What does grief do to the body and brain – and how can loss change the way we understand consciousness, identity, and the meaning of life?
Grief is more than an emotion. It can affect how we think, remember, connect with others, and understand ourselves. In this episode of On The Same Paige, Paige explores why loss can feel so disorienting, why healing is rarely a simple or linear process, and how people begin rebuilding a meaningful life without pretending the loss never happened.
The discussion also moves beyond conventional psychology and neuroscience into the bigger questions grief can surface. What is consciousness? Does our connection to another person disappear when they die? Why do experiences around death and loss sometimes feel impossible to explain through science alone?
Rather than offering definitive answers, Mona and Paige look at these questions through scientific, psychological, philosophical, and personal perspectives on one of the most difficult parts of being human.
Mona Sobhani, Ph.D. is a cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, and author. In 2022 she published her first book, Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist's Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe, which documents her transformation from die-hard materialist to open-minded spiritual seeker.
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In this conversation, you'll hear about:
💕 How loss can affect identity and emotional wellbeing
💕 Why grief is not a linear process
💕 The difference between healing and simply "moving on"
💕 The neuroscience of grief and memory
💕 How grief can reshape meaning and purpose
💕 Where neuroscience, philosophy, and spirituality overlap
💕 The questions grief raises about consciousness and human experience
This episode is for anyone coping with grief, supporting someone through loss, or trying to understand how the brain and mind respond when life changes in a way that cannot be undone.
YOUTUBE + TRANSCRIPT:
(00:00) Dr. Mona Sobhani, welcome to the show. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Um, so I’m so excited to have a chat with you. Your um book is incredible and there was so much in the book that resonated with me in terms of really just like needing more evidence to believe in these things that are ineffable as you say and and so mysterious.
(00:20) We let’s let’s go back a little bit in time. What is time? But we’ll go back in the time of your life. Um and and maybe just like a brief kind of overview of where you were at before you wrote the book and then um I I want to encourage people to go off and read the book themselves. Like especially if you are wanting so badly to believe in in spirituality, but you have a science mind.
(00:41) Like it’s the perfect book for that. But yeah, let’s just go back in time to where you were before you wrote the book. We can kind of track forward to like where you are now cuz it’s been a few years since it’s been published. >> Uh well, I was very much a scientific materialist, like a very serious scientist.
(00:55) I didn’t believe in anything as people call it woo woo or spiritual. I was definitely not spiritual. I’ve always been very intuitive and but I would never I wouldn’t put it into words. I would just like have feelings about things and like know this is the right time to like email someone or know that it’s not the right time to do something like that.
(01:15) Um but I never thought about it. It was just the way I lived. when I went to grad school which was six years long and it was in neuroscience. So they specifically train you to believe that the brain is a coincidence detector like it scans the environment you know and for coincidences. So and then it creates meaning from these things.
(01:37) So they taught us that the external world has no uh intrinsic value itself that all value or meaning is created by us by our brains and because that’s it its job like that’s just how we evolved to make sense of our environments. And so by the end of grad school that’s what I believed because they really beat it into you.
(02:03) Um and it’s also like the worldview that comes with mainstream science is called scientific materialism or physicalism which is um basically believing that matter is the basic fundamental building block of the universe. They never explicitly tell you that. They never train you in that. It’s just there that you know like it’s just the assumption implicit assumption.
(02:26) Yeah. You’re just supposed to know. Um, and anything that falls outside of that, of course, is kind of like mocked and looked down upon. And there is very much a culture like a weird social culture of of that of like this is what we believe as a group as scientists and like if you believe something different then you know it’s kind of you’re ostracized or there’s a lot of stigma around that.
(02:48) So by the end of grad school I believed that that the world was physical. We create all meaning. Even though science is supposed to be about curiosity and open-mindedness, they actually inadvertently make you more close-minded. So, >> you had they put you in this box and then you use that box to to fit everything in in and you’re like, does it fit in the box? No.
(03:09) Then like it’s wrong. It doesn’t it’s not it’s not worth my time. I appreciate it in the book as well how you do also like um pay credence to the scientific method. So there’s this like really nice balance of you being like I spent a lot of my time getting to know this method and it does it it has done a lot for moving evolution forward and also it’s missing parts like many parts. Yeah.
(03:32) The meth I mean the scientific method is great and it’s the best tool that we have uh to measure our environment and make sense of it. It’s more like the culture. I think it’s called scientism. It’s like kind of this cult of again it’s really an identity that you’re signing up for and just like any identity you you adopt the values of it and and it becomes this like in-group outgroup thing.
(03:55) So it’s very like sociological which is fine but yeah the actual scientific method is super useful. Yeah. So I like I said I was more skeptical I guess is the word people like to use of everything and like you know kind of arrogant. Um again it comes with the culture. Um, and then I started working in a lab. Uh, I did a few different things, but I ended up at this lab back at USC, University of Southern California.
(04:20) Um I just had like a series of heavy life events happen and I started having um an existential crisis or so I thought like especially going from working towards a degree which is a very clear goal you know and you’re like very focused and that’s what you’re doing then to moving into the working world where it’s just like oh this is we just we just come to work every day and like do this like I kind of felt like what’s the point of all this? I started having that those kinds of feelings of like, oh no, is this it? Is this it forever?
