Why Your Retirement Strategy Is Missing This Critical Element

speaker-1 (00:31.502)
Welcome back to the Transitions Network. Today we have an interview with Dr. Helen Lavretzky. Helen is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA and a geriatric integrative psychiatrist with a federally funded research program in the US that focuses on integrative mental health using mind-body therapies.

She’s a recipient of several research career development awards, and her current research studies include investigations into novel therapeutic options for mood and cognitive disorders for in older adults, as well as for developing options for long COVID. You’re going to get a lot out of this. It takes away from the old just focus on the body and looks at a more holistic way of dealing with.

things that are going on as we get older. I hope you enjoy this. Ellen, thanks for joining us. much appreciate it. before we go on, I’ve done an introduction of you, but why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself in your own words?

speaker-0 (01:44.296)
so my name is Helen Lavretsky. I’m a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. I have I wear several hats. I’m a director of the Late Life Mood Stress and Wellness Program, Long COVID clinic and research program, and also I’m the director of research for the Integrative Medicine Collaborative, and I have another integrative psychiatry clinic, meaning complimentary and alternative therapies.

speaker-1 (02:13.358)
Okay. So tell me about the you I didn’t get the full name of the group, the late life mood stress and wellness. Tell me a bit about that.

speaker-0 (02:21.632)
Stress and wellness.

speaker-0 (02:26.51)
so part of this program, it’s a research program, we are studying factors contributing to stress in older adults and therapies that might help with reducing stress reduction, like mind body therapies, but also antidepressant treatment for depression, and we study biological mechanisms of response to this therapies.

we use pharmacological and non pharmacological meaning drugs and therapy, also behav behavioral activation and a lot of mind body therapies like yoga tai chi, meditation, qigong, art art, yes, all all of them.

speaker-1 (03:14.659)
So some of the eastern practices as opposed to Western medicine type practices.

speaker-0 (03:20.522)
Right, and that’s why I said, you know, my specialty is in combining mainstream western practices like medication and psychotherapy with eastern or complementary and integrative. The the term we use at the moment is integrative, complementary and integrative therapies.

speaker-1 (03:39.702)
Interesting. Okay, that hasn’t been going around for long, I would assume. Yes?

speaker-0 (03:45.088)
It became popular in the last ten years. I started doing it almost twenty years ago and the first ten were difficult, you know, because receptivity within the mainstream medical system was not there. but I did a lot of research that showed multiple health and brain and mind and cognition benefits of doing those.

speaker-1 (04:08.396)
So instead of focusing just on the body, you’re doing a a mind and body combination because the two back to each other.

speaker-0 (04:16.15)
Right. Plus I’m a psychiatrist, so I’m interested in the brain and a mind and the body because all three are not separable. So unfortunately mainstream Western medicine tends to be di div divisive, meaning that if you go to see a cardiologist, they only pay attention to your heart. if you go to see an integrative practitioner, it would be a whole person health. Okay.

Mind, body, spirit in my case, you know, because I do spend quite a bit of time paying attention to individuals’ spiritual beliefs.

speaker-1 (04:51.864)
Okay, so you you have more of a holistic view on how everything Okay. So you mentioned spirit. Is there a spiritual aspect to this? So not everybody is religious. There’s agnostics, there’s atheists, that sort of stuff. Does the fact that somebody has religion or not have a religion impact any of this?

speaker-0 (04:56.17)
It’s more holistic, right.

speaker-0 (05:16.206)
I would ask, you know, the first thing I ask people before I say anything, I need to know where they’re at. You know, so I said I say, would you consider yourself spiritual? Do you have any practices? What did you grow up with? Just to have an idea. And nowadays the majority would say I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.

speaker-1 (05:38.606)
Spiritual. So don’t believe in an organized okay. But they do believe there may be some entity or some pattern or something like that. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. when we were talking yesterday, you mentioned something called brain health. and a conference associated with that. Is that tied into all this? What’s brain health?

speaker-0 (05:42.454)
Religion, right? Right.

speaker-0 (05:48.686)
Something bigger than myself.

speaker-0 (06:07.192)
Brain health is you know, it originated, the movement in brain health originated with the spread, increase in numbers of Alzheimer’s disease and associated caregiving, but it didn’t stop there because brain health is universal. You know, we the don’t develop new brain when we turn sixty five. Nothing happens on your sixty fifth fifth birthday, generally, you know. I mean it may, but generally it doesn’t. Okay.

