Hello and welcome to Day to Your Ego Mariosol Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Fina, and I am an Ego and Soul enthusiast. We can no longer be strangers to our egos and how they function. So come join me as we find out why and how this philosophy of dating your ego but marrying your soul is true and useful for you.
I am delighted to welcome you to this episode and I just want you to know you're going to want to listen to what we have to say today. I have a very special guest who is literally brought to me by the universe. I am the travelling podcaster. My first few episodes have been taped while I was travelling the world and I had the great good fortune of meeting people everywhere I went.
This next guest is a by chance meeting that happened in Sydney. I looked up Professor Phil Dyke on Airbnb Experiences where he had an experience titled A Journey Inside Your Brain. I was fascinated. Isn't this podcast all about figuring out the voices inside of us and figuring out who we are and which part of us is working and operating in our life?
So yes, you guessed it right. I was right in there, looked my appointment and I'm so glad I did because I can share with you some very scientific facts about how your brain works, what states you must keep it and what states it goes to and the three simple things that will allow you to keep it in its high performing, efficient calm state. So without further ado, let's welcome Professor Phil Dyke. Hello Phil and welcome to the show.
How are you? Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much for joining us and just as a quick background for the listeners that we have on today, I had the good fortune of meeting Phil last evening in Sydney, Australia. He runs a great workshop which he's going to tell you about shortly, but he literally gave me a view into my own brain.
I mean, I didn't think this was possible. He told me how my brain behaves in different states. He also showed me how I could move objects with my brain and my thoughts. I mean, this was by far one of the most fascinating evenings I've had in my life.
So Phil, without further ado, please do tell us a bit about yourself and give us a background about mine's brain play. Okay, I began my working life as a teacher. I was an educator with every grade from kindergarten up to masters level university really. I retrained for tertiary education and my speciality was in science and medical communication.
So my foretane focus was to make complex information simple, to make it digestible for the public, yeah, so that it could be used in a promotional sense, in an education sense, and people would understand what would otherwise be quite complex subjects. So that's been my main thing, although I've been a musician, I've been an author and I've done many things, but that's been the main thing so far. And mine's brain play is the pointy end of that at the moment. It's a business.
It's not a business, it certainly is, but I really get far more out of educating people, seeing the look on their face, looking inside their brain and see what's happening is a wonderful thing. Seeing the look on their face where they can actually move things on the screen with the way they think. And of course, the relevance of that to society and particularly the disability sector. Right, interesting.
I mean, obviously I couldn't move much last evening. I did try, but I couldn't move much. So for me that was also interesting. But what I love about what you just said is to apply it to the sector beyond just normal people.
Could you tell us a bit more about that? The technology, which is an EEG, electron technology, EEG stands for electron and sepulograph. It's been used since the 1850s to read the electrical signal that comes out from your 80 to 100 billion neurons that are inside your head. Now each one of those neurons can transmit or generate a very tiny electric signal.
And we use heads on the head in order to pick up the electric signal. So it doesn't put anything into your head, but it actually reads the electricity that's being generated from these 100 billion neurons that we all have. Now my system is only 14 to 16 sensors, so it's not massive, but the very expensive EAGs go up to 150 sensors where your head is completely dotted with these little sensors that will pick up every little bit of electrical activity that happens inside your brain. So the main application for that has been to teach people who are disabled in some way to do things in their home or in the world that they wouldn't normally be able to do, like teaching quadriplegics to drive their wheelchairs.
They think in a certain way and they have a memory of perhaps before they had their accident, that memory creates a neuron pattern from the 100 billion neurons. The pattern is read by the EAG headset by these little sensors that sit on your scalp, goes through to a computer and the computer then will direct the wheelchair to go in a certain way. So the main application for this technology has been in the disability sector, although I know that over the next 10 years, Mr. Google and Mrs.
