For those of you who didn’t have a chance to meet me this morning, as they say on Fox News, “I’m everybody’s homie, Dr. Romie.” One of my initial segments, when I was first hired on as a full-time medical correspondent for them, was around, I think, one of the greatest leaders and unknown mindfulness teachers in our time. Muhammed Ali had passed away. That meant I was at the top of the news hour to help console and explain about Parkinson’s Disease and his journey.

And I was not practicing what I preach. My phone was not in airplane mode and it started to ring. They were counting down about 60 seconds from commercial. If you’ve ever been in the news studio, you know how chaotic it is on the newsroom floor, even though it looks so overproduced when you see it on the other side. People are running around and the phone went off and it was like everything was at a standstill. I looked and said, “Oh. It’s my momma.” Asian momma drama just never ceases. Right?

I was embarrassed that I forgot to silence my phone. This was my first time at the top of the news hour and it was ringing. I quickly thought, “I’ll the decline button on my iPhone.”

Instead, I hit accept. I heard, “Hello, Becca?”

“Mom, we’re in commercial break and I’m about to be on the news. Can I call back?”

“No, no, no. Very quickly please tell me what is this book face? What is this book face all about?”

“Mom, do you mean Facebook?” And we were on Facebook live on Fox News right then having this conversation. “Everybody is coming into the clinic, your father’s clinic, saying, ‘Have you seen what Romie is doing? We are so proud of her, a young girl from Danville, Illinois. She’s on TV. She’s speaking around the world and she’s teaching people to do what we were yelling at her to do her whole life as a child.’”

“OK, Mom. It’s 10 seconds to commercial. I love you. Bye.” Click. Right?

And so it got me thinking of those of you who do spend some time on “book face.” Please say hello to Romie’s mom on Facebook, because she only has three friends, my brother, Erst, and me.

But what is this image that we put out in the 2D world, whether it’s LinkedIn, your professional website on Facebook? What is the image we project to our clients who we provide services to? To your clients who you’re selling to, to your colleagues, to my patients? Who is it that we think we are projecting an image of? And what have we really been taught all the time? That in order to be successful individuals, we must talk about success.

One of the worst tools in psychology: “Fake it until you make it.” And if you don’t believe it, just put a meme about it on Facebook or Instagram and then see how many people like it. And determine your self-worth by that. So often, when I’m overwhelmed in clinic, I have people who spend 90 minutes with me on an intake when they come in. We want to get to the root cause of what’s going on and it’s not as simple as tell me the seven or eight physical or mental systems you’re having. When people come in and everything is going wrong in their life, their physical health, their mental health, their marriage, their job, life just sucks and even I start to feel overwhelmed, I take a deep breath and I say, “Tell me what you’re seeing in your Facebook news feed.”

“Oh my god. I’m so tired of seeing these happily married couples and their anniversary pictures. And I know half of them are cheating on their spouse.” We project what’s really going on inside of us. And I know to start from that place.

And so, if we can take a moment and have that reminder to put your phone in airplane mode so my momma doesn’t call you to check up on me right now. And really think what is this myth that we’ve been chasing: That in order to be successful I must project something to the outside world. Without figuring out what it is that is on my inside. And I know I am talking to the top performers at MDRT, so the fact that we even have a personal life maybe of a moot issue.

This picture is highly outdated with something like maybe many of us felt about paperwork. Now, it’s probably multiple browser windows that are open. But as a brain doctor, the research I’m doing for my first book, “Busy Brain Care,” that maybe our dependence on our digital devices is what’s really hurting us and we were doing a little bit better when we lived in this paper chart world.

You heard this morning that I don’t believe that we must be constantly striving to have work-life balance. That, if work is great but the marriage isn’t, or if my kids are excelling but I missed the fourth quarter sales goals, I am a failure.

The truth is the places of success start within and not what we’re posting about or talking about in our outside life. And this is that foundation that when I start that, inner peace is now my new success. Everything else starts to shift in its frame of reference and how we’re looking at it.

The next hour, my goal is to take a little deeper dive into these practices of mindfulness and meditation and to give you exercises that are proven in research, that we are about to publish that I did with a large company of 5000 employees. I ask you to take it back.

Those of you who are here with your partners or your spouses or your children, now you have a built-in accountability partner. And for those of you that don’t have someone here, I hope you will take this back to either some member of your family or your office.

We’re going to start with this idea. Do you have a busy brain or are you ready to brain up? And then I’m going to teach you these three cycles that I go through every day when I start feeling that something is off and I’m not connected within. “OK, Romie. Stop, contemplate, meditate and gravitate.” It’s those three steps, all the time.

What do I mean by braining up? I remember my intern year at the Medical University of South Carolina when we were training in neurology our first year in internal medicine. I became very attached, my first week, to this amazing Greek family. The grandfather was in with metastatic lung cancer, and just spewing wisdom, probably one of my greatest mindfulness teachers without me realizing it, about having compassion around death.

When he passed away, I was supposed to go in. I was on call. It was maybe 11:00 at night. My job as a doctor was to hold composure and label him brain dead. Instead, I walked in, saw the family crying, saw his lifeless body and started to sob. Now, girl, you’re not supposed to cry when you’re at work. My senior resident, chief resident, got hold of this and called the attending. Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands reac towards me, grab the collar of my white lab coat and drag me out of the room. He said, “Dr. Mushtaq, what are you doing? There is no crying in medicine. You need to man up.”

I got my lipstick, the heels and a couple things in between. Yes, my estrogen and progesterone levels. Yes. “What do you mean man up?” And I say this, not just for the women in the audience, but for the men. This whole idea that I have to toughen up and tough through. And I’m not allowed to have the full range of emotions that when life is sad, I can sit and mourn and, when I feel like life is joyful, I’m not allowed to feel joyful.