But everything happens before you reach six age sixty-five, and that’s what matters, you know. It’s a cumulative effect of your exposure to different toxins, or trauma or physical and mental, your life experiences and that’s what produces this aging effect. And so the idea is we live with one brain, it’s one life, one brain, one mind, and you have to take care of it from the beginning, you know, as as you’re

in utero in your mother’s womb and then a young child in school, precautions have to be taken. Families have to know about brain health, what constituted, what is healthy for the brain and what is not. In order to prevent disorders of aging like Alzheimer’s disease or stress related disorders or chronic pain, you really have to take care of yourself throughout your life. That’s the point.

speaker-1 (07:31.874)
That goes to the physical side of things.

speaker-0 (07:34.538)
yes, I mean, as we established it’s all holistic. For example, I work closely with the American Heart Association. Why would the psychiatrist do that, right? You would ask. And mostly because cardiologists got tired of taking care of just hearts and turned to the brain. And that comes to so they invited me to consult and I’ve been working with them for eight years. We produced multiple papers.

on psychological factors contributing to heart disease. And now they’re interested in brain health. Because, you know, yeah, I’m sure all of you heard this what’s good for your heart is good for your brain, right?

speaker-1 (08:16.558)
That’s the first time I’ve heard it. But that said that’s that’s me.

speaker-0 (08:20.394)
Welcome to the twenty-first century. That’s a common knowledge at this point, you know. Basically it refers to exercise, a diet, and whatever cardiologists tell you is good for your heart would be good for your health brain as well, because it’s not separate from you. Like just imagine, you know, it’s the same cardiovascular system, vascular system in the brain, stroke happens because vascular risk factors exceed their

sort of threshold, you know, you you you damage it because you’re not paying attention, like cholesterol, diabetes, blood pressure, things like that, you know. So they have to be managed tightly to improve your heart health, but also your brain health.

speaker-1 (09:07.672)
So do is there a way of God, so many questions here. Okay, so is there a way of measuring a baseline for the brain? and the way you’re thinking and that sort of thing?

speaker-0 (09:18.45)
Right, so that’s what we’re working on. Finally, we got to that. How do we measure brain health? There’s actually a brain health score developed out of Harvard University, specifically for lifestyle and cardiovascular risk factors for brain health. And there you’re asked how much you exercise, how much you sleep, what you eat, and then you there’s a score that is derived from that.

your your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your hemoglobin A1C, which is a diabetes measure or glucose metabolism measure. And so the composite score would tell you what your general brain health. And then overall, if you’re to pursue lifestyle interventions like improving your diet or spending more time exercising, different type of exercise, weight training versus cardio

exercise, it would improve, your score would improve, you would see improvement in your score. And that tells you that you’re successful in improving your brain health.

speaker-1 (10:24.61)
Okay, so normally we’re as a an adult, as we’re growing or as we’re aging, we have a a set pattern of activities. We’re going to work, we come home, we are raising a family, we may be going to the gym a couple of times a week. We get to the retirement age and all of a sudden our entire lifestyle starts changing. Have you seen an impact to the brain and the brain health side of things?

When you get to that retirement side of things, you know what I mean? where your the entire lifestyle has changed.

speaker-0 (11:00.014)
Not only that, your identity that was especially for men was all about your work occupation all of a sudden disappears. You kinda lost. So a lot of people develop depression and anxiety around that retirement transition, that may last, you know, because they never had hobbies. You know, men of your generations generally went to work and came home late and slept on the weekends and did

pretty much nothing else, with very few interests or hobbies. So imagine them retiring in their sixties or seventies and then entire world disappears without much being in the background.

speaker-1 (11:43.038)
So if you were to advise people to prepare for that transition, it sounds like there’s a few things people should be doing. For example, you just mentioned hobbies, finding a hobby or something that you can occupy your time in that can stretch into the excess time when the career side of things back down.