Apple and all of those companies are going to start to promote items for the consumer market. And that was my first thought actually because I obviously study spiritual truths and philosophies and everyday life and how we can apply them. And what I found fascinating or even very educational and informative about last night is that if I had one of these at home and I was able to see the effect of meditation on my brain, I feel like that wouldn't motivate me even more to have a regular meditation routine or I would see the effect of a stressful thought. That would help me change my thinking pattern, just somehow the visualization of the effect of outside stimuli on us internally changes us to a degree that theory doesn't, reading about it doesn't.
It's interesting that you have access to this software and I hope, you know, I wish you all the success and I hope you can take it to more households and schools as you are doing and more people can learn about it. Now, can I ask you a bit of a different question and could you talk to us about your childhood? Where did you grow up? How did you get interested?
Are you always interested in this? Yes, I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney and if any of you listeners have ever been to Sydney, there's the central Sydney part and there's the out-of-lying suburbs which in the west where I grew up were very poor. So I grew up in a very poor family. I was the only one of the family to go to university which created a great deal of jealousy and potentially anger in the family.
Sort of background or my history was actually very big in social justice and science. I was fascinated with science. I had an immense insect collection which my mother was completely horrified at because these insects were all dead of course and they'd been dead for two or three years in bottles in my cupboard. But that created my interest in science.
So yeah, you haven't got to have a privileged background to grow up and have a career in science, most certainly not. But then being a teacher really helped my communication skills in that and then retraining in science and medical communication was pretty important. That's really inspiring to hear you say that. Men's insect collection, wow, to think that's where it all began.
So mine's brain play has obviously been a sort of conclusion to your years of experience. Tell us a bit about how you decided to take neuroscience to the streets through mine's brain play. Yeah, it was an interesting evolution because when I was at the University of New South Wales, which I was there for three years as an educator, but mainly to teach people about the artificial things that go inside them to keep them alive like a stent inside your arteries or an artificial heart or a deep brain implant. So that wasn't my focus, but one of the things that we were involved with was the use of the EEG in education and training and certainly talking about the disability sector.
And there was a project at the university which was teaching quadriplegics how to drive wheel chairs. Now I saw that the school students particularly were fascinated by this and I said to the university, can we take it out? Can we take it out of the university and take it to the streets? Now they were very positive and terrific, but taking things to the streets on behalf of universities is often not what they want because they want people to come to them.
Obviously they want people to go into the university. It's not a great thing for them to go out. So I decided I wanted to take it out and I spoke to my direct manager and it was fine if I did that, I took it out and then I decided that I wanted to do more of it. So the whole idea was to take neuroscience to the streets, to educate people about their brain and what affects it.
And I think in last night's workshop we talked about alcohol, we talked about surgeon drugs that affect the brain. We talked about the immense importance of meditation, of exercise, of doing all of those things in order to have an impact on our brain. We know that they can have an impact on our body, but we just forget about the immense impact it has on our brain. So in a sense it strikes me quite a pioneer of taking neuroscience to the streets because I haven't come across it, not in the US or in the UK.
And it's really exciting to see that people have access to this knowledge. Tell us a bit about the workshop and the experience you took us through last night using your software at the workshop in Sydney. I like to begin by teaching a little bit about the brain. I'm a teacher by trade and I think I'm a teacher by genetics.
It's very hard to get it out of me. So I like to spend 20 minutes teaching about the brain and the 100 billion neurons and using this plastic model called Boris to show inside his brain. And I think that's quite important for people to know that bit of science background. Then I put a 14-cent EAG headset on participants where they can then move objects on a screen with the way they think.
Now, that is really hard for people to do. As you know from last night, you were tremendous at it, but there was a couple who were very, very good at it. So not everyone can do it, but we can teach ourselves to do it by thinking in certain ways. So the idea is that if you think a thought that will put your brain into very low brain waves, let's say we call that, we'll get a call that beta brain waves, which is quite low.
It's when the electric signal is low. Now that comes off and from counting. So that then goes through the headset via Bluetooth to the computer, computer remembers that, and that will make an object move in a certain way. Then they might think of a highly physical and exhausting vigorous activity that puts them into beta or sometimes even into gamma, which is a very high electric state, and that will make the box go in a different way.
