Conversations on Healing

Welcome to the Conversations on Healing podcast, where host Shay Beider speaks with renowned healthcare leaders, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore the world of wellness, the incredible powers of self-care, and what it truly means to heal today. Join us on this journey to become more whole, healed, and connected.

Shay Beider Hello and welcome to the Conversations on Healing podcast. I’m your host, Shay Beider. For today’s episode, I’m delighted to introduce Jeffrey Karp. From a very young age, Jeff began “thinking about thinking,” using metacognition to transform his undiagnosed ADHD into a source of creativity, innovation, and purpose. Jeff is now a professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, a celebrated inventor with over 100 patents and the co-founder of 14 companies that have raised over $650 million. He has been recognized as a highly cited researcher, and his work spans across breakthroughs in biotechnology, from tissue adhesives to smart needles. He is the bestselling author of Lit: Life Ignition Tools, a book that empowers readers to break free from autopilot living and consciously reshape their lives. In Jeff’s newest role as Executive President of Geoversity- Nature’s University in Panama- he’s championing a new kind of leadership that unites science, design and indigenous wisdom in harmony with nature. Today I talk with Jeff about the importance of practicing intentionality in daily life, the cultivation of daily rituals, and how our listeners can learn to ignite action and passion in their own lives. From expanding the frontiers of biotech to mentoring emerging leaders or embracing nature’s wisdom, Jeff is dedicated to helping humanity shift from disconnection to connection, turning life’s challenges into catalysts for growth, to uplift both people and the planet. I’m excited to share this fun and dynamic conversation with you. So let’s go ahead and get the dialogue rolling.
All right. Well, Jeff, it’s great to welcome you to the Conversations on Healing podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Jeff Karp So great to be here. Thank you.

Shay So we’re going to start by looking at your book that you’ve released recently. It’s called LIT, which stands for Life Ignition Tools. And I wanted to kick off our conversation by just having you share a little bit is what are these tools, a little overview of the LIT tools and what inspired you to write the book?

Jeff Absolutely. So the LIT Tools: Life Ignition Tools, are really all about strategies that we can tap into to interrupt patterns in our lives. And I think that, you know, this is more important than ever before because we have such, so much information coming at us from every angle- stimuli, and we have, you know, the power structures of society are such that the large corporations are essentially feeding us these algorithms, which we tend to just follow and not question. And we tend to live by the definition of other people’s, you know, definition of importance rather than our own. And so LIT is really all about how can we disrupt these patterns and really regain our autonomy, regain our aliveness- really tap into the life-force energy, curiosity, creativity, love. You know, the things that can really energize us and help guide us towards, you know, paths that can set us free, and really just feel alive, and have deep experiences, and connect deeply with other people, and really get on a path of self evolution where we’re learning and experiencing wonder and awe. And so the LIT tools are really all about just really simple accessible ways to access all of that.

Shay Yeah, and can you give us some examples of one of the LIT tools, just so our listeners have a deeper understanding?

Jeff Absolutely. So I think one of the things that tends to happen in our lives is, you know, if we kinda look back when we were children, everything was new, everything, you know, learning to crawl, learning to walk, you know, every grade felt like a completely new experience. And as we get older, we tend to lead these very algorithmic lifestyles. We wake up at the same time, we eat the same foods, we hang out with the same people, we scroll the same sites, you know, we go into work at the same time, we- you know, it becomes very algorithmic and the number of new things that we’re engaging actually rapidly declines. And so one of the tools in LIT is called “Do New,” which is all about how we can infuse our lives with fresh energy. And often what happens is, you know, we tend to get into a rut. We tend to feel like we’re not fulfilled in our, you know, our job, things might not be going well in some of our relationships, and it all kind of comes crashing down- and we feel trapped and “Do New” is really all about engaging sparks which exist everywhere, which can just, you know, ignite these little flames within us that can have a domino effect throughout our lives.

And so, one example would be, I mean there’s just rituals and practices essentially that we can engage in our day. It’s just doing something new, doing something different. Its really like- it’s like crazy simple, right? So the first step is really just having an awareness of a pattern that we potentially could disrupt. And so, you know, often people will say, okay, one of the patterns is brushing your teeth. You typically brush your teeth with one hand; brush your teeth with the other hand. And I would say that is a great example of doing new, but really you want to go deeper than just switching hands. You want to tap into how challenging it is at first to brush your teeth with the other hand. But if you stick with it for a few days, you start to realize that it becomes easier. You start to develop a new pattern. And when you tap into that incremental growth that you’re experiencing, then you start to feel like you can apply that to other areas of your life.

