guy: I interviewed dr. Joe Dispenza about three years ago and kind of opened up a new world to me. And I went exploring that and I’ve had the great pleasure that, which led me to your work, Bruce Lipton, Gregg, Braden, Lynne, McTaggart all these wonderful people that are doing wonderful things. And I was kind of gobsmacked that nobody was really talking about it in my world, if that makes sense. And I’m curious to know what led you into this work in the first place, or have you always kind of gravitated towards it and from there, how much do you think the industry has changed as well?
Dawson: Yeah, it’s been questioned. And one of the things, one of the divisions I see in a science and in society is between the materialists and the non materialists and people who, for example, approach, um, weight loss or fitness as an exercise in calorie, counting in exercise and repetitions in the external manipulation of matter are people who essentially are trying to work that end of the spectrum to produce results. Then you have the energy people. Now, the far end of that spectrum, there are people who are into pure consciousness and pure energy and the people who will go away and spend a lifetime meditating the Himalayas and be totally focused on their spiritual journey and completely neglectful of their material. Reality. What I think is happening in today’s Western world is a, um, an unprecedented, historically unprecedented combination of the two, uh, many of the techniques we use with people in Rwanda who lost their parents, the genocide there when we work with, uh, victims of domestic violence.
Dawson: And we work with veterans who saw and did terrible things in combat, um, when we work with all these traumatized people, what we, what we’re doing is we’re bringing techniques like meditation, like acupressure, um, energy techniques that used to be the reserve, the province of those people in the monastery, into the consulting room, into the battlefield and to these highly traumatized situations. And we’re finding they make a huge difference. So it used to be that you would either look at the material end of the equation and try and accomplish your results, my manipulating matter, or you look at the energy end of the equation and try and through metaphysical means, um, produce change. What I think is really shifting now is that there is so much, um, awareness on the part of people that you need to approach both these things. If you’re a wonderful Saint and meditating four hours a day, but you are eating a diet or fruit and you have huge amount of fructose and not enough protein and fat in your diet, you’re going to have health effects.
Dawson: Um, there’s just no way around it. If you are a person who is only approaching your body as though some machine anyone neglecting your emotional, spiritual wellbeing, you won’t be successful either. And so it’s important that we use and, um, and interact with all these dimensions of both on the energy level and the material level. And so what’s brought me to, this is techniques that, um, are combinations of these two and especially ones where we’re applying energy. Like for example, there is a lot of energy, psychology and EFT tapping in professional sports nowadays. So the national football league in America and the Olympics and the national baseball league, all these, all these athletes. So now using energy techniques to help them with, with performance that it’s affecting their material bodies. This, my, my newest research is all about how those energy techniques are affecting people at the level of hormone expression, enzyme, production, gene expression, what’s going on in the body of the people as they apply these tools to their daily lives.
Guy: Got it, got it. And with all these techniques you discovered, when did you first start looking at it? And then when did you realize that there’s a lot of weight behind it because you know, it was interesting those nos at the coffee shop this morning, I’m just doing a bit more research for the podcast. And I was chatting to a gentleman down there and I said, I’m really fascinated by the ft. And he kind of knew what it was. He goes, Oh, it’s not a tapping thing, isn’t it. And then it was kind of from that, it’s like, Oh, is that, does that work like that? You know, there was a disconnect. Um, so I’m intrigued to know what brought you to start looking on that. And then from there, what kind of results you’re starting to see and get from these things
Dawson: I hadn’t experienced when I was, uh, probably 24, 25 years old, and I was working on a construction site. And, um, there was, it was a big project framing, um, timbers. And there was accident on the construction site and, um, a framing nail went through the thumb of one of the workers. And so the thumb went in, the snail, went in through one side of the thumb, outside, out of the other side, right in the middle of the thumbnail, there was a lot of blood and it was very painful and so on. And we had an energy worker there and I watched the energy worker hold that person’s thumb. And I literally watched the wound heal up before my very eyes in under 20 minutes. Now that made a powerful impression on me. I saw people doing energy work in my twenties, and I saw migraines disappearing.
Dawson: I heard even accounts of serious diseases disappearing. So there were these anecdotal stories and there have been these for thousands of years. But, um, what I began to find was that when you study this phenomena, scientifically, when you look at, for example, levels of stress hormones, the body levels of brainwaves of the brain, and you start to apply scientific tests to these, that’s when the game becomes interesting, because you’re going to quantify how much bodies are changing in response to these, but these, those early experiences of seeing energy healing and seeing people healing and shifting often really serious conditions very, very quickly. We’re very powerful to me. A friend of mine is just recently was diagnosed with breast cancer and, um, she immediately set out on a healing journey. She, she phoned me, she phoned energy healer. She knew she had people do energy work on her. And within three months she went from this diagnosis of breast cancer to being cancer free. Um, and I’ve seen this happen with, with PR, with people, so many people over a long period of time. So, um, all of the experiences have, have shown me that it works and then looking into the science of it, uh, it’s remarkable how quickly it works, how pervasively works and how dramatic the effects are in our physical bodies.
