Dr. Alok (Dr. K)

What's your understanding for why this is happening?

Completely agree.

Hey y'all, just a reminder that in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face.

We've got things like Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey.

So check out the link in the description below and back to the video.

Can I ask a couple of specifics about that?

Awesome.

So in the system of psychiatry, we'll sort of diagnose people with different kinds of things.

So their internal experience, one person may be very sad, one person could be very anxious, one person may have difficulty focusing their attention.

We'll call this major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

How do you can you help us understand?

So find that there's a certain nutritional makeup that makes our body.

I think you also alluded to we're not just an accumulation of physical substances, but mental impressions as well.

And if I missed that, please let me know.

But how do you understand why people end up in a different kind of, quote unquote, mental illness?

Yeah, if you've got jokes, go for it.

I think it's the mind.

On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you.

Maybe.

You're not the only one who's joked about that.

Yeah, so let me ask you a couple questions.

So when you say, you know, you ask the question, would you choose to suffer or be blissful?

So it sounds like you're separating out the youth.

I think I would choose, yeah, blissfulness.

Yeah.

So a couple of questions about that.

One is, what is the you if it's not the mind?

And secondly, what makes it hard for people to... So people, I think, think they are choosing blissfulness all the time, right?

So just like you said, everyone's going to choose blissfulness.

So how is it that people are striving for pleasantness, striving for blissfulness, and end up in suffering and compulsion?

How does someone bridge that gap?

I think so.

I think, well, I don't know if there's one, but I've read many things that I think... There is one.

Yeah.

I think I've read some of it.

I've gotten through the first few chapters.

Right?

So is there a particular methodology that allows people to bridge the gap between behaving in a compulsive manner?

So let me take a step back and ask in a different way.

So I have some patients.

And I teach a fair amount of yoga and meditation to my patients.

And I think it's a fascinating take that I also agree that there's a lot of compulsion when it comes to mental illness.

I think the key thing that defines mental illness is that you can't control where your mind goes.

So if you start to think negatively about yourself, you literally can't stop it.

Please.

Always.

Agreed.

I think that there's there's a lot of evidence of that, that the more severe the mental illness is.

So if we take a case like psychosis, so in psychosis, someone believes that their thoughts are 100 percent true to the point that we call it delusional.

Then we have anxiety where you're worried that your thoughts could be true, but you have maybe some sense that it's not true.

And then we have what I would call a regular human being who has some ability to question the results of their mind.

I'm still kind of curious, how does someone get from a compulsive mind to a mind that listens to what you tell it to do?

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

I think so, yeah.

In another microspec of a microspec, Houston, Texas, USA.

I think so.

How does one... So pardon me if I'm kind of leaning into some words here.

So I'm hearing you talk about what I understand to be a humkar.

Is that fair?

Absolutely.

I've got… I've got a client either way .

Heaven forbid.

We we made it very clear that you're never going to be a client for a psychiatrist.

Why not?

How does how does so can you tell us a little bit about how were you born this way?

No, so you're saying that one of the things that you're capable of doing is that you're able to shut off mental activity?

No.

I'm not doing it.

But the process of going from walking to sitting involves an arrest.

And what you described of I have mental activity and then it shuts off.

I think there's a transition.

Okay.

So let's dive right in.

Absolutely.

I don't know if you're going to die in 24 hours, but yeah.

Eventually, yeah.

But that nonstop activity, since you're saying the base state is rest, right?

I may not be using the right words there.

Okay.

So you're saying that you engage in mental activity and then there is a natural extinguishing of that activity when it's done?

Yeah, so I'm talking about the activity, not the object of activity.

So when I'm doing this, right, and then I stop this in some way, or maybe you're not saying it's stopping.

Is that stopping or just resolution of the activity?

Yes.

The same should be true.

Well, I think that's true for you.

So I think that the challenge is that.

Yeah, I mean, I think because I know we have a couple of questions that we want to get to, and I am super curious about that because I think this is the this is the I'm sort of sensing a major underlying thread to what you're saying, right, which is intentionality, consciousness, voluntary action.

And so what I'm curious about is like.

You know, if we've fallen from consciousness into compulsiveness, how do we go back?

Sure.

Absolutely.

So I think when you say mind, I think it depends.

Okay.

Let's just say yeah for now.

Yeah, absolutely.

So is it that so when you talk about inner engineering, do you think most people require?

So you talked about being a mechanic, right?

And engineering.

So do most people's chemical soups have the same problem or is there a specific way to fix a particular problem?

So just a reminder that today's live stream, while I'm a medical doctor, welcome everybody to another Healthy Gamer GG stream.