So it’s doing things as simple as that. And again, it’s like there might be driving a different route to work, and so that might, you know, seem like, okay, I’ll just drive a different route. But it is not just driving a different route- it’s actually when you’re driving a new route or walking your dogs a new route or the path that you normally walk at night, it’s sort of turning on the observation mode in your mind and starting to notice things like you might notice like homes or trees or just like you know patterns in nature or certain animals or things that you didn’t notice before. Our brains are programmed to really notice those nuances around us. And when we tend to get repetitive in our lives, which happens with often age, we tend not to engage the nuances, but the nuances are really where it’s all at. It’s where we can engage like this fresh energy and these sparks that we can then, you know, like lead to to all these, you know, possibilities in our life for infusing fresh energy.

And so to me, that’s really what it’s all about, is just making small changes. Another example is I used to drink coffee and I would put sweetener in every day. And then what I thought is, okay, I don’t want to, we often give up our power to others. So, you know, I think for example, I don’t know, I just feel like when I’m putting sweetener in my coffee every day, I’m almost like it becomes a habit and then I’ve given up my power. And to regain it, what I do for “Do New” is one or two days a week, I just won’t put the sweetener in my coffee, right. And so the first few sips I might notice, okay, this doesn’t taste as good, but after a while I just forget about it and I’m drinking the coffee. And so to me, pattern disruption is just so simple, yet so powerful and do new is, you know, one of the tools that we can engage to really access that.

Shay And I’ve also heard you share that you think in modern society there’s these three primary forces that are kind of holding us back. And I would be interested to have you share a little bit more about your thoughts around that with our listeners.

Jeff Yeah, sure, sure. So one of the major things that’s holding us back is that we have been, you know, if you look back at human civilization and just human existence, over the course of the last, you know, tens of thousands of years, we were hunters and gatherers. We were outside working hard. Often we would just be in small groups of maybe a hundred or 200 people or so, and we were nomads. We were looking for resources. It was all about survival. And so at that time, it wouldn’t make sense, for example, to go exercise, like to go for a run because you would need to conserve your energy in case you needed to move to another location or whether something was coming to eat you, for example. And so our brains and bodies naturally gravitate to this low energy state. And I think that’s why it’s so hard for us to do things.

A lot of things, you know let’s say at work or maybe even, you know, fitness-wise, like going to the gym, we tend to shame ourselves, you know? “Why am I not getting off the couch or wherever you are and not going to the gym?” But we’re actually wired to not go to the gym because we’re wired for survival and this impacts both our bodies and our brains. And so I think it’s really important for us to consider that we still have that primitive wiring. And in modern society, you know, most of us are not, you know, that survival wiring is not as helpful as it used to be. In fact, it can actually hold us back. And so recognizing that I think can help us break this cycle of self shame, but also realize that we are up against that wiring and we need to find ways to be intentional in our lives. And the second thing that is really a massive force that we’re up against is that every year there’s a trillion dollars spent on marketing and advertising to hijack our attention, to basically tell us what to buy, to tell us what experiences to have.

In fact, you know, a lot of times we’re presented with options that aren’t even options that we choose. And then we’re choosing amongst these options that aren’t even really, you know, serving us. And so, you know, this sort of all these algorithms you can just think of all the algorithms and, you know, marketing and advertising essentially can get us to just buy things that are not going to serve us at all, or that, you know, that you can kind of think of things that you buy that are really kind of, oh, they look great, they feel like they’re going to do something amazing. You use it once and then you just never use it again. Like you know those kind of things. There’s so much of that, but it goes far beyond that. I think the problem is is that the marketing and the advertising are really the powers behind it. The corporations are the ones who are really pulling the strings and they’re controlling us like robots.