Guy: Yeah, it’s amazing. It is amazing. And like, I’ve, I’ve actually experienced some of that energy firsthand at one of Joe’s workshops, you know, and that’s what made me start looking at this a lot more Dawson, but how it, like for the complete, I’m thinking of just the, of the listeners here that might not be familiar with energy work and there could be, um, that mechanical side of things, like I was from for many, many years, just looking at matter to matter if you like, um, how would you kind of quantify energy work in, in layman’s terms, I suppose. And then from there, like, what are the vehicles to help the toolkit if you like to help with energy work?
Dawson: Well, EFT tapping is the most, a prevalent form of energy psychology. And there are, uh, an estimated 20 million plus people doing tapping full of the world and tapping a simply tapping with your fingertips on acupuncture points. So these points have been known and measured for centuries. And with EFT, we use pressure tapping on those points and that’s what helps people release their stress. And so that’s a very common method of energy psychology. The acupuncture system though, is ancient. Um, it’s been known about by human beings and used for healing for these 5,000 years. So over 5,000 years ago, great healers knew that there were energy flows in the body and that they could shift those energy flows by inserting needles at various points. And so the, the, the body’s energy structure has been known for a long time and Joe Dispenza’s workshops, I’ve been to a number of them, and I’ve helped with research.
Dawson: They’re looking at stress hormones like cortisol, looking at immune markers, like immunoglobulin, looking at brain waves and how brain waves change. Our brain function changes when people meditate. And, um, we’re finding those are very substantial, but for the person who’s just new to this EFT, for example, it takes about a minute to do an EFT routine on a troubling memory, on a fear on a phobia. And we find that people often just one minute of applying accurate pressure to these points, suddenly their whole picture changes. Um, I had one guy at a workshop a couple of years ago, and the workshop was being held in a hotel chain in the U S called embassy suites. And most embassy suites hotel. They’re all built the same way. They’re usually 10, 15 stories high, and they’re built around a central courtyard and the courtyard, there are usually ponds with goldfish and beautiful ponds Palm trees.
Dawson: And then there are these glass elevators that take you up to the high floors. You walk around to your room and you looked out over the rail and you can see this, that these koi ponds and these Palm trees, these beautiful terraces down below. And so this particular man was the husband of a woman who was taking my workshop in EFT. And he had a lifetime fear of Heights. And he wasn’t good with looking down from a glass elevator, excuse me, from 10 stories high and seeing things blow. So he couldn’t do that. He would take the regular elevator, avoid walking anybody on the balcony. Um, she learned EFT in the workshop and after her first experience with EFT applying acupressure for those fears said to her, her husband, let’s give it a try. And it was absolutely hysterical, uh, through just trying EFT one time very was he just use it on his fear of Heights.
Dawson: There. He was leaning over the balcony, looking down at the COI saying, wow, what a beautiful view, traveling up and down in the gloss elevator, having no problem whatsoever. And so for people who have a lifetime of traumatic stress life on a phobias lifetime of panic attacks, it can be miraculous to just tap on a few acupuncture points and suddenly that whole picture changes. Now, I don’t want to paint a picture here, guy, that, that this is a panacea, or is that easy for everyone? It’s not, there are some people who that is that easy. Other people need external courses of treatment. If I’m working with, uh, a person who, um, has severe molestation as a child, I am not going to be able to sit there usually and tap with them for five minutes and have all those, those memories be neutralized. It may take five, 10 sessions of therapy, but we recently published guidelines with one of the large hospital chains in the U S and we found in those guidelines that five to 10 sessions, one hour sessions of EFT, usually isn’t even for people with PTSD.
Dawson: So EFT tapping is the most commonly used forum of energy psychology. There are many others, and they’re all part of a much bigger world called energy medicine. And again, all of these techniques use the energy body, energy flows, change those, uh, remove balance imbalances and blocks and the energy flows and suddenly people’s physical bodies improve a lot. That’s incredible though. Does that mean, then I’m just trying to break this down. Does that mean then that we actually hold emotional trauma within our body and then recreate an energy box if you like, we hold emotional trauma in our body to a remarkable degree. I remember talking to a psychotherapist many years ago, who is also a massage therapist. So I walked into her office for the first time. I knew she was a psychotherapist, but there in her office was a massage table. And I said, why am I walking into a psychotherapy office?