So I came up with this term, “brain up.” That you are sitting in your peak performance honoring this current present moment. If, in this moment, you’re feeling worried because some aspect of your life is not where you would ideally want it to be, be present with that. That is what we mean to brain up.

But when we’re sitting in a busy brain, we often have lost touch with those feelings. So, when I ask in clinic, one on one, or in the audience, “How are you feeling today,” what do I get in return? Your to-do list.

“Oh girl. I’ve got like 17 things on my to-do list. I still need to take care of blah, blah, blah, blah.”

We are busy doing, rather than feeling.

I’m here to say, “It’s OK to feel.”

You heard the speaker after me this morning talking about the concept of emotional intelligence and this is what we need. Strength and mindfulness are foundations of it.

So, I go back into this place. We talked about stress being what it is that’s on the outside, how I am processing it in my mind and whether I feel like I’m in prison in my mind. Or can I cope and redirect? This is what we’re going to talk about. I’m going to repeat this a little bit more. We talked a little bit about the stress response in the brain. This was coined by Dr. Walter Cannon in the 1940s at Harvard Medical School. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this. This is known as the fight or flight response. A lot of us have heard this, right? It’s like if you’re ever walking in the woods and you come upon a bear. Now I grew up in Illinois and I live in Florida now. I’ve never been walking in the woods and come upon a bear. Anybody in the room, is that like an issue? Bears. OK. A few of you. So the rest of us hear this and we disengage because we can’t relate to the story. The bears we’ve seen are in the zoo or on National Geographic television.

But the stress response is this: When something takes us out of that mindless comfort zone, the stress response kicks in to make sure we’re not in danger.

So what is the mindless about? Think of the most common place you probably drive on a day-to-day basis. For most people that’s from home to work or home to school. The last time you were at work this past week. I was in clinic on Tuesday and I lecture on this for a living. I remember reaching to work thinking, “I have no idea how I just got here.” Anybody else ever experience that?

That’s mindless driving. But what would wake us up? Well, if suddenly we had inclement weather and the car started to slip. Or if someone cut us off in traffic. Or if suddenly the road that we typically take was closed and there was a detour sigd. Suddenly we would wake up into consciousness. That’s the stress response, our airport traffic control center saying, “Yo, Ro. Wake up and drive.” That’s the difference. That’s how the stress response helps us.

But the stress response only works in full function for on average from 90 seconds to three minutes.

Another real life example I remember from my intern years, the most dreaded night was when you were carrying the code pager and there was a code blue called in the hospital. That means somebody’s heart stopped or someone stopped breathing. You drop everything and you run. That is the test of every doctor, nurse, respiratory therapists. Fight or flight response. You drop, you run and you focus to wherever they’re telling you on the overhead pager to go.

Where did the stress response help my cognition? That as the doctor and one of the leaders of the team, you’re able to quickly assess what someone else needs. Not look over here and think, “Oh, girl, look at the nurse’s shoes. I like those. Where did you get them?” Right?

That’s that cognitive ability to focus where I need to focus. And that’s where the stress response works for us.

Here’s the problem. If you’ve got a heightened stress response because a client has just thrown a curve ball at you in your presentation and you need to think on your feet, you’re there for about 90 seconds to three minutes. After on average three to five minutes, that inflammation starts kicking in and that airport traffic control tower that we were talking about starts shutting down your runway. And that’s what’s known as inflammation. We talked a little bit about the body. You heard my story. But for high performers like you, what does that actually mean?

A couple of you asked about this in the lunch break. “Doc, you know, you talked about this. I think my memory is fading with age. I’m not as sharp in my 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s as when I was in college.” That is actually not true. It’s just about training the brain. But when we’re constantly running and worried that our lives don’t look like what we posted on Facebook or LinkedIn, we start having impairment in the key five areas of our memory with our airport traffic control center. Which is our ability to pay attention, perception (that I know that you, Angela, are sitting maybe three, four feet away from me and Alan, the great AV guy, is about 50 feet back). I’ve got no sense of direction, so I probably have that measurement wrong. But, that’s your sense of perception. Our short-term memory, our ability to learn new facts and ideas and our word finding. These are all a function of that airport traffic control center inflammation.

I’m here to help you make the case in an easy way to reset that. We talked a little bit earlier that this happens because once that stress response goes off, the fight or flight, you’ve got that initial adrenalin and dopamine helping you to run, helping you to focus, helping you to do whatever you need to do. But, once that shuts down, the stress hormone levels go up.

What is a common measure that a lot of your primary care doctors are getting nowadays but not a lot of people know what to do with? It’s your C-reactive protein. Somebody else said that to me just as we were coming in. “My C-reactive protein is through the roof.” Or the cardiac ratio is through the roof when you measure your cholesterol numbers and you don’t know what those are.

So, if your primary care doctor or cardiologist got one of those numbers and you’re thinking, “that looks pretty bad,” you need to do something about your stress or you could have a heart attack. This is it people, we need to reset our airport traffic control center. Two easy measures of that. It leads to the typical symptoms of stress, I’m not sleeping well, I’m not eating well, I’m under emotional distress. And then it just feeds back into the stress loop and it goes over and over and you wonder, “How do I break it?”

If you weren’t here this morning, I talked about three symptoms that are common. We can measure all these blood hormone levels. I can check your rate variability, your reaction to blood pressure. We can do your psychology test screening, hormone levels in clinic. But once your airport traffic control center is off, the first thing that goes is your runway, your circadian rhythm. By the way, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a person who’s done the research on circadian rhythm and sleep. It’s that profound and important and sets the stage for meaningful health.

So how do you know your stress response is off? Think for a moment, before you arrived here in California, the state of your sleep for about the week before you arrived here. Did you have difficulty falling asleep because of thoughts racing in your mind? No judgement here. I talk on this for a living. I’m in the middle of tight deadlines for a publisher and a full speaking tour. I’m often going to bed at night trying to remember what city I’m in. I have this. I say this not to talk about me, but to just help give you ease that this is normal.