And so essentially, you know, because we have this primitive wiring where our brains are gravitating to a low energy state and our bodies, and then we have all of this marketing and advertising coming at us, you know, from every direction essentially, you kind of have to step back to see it. But majority of people in society are literally just robots like acting in the ways that the large corporations want you to act in terms of what to buy and what to wear and where to go and what experiences to have. And it’s like when we start to recognize these two massive forces that we’re up against, then we realize how important it is to have a strategy in our lives. You know corporations, for example, have boards of directors and lots of people to help guide. And I feel like as, you know, as people navigating society, we tend not to have that in our lives.

You know people who are, you know, it is almost like I kind of imagine, you know, imagine if we all had our own board of directors, right, that could help guide us in our paths forward. And that’s why it’s so important for us to surround ourselves with people who are on paths that we really admire and look up to and are really inspired by. That’s why it’s so important for us to take time to kind of cultivate our environment and the people that we’re interacting with because that can really help us see all of these sort of powers that are extremely controlling and help us break through that. Because, you know, let’s face it, I mean over half of- if we think of like in the United States, over half of the population is either significantly obese, significantly lonely, or anxiety, depression. It’s like we’re not doing well as a society. And I think that when we recognize these massive forces that we’re up against, we start to realize that actually we need to step forward and find ways to have more intention in our lives. And that’s where I think tools like the LIT tools can really be helpful to help engage that and disrupt those patterns so we can regain our autonomy.

Shay Great. And I know you’re working a lot with intention setting in your own life. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re using the power of intention as a tool in your own life?

Jeff Absolutely. I just think there’s so many possibilities that we can engage- limitless possibilities- and often we see only the possibility that we’re living. And so to me, I like to think of practices and rituals as a way to- and experimenting with them and letting them evolve- is a way for us to break these patterns, break these habits, and really regain our aliveness and really tap into that. And so one of the things that I do now in the morning- and by the way, I feel like practices and rituals are such that if you practice them long enough, they actually get in the way of what you intended to use them to solve or their purpose. And so I really feel it’s important like for example- and this isn’t necessarily for everybody because some people they just like routine and it can work for someone’s entire life.

So it’s a personal thing, but from my experience, I need to constantly evolve practices and rituals and change them up and listen and engage other people to figure out what they’re doing so I can try them. So one of the things I do is when I have my breakfast in the morning, I’ll hold, like let’s say the bowl of oats and nuts and things that I have in there, berries. Actually, GQ did an article on my breakfast last year, so if you want to check out what’s in my breakfast, you can see there. But it actually has evolved since that article was published because I feel like that’s do new. We got to constantly “Do New.” So I’ll stand there with a bowl and I’ll look out at the trees and I’ll think to myself, “Thank you.” I’m looking at nature and I’m showing gratitude for like “Thank you for providing this, thank you for making this, thank you for allowing me to access this and this is going to fuel my body and what goes in me is going to come out as well and go back in there.”

So I am what’s out there, and what’s out there is me, and just sort of this trying to feel into the oneness of everything. So that’s something that I practice and it literally just takes like 20 seconds or it is very short. But I do that and it just grounds me and makes me feel connected to what’s around me. Often when I’m eating as well, I’ll close my eyes for a few breaths. And when you breathe through your nose, if when you breathe out, the flavors kind of pop actually- so you can actually deepen your experience. And in a way, I feel like I like to have meals where I’m not with other people because then I’m able to connect more deeply with the food. So sure, I love to socialize and go out for dinners or whatever it is, but I also really am trying to practice being alone with food and engaging it so I can really feel into what I’m eating and sense all the flavors and just savor the food- because doing that, it just elevates our baseline fulfillment and wellness in life, these simple things.

Something else that I’ll do is let’s say when I’m walking the dogs outside, I’ll cycle through my senses. So I’ll say “sight,” and I’ll look at the texture of the bark on the trees and I’ll look at the shapes of the leaves, and I’ll stop to look up at the clouds. And you can’t see the clouds moving unless you stop, actually, most of the time. And I’ll look at shapes in the clouds and sort of use my imagination and try to think of animals or whatever is kind of up there because I really want to also cultivate more imagination in my life. And so sight. So I cycle through, so sight and then hearing, I’ll listen for the birds, I’ll listen for the rustling of the wind in the tree, in the leaves and other creatures like squirrels and things. And then I’ll say “touch” and I’ll feel my heels hit the ground as I’m walking and I’ll feel the breeze on my face.