(04:54) >> Um, and so yeah, I started having this crisis. And then alongside that was my um my background is Persian. My grandmother used to, she passed, but my mom still uses divination, which is um you can use any tool like tarot cards or coffee grinds or tea leaves or whatever to like divine somebody’s um not only their future, but like things about them and their life.
(05:21) So, my mom had always done that. She’d done readings for me and I she was very good. So like a lot of things she said would come true and she would know these like really intimate details of my life that I would never tell her. And so there was always kind of that in the background of my life, but I kept it separate from the science cuz obviously I couldn’t like use the science to explain it.
(05:43) They were at odds with each other in my head. >> So I just lived like in dissonance. So I was like there’s that part of my life and then there’s the science life and like I just kept them separate. But when I started working in like some of those life events that I mentioned, my mom’s um coffee readings like predicted some of those.
(06:05) And so then I started to like being able to not ignore that anymore. Like these became >> just very loud I think cuz it’s almost Yeah. Like it’s like there was this crack this like existential crack an opening um where I could let the question come in like why or how or you know like like wait what did you feel like how do I reconcile these two things and >> they became statistically significant enough in your life.
(06:30) >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Became Yeah. Exactly. They just piled up and I was like wait a minute like I probably shouldn’t ignore this anymore. this materialism, this like um physicalism scientific point of view is actually something that’s only been around for a slither of time. We have this very very vast history of human um of of humans trying to make sense of the world and it certainly has not always been through this limited scientific method that relies on spaceime being fundamental.
(07:00) >> Yeah, that’s like relatively new from about the time of the scientific revolution which was only a couple hundred years ago, right? So I mean it’s all really and if you look at right the span of human history the rest of the time it was other things. So it’s like really shortsighted of us to to think that like now we have all the answers like now we have the method that >> um you know and kind of like look down on the rest of human history as like oh what idiots they didn’t know.
(07:31) It’s like they didn’t do too badly for themselves. you know, like >> the rest of humanity, I we’ve survived for this long. >> We got here. >> Yeah, it’s f it’s been fine. So, something must have been right. Um, okay. So, you’re having these coffee readings. There’s some eerie kind of coincidences there with your mom’s prediction of your of the life events.
(07:52) What happens as a scientist who’s been um had this method or not method, but this belief system drilled into you? Like, what happens? I didn’t start looking into it, but then um coincidentally or just like accidentally I was listening to a podcast from a comedian and she started talking about it like psychic mediums and she mentioned this book called Many Lives Maners which is about past life regression which I didn’t know that’s what it was about.
(08:20) I thought it was just a psychiatrist case study. Um, and so since I was I was, you know, it was kind of like in my head like, oh, I’m interested in getting interested in this. And then when I heard that, I thought, oh, let me order this book. And even though I didn’t think the book was spiritual, I was like into their whole episode on like I was, it was really fascinating to me cuz I think she had Laura Laurelyn Jackson on who’s like a famous psychic medium.
(08:47) And so Laura Jackson was talking about >> this is Chelsea Handler, right? This is Chelsea Handler, like very famous comedian. >> Yeah. So, it was her and she had Laura Lynn and they were talking about just like how Laura sees, you know, like her psychic information and the mediumship information and how it comes into her in her internal world, like her subjective experience of it.
(09:09) And then she mentioned how she’s had her brain measured. So, all of that was super fascinating to me. So, I ordered that book they were talking about. And then that book was the first book I read that was like a spiritual book which I didn’t even know when I ordered it. I thought it was just going to be a normal psychiatry book, but it arrived and it was like one of those crazy things you read where I’m like, “What is this? I don’t even know what this guy is talking about, but it’s it’s interesting.
(09:37) “ And so I I read so many more books on past life oppression which then led me to near-death experience books and then read books on reincarnation because that kept coming up and I I wasn’t familiar really with that framework. Like I mean you know generally I know what it was but I didn’t I didn’t know the full framework. So yeah I just started like I mean I’m a scientist so what do I do? I I read and research a lot.
(10:00) So, I got all the books I could and started reading. And then I started going to get read like actual psychic readings with my girlfriends here in LA because there’s no shortage of readers here. So, like go to get readings together. Um and then at some point I decided to start interviewing the um the readers like the intuitives and then the scientists like it just kind of evolved into this project that I just and it was just for myself.
(10:29) I just wanted to know the answers. But the more like interviews I did and more books I read, I only had more questions like there were just more and more questions. And at the same time, I was having this identity crisis because um yeah, it started to threaten my scientist identity. And so I started to flip out about that and be like, you know, do I want to lose that identity that I’ve built. Yeah.
(10:55) All of that was happening, but it was kind of unstoppable. It was also like the most alive I’d felt in years. It was like the thing I’ve been the most I had been the most interested in. Um, and so I couldn’t stop in a way like you know like >> even though I was questioning >> like do I want to go down this path like part of me >> was like going to go down the path no matter what the other part chose.
(11:18) So yeah it was kind of it snowballed and then I ended up putting all the interviews and all the evidence and all of it together in a book. It’s very clear that this was kind of like a night and day experience for you. you were sort of one version of yourself and it’s not like you woke up a new version but it was you know you really track the like painful the resistance how much resistance there is to like changing your mind and as I’m reading this this journey in your book I I really was like I can just resonate and I think for me
(11:45) with wanting to believe so much in all of this other you know in in all the parasychology and the size stuff I want to believe so much in it because it makes me feel like way more is possible like if this is possible then what else is possible? And I guess as the you know um the the narcissism comes into that because you’re like well what is possible for me and like what could this mean for my life and you end up sort of wanting to um yeah yeah hang your hope on this stuff because it could mean essentially like more freedom and
(12:18) happiness and liberation for you as an individual for me as an individual. And yet I could really resonate with your um desire for more and more evidence because for me like hanging my hope on the fact that like time isn’t linear and like you know you the consciousness is universal.