Dawson: I’m going to work with the mind. And there was a massage table there. And she said, because our traumas are stored in the body. And there’s a lot of work, a lot of evidence showing that there is a link between mind and body. And that a lot of what we think of as mine is in fact, the body, the great neuroscientists will Candace PERT wrote a body, but wrote a book called the body is the unconscious mind. And so a lot of our traumas meet store in the body, a bill Hallam Reich century ago, a contemporary of Sigmund. Freud’s talked about body armor, how people have had traumatic experiences carry those experiences as body armor. You hug some people guy, and they’re stiff. Their bodies are armor. Their trusts are rigid. Their bodies are frozen. And so after repeated traumatization, a lot of that trauma does come to, to, to subside, subside subsist in our bodies.
Dawson: And so by working with the body, you release that it’s interesting. I have over a hundred YouTube videos. And as you watch people, I work with people on video. You’ll see. And actually the talking about the car crash or the rape, or the talking about the, about the, uh, the beading or about the child abuse. And they’re telling this story in their faces, Richard, their body’s rigid 30 minutes later off they’ve tapped off. They released all of that traumatic stress. They’re moving their bodies of voices of fluid there. Their arms are moving around their heads and moving around. Their whole range of motion starts to change as all that old stuck energy gets released from the body. So these are not just mental problems, mental health problems. They are physical problems as well. And one of the biggest studies showing this was called the adverse childhood experiences study.
Dawson: And this big hospital chain looked at 17,000 adults and looked, especially people who’d had adverse childhood experiences whose parents had gotten divorced, whether it was a parent who was an addict or had mental health problems, suicide attempts, and so on. And they found that, okay, the more mental health problems the parents had, the more defect of the children as they grew up. And so 50 years later, these now grown children of those people that had been exposed, all those traumatic events in their childhood. These adults now had more heart disease or cancer or high blood pressure, more diabetes. You name it. If it was a disease, they had more of it sometimes much more all based on the degree of adverse childhood trauma, they were carrying around in themselves. So these are not problems of the mind they’re problems of the body to wow. Wow.
Dawson: Would it be safe to say then that our emotions on our relationship that we have with ourselves can influence our outcome of our health. They have a huge effect on health. And often when people release that emotional trauma, especially their childhood, their physical health shifts a lot as well. I have done a number of videos where I’ve interviewed people who had what they believe were purely physical problems. And one workshop I ask for volunteers, I said, okay, we’ve done work for the motions. Now I’m a volunteer who has a purely physical complaint as this old lady raised her hand. She was like in her, her eighties. And, uh, she said, well, you know, I, I had a rotator cuff surgery a few years back, and the doctors, uh, made one of my tendons. They sewed it up too short. And I have this pain in my biceps for the last six years ever since his rotator cuff surgery is a purely physical problem, no emotional components to it.
Dawson: So, um, I’ll volunteer. So this charming sweet lady sits up there and works with me on her problem with our biceps. Now, again, she can try, it began the day, right after the, after the operation, she could trace it to which cart lead it was in her biceps muscle. It had been there for six years. It was always a certain intensity. And we, we both thought it’s a good example of a purely physical issue, but as I’ve yet to work with her, it turned out there were emotional issues they had to do with their childhood. They had to do with her, with men in her life, had to do with her ex husband. And so we worked those emotional issues as we tapped and did acupressure and emotional release on all those emotional issues. Her pain simply went away. And I have many videos like that of people with purely physical pains.
Dawson: And they go away once we treat the underlying emotions. So even in the case where she thought there was no emotional component to it, I thought there was the emotional components with whole audience thought it was go above. We were wrong. And there almost always is. You know, just for example, you have some kind of sprain your ankle just to get, it seems like you’re going to mechanical thing. Well, maybe you have some self-talk like I was clumsy. Why didn’t I see that obstacle? I tripped over, um, maybe it won’t heal. Um, I may need surgery. What happens if it’s not just a spray deck? What happens if is a torn ligament in there? You know, these are all emotions. These are all fears and all of those are impediments to healing. So you tap away all of those where you sold those. And then the can do what it naturally does, which is heal our bodies, our natural healing machines.
Dawson: That’s what they do. And when their free will and emotional baggage, they can do what it is. They do best. Got it. In other words, we get in the way we do. Yeah. That sort of led me to a question that sparked as well. And so would it be fair to say that we don’t even know we are carrying emotional baggage and holding it energetically in the body full stop? Is that possible as well? We have, we are carrying often on unconsciously. And one of the intriguing things to me about people, about you, me, all of us human beings is we have our stories. We say, well, I am the way I am because I was born in this place. I had these experiences as a child, I have this kind of a body. I have this kind of a genetic predisposition, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dawson: We have this whole biography. And this worldview about the way beyond where the world is, where our bodies are, us life stories, our health histories, all of these stories and guy, when I work with people in live workshops, I haven’t tell those stories, but we haven’t do energy work at the same time they tap well, they meditate. And they talk about those issues when they do the tapping, suddenly the whole story starts to change. And we discover that so much of what we think is objective reality about our history, about our present situation, about our body image, about our future, about what we can do and what we can’t do. It’s just a myth. I worked with one young man. He was like, I don’t know, 19, 20 years old. And he lived with his parents. I was visiting them for dinner on a trip.