And it’s really amazing because when you’re outside, I don’t know- generally I feel like you don’t really feel the wind unless it’s really gusting in a major way. But if you think about it, if you focus your attention on just feeling, you start to feel it- you become sensitized to it. And what that does is that re-sensitize our aliveness because our senses are how we experience the world. And as we engage each one of these senses- it’s like we’re doing a bicep curl for it. We’re actually sensitizing each one of those senses. And so that’s something that I do to be intentional in my life as well. Even before I eat, I like to set an intention. Just something really simple- that because the food is going to energize us to do something. And I also like to think about food in that way that I’m not just eating, but I’m actually eating to get energy to then activate my being to do the things that I really want to do.

And so setting an intention- whether it’s to really connect with my work with other people, or whether I really want to be expansive and I really want to work on not judging, and I really want to- or maybe it’s I’m going to a meeting. Actually this has been transformational by the way. I go to, if I go to a conference and I don’t set any intentions versus I go to a conference and I just take 20 or 30 seconds just to set an intention to connect with people who are there, I just really feel like, “Okay, my intention is to connect. I’m going to be open to connections, I’m going to feel the connections.” And it’s like transformational, just like that 20 or 30-second intention. And all of a sudden, I’m chatting with everybody and connecting with people and continuing those relationships as well. And so to me, there’s just so many opportunities for intention in our lives and even coming down to sleep and rituals that we can engage.

And even when we’re in conversation with other people, something comes up on our mind, we could just be like, “Okay, just once today, I’m not going to interrupt that person. I’m just going to let them speak like that.” Just setting a simple intention like that and setting the bar low so that you’re not like, “Okay, I’m not going to interrupt anyone for this month.” That could be really tough. But if you just said, “Just once today when I have an urge to say something in a conversation, I normally would blurt something out. I’m just going to hold it in and see what happens or try to write it down if I can.” And to me, that then you can deepen your connections with other people. So yeah, lots of different things.

Shay Yeah, those are great. A little bit of what you were describing in your morning breakfast ritual where you’re looking out and connecting with nature reminds me a little bit of Michael Amster’s work on awe and the power of awe. We had him as a guest on the show, and basically the protocol now for that is microdosing. So it’s like 15-second increments throughout your day where you’re essentially cultivating an experience of awe by intentionally looking, observing, noticing, just something that gives you that feeling of like awe. And what they found in the research is it’s incredibly powerful. And he is someone who was a very long-term meditator and had spent probably thousands of hours in meditation. And he found these really short practices of cultivating awe in 15-second doses was having a deeper impact on his quality of life and wellbeing than seated meditation for many hours. And so he was trying to understand, “Wait, what’s happening? How is that even possible?” And got involved with others to look at what is happening and why is that so powerful. So I love those ideas of little things that you can weave into your day-to-day, but that really make a significant impact.”

Jeff I mean, I would add to that we hear often “Go spend time in nature. It’s so powerful, it’s so important.” And to me, there’s so many things like that that I hear that sound great, but I don’t know what to do. It doesn’t work for me unless I have a more detailed process to engage. I need steps. I need more guidance than just going out into nature. And so for example, through experimentation, what I realized is that if I go out into nature and I, let’s say cycle through my senses, and I do that for several days, I notice that I start to pay more attention to what’s around me. I start to notice the texture of the bark on the trees. And when you start actually tapping into that, you start to see patterns that are just wild, like rivers and mountains and valleys, and you start to see faces and shapes and animals.

You start to see all of these things. And to me, that’s one way of re-sensitizing our aliveness. That’s one of the ways that we can experience awe- that’s a pathway to doing it. Or if you go outside and you just look at the sidewalk and there’s ants and you just stop and look down just for 30 seconds or a minute and just watch what the ants are doing and where are they going and how are they interacting with each other, and why are they going this way and not that way, and what are they carrying? And you just start to get into their world. And to me- that it sort of goes from something that’s always there, but you’re not connected to it, to now connecting to it and igniting wonder and awe. And you start coming up with questions like, “Oh, why is is that one just bumping into the other, all these things and what is it carrying and where is it going with that and why would it carry that?”