(12:35) It’s not produced by the brain. Reality is not how um we actually perceive reality that the base reality is is we don’t know what the base reality is. Like we only have our perceptions. So can we change them? that’s like so hopeful and just I need I I feel like in my life I need so much evidence to actually trust that hope. But I think that that’s the whole game, you know, like that’s the whole the whole thing is that you got to learn to like actually get in in right relationship with uncertainty. Yeah.
(13:01) No, I feel you. I was I was the same. I was like I I need, you know, cuz I was like I said, I had this very strict training. So for and and my identity was built around it. So every morning I would have to it was like I would go to bed convinced and be open-minded or or like you know even just being open-minded just being like it’s possible.
(13:21) Um and then I would go to bed and wake up and then I would be skeptical again. So like I would have to reread the studies and um my notes double check >> every day was like Groundhog Day but eventually it landed. you know, it’s like enough times. I think actually um the the the scientific evidence obviously helped me because I’m a scientist.
(13:44) So, I was like I I know these experimental methods, I know these stats. That helps a lot of course, but I would say um you know, personal experience also really drove it home. I always uh kind of with with scientists who are curious like I talk about that with them like reading and stuff will only get you so far but like nothing can replace you know like the personal experience of having like a mind-blowing reading right or um or just something else happening like some crazy synchronicity like those things really make it like an embodied experience and
(14:17) then that really drives it home. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean that’s why people end up converting to religion because they have these like spontaneous spiritual experiences and they go well I can’t like you know I have to just I haven’t had one so I don’t know but I’m guessing well I mean I guess I kind of have with psychedelics but like I I’m assuming that that’s kind of like a I can’t not now completely shift who I am based on this lived experience that I had.
(14:43) >> Yeah. It’s all it’s all about like integrating it as well as you can. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But what’s been so what’s been happening since? How’s the journey of you kind of moving away from materialism and more towards a new frame? It takes a while to you know change the way you think about the world.
(15:01) So even after I wrote the book, um there was a lot of that kind of integration period of like combining these two identities like being a scientist and being more open-minded and like making them merge together and like being comfortable being both of those people and kind of convincing myself that you could be both of those people. That was a whole thing for me.
(15:21) Practice initially to think in a new way like it was genuinely a a practice. Uh, and I thought my journey was over, you know. I was like, “Cool, cool.” I did this like spiritual exploration and I wrote a book. I’m done. Um, and then I went off to like I I left my job. I started my own company and then I started trying um like various healing modalities.
(15:47) So you mentioned psychedelics, like doing some psychedelics, some breath work, passive life regression, like I tried all this stuff. And then at the end of um 2022, I started feeling weird. I started having these like what felt like rushes of energy like from the just like through my whole body, but kind of like from my feet up and then I thought it was anxiety.
(16:12) It’s hard to put into words really, but my perception changed and it wasn’t like I was seeing anything weird or I wasn’t hallucinating or anything. Um, this is why it’s hard to put into words. It’s just that my perception was like off. It was different. Like do you mean visually which which perceptive tools were felt the most? Like >> first of all, I became sensitive really sensitive to light and and then I became very sensitive to sound.
(16:41) Um, and then also I would have these like shifts in perception. So I wouldn’t say I was dizzy. Dizzy is not the right word, >> but but something like that where it was almost like the ground underneath me was shifting. Um, it’s it’s really strange. It’s hard to put into words. >> Since then, I’ve I’ve read accounts from other people who’ve had spiritual awakenings who’ve had similar things.
(17:04) It’s kind of like you think there’s an earthquake happening, but there isn’t. It’s just you. Um, oh, my emotions became super intensified, like huge, like all-encompassing. Um, just like enormous and and like like just pouring out of me. Um, I was just I used to be a masterful emotion suppressor. What were the what were the I’m curious to know what were the emotions? Was it like um I mean it’s hard to give names sometimes to these things like more sadness, anger, grief. Yeah.
(17:37) All of those like sadness like like depression was its own kind of emotion. It was like this like really low frequency, low tone like like I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to move. Energy would come up. Anger uh like rage, despair. Yeah, those one well those are a few that and they would just like rapidly one after another.
(17:59) So I had like emotional whiplash. What about heightened like senses of the heightened like happiness, pleasure, ecstasis? Was the other spectrum getting I mean maybe there were moments of that. Yeah. Like sometimes uh like awe like moments of awe like things that give you goosebumps, you know? Um those were amplified or like if that happened it would be like wow.
(18:21) But um I didn’t have those like ecstatic blissful you know states that you hear about. Yeah. It was mostly just really intense negative emotions. And um by the end of 2023, I started noticing also like in my body, I just started noticing that there were areas in my body that I didn’t like I couldn’t fully contract like my left hamstring.
(18:47) And then I was reading about somatic psychology and how you can have emotional blocks in your body and their emotions. But I like I sort of put two and two together, but it wasn’t like it didn’t become super prominent until later. So like all this was happening 2023 all that whole year was just like this slowly unfolding like the emotions getting more intense.