But if this is going on for more than seven days in a row, our stress response is a little off. You’re waking up in the middle of the night. You may be going to the restroom. That’s OK. Or husband or wife is snoring. If the snoring isn’t that bad or you go to a different room, you should be able to fall asleep within 10 to15 minutes. But if you’re waking up now and you’re wide awake and you’re thinking, “Just let me check my mobile phone, emails, start doing chores around the house,” that’s an abnormal stress response. That’s typically related to your thyroid and adrenal gland in the middle of the night being off.

And last but not least is you slept a full night, whether you used alcohol or a sleeping pill to help you or you were just so exhausted from your day, but you wake up feeling absolutely exhausted. That’s typically a sign of that multiple endocrine issues are going on and are undiagnosed. And that’s all happened because of inflammation in the brain.

What are some other common symptoms other than sleep? The abnormal stress response that I see in this busy brain access is hyperactive state. I know someone said you’re not allowed to take pictures. I don’t mind if you’re taking pictures of my slides and I do think the slide decks were uploaded in your system as well. They should all be there.

But difficulty falling or staying asleep. The food cravings, the abnormal food cravings. Thank you, by the way, for the couple of you that brought my medicine, chocolate, here. Thank you. I’m on Florida time zone and I’ve stopped in Michigan and Texas on the way here to speak. So my time zones are a little off. Food cravings. If the Pacific time zone is not your time zone and you’re having some food cravings, come join me. We’ll have a chocolate party tonight.

But what about this thing of, “Doc, I’ve been doing everything. I’m exercising. My personal trainer is telling me I can’t get rid of that muffin top.” Do we even call it a muffin top anymore? That’s a 90s thing. I don’t know what, a “dad bod.” Is that what that is? That difficulty losing that last five to 10 pounds despite eating right. Generalized pains and aches of joints. You’ve got some inflammation. It’s arthritis. Or you just notice when you’re a little more stressed your neck and your back pain are worse. But if you sleep a full night, they get better. Right?

Here are some major ones in your GI system and that gut brain connection. Heartburn. Symptoms consistent with irritable bowel syndrome or bloating after eating, no matter what you’re eating. And then the anxiety and difficulty focusing.

Now I just gave you what seems like a really long laundry list that seven different specialists and medicine would take care of. Right? That’s the inherent problem with how we’re approaching stress and the stress response on the body. We go to a few different doctors or a primary care doctor and one pill for one condition is going to make the other one here worse. And we’re not getting to the root cause of the issue. And what is the root cause in integrative medicine and this world of neurology and mindfulness? It is that your mind is strong medicine.

We still get clients at the Center for Natural and Integrative Medicine who are vegan or paleo. They are eating clean, triathletes, yet life still feels like it’s falling apart. “Doc, I’m taking all these supplements. I’ve got a perfect diet. I haven’t had a cheat day in 22 days.”

What do I tell them to do? “Well, you go home tonight and have a cheat day.” They think I’m absolutely insane. But it starts with the mind and the spirit. And everything goes from there into good health, emotional well-being, physical well-being and really the energy of your office as you heard from the leader.

Let’s do a little test. You’re in control and not the doctor or the lab that they handed you. And, if I teach you that you’re in control of your airport traffic control tower right now, and no cheating and taking pictures and getting help from your friend sitting next to you right now. We’re going to do a little brain test. I apologize, I did not let the MDRT staff know I was going to inflict a little pain. But, I’m a neurologist and, if I’m not doing a brain test, I’m not doing my job. Are you in busy brain or peak performance right now? This is from a neurocognitive test that we do in clinic when people come and tell me, “Doc, I think I’m losing my mind or my memory and I’m too young to have dementia.”

This is one of those screens we use. I’m going to give you 30 seconds to remember the list of words. And I see somebody with their camera up there. Don’t pretend that now at the end you know which words those are that are right on the screen. Just teasing you. Take a look at this. For those of you who can’t see the slides, I’m going to help give an audio cue and read it. And give you 30 seconds. This is a room full of smart people. You’ll remember them. Ready. Set. Go. Thread. Pin. Sharp. Point. Sewing. Eye. Symbol. Prick. Thorn. Hurt. Haystack. Injection. Syringe. Cloth. Knitting.

OK. Take a breath. One more look. Everybody got this to memory. This is a really sharp group.

There’s one more list. You’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have had that desert.” I know.

OK. Bed. Tire. Rest. Awake. Wait. Dream. Snooze. Blanket. Slumber. Doze. Snore. Nap. Drowsy. Peace. Yawn. Take a breath. Take in that list. I swear this is the last list.

Now tell me. Were these six words on those two lists? Go ahead and take a look and just think to yourself, don’t shout them out. I’m hearing a lot of disagreement and mumbling in this room. Here we go. Awake and sewing. This is a test. I just saw blood drain from some of your faces. You do not have dementia. I’m a neurologist. This is just a sign that our cognition isn’t where it needs to be. This is a typical time of day, two meals, breakfast and lunch if you’ve had it. You’ve had some carbohydrates. Glucose levels are altered.

This is what will do this. There are a few things.

It’s this idea that if I really want that life-work balance, it’s not about what I’m projecting or doing out there with my work and spouse and my children and church and all of the things that we’re juggling in our life. It’s converting the busy brain into a balanced mind. And here’s the program based in science we’re going to do.

To contemplate, meditate, gravitate. Stop over and over throughout the day. Any time I start feeling like all my airport traffic control centers aren’t functioning, step aside, contemplate, meditate, gravitate. I’m going to give you this program to do at home. And I’m going to ask that you try it for the 30 minutes before bedtime. I’m going to just start and I’ll ask this at the end. How many people in this room think they can give me 30 minutes before bedtime for self-development exercise? Perfect. Almost the majority of the room. If you’re like the go-getter, the CEO, you’re the next person on the cover of that Success magazine, give me 60 minutes.