speaker-0 (12:03.596)
Right. hobbies, finding meaning and purpose in maybe part-time work. If you have must work maybe part-time or volunteering, just finding that purpose or passion or drive. Or you might have a bucket list of things you won’t always wanted to do and never did. so now is the time to fulfill this. And that could be your purpose. but generally people

like to it’s a generative age, the sixties and above. You know, you want to contribute, you want to mentor people. So finding some activities and opportunities in that domain. You know, people generally go to the libraries, read for the children, or to the hospital. I mean, a variety of things, or volunteering in an animal shelter, or going to a farm, you know, I know quite a few doctors who just decided to be farmers, you know.

And developed green thumb and that’s where they find their purpose, you know, just finding new things to do. And I generally tell my patients who have chronic illness, for instance, and now they can do things that they used to be able to do, is that life is a journey and you don’t have to be attached to the old self. For example, you know, it’s not just one of you, it’s many of you. Do you remember yourself at twenty? Are you the same person?

Person now, as you were when you were 20? No, probably not. You have different interests, you you have different aspirations. Same thing in every transition. You just find your new purpose, you new meaning, anything that brings you joy, you know. So the joy aspect has to be a guiding star. If it’s boring or you’re drained by doing the same thing, probably not a good idea because it backfires.

speaker-1 (13:57.792)
Interesting. My father is I I’ve mentioned it in previous podcasts and I think I mentioned it to yourself you yesterday. He’s ninety four, he turns ninety five this year. And for when he was forced into retirement around my age, ninety one, ninety two, he he

was always into genealogy and really started working on that and focusing on that. And it kept him busy. Plus he was out in the garden and that sort of stuff because he originally grew up on a farm in Germany back in the nineteen thirties. so that’s what you mean in terms of things that you were doing, turning and really focusing on that and expanding that capability.

speaker-0 (14:42.222)
Right. And you know, you must enjoy them because you don’t have a lot of time left. I mean most of your life, most of your life is behind you, even if you live another 30 years, let’s say, which is possible, right? How would you like want to live those years? And that should be the question everybody asks themselves.

speaker-1 (15:01.018)
Well, that actually begs the question, with all the work going on in actually lengthening people’s lives, do you see some mental aspects that are gonna be impacted by that?

speaker-0 (15:15.444)
So much is going on right now that will really transform how we live and our lives. So, you know, first of all, health span is a term that is applied to healthy living in your later years, you know, it’s not just expanding life when you’re disabled. Who would want that? You know, maybe some good, but most don’t. but living healthy older years and then

what is the solution there. The other thing that is happening is AI, you know. they’re telling I just came back from Davos World Economic Forum and according to Elon Musk, there are gonna be more robots relieving us from our duties, but also making retirement a a non thing, you know, or something that will happen much earlier, you know, because robots will be doing everything.

So we’ve never lived there, you know, in this lifetime. it’s all open for discovery. The only thing I would say, even to younger people who might retire because they just don’t have a job because of robots and an AI, is to find that purpose that brings you joy.

speaker-1 (16:29.972)
Interesting. It’s interesting, because like I I was having a discussion with somebody the other day where when you have AI combined with automation, if you think about all the things that will be removed from what people have to do, self-driving cars can replace taxis, so you don’t need the taxi driver or the Uber driver. farms are now making use of automation from the reaping of of

farmed goods. A lot of jobs that we right now think of as manual and have to be manual will disappear. So then it becomes okay, what are we going to end up with our lives? Doing we’re not going to have money because we’re not working. So it changes the entire concept of well that’s just it. It’s it becomes where do we go? So it becomes focusing on the things that you really enjoy doing.

speaker-0 (17:19.32)
Don’t give us a little bit.

speaker-1 (17:29.334)
I I would assume.

speaker-0 (17:31.818)
Say, you know, my prediction, and it’s actually happening. It started happening during COVID pandemic. People started moving out of large cities into nature, you know, less populated areas with access to nature, organic farming, gardening, and creativity, human creativity is nothing that robots can take from us.

