Unlocking Mind-Body Connection for Peak Performance with Dr. Conor Hogan

A competitive young athlete striving to reach the top of their sport, discovers that their body is suffering and breaking down due to scoliosis. Facing an inoperable diagnosis in Europe, they must explore alternative treatments to heal their body and mind- is it enough to make them a champion? But little do they know, their journey will bring an unexpected awakening that will reshape their perception of the world... Show Notes | Transcript "I found myself kind of getting more tuned in, my awareness more focused in different ways, and just essentially able to grasp things better and more in the moment." - Dr. Conor Hogan Dr. Conor Hogan, an Irish thought leader in business and marketing, is recognized by Time for his expertise in integrating neurosocio data and experiences to facilitate higher performance. As the author of "The Gym Upstairs: The Neuroscience of Future Champions," Dr. Hogan delves into the mind and mental processes of individuals and organizations. In this episode, you will be able to: Optimize your mental and physical performance by mastering the powerful connection between your mind and body. Discover unique and alternative methods to enhance your well-being and skyrocket your chances of success. Transform your life by learning to rewire your brain through consistent meditation and powerful visualization techniques. Find the perfect balance in using technology while still maintaining a mindful, growth-oriented mindset. Understand the undeniable impact that small habits, curiosity, and being present can have on accomplishing your goals and dreams. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Transforming Subconscious Minds with Krishna Avalon Healing through Body Memory Release with Tatiana Vilarea Tapping into Your Body's Wisdom with Leah McQuade Resources: Connect with Dr. Conor here Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand: I am so glad to be with you again today. And of course, these are always my favorite episodes when I get to have a guest with us on the program. And today I have got lovely gentlemen coming to us all the way from Ireland. And for those of you who may not know if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, I live in Florida, so I'm in the United States. So we've got about a five hour time difference. So let me tell you a little bit about, uh, Dr. Conor Hogan. He has been acknowledged by Time as one of the most influential thought leaders in business and marketing. And he integrates neuro socio data and experiences by studying the mind and mental processes of individuals and organizations to facilitate higher performance. And, um, for those of you who are, have the option of watching this interview on YouTube, you will notice there's a book behind his shoulder there. He is the author of the Gym Upstairs, the Neuroscience of Future Champions. So I want to officially welcome Dr. Conor to live, love, engage. Dr Conor Hogan: Thank you so much, Gloria. Thank you so much for having me. Gloria Grace Rand: Well, I am really looking forward to this cuz I, I met you, um, a little while ago at a, publicity summit, and I was intrigued by the, the work you do. I'm, shall we say, a brain geek. I love learning about how the mind works and, uh, and I seems to be that that's a bit of your specialty as well. And I know one of the things that we talked about before setting up the interview was to now talk about optimizing your mental performance. And we're, we're gonna get into that in a minute, but I always love to start off my interviews with asking my guests a little bit about their background and what got you interested in the type of work that you're doing. Dr Conor Hogan: Yeah, well, once upon a time, if we go back that far, but essentially when I was younger, I was into sport. And so I played a couple of sports here in Ireland and dreamed like most children, not boys, but girls also, of course, that they wanted to reach the top, the very top of the games that they played. And so I was no different. I wanted to do that and I practiced andtrained, read, watched, this is pre-internet, did all of the things that would help me achieve my very best. And in correlation with that, as I was growing up in my mid-teens, well early teens really, I started getting problems. But it was kind of unbeknownst to myself because I just felt, hey, you know, I'm growing physically and these are the challenges of everybody because as we all know, teenagers, they change shape, they change sound, they change in many, many different ways. Dr Conor Hogan: And so I didn't really kind of compare myself to others in the way in the rate and, and how I was growing. And all of the, the incidences of kind of pains and aches I was getting, uh, until essentially when I was about 16, I just broke down physically. My body just kept getting injured when I was playing sport. Now I was a big guy by the way. I was like probably about six foot two, six foot three at that time. I'm six foot four now. And so yes, there was a big rate of growth throughout obviously my teenage years. But genetically I'm from a big family. And so by that time I was then using that strength and that kind of athletic ability, size. And obviously I practiced a lot and had certain abilities in the sports I was playing. And so I was using that to play beyond my years with senior, with adult players. Dr Conor Hogan: And so at 15, 16 years of age, I was physically obviously much bigger than many of the other players. And so, as well as that, we were doing training and, uh, practiced in a lot of athletic training was coming into the game, but the dieticians and all of those things never really came into the game. And so what was happening was we had a correlation of a bad diet, perhaps again, now we can look back with 20/20 vision, 20 odd years later. But also with this like sharp, harsher training regimes that essentially were duplicated by a lot of, uh, coaches that really just didn't have the knowledge, didn't have the ability, perhaps didn't have the science behind them, and just so did what they saw on television, what they saw other champions were doing. And so my body just started breaking down. Dr Conor Hogan: And between the ages of about 16 to 20, there was just a catalog of injuries, a catalog of problems, and then it went deeper towards actual illnesses, sicknesses. I was on I think seven doses of antibiotics in a row at one stage. Oh man. And it was just ridiculous. I had a, you know, an operation on my nose and my nasal area. And of course there was other issues going on. I had a hernia at like 17 or something like that. It was crazy. And so old man injuries as such, old man illnesses. And it was all eventually put back to scoliosis where I had a twisted spine. And of course, many females listening or watching, would probably be more aware of this than males because I think it's five or seven times more girls tend to get scoliosis. Now you can have it in a variety of ways and you can have it from birth and with a lot of other ailments or conditions, but also you can get it in your teenage years. Dr Conor Hogan: It's called idio idiopathic scoliosis. And so for me it was like that. So obviously if you're big and strong, you're going to be, and these were contact sports, so you're going to be targeted more. And so I was getting a lot of flack physically. My body was breaking down. It wasn't able to take, I was getting all these illnesses. And so essentially I had to stop playing. And I went to medical practitioners and all the experts, and they told me I was, was inoperable in Europe. And so obviously I'm in Europe, I'm in Ireland, so therefore the operations would've potentially been in, in Europe. So, you know, you, you had all of these issues and then you're, you're 20 years of age, what do you do? So I had all this wealth of knowledge, all this kind of wealth of, um, drive, ambition and so on. Dr Conor Hogan: And so with the things that I was doing growing up, I wasn't just reading into like physical things, but I was looking at the greats of all these sports and not just the native sports of Ireland, but also the native sports in America in all around Asia and Europe and so on. And the mindset and all of that area really kind of, uh, just really got I, I I got it, you know, I really enjoyed it. And so obviously when then physically I was inoperable in Europe, I was, uh, I had to go to other places. I had to figure out what was wrong with me. And so I went to what's called a lot of alternative practitioners and a lot of those being known as complimentary practitioners now. And literally I spent my twenties with those type of people. And so I'd be lying down and physically they'd be doing work on my back or something like that. Dr Conor Hogan: And we'd just be chatting, discussing and learning. And I was learning so much about all the alternative things they were doing. And so I started studying myself and doing all these bunches of different courses. And eventually in the professional field, by the way, I was a teacher, I got into teaching. And so then in the teaching world, even though I was a high school teacher and then an elementary school teacher, I then fell into behavioral teaching. And that's where all of my say ailment, sicknesses, conditions, studies, extra studies, and my healing and also my professional ability that I was working with as a teacher, kind of all crossed as a, at an intersection in a crossroads where I started working essentially during the day as a behavioral, uh, emotional social teacher with a lot of children who had, uh, depression depressive problems,...