And we’re going to start here. This is the second painful point in the exercise. For those of you who have your phones out, we are going to talk about the importance of digital detox. We’re going to talk about cultivating self-awareness. I hear the uncomfortable giggles in the room. Meditating and setting a positive intention. My mindful prescription for all of you.

We first start with mindfulness and this present-centered awareness. And what was this. This is a picture that I took with my own iPhone. It wasn’t a stock photo. Your MDRT folks were actually asking. And I put this here for this reason. When I was learning about mindfulness-based meditation and emptying the mind for the very first time, I was in Cambodia working with the wartime monks. And there was this beautiful bridge leading to the temple and this whole pond of lotus flowers in various stages of bloom, every morning. No surprise, miss neurotic neurologist, I was in such a hurry to be a good student and sit in the front of the room with the monks, I just walked past all the lotus flowers. Just ready here to breathe and meditate with you all. And didn’t notice. And what did they say? Did you notice the lotus flowers this morning, Dr. Romie? What? What lotus flowers? The thousands that were out. And, as I began to meditate, sitting in the temple, hours upon hours each day and realizing this wasn’t about doing and taking notes but actually about being present, I started to notice the individual beauty of each of these thousands of flowers. That whole moment of stop and smell the roses has become the overused cliché that none of us follow in a busy brain state. That I’m going to be present. I am going to pay attention without judgment.

And for those of you who weren’t there this morning, what does that mean: without judgment? That’s very difficult for brilliant minds that are in a constant state of analysis. All of you with financial numbers, legal, legalese. Me with medical jargon. We analyze for a living. Judgment is when I attach emotion to that analysis. Whether it’s a negative or a positive emotion. It’s OK to analyze and be brilliant. When I’m in my meditative state and completely present, a patient can hand me a hundred pages of medical records and I can analyze really quickly in a present-centered awareness and find the missing loophole. As all of you can with your financial reports. That’s the present-centered awareness without judgment.

So why digital detox? There is study upon study. I am on-air, it seems like, every Saturday or Sunday, and the irony is not lost on me that we’re big into social media now. So we’re telling people to tweet us. We’ve got Facebook live or Instagram live running. In the meantime, I’m talking about how social media is ruining our children, our marriages, our lives, our phones. They’re causing dementia. I mean, it goes on and on. But at the core of why I’m asking you for digital detox for 30 minutes before bedtime is this. Any time we have the blue screen, the light from the phone, a smart tablet, a laptop, a TV, six to 24 inches from our eyes, it’s emitting a blue light that is now going to our eyes and our retina, back of our eye. Allow me this geek moment. It’s going to the airport traffic control center saying, “Yo, Ro. Wake up. It’s time to get all emotional and do your analysis again today.”

And I was just trying to wind down from a busy brain day and go to sleep. I doesn’t matter that you say, “I know. TV helps relax me.” I mean, come on. What is on after about 8:00 or 9:00 at night? News. And it’s all bad, because bad news sells. I’m telling you this from being in the newsroom. Or it’s the crime shows that raise cortisol levels. Or, what is the most stressful thing to me? Sitting and watching HGTV. I can’t figure out that interior décor thing. Whatever it is, it’s engaging words and analyses and emotions and not allowing us to calm down. But that blue light is also dropping our melatonin and serotonin levels which are feel good, get to sleep hormones and restfulness. So that’s why I ask for the digital detox.

Some of you are going to ask about the red screens that are out. I’m doing research for the book. None of those are based in sound scientific studies. They’re run by companies that will hand out a hundred red screens for free. Here’s a gift. Can you tell me in a week how you’re doing? You need to have a sound scientific study. We need to have two groups and they need to be blinded. And there’s no such thing. So as far as we know, that’s why I ask for digital detox. Because in order to completely reset that airport traffic control center and calm the inflammation down, all the way down in the body, to the heart, to the blood vessels, to your hormone system, we need to sleep so it can all get reset and restored from the brain.

So, what do we do, I ask. You put your phone in airplane mode. Even better, get on Amazon. Go to the store and invest $5.99 in a good quality alarm clock and leave your phone outside the room. Why do I say that? Because most of us forget to put our phones into airplane mode and the notifications from emails and text messages are actually lifting our brain out of deep stages of sleep at night. Not to mention they’re triggering a stress response in our brain. We might be awake, and all of a sudden, somewhere in the middle of the night, you’re thinking “Look at all of those notifications. Was that my boss emailing me?” And if you’re one of those bosses who is emailing after 11 p.m., I’m asking you, please don’t. We’re now creating the stress hormone response in the entire team and the organization.

If we’re going to do this in the middle of the day, walk away from the area of stimulation and your desk. But we’ll start at night to make it easier. And then you just find yourself a comfortable seated position. This is what we’re going to do. Step one is committing to digital detox. If you do nothing but this for the first seven days, you’ve created a present-centered awareness with yourself. I would just ask you to do even this. But since we’re high achieving, peak performance people, we’re going to go a little further.

There is this old fashioned technology that I’m old enough to know that still exists called pen and paper. Find some in your home, right. Not the laptop or your smart tablet. This in traditional psychology and positive psychology is really known as journaling, list building. I call it a brain dump. It’s every thought that was racing in your mind before bedtime. Write it down. Your to-do list, any emotions, ideas, you don’t even need to organize it like this is my home to-do list, this is my work to-do list, this is who pissed me off today, this is who I need to tweet back tomorrow. Don’t forget to call the aunties. Whatever is on that list, just write it all down. Why? What does the science teach us?