All these kind of things. And so to me, there’s so much of that around us. Even I look out the window here and I see Ivy growing up the side of a building and it’s like, “Okay, well how is it attaching to the building and how does it know where to go and why is it going in this direction and all these different things?” There’s just so much. And so to me, it’s not just about going out into nature, it’s deepening the experiential- the richness of being in nature, it’s opening up our powers of observation. We all have these incredible powers of observation that are ours, and nobody can take those away from us, how we experience the world with our senses. And we’re all unique in various ways. And so we can go into nature and start observing, and then we can share those observations with other people and see whether people see different things.

And by the way, I just feel like if you just stop with somebody and you have a friend beside your family member, whatever it is, and you look up at the clouds and you just say, “Okay, let’s see what shapes we can, what animals can we see today? Or what can you see up there?” And you just let your mind sort of wander and sort of imagine. And then you tell the other person, “Oh, I see a dragon. Can you see it?” And they point, “Oh, yeah, I can see the dragon.” Now you’ve connected with that person as well, and that feels really good. And you’ve also done a bicep curl for your imagination, and that can enhance your creativity and how you do lateral thinking and connect different things together. And so it’s all right there. It’s all in front of us, and it’s just a matter of sort of having a little bit of awareness of the possibilities and then just engaging a process of letting our minds just connect a little bit more deeply than we normally do- looking at the ants on the sidewalk or whatever it is.

Shay Right, right, right. And so much of your work has been deeply informed by nature. So I want to talk a little bit about your work at the Karp Lab, which focuses on designing advanced biomaterials and devices for therapeutic use. And one of the ways that you’ve kind of creatively embedded your work is by using this concept of bio-inspiration, which is drawing ideas from nature. And you have several examples of that where you look at spiderwebs and how a spider can walk across their web, but their prey gets stuck and trapped in it. And why is that so? And you also look at porcupine quills and how they have this incredible barb that can anchor into the body and different uses of that for the medical basically technologies. And so I’d like for you to talk about this relationship with nature and then how you’re applying that in the laboratory with some of the work that you do.

Jeff Absolutely. So I think that nature, the way that we turned to nature for inspiration is really kind of going back to one of the things that we kind of started the conversation with, which is pattern disruption. And to me, it’s one of these things that our thinking gets narrower and narrower over time. And so whenever we have, let’s say a purpose in our life- let’s say in my laboratory, our purpose is to engage science and engineering and medical technology and knowledge and to look at problems and to try to combine all of these things to create new solutions that could help patients in the shortest period of time. And the challenge that we’re up against, I think, is that our brains are pattern the same, have all these patterns and these algorithms that they follow. And what that does is actually limits the possibilities of our thinking.

And so when you’re working on trying to solve any problem, you can increase your chance of solving that problem if you can look at it from many different lenses- if you can have lots of different access to different knowledge and tools and things like that. And so one of the ways that we pattern disrupt our thinking in the lab is turning to nature for inspiration. And it’s this idea that evolution is the best problem solver- hundreds of millions of years of research and development happening all around us. And I think it’s like there’s this encyclopedia of solutions where new chapters are constantly being written because nature continues to evolve. And the reason that nature evolves, or one of the reasons is because our environment is changing. There’s this interplay of the environment and nature as things are changing- the environment perturbations like a meteor or fire, whatever it is, a drought- nature is updating, it’s evolving and it’s creating solutions.

Creatures are coming up with new ways, and if they can’t, they become extinct. And so their solutions exist all around us. And so in the lab to disrupt of our thinking, we say, “Okay, we have a problem of developing a tissue adhesive- let’s say like a surgical glue that could work inside a beating heart. And we want to be able to seal holes in between the chambers of the heart.” And this is a big problem, especially in children who are born with congenital heart defects. And the tissue is so fragile that you can’t suture it because it just tears. But inside the heart, it’s just such a harsh condition. There’s so much blood that’s flowing and it’s very wet and proteins and cells, and it’s just expansion and contraction cycles. It’s really challenging. So we say, “Okay, what creatures in nature exist in environments where there’s flowing water?”
And we look for example in the sea and we see that there’s these kind of worms and other creatures that can attach to rocks- like sandcastle worms, and the waves are just crashing up against them and they’re staying put. How does that work? What’s the mechanism there? And so we start looking into creatures like that and we start understanding how do they adhere under these wet dynamic conditions where they’re just waters crashing up against them. And by doing that, we gain insights that we wouldn’t have thought about had we not turned to nature. And so we were able to develop a surgical glue, an adhesive kind of fixation system that we showed could seal holes inside a beating heart that could seal blood vessels, that could seal gut tissue. And that project I started over 20 years ago, and actually we just got FDA approval in the United States for nerve reconstruction using this material that we developed in my lab that was bio-inspired.