(19:13) Um me becoming more aware of my body. Like actually I did start to notice now I’m remembering I did start to notice that certain like postures would um would elicit certain emotions. So then I started to kind of like learn that and you know I was still like weirdly skeptical or kind of like of everything.
(19:34) So I was like I know they say that you can have emotions in your body but as a neuroscientist I didn’t learn that and I was like I don’t know I don’t have a model for that. So, I was like, it’s a possibility, but I I don’t understand that. Um, but I started to notice that that was the case, like at least with me in my in that situation.
(19:54) But I could also feel in my body when the energy moved where it would come up against a block because that area would be like super uncomfortable. It would feel like there were snakes moving under my skin. Hit a block and it was just like torture. Um, so so that went on and then in July 2024, someone I love died and my heart broke like shattered.
(20:21) Sorry, I’m sorry to hear that. And um like a few weeks after my chest started um burning and itching the front and the back. And that was the first like direct correlation of like an emotion and and my body situation that was happening. Like >> it was the most direct like I what’s what’s a good word for it? Um >> just yeah I don’t know.
(20:56) It was just obvious. It became obvious to me that like this idea that I had been flirting with about maybe emotions are stored in the body. Um, suddenly with this heartbreak, like my >> chest was like burning, itching like >> and it it really felt like it cracked and from that crack um the energy started to like spread through my body.
(21:22) It was so crazy like through my torso, my arms, it went up to my face, my through my neck and it felt like snakes. And then um eventually I had to get help with like a myofascial uh release lady to open my hips, but with her help we opened my hips and then it was just like I was the grief was already overwhelming.
(21:45) Um but the with the energy moving through my body it was just releasing all those emotions that we talked about. Um so like yeah so basically I was debilitated with like overwhelming emotions. So I think I tried to function for a while like just doing I mean really I was in bed crying for 6 months from just the grief but then after that I got up and I was trying to function and do things but I was so tired and like the um emotions were so intense and the body stuff just felt like there was so much energy moving through me all the time that I
(22:27) felt like I couldn’t sit down, you know, like I could literally couldn’t sit cuz I couldn’t sit still cuz it was all >> energy. So um I think by March, April 2025, so last year um finally somebody I work with like um intuitively she was like I you really need to cry and sleep more like the grief is really weighing you down and you’re like fluctuating between states and whatever.
(23:00) So I kind of took that as like the final permission to just collapse and fall apart fully. >> And so I did that. I just decided I was just going to sleep and cry. So I did. I cried morning tonight for a long time. Um and then because I was you know realizing the um connection with the body after a few months of doing that I had to travel for a conference and I was like I can’t get on a plane in this condition.
(23:30) >> So I was like let me try to get as much of this out of my body as I can. So I started get I got like a red light infrared light >> um belt. I had like a the gun. I had all these massage things. I bought um there’s like a pulse electromagnetic frequency, you know, like mats and like headbands. >> Yes.
(23:54) I bought like every device and I I my phone is spa now. Um but I bought all these things and >> yeah, my job my job my job became to like just release um all this tension which was which were emotions from my body while grieving. Um, and and that is basically what I’ve been doing since then. >> Whoa. >> Whoa. >> Over a year. But it it worked.
(24:23) I mean, because the more I cried, the less the better I felt and the less tense my body was. And then the more I worked every time I in the beginning, I couldn’t even release like that much from my body because it would be too overwhelming. So, I would have to do like just like 30 minutes of red light and then I would be like a disaster like emotionally and I’d have to wait until I felt capable of doing it again. Um, I couldn’t think.
(24:53) So, it’s funny like telling the story to people cuz I feel like some our society is so weird about crying, you know, like um tell I’m very aware that as I was going through this, the people in my life definitely didn’t understand and like telling the story, people are probably like it’s weird, but I think that’s just cuz like we don’t understand that crying is actually healing and >> like It sounds weird that I cried for like two years straight, but I’ve never felt happier now.
(25:30) So, >> yeah, >> I kind of think everyone should cry for 5 years now, so we don’t have to deal with all their problems. But, um, yeah. No, it’s been it’s been educational and it was hard, but it was also like if that hadn’t and anyway, I I realized um by the way along along I think it was like October 2024, I accidentally heard a podcast um where they listed the symptoms of a condalini awakening and I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what I’d been experiencing.
(26:02) “ And I just hadn’t put two and two together. And then once I knew what it was called, um, which I also knew that it’s not like if you could choose a spiritual awakening, you wouldn’t choose that one. So like >> I I knew it was intense and I didn’t want to read about it. So I didn’t I was just like, I have a name.
(26:21) If someone asks, I can tell them I’m having a daily awakening and if they don’t know what it is, you know, they can go to Google or chat GBT. So um you it was it was helpful to have a word for it but then also not really because it’s a very spiritual thing then people don’t know about it in the west.
(26:41) I didn’t you know I didn’t know and even if you have the spiritual explanation um you know like it’s hard to explain to people what’s happening with your body. So yeah, been a very strange a very strange journey, but very educational and like if if I if the awakening hadn’t happened and I hadn’t been forced to like deal with all these emotions, um like I 1,000% would never have recovered from that loss.
(27:15) Like that I would that’s it. like I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the with the pain and I would have just shut it down and shoved it away and then not lived a very good life, right? Cuz like >> the grief is always there. It just hangs out in the background. Um but because because I was forced to deal with it as well as purge everything else. Um, yeah.