Dawson: And he was a competitive dancer. And in his dancing, he used to have to do this high kicks called a grand bottom line ballet [inaudible]. And so he would do these, these high kicks, but he, he, his leg, his upper thigh would always tense up when he did the high kick. So I thought, well, he has a good chance to see if this stuff works. So I had him go stand in the corner of the kitchen. I grabbed a magic marker. I put him a line route, his foot showing his foot was, and I had him do a series of grand bottom arm, kicks up against the wall. And I measured with my marker, how high he could kick. And every one of his kicks with it was within a very small range of about an edge. He could, you’d get to a certain height and not any further.
Dawson: And that was just what he knew he could do. We then worked on fears. He had a fear that if I, ah, if I kicked much further, I’ll hyperextend my thigh muscle, my thymus leads to Clint, Clint clenched down to protect me. So I don’t injure myself, all these ideas, all these beliefs, all of these pieces of inner self tool. We then had them go off. I’d work with them, go back to that same place, put his foot back. And that same Mark and do a series grand, Baltimore kicks again against the wall. And I mentioned him again, and his average kick after tapping was 13 inches higher. Okay. So he thought that was his capability and it wasn’t there so much tapping now. And about Olympic athletes is tapping among national football league players in the U S BAS baseball, basketball players in the U S athletes tapping because we’re discovering so many what we think of as our limitations for our health, for our complement, from money, for our relationships. They’re just stories, they’re stories. We had implanted in our heads when we were young and they aren’t true. They’re just limitations to our potential. And that’s why when people could bust through those limitations, question, those old stories to discover how their lives could really be, which is often, far grander and more glorious than the way they’ve been living.
Guy: That’s amazing. It just goes to show the power of our beliefs. You know, they’ve got a lot to answer for sometimes I think.
Dawson: Yeah. They keep it small.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. I know they had for me for many years. Um, so with EFT then if let’s say we were kind of content in our lives where, you know, we’re doing our thing, we might not have had some traumatic trauma young or, or whatever. Is it still something that we should look at users maybe maintenance or like a weekly practice or something we bring in or do we just use it as a tool to really just sort of dig deep? What are your thoughts on that?
Dawson: Both. And, um, I believe that it’s worth removing stress as it happens. So even minor stresses, uh, maybe you have to drive and you get upset or, um, triggered by other things that happen during your drive or you’re on the train. And there are too many people on the train and you feel cramped. So every little stress of the day I recommend tapping on and releasing, that’s using EFT situationally as things arise. That bother us. Also, if you have future fears, if you have to do a presentation at work and you feel nervous about that, if make a video for your website, you feel nervous about that. You’re going to meet a new person who might be important in your life. You feel nervous about that, tap on those future fears, but what’s most important is to go back into your childhood and look at those events that told you, you were small told you, you were weak told you, you were in capable, limited your sense of your possibilities and tap them away. Because what you then do is use EFT, proactively. You find those things that built those limiting stories, release them, and then open up your vision to that much greater set of possibilities you could be. So it used in both ways, both situationally things bothering you right now. So you don’t carry that load of stress throughout your life. And also proactively going back and tapping on your childhood. And in fact, giving yourself a happy childhood without all of those limitations and negative self talk.
Guy: Got it. Yeah. That makes total sense. Hey, and so I’m absolutely fascinated by those thoughts. And I have another question that that’s springed in there as well. Is that, is it scary to, to sort of dive into those old traumas and stories and what comes up for people? Is there something that we have to sort of overcome and get through as the process unfolds?
Dawson: It’s very scary. If you have traumatic memories, often the last thing you want to do is remember them. Um, if you were abused, hurt bullied, uh, then you don’t want to remember that stuff. In fact, much of our waking lives, we are focused on what is a positive on our lives, and we’re trained to not deal with the problems in our lives and not think about them. So, uh, people say, you know, focus on the positive, think on the bright side of life. And then we’re, we’re, we’re taught not to deal with all of the, that early childhood wounding, the trouble with that is that if you don’t deal with it, it doesn’t go away. As the researchers found, and that adverse childhood experiences study, it shows up 50 years later in your body, as hard as he is high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, and all those other kinds of problems.
Dawson: So if you don’t pay attention to it and heal it, it shows up and make sure you pay attention to it as disease later on. So it definitely is worth being proactive and going in there. Now, even though it’s scary to think about that person who hurt you or that person who abused you, what we have people do. Like I’ve written several books on EFT, there’s EFE for weight loss, EOP for sports performance, EFT for the highly sensitive temperament EFT for, um, meditation. There are all kinds of books on EFT like that, Everett and quite a few of them. Other people have written some of them and any EFT books. What we do in the first chapter is we give you, what’s called a quick win. We have you think about something in the first five pages of the book that others of you, and then tap on that and then see how much your emotional triggering is reduced.