Okay, so are you saying that the conscious nature, you said everything in matter is cyclical, everything in the universe is cyclical, but when you talk about voluntariness, when you talk about intention, when you talk about being conscious, is that a cycle too?

So there's one particular cycle that I think a lot of people are struggling with right now, which is dating and relationships.

Do you have any thoughts about, you know, so the birth rates are in some countries at an all-time low.

People are entering relationships later, moving out of the house later, at least in many parts of Europe and North America.

Do you have any thoughts about what's going on here?

And a lot of people are suffering.

So do you have specific thoughts about this or does this basically track back to what you've already said?

Hey chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer GG podcast.

What is the difference between gratification and engagement?

So I'm getting a sense from engagement of, like you said, kind of just being involved, right?

Not necessarily trying to extract the most positive out of it.

But when I think about engagement and listening to your answer, it's like, okay, I'm in this.

Whether it's good, whether it's bad, for seven lifetimes, that's what I committed to when I got married in this one.

And so is that kind of what you mean?

Okay, so we have a couple of... Yeah?

Yeah, let's do a question.

Trevor.

Trevor.

Do you have any recommendations for where he should go riding?

All right.

Thank you for your time today, Sadhguru.

All right, so I'm going to go... Trevor, are we still streaming?

Okay, cool.

So what's the... Yeah, so that was interesting for sure.

Yeah, so I'm not sure what... Can you show me the overlay that people are seeing, Trevor?

Yeah, so I hope you all enjoyed that.

I think, you know, it's interesting because I think...

So this is sort of like my experience when I learned yoga.

And part of the reason that I teach yoga and meditation and stuff like that is, so I think that in the West, so if we listen to Sadhguru, I think here's kind of what I took away from the conversation, is there are a couple of fundamental processes that result in what we call mental illness.

so his his big theme today was compulsiveness versus consciousness and i think we kind of see that i think i've always been curious why from an evidence-based perspective we have all of these different diagnoses so we have diagnoses like major depressive disorder generalized anxiety disorder um adhd now that's the one that i think is a little bit different but

And so I always thought it was interesting that you, you know, if we look at the treatment of these things from a psychotherapy standpoint, from a medication standpoint, these are all very specific, right?

Just because I'm a medical doctor and a psychiatrist doesn't mean that anything we discuss on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice.

So if like if the mind has a particular problem, it has a particular solution.

But I think that what's interesting about meditation is that there are studies that basically show it's like you can do one technique and it is equally efficacious for all the different stuff that you do.

Like basically if you have an anxiety disorder or a mood disorder,

there is if you have narcissism, there's basically one technique which will help everything.

which got me really curious from like an outcomes perspective, right?

Because if all of these diseases are different, how is it that there's like one treatment for everything?

And we sort of see this on the physical side as well.

If you look at something as simple as exercise, if I have a heart problem, if I have GI issues, if I have blood pressure issues, if I have insomnia, we can look at something like exercise is a whole scale treatment that improves all of these things.

and i i think it's in a sense i'm not too surprised because i think in in you know in the yogic discipline they're not super concerned with a particular pattern

of suffering or mental disturbance, right?

They're just like, okay, there is a, the contents of the pattern are not what's important.

It is a certain amount of repetitiveness.

So the two things that I kind of pulled away from this conversation are compulsiveness versus consciousness, which I think he, you know, said several times.

And the second thing is the misidentification with the self, right?

And that's stuff that we kind of talk about.

And the interesting stuff is, I think he had a couple of good points about, you know, science and Western science and those were super fair.

And I think that what we've found is that that's, you know, there's a lot to that.

I mean, we know that when you think your thoughts are true, when you no longer have space between you and your thoughts, we talk about some of that as like getting distance or even detachment vairagya.

when you and when there is a compulsive way of thinking, that's absolutely correlates with mental illness.

So he's like spot on there, right?

So if we look at OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, what is the root problem?

The root problem is a certain compulsion to a way of thinking.

And then if we look at the other bucket, even if we talk about something like social anxiety, right, it's like when I am out with people, my mind has a compulsive way of thinking.

I'm thinking, oh, my God, what do people think?

Do people like me?

Do people not like me?

So I think that's that's spot on.

Then the other thing is the identification with the self.

So so I kind of think of that as a hunger, a hunger.

And I think he I would also agree with him that this gets translated as ego, which is not a very good translation.

One of the things that I've come to appreciate is that translating certain Eastern concepts to Western words

it attaches a certain Western implication to it, right?

So if we say like someone, when we think about ego in the West, we tend to think about it as sort of like negative.