So it will prevail. I I think w all of us will go through a period of discovery, self discovery, what it is that makes us human and what it is that we’re better at than robots or AI. You know, and we’ll find it.

speaker-1 (18:13.058)
Yeah. Yeah. so

speaker-0 (18:16.514)
I mean things like this has happened have happened throughout history, like with the development of print technology in yeah, so we’ve lived through such revolutions. this is another revolution that will transform our lives, education, and every other field. We’ll just have to discover what what our role will be.

speaker-1 (18:39.284)
Interesting. Now is there a specific age where all of a sudden things really trigger, or is it a gradual change over time?

speaker-0 (18:51.53)
It is pretty much gradual. I mean, you do a lot of your damage before you turn 65, as I said, you know. but things ha start happening for men in their late forties, forty-five through f through fifty-five for women is more like in their fifties, when men post menopause, and that’s when things start breaking up, you know. So you have to be careful, you have to

So what needs to happen is that children need to learn how to age gracefully and what they need to do to prolong the life of their bodies because nobody’s thinking when they’re young, nobody’s thinking, we’re not taught how to get old, you know? And hence the saying aging is not for Cesis. Because by the time you have to deal with that, everything is pretty much bra broken down.

speaker-1 (19:45.026)
It’s fun. Y you look at I think back to my kids as they were growing up and I swear they were numb from the neck down. Didn’t feel anything. It was just how do they do deal with that? It’s just fun. so I’m right now what what I guess it’s called the sandwich generation. I have kids, twenty five and twenty one, and my father is ninety four, gonna be ninety five.

Is there

How to say this. Is there aspects of that having to deal with both age levels that start impacting us because our stress level starts going up? Like I can tell you right now, having to care and make sure that two young men that are going to university and a father who is at the end of his life, and every time I talk to him, it’s like, everybody’s gone for my life. I’m just waiting to die, type thing.

trying to deal with those stressors is really starting to pick up now at this age.

speaker-0 (20:55.178)
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, caregiver burden is real. Men are are actually less adept to be a caregiver. And that means that they are under more stress. They’re you know, not natural caregivers, so to speak. so you have to watch out for yourself. You have to create a support system for yourself, have an outlet, exercise, like good lifestyle, you know, really

your body sleep essential because in caregivers the first thing that goes is sleep. You know, because you’re worried, you’re constantly on the phone. are you a distant caregiver or hands on?

speaker-1 (21:38.008)
Depends on your definition of distance. It takes me an hour to get to my father.

speaker-0 (21:42.372)
okay, so you go. No, so distant caregiving is a real thing because people live in the large distance, but then they have spent all the time managing all the caregiving. And it’s also stressful, but hands on, especially if you have to drive. So, you know, generally I give an example of sandwiched middle aged women who are who have I mean you’re a little bit in a better situation with your children being in their twenties.

But when there are teenagers and the parents are in poor health is when it’s like really compressed. You know, you have to drive your teenager somewhere and you go to work and you do two jobs and then parents at night or on the weekend. So the stress level is ro skyrockets.

speaker-1 (22:32.194)
Yeah, that was me ten years ago. My fat my mother passed when she was seventy seven. so that’s that’s that was me then.

speaker-0 (22:41.676)
Yeah, it’s very stressful. And it is well known that caregivers, dementia caregivers that are studied well, have sixty percent higher mortality than non-caregivers of the same age. And there are health declines and heart health, cardiovascular health, diabetes, all those chronic illnesses occur with this caregiving stress. Sleep is something that can help and has to be cherished as a tool of self-regulation, you know.

‘Cause during sleep you rest, you recharge, your brain recharges. But generally, you know, stress is the risk factor for depression, anxiety and and cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease.

speaker-1 (23:23.948)
Okay. One of your in your introduction, you indicated that you’re dealing with novel therapeutic options for mood and cognitive disorders for older adults and for long COVID. How does long COVID fit into all this?

speaker-0 (23:40.578)
Well, I moved so, you know, I started working with long COVID in twenty twenty one when, you know, we organized multidisciplinary clinic, and it certainly plays a role because the majority of people complain of brain fog. and the reason I moved personally moved into that is because I’m a geriatic psychiatrist and I am integrative medicine practitioner and I knew exactly what to do with it.