Dawson: And we do that by means of a numerical scale. We’ll have you remember, say, for example, being a, say, for instance, you were a teacher when you were seven years old, accused you of cheating on a test and you didn’t and she punished you for it. And you’ve been ashamed and upset about that ever since. Okay. So you go there, you think about that. So we have you rate the intensity of that event on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being no emotion and 10 being maximum possible emotion. So in our quick wins section of ETFE book, we have you think about an early event in the first five pages, give it a number. Now, typically people will have a high number around some of that, maybe a six, seven, eight, nine, maybe even a 10, and I’ll do tapping. And within a minute or two, they’re down a low number, maybe four or five, maybe one or two.
Dawson: So that gives you a quick win and confidence to then go work on more people who, um, have a lot of trauma don’t want to go there at all. We had one, one, a Vietnam veteran called Bob Culver, and it was documentary movie made about Bob and other Vietnam veterans. And this, and we have a big, um, tribal program pull the veterans stress project. And many of those veterans were in this documentary movie. And Bob said, when he began treatment, he said, okay, I’m going to tap and work on some of my memories, but I have a whole group of memories that are behind a wall. I’ve walled them up. They’re too painful to even think about working on, I will never go behind that wall and I’ll be here as part of your documentary part of your project, but I’m never going to go behind the wall.
Dawson: I’ll work on memories in front of the wall. That was his precondition program. And he just had Waldorf that whole segment. I mean, the memories were terrible. His experiences in Vietnam, my day three guy, Bob Culver, was working on the memories behind the wall. And he then developed enough confidence to know that EFT works and he’d had his quick wins, you’d have several wins. And he had the tools to go in there and work on the memories behind the wall. So yeah, we can go work on those memories. We’re often, um, we’ve often got a whole bunch of them that are too painful for us, but there are some wonderful ERP techniques. I explained in my book, the EFT manual, the call, the gentle techniques, we’re working on those memories behind the wall and they’re incredibly easy and they help us gradually reduce all the emotional intensity of those memories and get to the point where we can deal with them, release them.
Dawson: And most importantly than not have our lives driven, bye regret, bye mentally mental health issues and by physical disease, once we released all that massive trauma from our POS, that’s amazing. And it’s so freeing once you’re sort of overcome a part of yourself like that, it’s incredible. It is this work who is this mainstream now where where’s it on all work, all medicine, most of the techniques began as fringe techniques with a few adherence. People who believe that they’re they’re useful. And then they gradually develop more and more research behind them. Then they become mainstream. Like EAP is not accepted by the us veterans administration as evidence-based therapy that therapists can use EFT is except by several large hospital systems. And if you’re a therapist or a social worker or a psychiatrist, you can use EFT or nurse use EFT in that setting, but it’s on the, um, on the, uh, in the early stages of acceptance that, that way.
Dawson: And it’s taken 20 years guy to get that far. Uh, one of the distressing things about modern medicine is that it takes such a long time for medical breakthroughs to make their way into mainstream usage. And the U S government commissioned a report in 2000, looking at that lag time. And they found that it takes 17 years for the average therapy to make its way into common practice. And that only 20% of new therapies ever get that far, the other 80% are just lost. So, uh, the unfortunate fact is that it takes a long, long, long time for new therapy to an acceptance.
Guy: Wow. And when you think of the, how quickly like technology evolves and other sort of industries, that’s just incredible. Technology evolves quickly. Our smartphones
Dawson: is our cars evolve very quickly medicine and the famous words of Matt plank, science advances, one funeral at a time as the old scientists die out or the new ones take their place. And, uh, it astonishes me that, you know, like I mentioned, the, that it takes 17 years for a new technology to get adopted in medicine. Well, imagine guy, if I gave you a cell phone and said, guy has a cell phone, it’s your birthday. He has a gift for you. Unwrap the gift. It’s a cell phone. I say, here’s her cell phone? The cell phone is yours, no strings attached. It’s 17 years old. And 80% of its functionality is disabled. Only 20% of his functionality is enabled. How happy would you be with that cell phone? And it, when it comes to our bodies and our health, somehow we think this is acceptable. I have no idea why.
Guy: Yeah, I know. That’s incredible. Isn’t it? I didn’t realize that. I mean, you know, in my view, meditation should be handed out as a prescription. Um, every time you go into somewhere like I’m, I’m keen to hear about the meditation side of things and what studies have you sort of found in and how much of a tool would you, would you say it is along with the ft for this kind of energy work. There are two different tools and they have two different uses. I meditate every day, but meditation
Dawson: to me is like this foundational practice that you do to set yourself up for a successful day. So I recommend meditation early in the morning and setting it as a tone for your whole day. And the research is amazing. What happens in meditation? We’ve been doing research now into a very simple form of meditation. I helped develop cold eco meditation, and we’ve been doing retreats. Having people do eco meditation. We’ve been doing, um, large group speaker meditators, and we’ve been measuring both our psychology and our physiology. And we’re finding that big changes happen in their bodies. Their cortisol levels go way down. Their levels of immune function go way up. Their anxiety and depression starts to go down. All kinds of beneficial shifts happen in their bodies when they meditate. So you want to have a basic meditation practice as a cornerstone of a peaceful.