(27:39) Like I mean I feel better and lighter and I probably healed at a much faster rate with all the body work I did. Just Yeah. I don’t know. It was just obvious. It became obvious to me that like this idea that I had been flirting with about maybe emotions are stored in the body. Um, suddenly with this heartbreak, like my chest was like burning, itching like and it it really felt like it cracked and from that crack um the energy started to like spread through my body.
(28:12) It was so crazy like through my torso, my arms, it went up to my face, my through my neck and it felt like aches. And then um eventually I had to get help with like a myofascial uh release lady to open my hips. But with her help, we opened my hips and then it was just like I was the grief was already overwhelming.
(28:37) Um but the with the energy moving through my body, it was just releasing all those emotions that we talked about. Um so like yeah so basically I was debilitated with like overwhelming emotions. So I think I tried to function for a while like just doing I mean really I was in bed crying for 6 months from just the grief. But then after that I got up and I was trying to function and do things.
(29:06) I think by March, April 2025, so last year um finally somebody I work with like um intuitively she was like I you really need to cry and sleep more like the grief is really weighing you down and you’re like fluctuating between states and whatever. So I kind of took that as like the final permission to just collapse and fall apart.
(29:33) And that is basically what I’ve been doing since then. It it worked. I mean, because the more I cried, the less the better I felt and the less tense my body was. And then the more I worked every time I in the beginning, I couldn’t even release like that much from my body cuz it would be too overwhelming.
(29:52) So, I would have to do like just like 30 minutes of red light and then I would be like a disaster like emotionally and I’d have to wait until I felt capable of doing it again. It sounds weird that I cried for like two years straight, but I’ve never felt happier now. So, >> yeah, I kind of think everyone should cry for 5 years.
(30:16) How do you think you would have coped with the experience of the last few years if you hadn’t have written that if you hadn’t have written the book and you hadn’t have gone down the path of of investigating um the the phenomenological side of of some of the things that you talk about? Um actually looking back on it I think um I think the awakening did start in 2019 because I remember sitting in meditation and feeling like I was on fire and like my body was on fire and that is apparently one of the symptoms but I didn’t know that then and I had no
(30:52) context like I had not started reading anything spiritual at the time so I had zero contact if that had continued and I had not started like seeking or reading I can’t even imagine I would just be so confused, right? Many people who have kundalini awakenings or other kinds of spontaneous spiritual awakenings, they often go to doctors because they don’t know what’s going on, right? Like sometimes um if they’re hearing things or seeing things um they can go and then they’ll be administered psychotic meds, right? Or like mclassified, misdiagnosed
(31:22) as mentally ill, whereas it’s only a temporary state in a spiritual awakening. Um, and then other people like the physical things that I had, a lot of people will go to neurologists and they’ll ne they’ll find nothing wrong with them of course or they’ll bounce around from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what’s wrong and western medicine usually has no answer.
(31:44) They’ll just be like you’re fine. Um, but like you know in the meanwhile there’s all all this stuff going on. I luckily didn’t have like hallucinations or anything. Um but I I did become incredibly um like psychic. Uh and then like and multiple times during the awakening my hands would start to burn and then someone told me that that’s like a universal sign for a healer.
(32:14) So um so I have some sort of healing ability now some like I can do energetic healing and I do it for my friends family. So like there are these weird things that come along that are spir well we call them spiritual only because that’s how our society has divided this world up but honestly I think science and spirituality are like the same thing.
(32:36) I think we just throw into the box of spirituality things that we just can’t explain. What is and what does that word even mean? You know like what does the spiritual even mean? It just it means outside of like what is normal or like not normal but what outside of what is like defined.
(32:54) Well, some people do have you know like they’ll feel like they’ve encountered the divine. Um or if they have like a mystical experience, it feels sacred. They come back using those words themselves. They’ll be like, I you know, I met God or whatever it is. And like I so I just haven’t had one of those. So that’s why I’m always like hesitant or I’ll say I use the word spiritual because I don’t have another word but it’s not like I encountered you know like the divine.
(33:24) Some people do like people who have spontaneous awakenings very often come back mystical experiences they’ll say like I you know like I encountered the divine I that’s not to take that away from them. I think really capitalism has so much to answer for in this um in this space with with try like trying to sift through um abilities.
(33:43) You know, you mentioned before about your hands being on fire and that meaning that you have some kind of healing ability and there’s a part of me like I, you know, I believe you like I believe that that that’s what has happened and that that that now you have this ability and that that is potentially something that has that has been passed down your lineage and was like part of your Persian history or you know, whatever.
(34:06) But like I I it’s crazy because if you were trying to like get me to pay you to um give get me to pay you to give me like a spiritual healing with your hands, I would be so suspect on it because that’s what like and that is the thing that makes me so suspect of spirituality and the healing arts and like all this all this stuff because well yeah science can’t prove it and then also people are trying to sell it and so it just it it becomes a singer.
(34:32) It’s like, well, why do you think you’re special? Because, you know, do do you see what I’m trying to say? Like, there’s just so much um it’s so hard to be discerning with with this stuff. I know many other neuroscientists now who’ve had their own awakenings, right? And we’re all very grounded people um and you know, very discerning, I think, because of our because of our training, right? And so like same boat like when I remember when I first came into this world I was horrified at like I mean it it’s a strong word but I was horrified
(35:11) at like the claims being made and like the kind of um just like loose way that people use language >> uh in the feeling space like they would just say things and I’m like there’s really no evidence for what you’re saying and like you know they would state it as if there because and um like I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do that or whatever.