That when the brain is seeing those words on paper and you’re touching the paper and the pen, you’re actually giving your amygdala and temporal lobe, that airport traffic control center, permission to disengage emotion and memory and worry from that item. So now, all of a sudden that marathon running in your brain shuts down. This is so profound. I was even surprised to find it. The literature shows it, but in our study as we’re doing this for the book, we have patients that have come in on average 18 months on prescription sleep medication. Ambien. Klonopin. These two steps alone got three-fourths of them tapering off their medications within 14 days. So when a doctor prescribes a sleeping pill, you’re really not supposed to take it for more than seven to 10 days. We all have temporary stressors. The goal is to get you back to sleep. The truth of the matter is those medicines are very habit forming. Whatever it is in that whole spectrum from the Xanax to the Valium, they’re all in that benzodiazepine category. And they create dependence. Then they make the sleep even worse and anxiety during the day even worse. These two steps alone are disengaging the worry and the emotion and the anxiety and the focus issues out of the brain. And patients are able to start tapering those medications. I think that’s pretty powerful considering nobody in this room is going to deny we have an addiction problem that is at record crisis levels in this country and we talk about opioids, but the benzodiazepines are right up there with that.

We talked about contemplate. The next step that I quiet in my mind and I’ve tried to disengage from the digital devices, is to meditate. Contemplate and meditate.

We take a deep breath and think, “OK. Where am I supposed to start with this meditation? There are so many different schools of thought for meditation. Do I get an app? Which one is better than the other? Girl, I tried it. I tried this whole breathing thing. I couldn’t shut my brain down. Where do I go?” The idea, remember, in mindfulness is not to have judgment. And the key is that if I’m sitting down and meditating, it is medicine for the mind. I’ve been doing this regularly now for over seven years. And my mindfulness teachers who’ve done this for a lifetime back in Cambodia and Thailand will tell you that their brains are still coming up with emotions and thoughts. The whole idea is in the river of our thoughts and our emotions that I don’t drown in the story. That I don’t drown in the emotion. That I just let it be without judgment, without having an emotion.

So, how is it that meditation is medicine for the mind? There are several doctors, some with bigger platforms than mine, but most of us have big mouths who are on television and in print journalism talking publicly about the medical evidence in the world of psychiatry for meditation. The editors at Journal of the American Medical Association convened a panel in 2014. In our world, and many of you in insurance know, this is considered one of the golden medical journals not only in the United States but around the world. They looked at whether meditation does really work in depression and anxiety.

They did a comprehensive study pulling 800 medical articles that looked at various types of meditation in depression and anxiety. And literally, in this study, the editor concluded, to his surprise, meditation is superior or equal to starting an antidepressant in newly diagnosed anxiety or depression. Let me repeat that.

Somebody comes in and they have newly diagnosed anxiety or depression. Meditation is equal to or superior to the SSRI drugs and the SNRI drugs. That is really powerful. Why do I care about that? Because my traditional neurology and psychiatry literature says 70 percent of people who we put on those medications never respond. And they’re still walking around depressed and really anxious on those pills.

So then what about the people who already came to us with depression and anxiety. It has been found to be a powerful adjunct to the medication and many people end up tapering. So this is just one example out of many how meditation is medicine for the mind. I put that brain science in there for the analytical folks. But really this whole idea was, could I teach you and we build upon what we started today and meditate.

I’m going to ask that we start with our meditation practice and we build. I’m just logically looking around the room now for people who are standing. If you can find a wall to lean on if you don’t already have one. Or sit down on the floor and make yourself comfortable. These slides will all be available to you. I promise they have them. I saw them on your website. They’re in your app. Drromie.com. You can download them for free. So just put the phones down and let’s try to meditate. We’re going to do this. And if you don’t want to try to meditate, that’s OK. I’m going to ask that you just sit here in silence and just observe and be present. That’s your job, be present and be mindful.

We’re going to start with that controlled breathing we did this morning. I’m going to walk you through everything else we’re going to do as you’re getting to a comfortable place. Find a comfortable place to sit down, no problem. Take your time as I walk you through what we’re doing and just find a place to sit down or lean against the wall that you’re going to be comfortable.

The biggest point that people get up from meditation when they’ve tried, they think we have failed because they can’t shut off their mind. I call that the waterfall moment. It’s actually welcoming that train of thought and emotions and ideas and stories and all those images that are coming to us. And just letting it wash over you. Then we go into what’s known in mindfulness-based meditation as the thought bubble. The analytical meditation for all of us analysis prowess type folks here. Sister up here is a neurotic neurologist, I mean, goodness it can go on and on and my colleagues in finance and law are no different I know.

So it’s taking that idea that keeps coming, putting it in a thought bubble and detaching it. I’m going to guide you through that meditation. Then we’re going to sit with the mantra, inhaling calm, exhaling peace. And this is that idea. We’re going to do this for about the next seven to 10 minutes. And so Alan can cue the music and while we’re doing that, we just find a comfortable seated position, lean up against the wall, take the phones, the purses, pens, paper, out of your lap and just find a comfortable seated position. And whenever we’re ready and we can get the music going if it’s working. And if it’s not working. Thank you.

I’m going to ask you to close your eyes if you want. If not, find a focal point on the floor. And the first step is to connect to breath. Breath is what brings us to this present moment. So find your breath. Be mindful of it. You’ve probably been self-consciously breathing this whole time. Take a nice deep inhale through the nose if your nasal passages are clear. Hold the breath. Open mouth and deep exhale. Sigh it out. Inhale. Hold the breath and exhale out.

I’m going to add counting to the breathing now. Inhale, two, three. Hold the breath. Exhale, two, three, four. Inhale, two, three. Hold the breath. Exhale, two, three. Continue the breathing at your own pace. Trying to make your exhalations longer than your inhalations. Inhaling to the count of three. Holding the breath. Exhaling to the count of four.