Dawson: What we’re also showing in research is that meditation changes the brain. In one case history, I talk about in a new book, I’ve written called mind to matter, uh, in one case it’s we are presented mind minds matter. Uh, we looked at the case of a man who went on it, eight weak mindfulness intensive program, and researchers measured his brain before and after the program. And they found that in just eight weeks, that several parts of his brain be able to change measurably. But the part that changed the most was a part called the dentate gyrus. That’s a part of the middle part of the brain that has to do with emotional regulation. And in eight weeks, his dentate gyrus grew by 22.8%. So massive explosion in neural growth in just eight weeks after he learned to calm himself. So yeah, all of the shifts we make in our behavior and our emotions in our spiritual life translate into new wiring of the brain. As we change the software of our minds, the hardware of our brains is changing moment to moment and day to day. And see, you might look the same operate weeks, but in his case, he had a large shift in the hardware construction of his brain. And that’s what’s happening with meditation.
Guy: Yeah. That’s incredible. What, why do you think people struggle to sit down and meditate? You know,
Dawson: Oh, well, it’s hard to clear. It’s hard to steal your mind. I’ve never been able to steal my mind. So with eco meditation, we make that not be a requirement you can have as busy mind as you, like. You can be as big a failure as I am at sling your mind. You said, just sit down there, your mind, busy mind, it does this thing, but you breathe in a certain way. And he relaxed certain muscle groups. And that puts you into this deep meditative state, even though your mind is busy. So, uh, it is hard. And that reason many people try and fail. So with eco meditation, I developed a simple method that even people who have failed other methods can do, because it does not require a sling of mine. It just requires sitting in a certain way, breathing a certain way, relaxing certain muscles. And that, that, that those physical cues, those physical signals in your body puts your body into this deeply relaxed state.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. And I just want to add as well, like I’ve been meditating for probably three years, you know, as a practice and God, the relationship I have now with myself and the world is completely changed. It’s been an unbelievable, and I would definitely encourage anyone to start exploring it as well. Yeah,
Dawson: absolutely. Yeah. You, you see the changes happening around you and your life and your own life and in your relationships when that, when you make it a consistent, consistent practice.
Guy: Oh, for sure. For sure. Now those no, I’m aware of the time and I wanted to change gears a little bit. Um, cause I have a few questions that I ask everyone on the show a little bit of just outside of the realms of what we just spoke about. But, um, the first question I
Dawson: was interested to ask you is what has been one, one of your biggest, I guess, failures you’ve had in life, but later in life is turned into a win and a great lesson? Well, I have always been very self critical and I began that way from the earliest memories. I remember, uh, uh, being self critical, having somebody, a lot of critical people around me and still being self critical. And so just for example, I’m going to the gym this morning and I went to a new gym, various, we, I just moved, moved to a different city and I went to a new gym. And so I walked to the gym. They’re always really fit people there. And so many of the, I was comparing myself to them and had all these self critical voices in my head. And so it’s, it’s, it amazes me that even after, you know, 50 years in the personal growth and transformational movements and doing all these practices, I still have these self critical negative voices in my head. But what I do is I learned to turn them into coaches into, um, uh, I can’t get rid of them completely seems what I can do though, is I can work with them. And so I began to say things like, well, you know, to even be here and, uh, seeing all these people who are in such good shape, I had to show up and here I am.
Dawson: So working with yourself, talking from your self talk, self criticism has been a huge one in my life, but I also use it to improve myself. So I review my day, I review my behavior. I think, how could I have done that better? Could I have spoken better to my wife? Could I have done better with that email? Should I, did I speak in haste in any, in any interaction? Was it something I did or said? So, um, that turning that self criticism into the act of self reflection and then using it for personal growth. So there are ways in which you can turn, right? Even those habits of yours that you may struggle with your whole life into, if not allies, at least you can neutralize them and, um, and incorporate them for your benefit. So that that’s been one big thing to be a self criticism.
Dawson: Uh, I also find habits very hard to change. And, um, so often I’m writing for people who have a hard time changing habits. One, one habit I have a hard time with is procrastination. I have to write things. I’m, uh, I, I, I write blogs. I write usually a book every three to five years. And it is so hard for me to sit down with the computer screen out emails, screen out all of the demonic voices around me and carve out a four, six, eight, 12 hour block to right. So when I sit there, I always resistance come up. So I meditate that morning and that helps. I calm myself that way. When I sit down and feel resistance, I tap and release it. So I still feel that resistance, but I move through it. I started writing the after an hour or two, the resistance has gone.