And so the idea is that if someone has a severed nerve in their finger, for example, we can take the material that we developed and we create a tube, 3D-printed tube actually with this material, and you put the nerve ends into the ends of the tube, and then you take the same material and you glue the tube to the nerve, and all the patients in the trial regained sensation, regaied function. And so we were able to- using this bio-inspired approach, we were able to bring a new technology through clinical trials and get FDA approval, and now it’s going to be sort of distributed to hospitals around the United States.

Shay So fascinating. I mean, there’s just endless implications for how that could be utilized. Like you said, it was originally purposed with utilizing for cardiac reasons, and now you’re looking at neurons and the nervous system and how it can impact the way the nervous system functions. So that’s really cool too- how you can create something and then it can over time you realize, “Oh, it could also be used for this other thing,” which is super fascinating. Another part of your connection and relationship to nature is through your work as the executive president of Geoversity- Nature’s University- which is in Panama. And I’ve read that a lot of what they’re trying to accomplish there is to unite science and design and indigenous wisdom and to kind of pull all of that together in a unified way. And I’d be interested to learn how that work is impacting you both personally and professionally and, yeah, learn more about that work.

Jeff Yeah. Geoversity is just this incredible organization in Panama that started 25 years ago. Actually, it even started before that because it morphed from something called Earth Train that Nathan Gray co-founded. And Nathan Gray is a co-founder of Oxfam America, and he moved to Panama 25 years ago at the request of one of the indigenous groups there to help with a significant conservation effort. And what was happening is ranchers were encroaching on this really important biodiverse valley, and Nathan was able to procure with his collaborators and colleagues up to- I think it was 13,000 acres of land to prevent the ranchers from crossing this valley. And rancher land is actually one of the worst things for the environment because essentially you cut the trees down and you burn them and then put cattle on the land. And the cattle typically don’t do that well on this land.

And the ranchers often will operate in the mountains and the trees control the rainfall. And so what happens is is that you get less rain in the mountains and then there’s less water that goes to the wetlands below and all the biodiversity starts to go away and the animals all die- the creatures- and you lose the critical aspects of the ecosystems for thriving, just really horrendous. And so Nathan, together with the indigenous in the area, planted 500,000 trees and restored that land to a primitive jungle. And so all the biodiversity came back, all the rivers started to flow more, and he then set up this campus in the middle of the jungle, which is just incredible. There’s a pool that’s fed by a river, it’s all hydroelectric and water-powered as well as solar-powered. There’s this amazing bamboo architecture and construction that happens- is happening there.

And so there’s almost like this Taj mall of bamboo structure in the middle of the jungle. And Jane Goodall’s been there four times, and they do these ocean-to-ocean treks where you start at the Pacific and you go following the trail of the jaguars- you mountain bike, fully human power, you go up and over on a mountain bike and then hike and then raft down into the Kuna land. And so it’s like a transcontinental Pacific to the Atlantic across the continental divide essentially this trip. And what’s so amazing about Geoversity is that Nathan has forged these incredible collaborations with the multiple indigenous groups in the area that used to fight. Now they’re all at the table through an alliance that he helped to kind of, you know, put together. And the indigenous are really suffering from loss of culture, loss of language, disconnection to ancestral heritage. And I think that how this really connects to this conversation here is that our current way of being is just not working with what we were talking about before with just this incredible rates of obesity and loneliness and sadness and anxiety and depression.

And I think there’s a lot that we can learn from each other when we start looking at other cultures and other ways of being, where there’s deeper connections that are happening where there’s really things embedded within the cultures that cultivate more richness in how we live and how we’re connected to the land and how we sort of experience life. And so to me, I’ve been to Panama now eight times in the last year and a half, and it’s just been so incredible because I feel like- as I was talking about before, all these corporations are serving us their definition of importance, but when I go into the jungle, for example, and I start to experience the interconnectedness of everything and the oneness and the just sort of immersed being immersed in nature and having curiosity just fully ignited and being there with other people- people who are the snail scientists who are identifying new snail species and the bird watchers who are looking around and seeing all these amazing birds and the guides who are listening for the sounds of the jungle and sort of telling us what they’re hearing.