As we’re breathing notice what’s coming to your mind. Maybe how you’re feeling sitting in this crowded room. Any noises that are surrounding us. Any thoughts or images coming to you. This is that waterfall moment. Allow whatever is there to wash over you as if you’re sitting in your own private waterfall. And as you sit in this waterfall, come in closer to your own self. Focus on your feet. Be present with what your feet feel like in your shoes or on the floor. Bring your awareness into your belly. Notice how it’s expanding as you breath in and collapsing as you breath out.

Then bring your awareness to your head. As it sits over your neck and your shoulders and your back and straighten out your posture if you’re hunched over. And as this waterfall is washing by you or through you, do you notice that there’s one idea or thought that keeps coming to you over and over again? Pick that thought and if you’re shuffling a few, keep shuffling until one is just standing there. Maybe a thought, a story, an image, a concern.

Imagine that there is a clear bubble at your feet and every time now a thought, a word, a sentence, an image comes to you, take it out of your brain and just empty it into that bubble. One by one. Detaching from our thoughts. Fill it up.

And as you allow this soft bubble to fill up, slowly rising to the level of your naval and your heart. Fill it some more, any thoughts that may be there. Then just slowly imagine the spot in the story, an image floating away above our head and through the ceiling.

Stay connected to a normal breathing pace. Bring your breath to a normal inhalation and exhalation. And if you find yourself distracted, come back to your breath. Inhale and think on the word calm and as you exhale the word peace. Inhaling calm and exhaling peace.

And as we close out our meditation, I’d like you to think of a member of your family or someone back in your office who could use an extra dose of inner peace today. And take a nice deep inhale in, inhaling the calm. And as you exhale peace think about that person. As if you’re exhaling for them and giving them that sigh of relief and inner peace. Bring your awareness back into this room and into your body. Wiggle your toes in your shoes. And whenever you’re ready you can open your eyes. Beautiful. Thank you.

When I first open my eyes after meditation, I make a point to set an intention. So, if we’re doing that at night it may be as simple as I welcome sleep. If you haven’t already fallen asleep. In the daytime, it’s this idea of who am I today. I am calm. I am focused. I am peaceful. Whatever that is. Set that intention and let that be your guiding light as you finish meditation.

The next question I typically get is; If I’m turning off my phone at night now and doing the brain dump and meditating and I fall asleep before I remember finishing the meditation, does it count? Yes. Sleep is the ultimate restoration. Physically for the mind, for our bodies and our brain. The reason I pick nighttime, even though some traditional meditation schools such as Transcendental Meditation don’t recommend it, is because I know most of our lives, many people have young children at home. Once they get home from work, you get up just in time to rush out the door and get your kids to work or school. I feel nighttime is the one place that we can promise ourselves, to make an appointment with ourselves and that meditation with ourselves. Ideally it goes that we get up in the morning and I use a colleague and a visionary in the field, Dr. Deepak Chopra’s mantra: RPM. Rise. Pee. Meditate. Not rise, pee, mobile phone. And consider that advanced meditation. If you already have a meditation practice, you’ve tried it, try it in the morning. That first calm. If it means you have to get up about 10 to 20 minutes earlier before your family does, give that a try.

What did we just do in this meditation together? That was that relaxation response we were talking about. Eliciting with controlled breathing and meditation, control of the airport traffic control. For the sake of time, I won’t make you repeat a brain test. But what happens here in clinic is people see an automatic improvement in their cognitive behavioral testing that we do. That ability to focus. The blood pressure immediately going down, the heart rate. I can just feel a sense of calm and rest and lunches are digesting in our bellies in this room as we’re meditating. That’s the parasympathetic nervous system kicking in and turning off the stress.

Meditation is a common prescription even in traditional medical offices and certainly in integrative medicine. We know its powerful roles in postoperative pain, in reducing the symptoms of chemotherapy, reducing blood pressure, improving immunity, controlling blood sugar, reducing the symptoms of menopause. I could go on and on and on. Meditation is medicine for the mind.

I found my sense of inner peace for this moment. But I’ve got to go to work and face the rest of the day. How do I take this sense of inner peace with me when the whole world seems like it’s coming against me? This is that idea of stop to contemplate, meditate and then gravitate. How do I bring the sense of present-centered awareness and this idea that if I get to know myself, then I can get to know others and that I take this peace and share it beyond?

We talked a little bit more this morning. It’s a common phrase we’re hearing, servant leadership, service-based business, mindful leadership. It’s all one. Cultivating this leadership presence. That I lead by who I am and what I do, not what I’m telling you to be and do. That I set the energy and the tone. I am responsible for the energy I bring to the room. I’m not going to react to your energy. That’s the idea.

You heard me tell stories of the C suite level executive, professional athletes, litigation attorneys, how to stay calm in the middle of courtrooms since most people’s brains are not wired like mine where we enjoy speaking for a living, and having fear how, in a moment’s notice, some presenting argument comes and you don’t know how to react, how to stay in that calm leadership presence and be able to now respond instead of react.

This is what meditation does for peak performance and why it’s become so powerful. I want to go over this because I heard a couple of people say at lunch, “I’m left brained.” “I’m right brained.” Has anybody heard that? It hurts my brain as a neurologist. I’ve got to tell you that as a neurologist, you would label me as a left-brained person. “Oh, Romie, you need to turn off your left brain and go into your right brain. You’ll be creative and you’ll make your writing deadline.” Now let me tell you, if I turned off the left side of my brain, that’s known as a stroke. I would stop talking. Stop moving the right side of my body. There’s no such thing.

What it is, is that the brain is this beautiful highway of brain cell networks and we want the imagination and creativity centers to work and they’re represented in both sides of the brain. The most brilliant innovators and creative thinkers that don’t ever see the box let alone have to think outside the box, also have very sharp analytical skills. That’s using parts of the right brain, the frontal lobes on both sides and your language center is on the left brain.