It's really very similar to what say a quadruplegic will do with their wheelchair, except we're doing it with the box on the screen. Yeah. So it's very similar in the technology. We then look inside the brain and look at the neurons firing off in, I like to say real time, but that's actually a lie.
It's about four to five seconds delay. So that when a person does a certain thing, for example, eating, and you were very good at this. I've got to say, so. I was good at eating, especially just as a name.
Yes, you were excellent at that. And you reach for the chip, you go to put it in your mouth and put you into state of beta, and you can see that in your brain map. So the neurons fire off in a purpley blue color, then they might go up to gamma when they actually enters your mouth. But then your brain goes into an overwhelming state of beta, which is a very relaxed, satisfying way of here.
And nearly every single person has that same experience. So it explains why people get addicted to food and why we love food so much. You know, it was always a food was a function of living, but now it is a pleasure. So different things can show different brain waves.
And then the final thing with that head said is to play a game with another person using your thoughts to fire a fireball at your other person. And that's on a screen. So every time you think about a highly active thought, your character will fire a fireball at the other character. Right.
Yes. Just for our listeners, I couldn't really fire a ball beyond two fires, I think. And I lost that game terribly so. But what I wanted to ask you a bit more about, so beta is a relaxed state.
What is the stressed state? A stressed state would be a state where your neurons are firing off at a higher electrical signal, yeah? So the science tells us that, okay, if we're going to be firing, we're going to be firing off in gamma or beta waves. We're going to be going off at about 30 cycles per second or for beta between 12 and 30 hertz.
Now, all cycles per second. Now listeners don't have to understand the science, but they just have to know that when you are stressed, now some stress is very positive and sometimes negative. But when you're stressed, your brain is firing off at a high electric rate. Now we can view that on a screen by saying, okay, well, your brain is going into purple and blue and even white.
So we can look at the colors. And then we can also look at what happens when you're relaxing, when your brain is in theta, that theta state which is much, much lower. Now I spend a lot of time talking about theta because theta is when your brain is most receptive to information and it's the state when you can most likely recall information and verbalize it or write it down. It's the state that students should be in when they go into exams.
A good example, I say to people, have you ever tried to remember the name of a band or the name of an actor, the name of a movie? And it's on the tip of your tongue and the more you try, the worse it gets. Now when you're in that trying, trying, trying phase, you're in beta. Your brain is saying, come on, come on, remember it's that.
Oh, it was only a couple of years ago. Come on, what's that person's done? And you're getting stressed about it. But then 20 minutes later, you are folding up a blanket or you're having a shower or you're cutting up a carrot and suddenly, oh, that was the name of the song.
That's the name of the band. And that's because your brain has gone down into theta, which is usually single focus, autopilot. Yeah, you're not thinking, oh, I'm going to fold this blanket very much corner to corner. You're not thinking that.
You're just doing it. You're not thinking, oh, how are I going to cut this carrot? It's going to be one and a half millimeters or what it's going to be. You're just cutting the carrot.
You're just having a shower. And oh, I think I might wash my arm first. It is autopilot. It's something that most people can relate to.
But when you go down into theta state, that's when you can remember things. Now another example is a lot of your listeners, if they drive cars, I don't know how many of your listeners have been driving a car. They've looked out the window and they say, oh, I'm in this suburb. And then about 10 minutes later, they look out the window and they go, wow, I've gone through four suburbs.
I can't remember that. I can't remember going through that suburb. Again, they're in autopilot and they will never make a mistake. Often, I thought, geez, how many people have I run over.
But no, I haven't run over anyone. Of course, we won't make a mistake. We're in theta. We're in autopilot.
We're doing it naturally. And geez, it's one of our least stressed states. That's really informative. So can I ask you a question going off from that a bit?
So if I'm really stressed about something, say I've submitted a book proposal at the moment to Hayhouse, as I shared with you. So the anticipation as the deadline approaches obviously is one of anxiety or, you know, evenness of, I don't know, all kinds of excitement. It's a cocktail of emotions. So when I'm in that state, obviously, I'm not in t-thart, right?