(35:37) I’m just saying that was my reaction to it was as a scientist like we don’t actually know, you know, we don’t actually know if any of this is quantum. We don’t actually know >> you’re changing my DNA. You know, we don’t we don’t we don’t know. We we just you can say that we think it’s that, but you can’t say you know it’s that.
(35:57) >> Yeah. So because there’s no regulation, which again not saying there should be because that’s its own bag of worms, but um yeah, it’s very it’s the wild west out there. Like >> like if you go to a spiritual convention, oh dear. You know, like it’s just the wild west. >> Yeah.
(36:14) And maybe you’ll resonate with this cuz it it does involve like moving in one direction really far and then coming back into balance. But like with the podcast, I um I was like I just I need to be I need to talk to scientists. It’s like I need to talk to people that can um can sift through evidence and like speak from from a place of like a grounded like with a groundedness about the these phenomena that I’m really really interested in.
(36:38) And it’s been so amazing. And then you also realize yeah but you do need storytellers and you do need people that are I think what it is is like certainty. I think I I don’t I I don’t feel like certainty does much for society. It’s like the certainty with people that don’t actually have any evidence for what they’re speaking to is like really harmful.
(37:01) And then even the certainty in science when you’ll when when somebody is so sure about what what their evidence proves. Really what all of this is about is being uncomfortable with uncertainty because there is no certainty. There is no truth with the capital T. like um I mean there might be but like us as humans being able to to get to that.
(37:23) Um even when I graduated grad school I knew that like if you leave grad school thinking you know usually most of us leave understanding that science is very limited and that everything is a story. Every scientific paper is a story. You know everything is an angle. Everything is a narrative. Um and it’s it’s the way humans operate.
(37:45) So there’s no way around that, but like you have to understand that, you know, and like be able to admit it to yourself and like the truth of the truth at the end of the day is that nothing is certain, right? And like and >> the best way to look to prove that is to look at science. I mean, things change every day, right? Like evident theories change.
(38:05) Um, and that’s because we’re always just looking at small parts of a very big picture. Yeah. But I wonder if that means then like you know the the flip side of that is is that do we have any can we pick any can we choose anything like do we get to just create it all ourselves like is that a possibility you know there’s this particular strain of a disease in my family and I’m you know and so I need to be wary of that can I just choose like no I don’t want to take that on like is it possible to just be like no I don’t want to I mean and you have to be
(38:34) critical and you can’t just like ignore stuff but like how much of if there is no certainty if there is no truth like how much of it is just choice of what you choose to be. I think it is possible to change anything like even if it’s genetically inherited I just think it can be difficult cuz changing beliefs is a lot harder than people think it is.
(38:57) I I think in my experience that each beliefs have a lot of um uh emotions attached to them and like identities, right? And like I said, identity is hard to change. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just saying it’s a you know, it’s a like process. Um and emotions and so like the older a belief, the more things it has attached to it, right? That you have to deconstruct and like um to change the belief.
(39:29) And so, um, I think it’s totally possible to change everything, but after going through like, wait, wait, what month is it? July. So, like almost a year and a half of doing nothing but like crying and trying to release every emotion in my body intentionally. It’s arduous. >> It’s like a lot of work. And that has been something I have felt in the last year and a half as I’ve shed all this stuff.
(39:54) I just feel like, oh my gosh, like as I shed all of these these things I’ve been carrying that I wasn’t even aware that I was carrying, like I get excited about what is possible and how am I going to change and how is my body going to change and how is my chemistry going to change and like how is everything going to change? Like part of it scary of course cuz it’s like completely uncharted territory.
(40:16) I’m like it’s scary but like you know I you know I can choose not to focus on that. choose to focus >> the um like the potential upside. So, I mean I I definitely especially after this past year and a half, I think it’s possible to change a lot of things about our bodies um and our beliefs and our you know, everything.
(40:38) Um it just takes I think more work than we’re taught to believe or like than is commonly believed, you know. But I’m wondering with your um training as a neuroscientist and then this these new kind of um beliefs that have come online uh with your with with we’ll call it quote unquote spirituality like how you have framed this bereavement that you went through.
(41:01) What do you think about death? What do you think about what happens after life? And like has that though have those new ideas helped you cope in any way? I remember I like had signs immediately and they were so powerful and I felt them like through my whole body. Like those moments of like you just know this is your person. But even in those moments um I would have the skeptical like sign back and be like >> it’s so difficult for our human brains to have a physical person >> and then for them to just be gone and then for this idea that like they’re not
(41:45) totally gone, they’re still here in some other form. Um like that whole thing is just like mentally so hard I to like it was hard. It was just difficult. It’s still kind of hard. Um but you know like anything you get used to it. Uh but yeah the eventually for me the signs and messages were so strong that um it became not a belief like it became a certainty for me and if I didn’t have that and if I didn’t have the general belief that consciousness survives death like I can’t even imagine like facing the loss like I can’t I
(42:28) don’t know even as you were saying that I was like oh I was like I can feel myself getting emotional like placing myself in your shoes like of having to like I can even feel it now like if anyone like if something were to happen with like my partner for example >> no now we’re just on this podcast crying but like that that I I share those beliefs with you that I think that consciousness is not a a production of the brain but like you know if he if it was something that were to happen to him and then I could feel like I I knew you
(43:00) know like he’s still around in some capacity. But like the trans the undergoing the transformation of not having that person in like the physical sense is just like how you know that that is the real human work of of even if you do have those beliefs like not having them physically and not having the tactile the tactile percept perception of them in your life is like yeah you suddenly are just open to this whole new dimension of being human and a very universal one >> and but also like a very translational one and you just kind of can’t help but
(43:38) look through the rest of your life and every interaction through that lens of like oh my gosh every person you encounter has or will experience like a profound loss like this and it’s just like I don’t know like you it’s wild that that’s the human experience yeah it’s the the most like inevitable thing the one certainty that we do have is that the body breaks down.