And then Freud meant a different thing by ego and stuff like that.

So it gets kind of complicated.

But I think the other thing that we see with mental illness is a over attachment to our belief in who we are.

So someone who's suffering from depression will think in terms of like, you know, oh, like, I'm terrible.

I'm a bad person.

Right.

So that's actually like that's their that's their identity.

That's who they believe they are.

And if we look at things like narcissism and stuff like that, some of these personality disorders, which also have compulsive thought patterns.

Right.

So the whole point, I think, and this is it was interesting to hear his take on it.

Right.

Because I, I think he's sort of spot on that.

If you look at the majority of mental illnesses, there are a couple of exceptions here.

There is a misidentification with the self and there is also a compulsive thought pattern.

And what we do, even in a very heavy-handed sort of way, so when we think about the role of psychiatric medication, what they're designed to do oftentimes is to stop a compulsive thought pattern.

So if you give someone with a panic attack a benzodiazepine, and this I kind of also appreciated his emphasis on physical stuff.

right?

That your brain exists within a body that your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system are going to affect the function of your neurons and then the subjective experience of your mind.

So I think like all that stuff is, it seems super fundamental, but also I think is like kind of spot on.

Um, so I hope you guys enjoyed it.

I'm sorry we didn't get enough chance for questions, but it's, it seemed like the conversation was kind of going.

So, um,

Yeah, do you all have any questions?

Yeah, so someone's asking, Dr. K, you talk a lot about teaching yoga.

Do you have any recommended yoga routines or guided yoga I can do at home?

Do you have any plans to release a yoga module?

So we did a boot camp a few years ago where I went through some super basic yogic postures.

And then in terms of meditation regimens and stuff like that, if you guys want... So here's where...

So being a psychiatrist, I spent a lot of time and I think this is true.

We didn't get a chance to get into this, but I do think, you know, he mentioned that there are specific ailments and I think that he didn't talk about it here.

But I'm I have no doubt maybe I'm wrong, but I have no doubt that if we had gotten to points of the conversation about particular imbalances, that he could have talked about that.

But I think that, you know, the work that I was kind of doing was, this was more research work at Harvard Medical School, was trying to develop particular yoga and meditation regimens for particular mental illnesses.

So a lot of that kind of information is in Dr. K's guide, right?

So when we think about depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma,

and meditation, I've tried to map out particular regimens or particular ways.

What are the patterns of the mind?

And this was kind of what I was, you know, he was sort of saying, you're very interested in how you're trying to rush to the how, because I think that's where the money is.

Like, I think that discussing a concept only has so much utility.

Maybe I'm wrong there.

But what I found is very helpful is teaching people the very practicalities of, okay, if your mind is compulsive in this way,

here is something here's first of all how do you become conscious if you're compulsive and that's where i think there's a really really interesting um take on one of the ways that i've found is helpful to that helps people become conscious more rapidly is to show them ahead of time what the compulsion actually is so that you're on the lookout for it

Um, and, and so that helps a lot.

So if y'all are interested in particular regimens and stuff like that, we have meditation tracks and things like that too.

So hopefully that'll help.

Isn't a hum car better translated like eye making or the making of eye?

Yeah.

So I would, I would say that a hum car, the best way to understand it is the eye feeling, right?

So when anytime you have a feeling of I, like I in the way that I sort of more technically describe it as I am dot dot dot.

Right.

So I am tall.

I am short.

I am rich.

I am a loser.

I'm a winner.

I'm successful.

All of these are abstractions.

They're not things that you can biopsy.

So even if I say I'm a doctor, you can't biopsy without biopsy.

a shared mental abstract illusion of that you can't find a doctor in me it's not a real thing it's something that i identify with and and that's that's something that's really hard for people to understand and i think it's it's very valuable to think about kind of what he's saying which is that how much of your suffering it's not so much that something is happening right so that's not really what suffering is pain is a part of life so you can't avoid pain but suffering is different

Suffering is the attachment, the associations with the thing that is painful.

So breaking up with someone arguably is painful.

The real suffering comes with the associations that you attach to it.

I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life if I can't make it with this person, then this, then this, then this.

And so if you really think about it, there's the actual pain of the breakup, which even then is not actually that bad if you really think about it.

So this just means that you won't see this person for some period of time.

But if you kind of think about it, you don't see that person for an hour during the day and you're fine.

Right?

I shower and eat and whatever without this person.

This person won't be a part of my life.

And that part of my life, when that person is in my life, I really enjoy it.