You know, because I’ve done the studies, I just treat them as geriatic depression, although they might be eighteen years old, but the symptoms are of geriatric depression. The one thing that long COVID does is increasing accelerating aging, senescence, biological aging. Okay. And we see with older people in their sixties just they just move into mild cognitive impairment and cognitive decline.

speaker-1 (24:33.836)
Okay. Now you were talking about brain fog there. It reminds me back in November. I was cleaning the l leaves out of my gutter. I was my ladder was on a brand new deck which was slippery and it slid out underneath me. I ended up with a co a concussion. I would assume that falls and dealing with that sort of thing is more prevalent as we get older as well. Is that something that you’ve been dealing with?

speaker-0 (25:03.628)
Sure, I mean you have to really pay attention to your exercise weight training and stability training to improve your balance, you know. And if you grew up an active young man, you probably had prior concussions or threats and that’s cumulative, you know. the difference is when you get older it’s harder to recover from it. You have more residual symptoms, it lasts longer, you really have to work at it to reverse it.

it’s all cumulative again, you know, it’s not one thing, it’s one of one thing after another.

speaker-1 (25:37.912)
Right, right. So it when I think about what you were just talking about from a holistic point of view, it’s also d mood dependent, I would assume. So for example, because I’m I’m just in the process of changing from career into retirement, I had that what am I gonna do? The mood the depression side of things and I started feeling

sore around my body as well. Left hip being really sore, that sort thing. Since I started this podcast, I’ve really become a lot more focused, a lot more energetic, and I’m le noticing less pain in the body as well, simply because of that. I would assume. Is that

speaker-0 (26:25.248)
Yes, pain is subjective, and if you’re depressed, you will feel more of it, you know, and it has to do with your internal focus, so you’re just focused on negative mood or pain. you don’t have a distraction, but also inflammation is a part of this, you know, first of all, aging, but also depression. It’s a inflammatory inflammation is increasing, and that would increase pain, you know, like if you have any.

prior injuries or arthritis, it would just increase it. In interestingly, I’m doing a study right now is of Tai Chi for nearitic nearitis pain and disability and depression. And that combines Tai Chi and brain stimulation. so that’s a very novel kind of approach, but you know, so

speaker-1 (27:19.948)
I’m I’m smiling because in my Instagram feeds I cannot tell you how many times I get ads about Tai Chi walking or something associated with Tai Chi.

speaker-0 (27:31.154)
it’s excellent. And it’s you know, tons of studies have been done with Tai Chi, including mine. I did my studies for older adults with depression specifically, showing that depression improves, resilience improves, but also brain connectivity improves, you know, and cognition improves as well, whereas just doing Tai Chi compared to health education groups where you discuss health issues.

But Tai Chi notoriously is known to be good for your balance, for your knees, like arthritis. And in fact it’s recommended by various organizations as a mainstream treatment for knee arthritis b lower back pain. And balance is another thing that has been documented now and again.

speaker-1 (28:22.412)
Why would is is our balance going as we get older simply because our muscles aren’t as strong? Is that

speaker-0 (28:29.378)
That too, but also neurodegenerative changes in the brain, including cerebellum that controls balance and it’s multiple processes at the same time, mostly neural, you know. a lot of people who have arthritis also would have some degeneration in their spine, you know, that is pressing on nerves that are controlling lower l leg leg movement and muscle movement.

speaker-1 (28:37.132)
Okay.

speaker-1 (28:57.986)
Ooh. So I don’t have to worry I can’t blame my lack of going to the gym on my lack of balance. It c I could just say it’s my brain.