And just, to me, it moves us towards a way of being that’s more sustainable, more fulfilling. It really creates opportunity to find our purpose and to get on the right path and to realize that it really is simple and that the complexities that we have in the modern world just is really clouding our minds. And it’s almost like this negative self-talk that we all have- it’s just becoming more and more and more predominant. But when you spend time, let’s say at Geoversity in the jungle, and you’re with people who are super curious, and just to me it quiets that- negative self-talk, it goes away really. And it just, you start tapping into all of this life force energy of curiosity and creativity and just connection with other people. And to me, that’s what’s so exciting. And so I’m working with Geoversity to find ways to bring more people there and bring the organization into the future to maximize the ripple effect.

Shay Yeah, I’m so curious because when you look at your body of work, right, like currently, one element is this deeply embedded in nature and learning- like you said, almost the contrast or remedy to the ills that modern society is creating. And yet, on the other hand, you have been immersed in high tech, high science product design and development- a lot of the advantages or benefits of what modern tools, techniques, etc., are able to generate and create in the world. And yet what I hear you saying is part of what we’re missing with the loneliness epidemic and obesity and vast consumptive culture is this interconnectedness, both connectedness with others, with nature, and then internally with oneself, right? The ability to listen, to intuit, to then set intention because you have an inner clarity and wisdom that you’re able to tap into. And I’m very interested to understand as we continue to evolve here on planet Earth, how you see all of this coming together. I don’t suspect that your answer is going to be, “Just get rid of science and technology.” And so I’m curious, how do you see all of this coming together in the most positive vision for the future that we could create in your mind?

Jeff Yeah, I love that question. I think one way is I think that if all of us would pause just for a little bit and at whatever time we are able to create space to pause and to realize that we can infuse our lives with more intention, that there’s opportunity to have these little, you use the word microdose, like microdoses of intention really even. And to feel how these small changes that we can make, can really raise our baseline level of fulfillment, can raise our baseline level of how we see the world and how we experience the world and each other. And I think when we start to engage in that, if one person engages in it, they naturally will have an impact on the other people in their community. Because even if they don’t- I mean it’s best if you speak about it, I think, and generally- but I think just engaging can have its own impact because other people start to see what you’re doing and you can amplify the impact by having actively bringing it into conversations, which I try to do, like the conversation we’re having here.

And to me, then what happens is is that then, as we are developing new technologies, I just think it’s important for the people who are developing the technology to be on a path towards greater intention in their lives. Because if the people developing the technology are not on that path, then they themselves are just acting like robots and just like everybody else, we’re just sort of following what we’re told to do. We’re just following what we see other people doing, and just the range of possibilities gets narrower and narrower, and then all of a sudden we’re in all this trouble and we wonder how we got there. And so to me, it’s like this talk at Bentley University last year, and it was at an artificial intelligence meeting in the area of life sciences, and they asked me to be the opening speaker. And so I was like, “Oh my God, okay, what am I going to talk about?

How am I going to frame this?” And as I thought deeply about what I was going to say, I realized that the key to connecting- people talk about consciousness, to evolving consciousness in the world- which I find actually is sometimes kind of confusing- what does that really mean evolving consciousness? But the way I sort of interpret that is we’re evolving our awareness that we can be more intentional in our lives, and we’re sort of taking steps to do that. And what I decided to talk about really was that, hey, we have a room full of people developing technology and unless we get on a course having personal strategies to infuse more intention in our lives. We’re just going to mislead people and we’re just going to create more chaos in the world. And so to me, that’s really the solution- is that all of us finding ways to just have a little bit more awareness, have a little bit more intention to make these small changes in our day, to find what really sort of elevates our fulfillment and to connect us more deeply with others and our surroundings and have more gratitude. And as we sort of get on that path, it filters into the technologies that we’re developing. We tend to make more conscious choices in how we conduct our lives and what we make and what we put forth into the world. And so to me, that’s how we start to bridge these things together.