But where does the real...

chunk of suffering come from the the primary chunk of suffering doesn't come from their absence it comes from because you can survive with you survive with them without for an hour totally fine and then you can survive a second hour and a third hour and they've been on vacation you were totally fine everything was totally fine even in their absence it is that it is when your mind piles those absences together

accretes them, right?

Now it'll be forever.

It'll be never again.

And never again is where the suffering comes from, even though you can survive for an hour.

And what do we find from a clinical perspective, from a practical perspective?

As people let go of never again and forever and these kinds of thoughts, and they start dating again, well, that facilitates their ability to date again.

Then they find they are able to date again, and then they find that they're doing fine.

Right.

You fall in love again and then you're engaged in this relationship.

I also like that.

Right.

So I think that there's a big part of.

And it's not just trying to be gratified in a relationship, I think half the problem in the world today is that we're trying to extract as much we live our lives as if we're trying to extract as much dopamine as we can from our brains.

My life becomes a dopamine extraction machine.

And the more that I extract dopamine from my brain, and I've seen this with people who are addicted to methamphetamine, where they're releasing a thousand times a regular dose of dopamine, the more that life or relationships become the extraction of gratification, the worse you're going to get.

And there's a lot of beautiful stuff in engagement or involvement.

See, engagement or involvement, he's precise with his language.

Engagement or involvement doesn't have a particular valence of positive or negative.

I don't know if you all caught that.

Right?

So he says you should be involved.

People aren't involved.

Involved doesn't mean good.

It doesn't mean bad.

There's no valence of positive or negative there.

It is just being there.

In a full way, in a total way.

And that's what creates good relationships, for better or for worse, right?

In illness and in health.

Till death do us part, which is what people who are, you know, get married in North American or European Christian sort of ceremonies will say.

So and I think that's really important.

And I think we have good evidence that that that works.

And the reason we know that is because we have some of these, you know, principles from psychiatry or psychology like radical acceptance.

Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only.

And if you look at some of these systems like acceptance and commitment therapy, which are rooted in some of the concepts I think Sadhguru talked about today.

If you look at these things, basically we've sort of figured out, even from a scientific evidence standpoint, that when you just accept what comes, as opposed to attach a bunch of conditions and try to make it perfect, if you accept that marriage or life will have problems, then that's totally fine.

Things get better.

Okay, I'm scrolling down.

Yeah, so another thing that for people asking about ADHD, we did a partnership with Audible.

So 30 Days to Thrive with ADHD.

And that's live now if you all want to check it out.

It's basically like a 30-day guide to some really practical stuff about even if you don't have ADHD, it's helpful.

It's just basically principles that I found are useful for people who have a growing number of executive function deficits due to things like technology usage.

So you all should definitely check that out.

What do you do when you feel alone on the spiritual path when everyone else is living exclusively through their egos?

That feeling of aloneness comes from your ego.

I am alone and everyone else is egotistical.

Not trying to troll you.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful.

But like, really, that is something you need to think about.

So one of the interesting experiences that I've had along my journey is that I've become more and more alone, but it's totally fine.

Like I feel good when I'm alone.

I think that aloneness has some degree of like stillness to it.

So be careful about that.

Um, but if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you stand life without dopamine?

So this is a great, great, great, great question.

Right.

And, and Sadhguru also emphasized a certain amount of, uh, what is it?

Chemical, the importance of chemicals.

So he's, he's definitely like the first guru that I've heard talk about that in that way.

Um, so here's the thing.

If you have a life without oxytocin, if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you live a life without dopamine?

So this is where like no amount of water is gonna be a substitute for food, right?

So our biological system is designed to have oxytocin and dopamine, and you can't substitute one for the other.

In fact, I think part of the problem is that when we start substituting or trying to use dopamine instead of oxytocin, that's what actually creates the most problems.

And I know that getting oxytocin is hard because oxytocin oftentimes requires another person.

You can't hug yourself and get a dose of oxytocin.

It's terrible.

It has to be another person or creature, animal.

And so then what happens is when we're oxytocin deficient, which comes from physical touch, hugging, cuddling, things like that, then there's a certain amount of mood disturbance that comes with oxytocin deficiency, right?

We feel anxious.

We feel sad.

We feel alone.

And then we want some way to get rid of those feelings.

And this is where dopamine comes in because dopamine is a pleasure molecule.

So when we get dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, we feel pleasure.

And so even though we feel pleasure, it's not a substitute for anxiety, like relief.

It's not a substitute for comfort, right?

Safety.

Dopamine doesn't give you a feeling of safety and comfort.

All it gives you is pleasure temporarily.

And here's the real problem with that, is that when we induce pleasure,

when we're feeling uncomfortable, alone, isolated, then what happens is that kind of shuts, it doesn't shut it down, it drowns it out.