speaker-0 (29:07.962)
you can’t blame anything, you just have to move, you know. And the way I recommend dealing with the all of this is to do everything in the water because it’s safer. aqua rehab, and at this point aqua in the therapeutic pool that is warm, if you have like muscle spasms or pain, it would lessen your pain and you would be more at ease to move around. But it’s also safe if you decide to fall. You’re gonna be

speaker-1 (29:35.342)
Decide to f decide to f

speaker-0 (29:37.014)
Well you know, if you you know if you can’t maintain your balance. also if you just walk in the water, if like some people can’t swim, just walk in the water, that engages your core muscles, it immediately trains your core muscles so that you pull everything in and your stamina and balance are much improved. So I I highly recommend Dakwari Heb. Okay. If you’re concerned about injuries, faults and such.

speaker-1 (30:04.13)
No, I’ve I’ve just for me it’s just a matter of getting out and doing it more than anything else. So

speaker-0 (30:10.732)
That’s a that’s another common problem in with aging like apathy and hedonia, not enjoying it, having low drive, and that has to do with decline in dopamine production in the brain. Which is, you know, that might might in severe form lead to Parkinson’s disease, but it actually happens with aging.

speaker-1 (30:31.648)
Okay, so that’s where so you’ve been focused on newer techniques for various different things, the the yoga, the tai chi, that sort of stuff. But when you originally introduced yourself, you also talked about tying that with the pharmacological mechanisms, that sort of thing. So the lack of dopamine can be dealt with that way, combined with a tai chi or something.

speaker-0 (30:59.414)
Well, you know, so choose your battle or do all of the above. It could be pharmacological, but exercise increases dopamine. So the one the one therapy for Parkinsonism is movement, a lot of it and like dance classes and there are groups that would do it and that would increase dopamine and improve movement.

speaker-1 (31:23.736)
Yeah, I saw a study

Actually not really a study, just a a chart a few days ago, where it talked about the older you are when you retire, the shorter your lifespan afterwards. Is that true or is that s is that erroneous information?

speaker-0 (31:45.114)
I mean I had like a cohort of engineers, airspace engineers, who r would retire at sixty two and die within two years of retirement. And that has to do with this premise, you know, that you lose your purp you j really have to plan. You can yes, you you can’t. It’s depression, there’s no point. your wife wants you to do something like a drawing class with her and that’s irritating. You know, s things like that, you know. Also relationship.

between spouses one retires changes dramatically. And that’s another adjustment to make because you know you may not know your spouse anymore. Because when you got married and kind of talked at that time, it was a is it was a different relationship. Then you went separate ways to work and now you’re back together and you’re different people. So it puts a strain on the relationship. So that has to be addressed, you know, in some kind of negotiation

couple therapy or some kind of intervention. because that will contribute to this decline, you know. and basically the the I I mean if you if you decide to die, let’s say, nobody can stop you. Or your body checks out. There’s no nobody else. But if you maintain your stamina, your purpose, pay attention to your body, teach your body as a temple.

And be aware, you know, increase awareness of what it would it would take to maintain usefulness and as an youth, useful and strong body and new pursuits, you know, you have to be curious, maintain curiosity. If none of it exists, there’s no point. People die just because there’s no point.

speaker-1 (33:34.22)
You’ve you’ve s used the term decide a few times now. if you decide to die is what d you just indicated just now. That seems to infer that there’s a lot of mind over matter, so to speak, going on with what with our lives.

speaker-0 (33:54.336)
It can be. So if you prefer to stay unconscious in how you live your life, you would think you are a victim of the circumstances. Once you become awakened to the reality that you’re actually creating your life every day and every moment, then you’re empowered to change it to your liking. And you become that creator. So I wrote the book I shared with you, Living from the Soul, the neuroscience of spiritual awakening, and that’s what I talk about.

N most of the things or all of them that happened to you throughout your life are not accidents. You are partially or fully responsible for them. And because you made a decision that led to that, you know, some point that would preceded it. Yeah and blaming something else or somebody else just doesn’t pay it. you know, it doesn’t pay you to live their life like that. It’s miserable to feel like you’re powerless, you can’t change things.