And what am I in there? Is that state that a cocktail of emotions? What is that state? It's probably, it's hard to measure without a proper E.G.
But I'd say it's a high alpha and beta state. Now, that's pretty important because you're thinking of many things at once. You're thinking of the deadline. You're thinking, well, is this sentence good enough?
I'm thinking, you know, how will I divide my book up into the right chapters? All of these things are going on in your head while you're trying to think of your deadline and no doubt other things that are happening in your life. Now, everyone has to go into that sometimes. We must do it.
The idea is if we stay in it, then we'll start to very much irritate ourselves. We'll start to have a lot of talk in our background of our mind and it'll start to get annoying for us. So we have to relax. We have to get down into theta.
And there's three main ways of going into theta. And the first one is to meditate in whatever way people meditate. Some people count breaths. Some people do an Indian version of meditation.
Some people go for a jog. You know, people are different. So it's their meditative zone. Another one is laughing.
Now, the old adage laughing is the best medicine. It is the best medicine. Laughing puts you into a theta state. Because when you're laughing hysterically, it's very hard to think rationally about things.
You're simply laughing and having a great time. So I always think people have got to laugh more. And perhaps one of the odd ways is that after eating, as you did last night, you ate the chips, you went into theta. You were brain flooded with theta waves.
So that is very satisfying for us. But of course, when we get addicted to food, and that's not great either. But yes, you know, it's those three states that are really important. That's actually hit the name on the head for me because I actually have a little aromatherapy bottle that I talk to that has a mixture of essential oils in it.
And when I take a sniffle, I automatically, my mind, it just switches from stress to relax. And it lets me move into a different state of mind and allows me to react to things. Just because of that little change, it allows me to react to things a little bit better in a more constructed way. That's very interesting.
It's like the senses you're using it as smell, other people use the taste of the food. So it's very similar to that eating. I think what's great about talking to you is all the women listening to this will know that when you crave chips and when you crave ice cream, when you crave that bubble, you're doing it because you need a little bit of a lift and a little bit of tea for your life. But don't feel guilty, ladies.
Well, it's the old thought of comfort food, you know, that we're rich for something that gives us the comfort of when we want kids. By the way, children have a lot more things than adults do. They seem to be able to slip into things that are waves easier than we do because we're so busy, busy, busy. Wow, yes.
I think we all need to go back to our childhood sometimes and try and remember what made us really happy and try and create those same catalysts around us. Can I even go on to my next question and ask you about a time in your life when you experienced an aha moment? Yes, I thought about this and there was a definite moment and that was straight after the birth of my daughter, Makayla, was about three or four months afterwards. And I'd written an article for, as the City Morning Herald about, father's experiences of being a dad for the first time.
You know, we hear a lot about mums and mums go through and stuff, but no one ever talks about dads. So I wrote an article for the City Morning Herald and I had quite a bit of feedback. Now, in those days, I'd put on a bit of weight and I think a lot of dads put on weight when they become a father because they're up at night and they're having a snack in the middle of the night not doing much exercise and all that sort of stuff. So I thought, I've got to go to the gym.
So I joined the gym and I was on the treadmill at the gym. Now, when you're on the treadmill, when you're doing physical exercise, you're actually in neurogenesis a lot of the time, which means your brain is making new neurons. You're making new ones and those neurons are made and they slip right down deep into outside your brain near the hippocampus. Now, there is research on that and people, you know, they never thought you could make neurons, but you most certainly can.
Now, here's me on the exercise, but I was also in a meditative state because when you're in a rhythmic state of walking on the treadmill and I wasn't looking at a television set, I wasn't listening to any music, I was just sort of looking at this wall, I remember. And suddenly I started to shiver and thought, I have to write a book, I have to write a book on this. And the shivering became really strong. And at the end of the treadmill, I got off and I thought, that's it, I have to write a book.