But the whole reason why the human body and brain and mind make us feel uncomfortable, think about this for a second.

Why do we feel bad?

Why does the body make us feel bad?

It makes us feel bad to induce certain kinds of behavior.

And so what do I see when a human being feels lonely?

And they turn to pornography, seen it hundreds, if not hundreds of times, let's say hundreds.

I don't know about thousands.

I don't know if I've had like a thousand patients with pornography.

I haven't.

So let's say hundreds.

Is now what's happening is those negative feelings which induce action are now being drowned out by something like pornography.

So now, and this is the real problem, is then you kind of get stuck, right?

You get stuck in this cyclic pattern of like, I feel bad, therefore pornography.

That's going to make the bad feeling go away.

But I'm not actually moving forward in any way.

I'm not actually fixing my problems.

And then the thing that makes that even worse is as I engage with pornography, as I engage in a lot of high dopaminergic activities, the effect of that on my body, on my mind, on my ability to handle negative emotions, to sit with emotions, my capacity for empathy, all of these things actually get impaired.

And as those things get impaired, my ability to engage in relationships and end up with oxytocin drops.

So the effect of chronic dopamine extraction on our brain sabotages my ability to engage in relationships.

That's the real problem.

But if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you stand a life without dopamine?

No, no, I think it's totally fine.

That's the thing, right?

So there's so many words there that are really important.

If you aren't getting something, then your focus should be on getting it.

And how can you stand life without dopamine?

That's where there's a certain amount of distress tolerance, which I know you all hate to hear.

But there's tons of studies that show that people who fall into addictions have a low capacity for distress tolerance.

I mean, I enjoy listening to you speak.

And so the ability to sit and sit with something without reacting to it, because this is really important to understand.

See, when I have a negative feeling, if I have to react to it, what that means is that I'm not in control of myself or my life.

If I cannot sit with sadness and I have to turn to dopamine to make it go away, that means that if I am sad, I will engage in this action.

Welcome, everyone, to Mental Illness Awareness Week, where we have all kinds of conversations with people just to learn about different perspectives on mental health.

So I have so many questions about that.

A leads to B. And this is what we see with sort of behavioral patterns of addiction is that the brain or body or human doesn't know an alternative.

And what that means is that your feelings will dictate your actions.

And if your feelings dictate your actions, then your feelings will dictate your life.

And this is why we have a mental health crisis.

Because we have way too many people in the world whose feelings determine their actions and their actions determine their destiny.

And so is it okay if I ask a couple of questions?

So all it takes, it's not easy, but it's simple.

All it takes is to separate your action from your feelings.

How do we do that?

Really easy.

This is why I love, so in the yogic system, we have these things called yamas and niyamas, which means they're like observances.

So cleanliness is a really great way to start.

So if you look around you and there is something that is not clean, and if you sort of think about why isn't it clean, it's because...

So the first question, so it seems like you're saying that there are a lot of sociological changes, systemic changes, the quality of the nutrient intake we take is changing, the water we drink, the air we breathe.

didn't feel like cleaning it in that moment you're like i'll take care of it later i'll take out the trash tomorrow i'll do this i'll do this it's something i'm very guilty of so it's close close to home for me and so if we think about how do we separate feeling from action notice when you have a feeling to to do something and then don't do that thing the big mistake that we make is we try to get separation from feelings and actions for big things

How do I survive this breakup?

Don't start swimming in the middle of the ocean.

Start in the kiddie pool.

Start by cleaning, right?

Notice within yourself, holy crap, I don't feel like doing this.

Go ahead and do it anyway.

Make sense?

Really simple.

You guys are like, how do I start?

Just start with cleaning.

And not just like clean up your room for the sake of cleaning your room.

Notice the internal drives when you don't feel like doing something and then run contrary to it.

That is how you are gonna be doing pushups for your frontal lobes and taking control

Decreasing the size of the connection between what you feel and how you act.

That's the really important training that you need to do.

Because what happens every time you give into an emotion and you act when you feel a certain way is it strengthens the connection between your emotional circuit and your behavioral circuit.

We need to weaken that connection out to separate those two things.

Can enlightened people just sleep four hours?

I think human beings can be healthy with four hours of sleep.

I don't know if being enlightened has anything to do with it though.

I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff from the yogic literature that we're sort of starting to discover.

So a couple of my favorite studies.

So we now know about free diving.

But, you know, I've studied with yogis that will breathe once an hour or even less.

Once an hour, I think I've come pretty close to that.

We know from freediving that that's something you can do.