Meditation opens up the runway to all of these areas. What we know on average how long? About 20 minutes. Could it be shorter? Could it be longer? Yes. The thing is when these meditation studies were started in the United States, they were first done with Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard Medical School with transcendental meditation. Their meditation is twice a day for 20 minutes. And so now all subsequent meditation studies that have been done on the progressive relaxation technique, mindfulness-based meditation and the list goes on and on, the posna, they use 20 minutes, because that was first set. So we really don’t know. But what we do know is that breath break that we did this morning, three minutes is what it takes to turn off the stress response and for the brain to start going into the relaxation spot. Twenty minutes a day for four to six weeks is what starts healing the inflammation in the brain when there are mood disorders.

So, if I had to give you a prescription and ask you and invite you to connect to your place of inner peace, it starts with you and it starts with me and my own presence. Not what I’m projecting, but what’s with it. That I’m going to ask you at nighttime for 30 minutes turn off your digital devices. The same goes in your office. If you have a big important project that’s due, that’s your period of focus. I call it your working meditation. Turn off all of your devices, all your browser windows and keep only open what you need to work on. Do a brain and a heart dump before you start working on what you need to work on in the middle of the day.

To give an example, I’m working on writing the next chapter in my book. I do a brain dump and all my to-do lists of things I need to do for speaking engagements and clinic clients so it’s not coming up when I need to be in that intense focus zone. Meditate and then set a positive intention. I ask all of you to try to do it for 30 minutes at night before you go to bed. And welcome sleep.

Because once we start to sleep, the physical mind and the body gets to peace and then we meditate. If you start with that three-minute breath break and if that’s all you can remember to do, that’s great. When you’re sitting there, if the thoughts start coming to you, no judgment, that I’m meditating wrong or I’m a bad meditator. Allow that waterfall of thoughts to come. Create a thought bubble and take the most important story, the thing that’s fighting in front of your brain, put it in the bubble and then repeat the mantra. I gave you inhale calm, and exhale peace. You may have your own mantra that’s been given to you, if you have a different spiritual practice, a different religion and you want to choose one from there, fine. I start with inhale calm and exhale peace because we embody what we say.

This whole idea ends with this: If at somehow in this stress to success cycle we have put this idea that success is when I reach a certain goal in my life, I receive that degree, I make my goals to join Million Dollar Round Table, congratulations to all of you who have worked very hard to get here. My child gets to college. I find a way to pay for college. I get to retirement. All of those things are wonderful. I want you to set meaningful goals for your life that fill you with joy. But our happiness should not be dependent on those external goals. When we connect to that place of joy and peace starting within, that’s when we grow to find it’s so easy to be successful.

As you heard me saying a lecture this morning. I’ve been doing this now since my transition into integrative medicine and when I gave my TED talk, I’ve been invited to companies and amazing organizations like yours for the last four years. The consistent thing that I see among top athletes, C suite level executives, actors, actresses, musicians, people who are at the top of their game is the sense of self-awareness and self-preservation of going within, course correcting what needs to be done and then going and achieving that next great goal.

There isn’t a single person in this room who can’t achieve that sense of inner peace. It just starts with setting an intention, removing the distractions of digital detox, releasing whatever is worrying you in your brain. Do the brain dump. Meditate and then gravitate asking how I can next be of service.

I leave you with this thought and this question for you to ponder: What is the one thing you, your mind or your body needs at this moment to feel that inner peace? With 100 people in this room right now, there are probably 100 different answers. So set that intention for yourself and I set that intention for you and hold it as your meditation teacher. As you ponder leaving California and how you’re going to live life differently Monday, let the meditation guide you to what that next step is of inner peace being. Because it really doesn’t matter what we’re tweeting or posting on Facebook or on LinkedIn or bragging to our colleagues. In this world where everyone craves an authentic connection, we must first be and do ourselves what we want to see in the world. I’m Dr. Romie and inner peace is your success. Thank you.

Question

[inaudible]

Mushtaq

I’m asking about the posture in meditation and when people hold their hands. This is known as mudra and it comes in yoga traditions of how we’re closing our energy fields with our hands. For intents and purposes right now, I’m not going to give anybody a particular way to do this because this is one school of thought. My goal is to teach a very neutral meditation based in brain training. What I typically say is just let go of anything in your hands so you’re not tempted to check your phone, wring your hands and that’s why we either kind of gently put our hands in our laps crossed if that’s comfortable or down to the side. Whatever is most comfortable. That comes from yoga traditions in how we hold our hands.

Question

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Mushtaq

Two really good questions. The diet question could be a whole long lecture in itself. I’d be happy to come back to another session and do that. But the key is in integrative medicine there is not one diet that fits everybody. I’m telling you this from an inside trade. If anybody has had a traditionally published book, the diet industry is the most prolific industry, they were offering to double my advance if I wrote a quick fix diet book. And that is not the right way. So, if you notice when you go to the bookstore, here’s the next big diet. Now it’s ketosis or it’s the zone or it’s Atkins or it’s paleo or it’s whole 30. In integrative medicine, I look at each and every one of you as an individual and what’s going on in your physical, mental and spiritual health and we create an individual diet that’s meant for you. I thrive on a vegetarian diet while other people in our practice need Atkins and high protein and meat and all of that or whatever it may be. So there isn’t one nutrition plan. It’s just sticking to something that is anti-inflammatory. All of the successful nutrition plans you’ll see typically are eliminating white sugar and white flour, the high glycemic foods that have led to inflammation, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes. So that’s nutrition.

Now to meditation and a wonderful question and I think I understood this right about the various religions and meditation. While meditation is a key portion of numerous religions, I teach meditation from a point of view of a brain health and brain training exercise.

Prayer. I’m blessed to have a spiritual counsel because of what I do and who I speak to around the world. A religious leader from every major religion. And a unifying theme that I see in prayer of every religion is that it is a communication with God. We are praising God. Thanking God. Asking God for guidance for help for others, for ourselves.