You’re against the wall, you’re a victim. caregivers, by the way, get trapped in in that thinking, you know. they’re resenting all parties they have to take care of because they feel that their lives are stolen from them. And that should not be like that, you know. So there is a way of reframing it that I am contributing, I am this is a positive thing, I can grow from it. The best adaptation to stress, trauma.

is taking everything that’s happening to you as a as an opportunity to learn and grow from.

speaker-1 (35:30.858)
It’s funny that that entire philosophy. And I’m not sure what I would assume you call that a philosophy. I’ve seen that I’ve lived by that my entire life because I’ve always been an entrepreneur. And I own what I do or don’t do. I have to. And it’s the reason why I’ve gone as far as I have in the various different areas that of my life. But there are some things that

I never triggered I l I remember being around forty and thinking back that how I got to where I was when I was forty, I could trace all the back way back to when I bought a car when I was sixteen and how that car took away money, made me to make these decisions, which resulted me going in this direction instead of another direction.

And and and and it just cascaded as I went along simply because of one decision when I was sixteen, type thing. That’s an interesting philosophy.

speaker-0 (36:37.962)
Yeah, so I look at everything from the soul’s perspective rather than from, you know, lower lower self or ego perspective. Yep. And would do you believe in soul? You know, I ask people if they believe in soul.

speaker-1 (36:54.868)
I yes, I know I you can tell, and I think people all people actually believe that as well, whether they’re conscious of it or not, simply because of the way we use our language. Right. This is my this is my arm, this is my hand. That term my arm, my hand, infers that it’s separate from me. It’s something I own as opposed to it’s me. Mm-hmm type thing. So

There’s me inside here that’s separate.

speaker-0 (37:26.296)
So, you know, nine ninety, I would say ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of people I ask about soul either agree to it or are open to the possibility of having a soul. And then it’s easier to communicate. I don’t go there if people don’t believe in soul, you know. Yeah and then too bad. because that perspective gives you a new opportunity to look at your life as this

lesson, you know, one so I ask people who believe in soul, if you were to put the lesson from this lifetime into one or two sentences, no more, what would it be? What what is one lesson that kept presenting itself to you and you learned from?

speaker-1 (38:14.316)
Yeah. Well, for me, and this is this is a concept that I I came about simply because of a series of books from a gentleman by the name of Isaac Asimov, the foundation series that I received back when I was seventeen as a gift from my best friend at the time. there is it it has the concept of mathematical history where you can project what’s going to happen because of groups of people.

Which runs opposed to the concept of you make the decision of what’s going to happen to you. But I see patterns all the time happening. I see it’s almost circular. But I think you can make a decision what you’re going to do if you’re aware of these patterns. So it’s a com combined

speaker-0 (39:05.026)
That’s precisely it. Once you understand the pattern, you could leave it. So, you know, when I see my and my patients get trapped in this relationship patterns, the same as their gr father or their mother, and it keeps repeating and repeating and repeating, and they can’t exit it. So and then I teach them because they’re constantly unconscious about it, they just get trapped by the same thing.

I make them conscious or I facilitate this becoming more conscious and then we together come to a new scenario. How what would be the desired way of living rather than being trapped by this pattern. And most of the, you know, more of the life or traumas are like this bad habits you keep being trapped into. So you just have to decide that you’re done with it. This was one lesson you were born to learn.

speaker-1 (39:46.84)
Right.

speaker-0 (40:02.038)
And once you learn that lesson it just goes away.

speaker-1 (40:05.09)
Yeah. So you’re you’re relating that pattern to an individual life or inherited through family behaviors. My my view is more sociological. Where yeah, it’s all patterns. And it’s all patterns type thing. So you can move from one pattern to another. For example, right now what I see with AI really, really reminds me of the dot com bubble.