Another thing is there's a great study by Herb Benson that showed that

Practice of yoga and pranayama in the right way can alter body temperature by a maximum of nine degrees Celsius, which is insane.

Can you help me understand how that results in mental illness?

That's been verified in the laboratory.

And I think that similarly with sleep, there are certain things that you can do that will allow you to sleep for a very small quantity of time.

And that just has to do with like physiology, right?

So if you do the job that sleep has to do, if you take care of your body and do some of the things that sleep normally does for you, you can sleep less.

And the second thing is that if we think about why do we need to sleep more, the life that you live will determine how much you sleep and how much difficulty you have sleeping.

See, everyone gets this.

We did a whole video about this, but I think this is a huge misunderstanding that people have.

I have a lot of patients who had insomnia and they think insomnia is about going to sleep.

I have difficulty going to sleep.

And so we try to solve in psychiatry, we try to solve insomnia at bedtime.

So we say, hey, take some mirtazapine, take some Benadryl, take something to help you sleep, right?

We'll give people melatonin.

We'll like, if you're having trouble sleeping, like take this pill so it helps you sleep.

Here's the key thing to remember.

Your ability to go to sleep depends on your activity for the day.

So the way that you spend your day will determine how easy or difficult it is to fall asleep.

Or what we understand as mental illness.

Now, some people have really bad insomnia disorders that this doesn't work for, or at least works in a very limited capacity.

But I'd say that literally for 99% of the patients I've worked with who have insomnia, unless you have something like familial fatal insomnia, which is a prion disease or some other form of really, really bad genetic or weird neurological insomnia,

So help me understand the connection of those two dots.

I don't know if what I'm saying is going to work for people with familial fatal insomnia.

But anyway, the rest of y'all, 99% of people, it's about how you spend your day.

So a couple of things that people really make big mistakes on.

One is I think having a heavy meal before you go to bed is huge.

So have a heavy meal, get that insulin spike, go ahead and go into that food coma.

Second thing is whether you physically exercise during the day will help you sleep at night.

And this is the third most important thing that a lot of people lose track of.

You know, there's this weird phenomenon where when you go to bed, you get this burst of energy and you're like, man, I feel so much motivation.

Like tomorrow I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this.

Why does that burst of energy happen?

I mean, I totally agree with you, by the way, but I'm just really... When I say I agree with you, I think about it from a scientific perspective.

Why does your mind say this?

So I want y'all to think about a day where you've been super productive the whole day.

You woke up in the morning, you went to set, you filmed for 12 hours, you prep for tomorrow, you went to the gym, you had such a full day.

And then at the end of the day, do you ever get a burst of motivation tomorrow?

It's going to be different.

Tomorrow I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this.

Sometimes you get a feeling of satisfaction.

Today was great.

Tomorrow is going to be a repeat.

And then you will be able to go to sleep.

Your brain literally keeps track, has a mental calendar of what you should be doing, what you should accomplish on a daily basis.

And if you do not accomplish enough of what you are supposed to do, and you know what that is, then your mind says, oh, my God, I have fallen short.

It's not time to sleep yet.

I have so much more to do.

And then what does the mind do?

The mind says, okay, I'm going to do it all tomorrow.

So you get this burst of motivation at the end of the day.

So if you live your day in a way that there's no need for that burst of motivation at the end of the day, if you hit the sack and you're like, oh my God, this is such a long day.

I understand that your background is a little bit different.

This is a, you know, I did a lot.

Then insomnia will get way, way, way better.

Okay, thoughts about on internal desires in of themselves being the purpose in one's life, finding satisfaction and drive in the continuity of life and present meaningful internal desires.

Okay, I think this is a great question, but I think we have to be precise with our language.

I don't know what an internal desire is.

I've never seen a desire outside of me.

And of course, some of the stuff you say is...

So I don't know what that is.

I do not think desires or the fulfillment of desires is a purpose in life.

I don't think that's going to work.

The gratification of desires is not how we derive meaning.

Okay?

So finding satisfaction and drive, that's good.

But generally speaking, I think the best way to have a meaningful, fulfilling life is to be engaged with something.

perfectly aligned with science.

it doesn't come from the gratification or even the satisfaction of your desires.

It comes from the wholehearted attempt towards something, right?

So like, it's not about even succeeding or failing or getting what you wanted.

I think there's scientific research to back up basically every statement that you've made.

It's about giving it your all.

And what you find with people who test highly for life satisfaction, a sense of meaning and purpose, the satisfaction comes from the living, not the object or the end of living, not the goal of living, not the goal of action.

It comes from the action itself.

So to participate fully in life, whatever it brings, the good and the bad, that's when people get satisfied.