Dawson: I’m in the flow and it’s all happening beautifully, but there’s that initial period of resistance. And I don’t know why after again, guy wouldn’t be teaching his classes for 70 years and people say, well, haven’t you dealt with all your problems. And the answer is absolutely not. And I usually tell them like workshops, a few stories about my own struggles still. So people know that, Hey, you know, I’ve written the books I’ve written, I’ve written about all this stuff. I’ve studied it. And I still struggle with all this stuff myself. So our, our learning process, as far as I concerned, never comes to an end. And that’s just part of being human or keeps us alive and fresh and interesting.
Guy: Oh, Towson. I love the answer. Thank you. It’s so nice to hear that coming from you as well, because I think we’ve put so much expectation on ourselves and perfectionism sometimes, and I’ve certainly not been able to do it, you know? And, uh, and I think it’s just part of the human experience, you know, and the relationship that you have with that and how you’ve used it to your advantage,
Dawson: which is great. Absolutely great. Well, one funny thing is, is being, spending time with people like Joe Dispenza. Um, I know I’m doing a big event with Joe this year and, um, we’re carving out four days after the event to go wine tasting as of a four days with Lissa Rankin and Joe Dispenza. And a couple of other, other people were invited to go away and have a four day vacation doing wine tasting. Now, probably on that, um, on that, um, on that four day vacation, one of us will miss a turn. One of us will be late. One of us will swear. One of us will screw something up. It is just so fun being with Jack Canfield and, and, uh, um, John Gray and Marianne Williamson and meeting all these people who were authors as well. And, uh, and you realize they’re just people, they deal with health problems. They deal with personal challenges. They just like all of us. Um, you meet your heroes and you realize they are human beings like you are, and they have their own challenges. So that very person you put on a pedestal and think they’ve got their life together. I can guarantee you if, if you were to spend a few hours with them, you’ll be laughing and realize, Hey, we all have our challenges. It’s just part of the human condition.
Guy: Totally. And it’s so refreshing. That sounds like quite a, quite a wine trip, by the way. Isn’t it?
Guy: there’ll be a lot of fun. Well, I just spent a week with Joe in Costa Rica and I know he enjoys his red wine. So yeah, no doubt. It will be a good time. Now, another question I’d love to ask you is that if you could have dinner tonight with anyone in the world at any time, imagine you could walk to a tele portal forward at the time back, it doesn’t matter. Who would it be and why?
Dawson: Wow. There are so many people that I would love to learn from and talk to. And you know, it, it might be, I’m going to say Marcus Aurelius, the Roman empire, prominent per philosopher. He had so many things figured out and you read his writings and, you know, 2000 years ago, this man was so, so very wise and he ran an empire. So, um, I admire people who have a foot in both the spiritual and material realms. He had to run the Roman empire. He had to do serious things and make decisions that affected the lives of millions of people. And it was deeply spiritual man. And so for me, it’s probably not going to be, uh, the, the person who got their spiritual life perfectly lined up, or the person who got their material. I perf perfectly lined up. It’s really the person who was able to be a vibrant spiritual presence and have a huge impact on the world.
Dawson: That’s the great thing, guy. Um, you know, we can go on and have a meditation retreat. We can go spend a weekend with Deepak Chopra or Joe dispenser or taking the AP workshop, or, um, take a, uh, a seven day or a long Buddhist retreat. And people have an easy time when they’re away from their usual conditioning, ENS, spiritual place, and feeling what Joe calls elevated emotions, but what happens Monday morning? What happens Friday afternoon? What happens Wednesday in the meeting when you’re with somebody and you’re having a difficult time? What happens when you’re with your kid? Who’s eight years old is screaming. Um, that’s what really matters. We need to be able to bring our insights. We need to bring the fullness of our potential into our everyday lives. It’s no good to be that Saint in a cave in the Himalayas. We need to be that Saint.
Dawson: When we’re in traffic, we need to be that Saint. When we’re in the middle of the emergency room and somebody has, um, a meltdown. We need me to be that Saint, when we’re faced with the, the catastrophe, when we’re faced with, um, family member, who’s struggling, we need to be that person in everyday life. And so, uh, I think for me, it’s really that combination of being as much of a master as possible of your everyday life, while living in what Joe calls those elevated emotions simultaneously, and not having to escape everyday life to be in those emotions, or, um, be so immersed in everyday life. You forget you are being observed. Great. So being, being of spirit right in a world of matter and be equally effective in both dimensions, I love it. That’s so true. So true. We have to, we have stuff we have to have to do here.