Of when websites and the internet first started. The patterns is exactly the same type thing. So the decision then is okay, if you know that this is the direction things will go, do you want to stay on that path or do you want to go a different path? And I’ve chosen a different path. So

speaker-0 (40:53.696)
Many people are, by the way, you know. So if you’re watching the news or listening to Elon Musk, that my hairdresser apparently does routinely, I don’t know.

speaker-1 (41:06.606)
Don’t don’t get me started on that.

speaker-0 (41:09.61)
You’ll be you’ll be you’ll be in a completely different world. That’s another thing that social media does to you. You can create your own bubble and you live in it. Yeah. And you can’t see that there are other bubbles beyond it. So becoming my solution to all of that is discernment, personal discernment, sort of getting out of getting a big picture, getting out of the pattern and looking at everything that’s going on and becoming more aware and self-determinant.

speaker-1 (41:23.051)
Interesting.

speaker-0 (41:39.928)
sovereign rather than being said whatever anybody’s saying, you know, somebody else is saying.

speaker-1 (41:46.318)
So if you do something completely out of your usual pat activities, for example, I work here. I intentionally go out food shopping every day. I could do it once on the weekend, but that way I get me myself out of here and go talk to people. But I’ve never done, for example, learned to play the guitar. That’s something completely new and different. And that changes your perspective. I

speaker-0 (42:14.498)
Yeah, I mean just simply speaking, if you want to break any pattern, just do it differently. Let’s say, but be aware of it because you know, if you let’s say go to a grocery store just to get out of your house, and you go left, this time you go right or change the route by which you’re going. Going into the store, be aware of who’s around you.

And for example, I have a rose exercise that I recommend people do. and put the row, imagine the rows of any, like close your eyes, imagine imagine the rows, white, red, of your liking, you know, any size. And you put it around yourself or your car when you’re moving, and you will find that people actually feel that interference and they will not approach you.

And that’s how you become, I mean, by doing things like that, you become more aware of your capacity to manage your space. And for example, if you’re talking with toxic people, I ask people or dealing with toxic relationships, put the entire pattern into the rows and explode the rows. And what it does, and you do it repeatedly, like s let’s say you’re dealing with some pattern and it’s it’s weighing heavily on your shoulders, you know, you’re you’re

kind of irritated, you’re you’re reactive to that. In order to take it out of your field and feel lighter, you put it in the rows and explode a few times. And you will will feel more joyous and lighter. Like that weight will disappear. Just do that exercise. It makes you more mindful and aware of your own capacity to manage your energy field and and space.

speaker-1 (44:04.174)
Interesting. I I learned that exercise back in when I was twenty-six, twenty-seven, from a woman up here in West Vancouver that was using that for cleaning the various different chi your chi, that sort of thing. Yeah. And it’s yeah, it’s interesting.

speaker-0 (44:25.174)
Energetic exercise, right. The rose has its meaning, it’s you know, it’s it’s a good tool. I learned it from mastering in alchemy as a group that I’m working with, a spiritual group, that sort of studies your ability to manifest your reality and gives you tools. So that’s one but I found it with patients, I found it very useful. People like it and it does work for them.

Plus it uses your imagination, color, scent, rose, different sides and you play with that.

speaker-1 (45:04.354)
Well, I’m choking now because of my chest cold. So what I think I’m gonna do is because I’m starting to die a little bit here because of my chest. I’m going to tie down the interview right now. If there was any one thing you would recommend people that are coming up on retirement that they should do, what would you recommend that I do?

speaker-0 (45:31.688)
I call it a plan B, workout plan B. Have a clear, you know, you can’t just jump off the bridge right away, you know. Have to prepare. You have to have at least an immediate plan what it is that you would occupy yourself with. structured days, at least one activity a day. Exercise is a must. you must treat your body as a tempo.

but also spiritual activities, you know, I do feel in the final chapter of your life that’s a most important thing they could do for yourself, to feel feel peaceful and at at joyous, and at peace with yourself, at peace with your life. Find peace, whatever it takes.

speaker-1 (46:19.36)
It’s interesting what you just said. Find peace. You just reminded me of my grandmother. I d I haven’t thought about her in years. So thank you very much for that thought. Anyway, Helen, thank you very much. I much appreciate the the the conversation. I got a lot of out of it. for everybody that’s watching this, I will put Helen’s website in the description of this as well as a link to the a UCLA

longevity center. And my apologies to everybody for choking it here at the end here. I’m just fighting off

speaker-0 (46:54.946)
Feel better, feel better. Take care of yourself. Okay.

speaker-1 (46:58.296)
Helen, thank you very much. Much appreciate it. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Bye.

speaker-0 (47:01.314)
Thank you.