And that's where I think there's a lot of subtlety here.

And I'm not sure that I think this person may understand that.

They just, I'm reading into their question in a particular way.

So, you know, you can have internal desires and the desires give you a general direction.

So that's good, right?

So if I have like a desire to do something, I'm not saying that you should move away from that desire.

But I'm curious about how you understand the connection between these two things.

But the satisfaction doesn't come from point A to point B. It comes from how you live this middle portion, right?

And there are a ton of people that I've met that, you know, will work on this where they start to really focus on not even succeeding, but enjoying the thrill of the chase.

Right.

And if you really think about it, like.

How when do you have fun playing a video game?

Is it the victory at the end that is really the majority of the enjoyment?

If so, games would last 60 seconds and they would end very, very, very, very, very quickly.

If we really think about it, right, if the end is about winning, the funnest game on the planet would be, hey, me versus you, heads versus tails, let's flip a coin.

Ah, you won.

Flip a coin.

I won.

Flip a coin.

You won.

Flip a coin.

I won.

Flip a coin.

I won again.

That would be the funnest game on the planet if the winning or the losing was really where the fun is.

That's not where the fun is.

The fun is in the gameplay loop itself.

And this is what's wild.

See, video games are awesome because video games have taught us so much about how we work.

So what makes a successful video game?

Remember, video games are taking advantage of our neurology.

They're leaning into what we already have there.

That's the problem with video games.

That's what makes them so addictive is because they hijack our existing circuitry.

So what makes a game fun?

Not the winning or losing, not even the loot box at the end.

It is the gameplay loop.

Right?

The loop has to be engaging.

So in your own life, if you are trying to figure out how to do anything, it doesn't matter what it is.

Focus on the gameplay loop itself.

Focus on your experience of doing the thing, not whether the thing is good or bad.

Give you all a couple of really simple examples.

So I've worked with a fair number of people who are incels or red pillars or whatever, and they really struggle with dating.

And what they really try to do is enjoy, like they try to date and it doesn't work well.

And they think, oh my God, this person doesn't find me attractive.

I don't find them attractive, but then you can change the way your experience of that date.

You can look at that date and you can say, okay, I'm going to go on this date and it may work out.

It may not work out, but Hey, it's an opportunity to get to know someone.

It's an opportunity to practice being on a date.

There are all kinds of opportunities that,

in on a date that have nothing to do with getting laid at the end of the night, finding your forever person, getting oxytocin.

It is all entirely based on your framing.

It is entirely based on how you see the gameplay loop.

And the problem right now is that most people have a fundamental gameplay loop in their regular life that sucks.

And they think that that is static.

But this is the cool thing.

This is the really cool thing about a human brain is we can change our experience of an experience by changing our attitude towards the experience literally.

Right?

So we have a growth mindset and we have a performance mindset.

The mindset that you adopt will shape your subjective experience of an objective experience.

So I'll give you all a really concrete example.

When I work with people who have addictions, they try to be sober.

They're sober for a week and then they relapse.

And then they try again.

They're sober for a month and then they relapse.

And then they try the third time.

They're sober for four months and then they relapse.

And then they're sober for three days and they relapse.

And they think to themselves, oh my God, I am back to square one.

Right?

Makes sense.

You've lost all of your progress.

But there's a different way to think about it.

You were sober for three days and then you relapsed and now you're unhappy with that.

What is the total days of sobriety?

What's the total days of usage in the total days of sobriety over the last six months?

That's a huge win.

Are there challenges?

Absolutely.

Does this need to be worked through?

Absolutely.

But the attitude that you take, the cognitive frame or reframe that you take, that you make, will determine your gameplay loop.

So the biggest problem here is that we don't have healthy gameplay loops.

It's not that at the end of the day, we're not succeeding or failing.

I don't think there are people hired by Sadhguru team here in chat.

I think there are a lot of people in our community who derive a lot of value from Sadhguru's teachings.

Okay, how do we change our mindset or perspective?

This is one thing that I wish he had really gone into a little bit more detail, but I've noticed he doesn't oftentimes.

He really focuses on major central principles.

A little bit less so on mechanism, but that's fine.

You know, everyone has their own take.

I'm always curious when I hear him speak about more about mechanisms.

There are good reasons to not focus on mechanisms too, but that's a conversation for a different day.

So how do you change your mindset or perspective?

So the first step to changing your mindset or perspective is to recognize that what is produced by your mind is not truth.

It is a mindset or a perspective.

So if I take someone who's like a black pillar and I ask them, you know, what do you think about life?

They won't,

There's a fundamental problem.