As if the gods have spoken. Now, I'm not a religious person at all, but it was like a real aha moment. Wow, I've discovered I have to write this book and it took me three years to write it, but I write the book, it was published by Australia's leading publisher and it's sold out. So I was very, very happy about that.
And I think it's still the sale on, I'm not going to mention the names of really big online book distributors. Well, do tell us where we could find the book and what is it called? It was called the Father Load, L-O-G-E, the Father Load. And I, it's certainly on Amazon.
I don't know what else it's on, but it's certainly out there on Amazon. I'd love to read your article too and be sitting more in your own career. We'll have a copy of that. Can I find it?
I'm sure if I Google it, you'll be on it. Yeah, we look, I think these, that was in the days before Google, that was 1994. So no, I certainly got a copy anyway. Great, because I'd love to have my husband read it.
Could you share with us one personal daily habit that contributes to your success? Yes, and I have to thank my dog for this, my dog Monty, who's a half-whip at half-grade hound. And I have to walk him, like walking him 200 meters, that's what doesn't do the trick. I have to walk him a few kilometers in the morning and a few kilometers in the afternoon.
I can't run with him because that'd be silly. I couldn't, never can. But I have to walk him and exercise him. So that's every morning at 6 a.m.
I'm up walking the dog and every afternoon about 5 o'clock I walk the dog. And I find when I do that, I get some terrific, terrific ideas. So walking Monty's great and also exercising, I do two to three times at the gym and I make sure I'm at the treadmill and I never watch the TV. Because if you watch the TV, you'll go into Peter waves and you'll start to think about what's that meaning on the TV and I'm going to watch that.
But if you've got nothing to look at, your brain can relax more and go into the theatre stage. I go to a gym in London in Clapham and they have all the treadmills and all the EFX machines facing the TV. I am going to become this into your interview and turn it around because I don't quite enjoy that and now I know why. Great.
And I also thought of asking you, I do a dance class on Saturdays and it's quite a popular way of exercising months, young women and men in London. And I find when I'm in that class and I'm doing the routines, I get a lot of creative ideas but I also tend to solve my problems. So I'm quite an emotional person and I react to think emotionally. When I'm in that class, in that studio with all my classmates and our teachers, wonderful, I find as we have been in routine my emotional problems get solved.
Is that because of Teetha? Is that because of? Yep, it's because of theatre waves again. When you're first learning the dance moves, I can't say this from much experience but the dance classes that I've been with, I had to put in a lot of concentration to learn the dance moves and that's when you're in beta, because you're learning.
You're learning your brain's active, you're trying to coordinate your body. But then when you learn them and they come as second nature to you and you can be on autopilot doing the move, that's when you'll go into theatre waves and that's when you'll solve your problems and get ideas. So the person learning to play tennis, yep, that's tough. You know, wreck it back, bend the knee, all that sort of stuff, you've got to think of that.
But once it becomes automatic, automatic muscle memory for you, then you can go into theta and that's when you relax, that's when you'll have your ideas and work out your problems. So I'd say in your dance class, and for the many women who are listening who do dancing, dancing is fantastic for this but you've just got to get yourself into that where you know all the moves. Yep, you know the moves or the other stages where you don't, so you don't get about the moves, you just move and that's very good for you too. And actually everything you've said is sort of reminding me of the routine that young women follow to de-stress.
The young women who typically have a stress-wise career will meet after work, have dinner, have a couple of drinks, go out maybe to a bar or a club, drink a bit more, start dancing, feel great, go home, go to bed, wake up. But then there's the hangover which is for great. No, that's right. Unfortunately the hangover spoils it a bit, you know.
But look, just dancing is a fantastic thing. Dancing crazily in a nightclub is just wonderful. Unfortunately, we've linked dancing and drinking and often you know other recreational drugs as well. If we could separate that and just have dancing it would be terrific.