(44:06) Although I don’t know if that’s going to change with the like, you know, protein folding and new technology like >> um yeah, no, it’s difficult. It’s like yeah, something that’s supposed to unite us all. And then it’s really a shame that like western culture is very, you know, like not understanding of bereiement and like the transformational pain of of loss.
(44:30) So, um I I’ve heard a really interesting analogy from a teacher before that there’s like at the base of every big emotion is grief and then we layer different things on top of it. And so, you know, it and that depends on like whatever society has deemed a person like you is allowed to feel. So, it’s different for men and women.
(44:49) And so, for men, there’s grief, but it kind of like gets expressed as anger, which is like still not really appropriate. So, it’s frustration, which is still not really appropriate. So it’s kind of like this like you know men have that gruff kind of stoic um sort of thing about them and I mean that happens with women and people all along the gender spectrum anyway.
(45:08) It was just an analogy that I thought was like oh really yeah that’s interesting like we are doing a lot to avoid like grief in particular. >> Yeah. Oh in particular. Yeah. Grief cuz it’s the worst one. >> Oh yeah it sucks. Like it’s it’s the Yeah. Yeah. I remember once I was like I was going through one of those PMDDD phases of my life I was telling you about and um I was just like so emotional.
(45:31) I wasn’t I this is also like I want to say this I wasn’t looking after myself and so that particular like spell of emotion was worse cuz I just couldn’t handle it. But I remember standing in the kitchen with my boyfriend and I was just crying like non-stop. And I’d found a way to make my feelings about him and we’d had a fight and then we were trying to like repair from the fight and he and he was just like you know I just I don’t know kind of looking at me like I don’t know what I can do to help you just like in this state and I was like it feels like the
(46:01) sorrow feels so deep and endless classic like so Piscian of me like it feels so deep and so endless and then I was like but it’s almost poetic and like it’s it was just such a weird thing for me to say but it’s true Like there is something to the depths of your emotions that is also poetic and that’s what you miss out on if you don’t >> Yes.
(46:25) >> feel them. >> Yes. You know, I love that you said that cuz I I experienced that too. Yeah. When when when I first had the loss, like the first like week maybe. I don’t know actually. No, no, it was like a couple weeks in cuz I think at first you’re kind of numb actually, but like when the true grief starts to to cut through the numbness, um I reme remember like the it was the first time I mean I was also in a kundalini awakening which means I had no defenses.
(46:57) That was like >> part of the thing is you can’t suppress your emotions. You have no more defenses, no coping mechanisms. Like you can’t it just feel the depth of it. So, but it sounds like you’re a big feeler, too. But I felt the full like depth of it. I thought I was going to like die, but at the same time, it was the deepest feeling I think I’ve ever felt in my whole life.
(47:20) And it and it was like this this moment of like, oh, this is life. >> Wow. Like, yeah, I’m alive. >> It was crazy. It was really powerful. I was like, this is horrible, obviously. that length. >> But but it was so, >> you know, alive. It was so um so alive is the only way to say it. It was so alive and it was just like, “Oh my god, this is I remember thinking this is what we came for.
(47:50) “ And I was like, >> this Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s like grief the the depths of the you and you mentioned it earlier. Um uh and it’s like my best friend says this all the time is she’s like you can’t feel the highs unless you feel the lows. Like you can’t you can only feel the high highs of pleasure and ecstasy if you’re willing to like go to the low lows.
(48:11) Like you got to expand the spectrum at both ends. I can kind of like imagine that without answering the question for you, but like that you’ve had this whole experience in science and it’s one experience to be a woman in STEM. That’s like its own thing. And then yeah I see you rolling your eyes like yeah one experience of being a woman in science and then you having this condalini awakening and or you sorry having this spiritual awakening that moves into condundalini and that also like it’s also an experience to be a woman in that and so after all of this
(48:39) plus you come from a lineage of women that have spiritual gifts and like yeah how where’s all like the where’s the vibe of being a woman landing for you right now? Yeah, I mean in science and like the process of going through that definitely, you know, they suppress the feminine. Um, and I I remember I found myself doing that.
(49:01) I don’t know if it’s it’s getting somewhat better, somewhat changing, but you know, like the overall like overarching like um culture is is masculine. And how do you know that? It’s because no one’s like freely, you know, crying in the workplace or like, you know, is your boss nurturing? No. Like just the fact that people will say things like keep it professional.
(49:26) That’s a masculine idea. I probably unconsciously some of it was conscious, you know, adopted more masculine, I don’t know, ways of speaking, writing, posturing, dressing. Um, and especially in science cuz, you know, it’s a very I’m actually very girly, you know, and I I love dressing up and like I love putting a little mascara on.