They do not think that their thoughts are simply produced by their mind.

They think their thoughts are true.

So mindset shift is impossible.

Intentional mindset shift, I should say, is impossible as long as the thoughts that your brain randomly produces, you accept as true.

And today we're going to be speaking with the one, the only Sadhguru about his understanding of what's going on in the mental health world, why the world is in a mental health crisis.

The first thing is to look at the way that you look at life.

And try to see, really look at it.

Okay, this is just my perspective.

These are thoughts being produced by the mind.

The second thing that we can try to do is shift it in a different way.

So we try to lay this stuff out for y'all like, you know, in various exercises and things like this.

But literally, what is a different way that you can look at it?

So a lot of people will say, oh my God, I've broken up with someone, now I'm screwed.

But now you have experience in one relationship, right?

Every mistake you make in life is part of the process of you learning and leveling up.

But if you see mistakes as fixed endpoints, then the mindset shift is hard.

The other thing that makes a mindset shift really, really hard, I'll give you all a cool, I mean, I hope this is helpful.

This has really helped me help other people, is look at the dimension of time that your mind produces.

That's a mindset, right?

This is forever.

This means, like, look at the dimension of time.

You'll notice that

The more unhealthy your mindset is, the greater the dimension of time is going to be as part of your thought process.

Things will linger for a very long time and your mind will think about time a lot.

So one of the best ways to shift is to focus on the short term, really focus on the short term.

Okay, I got dumped for someone.

My mind is saying I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.

What am I going to do for the next hour?

Am I going to clean my kitchen?

Am I going to sit on my phone for an hour?

Am I going to scroll through TikToks, their Instagram reels that now realize that I've been dumped and are going to feed me this kind of stuff?

What am I going to do in the short term?

And I think the biggest thing that people grossly, grossly, grossly underestimate is how important experience is for changing your mindset.

So this is, I think, a big weakness in therapy that we try to work on the mindset solely through the mindset for the most part.

We try to help people cognitively reframe and stuff like that.

Whereas if you look at what is the biggest thing that will change someone's thought process is experience.

And this is why people get locked into mindsets.

Because you can try to listen to me talk about a mindset shift.

But if your experience continues to be really, really bad and terrible, and I'm a black pillar, no one cares about me, no one's talking to me and things like that.

I can talk as much as I want to about mindset, but your brain is producing those thoughts based on your experience.

So the best way to change it, the most automatic way, the most non-intentional way to change your mindset is to cultivate a different kind of experience.

So if you have a very negative aspect in your life or mindset in your life, then think about what your day-to-day experience is.

How can you change that?

And there's a paper that I wanna show y'all that just flashes to the, oh, I guess I can't show y'all a paper, nevermind.

Okay, so if you guys see this,

So if you look at people who have endogenous depression, their experience is relatively constant.

So this is reactive depression where you have some highs, you've got some lows, highs, lows, whatever.

But if you look at a normal healthy functioning, there's a lot of variety.

So I think oftentimes what I see very practically is that when people have the same fundamental daily experience and there's not variety, their mindset gets locked in.

And I think this is what's so confusing is that oftentimes the way to fix our mindset problems is to not fix our mindset problems.

It is simply to start to accumulate a different kind of experience.

So whatever, like if you're stuck in a particular mindset, step out of your daily life in its current form.

And it's really fascinating because if you look at research on quarter life crisis,

One of the key things to overcome a quarter-life crisis is literally a phase that they call checking out.

Checking out is not a problem.

It's part of the process of plugging back in.

You gotta check out to plug back in.

You have to step out of your existing life in order to figure out who you are so that you can plug back into your life in a much healthier way.

I think we've been running for a little while, so it's about two o'clock, so we're gonna wrap up.

Any last questions before we wrap?

How did I feel with other guru?

Fine.

I think we were a little bit like rushed at the start.

So that was like, I was thrown off a little bit there, but other than that, fine.

Dark night of the soul.

I think it's probably, we're going to cover it in memberships at some point.

Um, a throat chakra lecture will not talk.

I mean, some about prana, but not so much actually.

Okay.

Um, so take care of everybody.

If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe.

Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.

I'm Dr. Alok Kanuja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer.

And so let's hop in.

Welcome, everybody.

Absolutely.

Let's go for it.

Welcome.

So first question.

So the first question we ask everybody is, what do you go by?

What should I call you on today's stream?

Yeah, so that's awesome.

So let me, I mean, I completely agree.

I think that one of the really misunderstood things by Western science is the depth of things that are understood in yoga.

What?

Which one?

How should I address you?

What's the proper way to do it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think so.