Well, we sort of, I don't want to take more of your time so I always ask people I interview this question. Tell us about a time when you experience failure and what did you learn from it? Yes, I've experienced failure a lot of times and I think all of the experiences of failure make you stronger and doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. I think one of the big ones I used to have a business as well as an educator, I had a textbook business which was going very, very well and succeeding and someone said to me, you should sell that business.
Philip, you know, it's going very well. I was like, well, it's fine. I might sell it. But of course, then ebooks came along and every student decided not to buy textbooks like all ebooks that he was trying to hold on to this textbook business, which was really old world, very old world by that time.
And I listened perhaps to other people, I would have been, you know, a lot better off and would have been the right decision, but I didn't listen. So I've learned to listen to people and when you have to act and you've got to act sometimes quickly and the more you think about things and you dwell on things often, that's not the best way to go. Well, thank you for that. I think that's teaching all of us to trust our instincts and also to be in touch with ourselves and have confidence, you know, that's something I know young women sometimes struggle with because society puts a lot of pressure on you to conform and be the way.
That's exactly right. I just add something too that if you go, you're talking about confidence with young women and that is such an important thing and I just just try to instill that in my daughter. But one of the things that I tell my daughter, Michaela, is that if you're going to be very confident, you're going to stick up for yourself and stand up for what you think. Not everyone is going to like you.
And it's okay when some people don't like you. For example, I just, my daughter at the moment has been in the environment where there's quite a bit of racism and sexism. Now, she's had to talk up about that. Just say, but not to talk about that particular issue.
And she became not unpopular, but people thought, well, she's not in our group. And I said, well, unfortunately it's a work thing and she's got to do it. But it's okay to stand up for yourself and to speak out. But for confident women, sometimes they weren't being popular with 100% of the people.
I'm really glad you brought that up and you decided to explain that it because it allows me to confirm what you're encouraging your daughter to do because I worked in a very male-dominated environment on the trading global bank. And of course, the culture there is one of, you know, bravadry and a lot of all of that. And that's fine. And as a young woman, I was only in my 20th then.
If you're slightly attractive, even, you're going to get propositioned in so many different ways. And just given my background, my father is a very protective father. And he's always taught me to stand up for myself. And the first time I got to apply this with a non-propositioned by a very senior boss.
And I just said to him, what can I say, ring or nothing? As in, you put a ring on my finger, there's nothing. And I don't want to marry you. And there's nothing that's ever going to happen between us.
So you can forget about it. I don't need this job. I don't need this salary. I need myself respect.
And that's what's important to me. And I cannot tell you, I don't think he was expecting that. I don't think he had heard that from a young woman in her 20s. It turned out that he became my mentor.
And I stayed with him for my 10 years. And he treated me like a daughter, like a sister, guiding me. You know, he even took me back when I took a break from banking. So he kind of had a respect for me that he didn't for other women.
And that served me much better. Of course, I have to admit I was totally frightened. And I was, you know, wanting to go back home to my parents, but I stuck to my guns. And it really served me well in this instance.
That is a fantastic story and a fantastic lesson. I mean, just because he hit on you doesn't mean you, you know, you run and take it to the media and there's a lawsuit over it. You say what you wanted to say, you risked, really. You took a risk in saying what you wanted to say.
But then he respected you and became a mentor. I think that's a wonderful, wonderful lesson. Well, I think there are men out there who can be your friends and mentors. I think it's just about you making it clear what you want our relationship to.
That really brings us to the end. I like to ask guests what they're reading right now. And if they would recommend any books to our listeners to help them date their ego, but marry their souls. Okay, I'm just reading, I'm nearly at the end of all the light we cannot see by Anthony Dua.
One of the best, most amazing books I think I've ever read is the sort of book I don't want to finish. It's how all the light we cannot see. I highly recommend that. And there's another great book on Exercise and the Brain by John Rady.
It's called Spark. And Spark tells you all about the benefits of vigorous exercise on the brain and how you produce new neurons and their brain crucial memory. So it's a tremendous, tremendous book. Well, thank you so much.
This has been enlightening and educational. And you've been so wonderful to me and to our listeners. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Sarah.
Thanks for your interest.