(49:48) And I remember, you know, I used to do that actually. I mean, I always did that, but I remember becoming aware of it like as a thing like in graduate school because people would comment like, “Oh, you dressed up today.” And I’m like, “Dressed up? I dressed period?” I was like you didn’t like you dress down like I was like I I don’t have to you know like it was a weird culture like where people would comment on stuff and I think that part of like coming to the spirituality stuff was in my head very feminine and like somewhere in my
(50:24) psyche it felt like threatening you know um to my identity as a scientist my my probably selfworth I don’t know like it you you come to devalue the feminine. I think I mean if you want my yeah total opinion I think women are more at least historically connected to the univer like you know the spiritual side of things and honestly I think men have been threatened by that.
(50:53) So part of the reason they try to suppress it, but it’s definitely been a a whole thing for me to come back into like good relationship with >> femininity like feminine. I’m still working on it. >> Yeah. Oh yeah. I know. Me too. Me too. Like I’m I’m um quite girly as well and it it Yeah.
(51:17) I still catch myself um yeah, I guess particularly with this with this project like my podcast and maybe I I wonder if any of this resonates with you cuz you had a project, you wrote a book, you did lots of interviews with people, but I I sometimes like I realize like when I’m trying to figure out how to prepare for something um and and or I’m I’m like researching how to research well so that I can be prepared for a conversation, a lot of it comes down to these very sort of uh it’s very logical.
(51:46) It’s it very much uses reason. Like you read a book, you write notes, you revise your notes, you come up with questions, you put the questions there, you order the questions, you make sure there’s a flow. And I’ve done that many times. That’s using logic and reason. And then I just never end up really using it.
(52:02) There’s a feminine way to do it that uses intuition and that uses like my perceptive tools um that are beyond like beyond the five normal ones we talk about during an interview which is like feeling the energy like where’s the energy of the conversation going and like that’s kind of my preparation to show up for that is by looking after myself and so I can be present.
(52:25) >> Yes. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I’ve I’ve moved towards that too, like less crazy prep, right? Like type a overachiever, like trying to leave some of that at the door and just intuitively feeling what’s actually important or how much prep is actually needed. You know what I mean? >> Yeah.
(52:46) Or like what the version what the version of preparation is. like is it actually am I supposed to just be sitting cross-legged in like with my thumbs and my pointer fingers together like coming into resonance with you know is that my preparation rather than like reading all these peer-reviewed journal articles and trying to make sense of them >> so I can sound smart like because so much of it comes down to like sounding smart you know I mean that was a huge part of my journey too right definitely as a scientist definitely um on on this newer version especially because a lot
(53:14) of my identity was around being a scientist was around being smart And then in my head spirituality was like made you stu you stupid. So I in the beginning it was the same. I remember prepping for interviews with like facts and studies and memorize things and like talking points so that I could you know like prove I was smart.
(53:34) And then at some point I just realized I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m smart I guess because like what do I really care if they think I’m smart or not? like, you know, at the end of the day, I could I could show up with I could do nothing but sight studies and somebody could still think I’m an idiot just because of my beliefs, right? Um, and like what can I do about that? Nothing.
(54:00) And so, it’s kind of like, yeah, I I realized that along the way. I was I was like, it’s about me. Like, I I know I’m smart. I’ve done enough to whatever show my or I need to do whatever I need to do to make myself right feel whatever I need to feel and then the rest is it’s whatever but it’s I I did that recently with um I went to give a talk to these students cuz my collaborator asked me to we were like planning this thing and I’m like I’ll come and I’ll talk but I’m not going to prepare anything because like I don’t feel like it. She’s like okay. And
(54:34) so I did that. I’ve never done this in my life, you know, but um yeah, I just showed up and then I was like I told them I’m like I didn’t prepare anything. I’m just going to talk and we’ll just see what comes out. I just like talked then I just told my story but they loved it.
(54:52) They were enraptured and I was thinking gosh that was one of the like easiest best talks despite the emotions that I’ve ever given. Like I followed my intuition to do that and it was fine. >> Yeah, totally. Well, that’s this. You just got to collect more data of of your intuition. I have this thing that I write every morning and it’s um my intuition is reliable.
(55:11) Evidence follows courage. So, it’s just reminding me that like you you cultivate your intuition by trusting it. And that’s the there’s no like you can’t think your way into that. You just have to do things and then be like, “Oh, like you did and that worked. That was good. I survived. No one died.” So, uh, we’re coming to the end, but I’m curious to know what’s next for you.
(55:32) Where, where is life going to take you now that you’re here? I have no idea, and I’m okay with that, you know? I mean, I I’ve been approaching my awakening as a scientist. So, I’ve taken so many notes and I have all these like drawings and whatever. So, I’m just continuing to do that. Uh, and then, you know, I have a collaborator.
(55:54) Every year we do a science and spirituality event at the society for neuroscience which is our big like conference. Um >> if we do it this year um I think what year is it 26? This will be the fourth year that we do it. But that event has been great. Um, so we might continue doing that because it’s just a space where scientists who are interested in anything other than like strictly just mainstream science can come talk and it’s grown every year.
(56:24) We have people come with like the craziest experiences and um, a lot of the psychedelic researchers come and so that’s so we’ll probably continue to do that. Well, thank you so much for your time today and for being so honest and sharing. Um, yeah, I really really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much for having me.