Meditation is active sitting in silence. And connecting to that place of God consciousness, Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness. Communing with spirit for people who do practice a religion. It’s being in silence and allowing the wisdom to come back to you.

Is there any data about if praying first helps with meditation? I think that would go back to the psychology data that I just showed you. Prayer is an active contemplation. For people with busy brains and high functioning individuals like all of us in this room, I’d rather contemplate what’s on your mind. But certainly, if you belong to a certain religion or spiritual practice where contemplation is a part of prayer, make that a part of your routine. Pray and then meditate. I hope that answered your questions. Two very beautiful questions.

Question

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Mushtaq

Taking melatonin. So melatonin is not typically used beneficially if you’re taking it to immediately fall asleep, like you would take a sleeping pill. While some people experience sedation and they say it helped them sleep. That’s not it. Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone in the brain that modulates sleep and our happy moods. When our circadian rhythm is off like in jetlag, melatonin is beneficial.

We use melatonin for people whose stress hormone levels are really high at night. So this is that group of people whose blood pressure is really high at night or who can’t shut off their brains at night. Melatonin is great to reset your circadian rhythm there. Be careful with what you’re buying in the stores. Most of them are very low dose. Three milligrams is the typical starting dose. Most of the things in the store are one milligram. Three to nine milligrams at night.

But if you’re the person who is waking up in the middle of the night or having short sleep, the melatonin typically doesn’t help that. I think my last blog article lists all of this on the website. It’s OK that I’m giving my website? drromie.com. It’s all on there for free. Five supplements and when to use what. Valerian root. Chamomile or other ones. And we have some formulations that are on there. Again, no commercial bias. Just giving some natural holistic substances that have been shown in clinical studies to work. It’s one of my last two blog articles on the website will give you all this. Great question. But I still want you to meditate.

Question

[inaudible]

Mushtaq

Meditating in silence or music? Whatever will help you. If you’re going to meditate with music, do it without words. I put music on because there are people who respond to auditory calm and I know, in a meeting setting like this, there are often noises in the corridors or in the room next door. I put on the music almost as white noise in the background to help with people who are distracted by auditory noise. Do what’s beneficial for you. If music helps the calm, but use music that does not have any words.

Question

[inaudible]

Mushtaq

The question is: If we have issues we’re dealing with and I write them down, I’m going to end up writing them down and meditating on them every night. The idea is certain life issues are meant to be with us for a season, a reason or a lifetime. Part of mindfulness is that I have no judgment or attachment to why that issue is there. It’s typically until I’ve learned the lesson I need to learn from it.

The easiest example I give is, we’ve all had that friend that’s always dating the bad boy or the bad girl and they break up with one person and they date someone just like that again. They didn’t learn the lesson and see the warning signs. All of life’s lessons are like that.

If we’re writing it down, it’s not that I’m asking you to write it down to find a solution in that moment. That’s a great way, a therapist or someone who does mindfulness-based combinative therapy. Someone that is smarter than me or you when we’re sitting in our own problems can help us solve. We’re writing it down to release it from worrying in our brain. And that over analysis that starts to happen. And then we meditate so that our mind is less busy. But we get the help we need to find the solution.

Question

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Mushtaq

Which one came first the chicken or the egg? It’s all one in the same. They’re both the same. We have emotional stress during the day or whether it’s a physical stress, we were in physical pain, we hurt something, it’s going to lead to a sleep disturbance. So we need to get rid of whatever that stress is during the day and cope with it. But, when we’re not sleeping, all of a sudden the things that don’t stress us out in the day physically or emotionally, all of a sudden do.

So we start at a foundation because we can’t control what’s going on in the outside world if we have a toxic bog or baby momma drama or financial issues or all of life that happens to us. So we start with sleep so that I’m building that reserve in my mind, in my body and in spirit so that now all of a sudden I don’t feel like I’m a prisoner in my mind with inflammatory responses going off when that stressor arrives in life.

Question

[inaudible]

Mushtaq

When we’re talking about sleep disorders, that’s not stress. Obstructive sleep apnea is a physical issue that needs to be diagnosed by a doctor, whether it’s obstructive or central from the brain or a problem with the ear, nose and throat. And needs to be corrected because that will disrupt a sleep and then if we’re not using our breathing machines or if there is reconstructive surgery or anything that needs to be done, tonsils, adenoids, there’s a long list, it’s going to disturb our sleep, cause inflammation. That’s why we know people with untreated obstructive sleep apnea are more likely to have diabetes, be stressed out, have depression, have a stroke. All those pathways of inflammation we discussed this morning.

Question

[inaudible]

Mushtaq

I hear this often. I think this is a beautiful question to end on. So thank you. It’s what happens when we run into people that think yoga or meditation is a bit too touchy-feely. Too spiritual woo-woo.  I quote the great teacher, Gandhi, that “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” If I came out as a doctor and just said you all need to meditate but didn’t have this practice and this journey myself and I didn’t emulate it, we inspire others by who we are. It isn’t me telling you what to do, it’s me being this and being of service and offering this to you.

Somebody leaves this room and says, “I sat through a couple of her lectures. Meditation is not for me,” I’m mindful. I have no attachment. I have no judgment. I just kind of know I planted a seed and the neurons. They’re going to keep getting reminders and maybe three months, three years down the road, they’re going to think, “I may give this meditation technique a try.” It’s not up to us. That’s attachment to outcome. Isn’t it? Of when someone else is going to meditate. I am responsible for myself. That is being the mindful leader. Then leading by example by meditating. And if someone chooses to join us on this journey or not, well, I’m not going to be attached to outcomes. All I know is I personally believe so strongly in the practices of mindfulness and meditation, that I’m here to offer it. And whoever is meant to hear it is going to hear it and be into it.