Dawson: You know, there’s global warming, there’s malnutrition, there’s overpopulation, there’s obesity. There is war, there are the social inequality, there’s gender inequality. Um, there are all these things and we live in a world that needs help. Uh, our immediate worlds need help our largest social world worlds need help. And so, um, it it’s vital that we bring that elevated emotion to these big social questions. And so I really feel it’s important to do both. That’s why I helped start the veterans stress project. We now treat it over 20,000 veterans. And essentially we have had the, all the official doors slammed in our faces 10 years ago. And, uh, and people in power said, you will never get these energy therapies into, uh, into primary care. So we said, well, we’ll go around primary care. And now 20,000 people later, we’ve delivered that, that, that care to huge number of people at it now isn’t primary care as well.
Dawson: So, um, you do make a difference even to these huge social structures that seem impervious initially when you, you take action. And so, um, we live in a world where we need to be empowered beings, making a difference. So the way you treat people, the way you smile at people, the way you treat the person next to you, the way you treat the driver of the car next to you, the person at the supermarket checkout, Stan, we need empowered people full of love, full of potential, full of a sense of being change agents in everyday circumstances all the time. And so, um, that’s why I’m so passionate about solving these big problems, but we solve them by working on ourselves and being the best possible people we can be at the level of our individual human potential.
Guy: Yeah, absolutely. And I was just going to add to that. That’s why my meditation practice first thing in the morning has become such a pivotal point to me because it really helps me bring me back and to propel myself into that day. Ready for the challenges ahead. Exactly like that, that come at us, you know, and I’m bringing your best version to the table. It’s the best of the best of your ability? Definitely. Yeah. So, uh, one more question, Dawson. Um, what’s one thing about yourself. Most people wouldn’t know.
Dawson: Well, um, I tend to be fairly, um, public about what I I do. Um, and, um, so I, I share and disclose quite a bit in my workshops and my books and, uh, so on. But I think that probably one thing most people don’t know is, uh, just how much pleasure I have and, and family, I have three, three children. Uh, my wife has two grandchildren. We’ll soon have more. Um, and just the joy of being with my children. I, I joined my children. Um, I, uh, I treasure time with them and, um, those family times are really important to me. So I think people it’s, what people don’t see is his time with children. And I can tell you if you raise your children constantly, my very first book, 30 years ago was called commuting with a spirit of your unborn child. And I, I argued in that book for, um, I talked about seeing parenting is a spiritual journey and I, I really raise my children with that on having them be, be, be beings of, of spirit. And so now that they’re the grown, uh, it’s just, uh, an absolute blast to be with them, hang out with them, spend time with them and, and enjoy them. So I think that that’s one thing that perhaps people does see that is a big part of my life.
Guy: Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. And, uh, is there anything else you’d just like to add before we wrap up for our listeners to ponder on,
Dawson: I would just say whatever obstacles you feel as he listened to this, to living your full potential. I can tell you having worked with tens of thousands of people, that the obstacles in your mind to live in your potential. When you say I can’t do this, I’m this kind of a person, these are the limitations I can tell you having worked with so many people that almost all of those limitations are not true. They’re, they’re lies there. Artificial constructs are installed in you early on in your life by people who had good intentions, but who didn’t know the first thing about liberating, your full potential. Now you’re an adult it’s time liberated. And so whatever you hear yourself say something small, like I can’t do that. I can’t be that I can’t, uh, achieve this question. That belief, those beliefs are often not true. And as long as you keep believing that you’ll stay small, we’ll keep on reenacting those limiting scripts. And I invite you to tap, meditate and explore the great hue that lies far beyond the boundaries of what you might presently believe.
Guy: I love it, what a perfect way to end a podcast. Awesome. Um, where can I send people to find out more about your work, uh, for everyone listening to this?
Dawson: Can I just one place I have, uh, the, that meditation is downloadable free and also the tapping manual is available downloadable free at my website, Dawson gift.com. So if you just go to that one place, dos gift.com, you’ll find the tapping manual, the meditation you’ll find the link to the veteran’s stress project. You will find a whole bunch of other resources all@thatdawsongift.com website. So Dawson gift, my name, DAW son GIF t.com. That one place you’ll find links to all of those resources.
Guy: Wonderful. And I’ll link them to the show notes as well. When this podcast goes live and Dawson. I just want to thank you for coming on and just acknowledge everything that you do and how much your work has had an influence in my life too. And I’ve been, you know, devouring genie in your genes the book, and I’ve sort of been looking at your work, like I said, for the last few years, and this had a huge impact and hopefully this ripple effect and what I put out to the world will have an impact on that too. So Dawson. Thank you so much for your time. That was absolutely brilliant.
Dawson: Guy. Thank you much for sharing that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Guy: Bye.
Guy: Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as me with Dawson Church. Don’t forget guys, head back over to guylawrence.com.au, if you want to know what my five step morning routine looks like and how I actually bring meditation and other aspects in to make my day as best as possible. So there’s a free download there to the little gift when you get it as well. And of course hit me up on Instagram guyhlawrence. Let me know what you think of the show. Have an awesome week, guys. I’ll see you next week