Shay And I know another group that you’ve been involved with is called the Modern Elder Academy, and it’s- one of the opportunities that are provided through some of the workshops and retreats and things that they have is to really cohere around what your core values are, right? Because what you’re describing- a process of setting very clear intentions in your life typically is situated internally within a sort of core resonance around your essential values and what’s critical, meaningful, and important to you in your life. And so I’m interested what you’ve learned from some of the retreats that you’ve gotten a chance to do at the Modern Elder Academy and what your relationship to your core values as a framework then for setting intentions, which then ripple out into the work that you create.

Jeff Yeah, yeah. Wow. So yeah, I attended a retreat a few weeks ago in New Mexico from the Modern Elders Academy, MEA, and it was really an incredible retreat. It was Chip Conley, who is an entrepreneur in the hospitality industry with Airbnb and all these things. He actually founded that MEA, and then Krista Tippett was there who has this podcast “On Being.” And she has books and is just extremely, I mean so hard to describe her, but I would just say she has her pulse on, I would say, what’s important in the world really, and where things are at and where we’ve been and where we’re going. And so it was this really powerful experience of maybe there was, I don’t know, 35 or 40 people who went to this retreat. And what we did is- I mean, there’s so many different things that we did, but one of the things that-
I mean, I have so many things to talk about. I’m trying to figure out what do I say here, but one of the things that we did is we actually got- they have this ritual where you get these bracelets, I dunno if you can see that, because I can’t see myself, but like you go in and there’s all these- it’s an exercise of fixed mindset compared to the growth mindset. And so what are some of the things in your life that you really want to get rid of that are in the fixed mindset? Maybe you constantly compare yourself to others or you’re people pleasing or things like that. You always want to be the hero in every situation. And so you write it down on a piece of paper and then you throw it in the fire and you say what you’re going to replace it with. And so to me, that was a really powerful experience.

Then you have a bracelet that reminds you of what you want to get rid of. And to me, this is part of, this is a process for manifestation in our lives. If we want to manifest something, it’s going to be a lot more powerful if we have an action and we have a way to remember it and a way to sort of connect with it. And so to me, I don’t know, that was one of the things that I came away with, which I thought was just really incredible. And we don’t have to go to a retreat to sort of access that level of manifestation really, but we can just really sit with… anybody can sort of sit with and say, what are some of the things that they would like to evolve or would like to change in their lives? For me, it was like being a people pleaser and comparing myself to others and things like that.

Kind of experienced that a lot. And so I want to reduce that. I want to eliminate it. And so I throw that into the fire, and now I think about it, and it’s sort of like there’s so many decisions that we have in a day about whether with our thoughts, and sometimes the thoughts are so powerful, they’re hard to intercept. But I’d say a lot of the time- not always- we can intercept the thoughts and we can flip them and we can stop the thought from progressing. And I think it’s just having rituals or practices like this kind of throwing into the fire burning something can help us with that. And there’s just so many ways that we can access that. And again, I feel like because we’re just so inundated with information and stimuli and all this sort of cloud of information, whatever around us, we forget how much power we have.

We forget how much access we have to making changes to redirecting our thinking, to acting in more intentional ways. And so I think that’s really where the magic happens. And it truly is magical because when you start to be able to redirect your mind you start to compare yourself to others, and you’re like, wait a moment. I know I don’t have to go there, and you just change your thought. It’s so empowering. You feel like, whoa, I can’t believe I just did that. What’s happening? Where else can I bring this in my life? And so to me, that’s just so incredible and powerful that we all have access to.

Shay And for somebody that’s listening that feels like they have a hard time hearing their own internal wisdom, and they’re like, I don’t know how to create a roadmap for my life or how to set intentions in the way that we’re discussing in this show, I’d be interested to hear where do you think you start if you haven’t cultivated a relationship with listening to that inner wisdom, what’s your take on how someone could start?

Jeff Yeah, I think there’s a lot of possibilities. I tend not to think in prescriptive ways. If you want to do that, do this. To me, it’s more about looking around and recognizing that there are a lot of possibilities and that you just are not tapped into those possibilities. So it’s sort of having this awareness of other people are making these changes, and it’s harder if you don’t have people around you who are engaging in this. So to me, that’s one of the very first things that I would actually try to focus on. I’m such a big believer in if you want to gain a new skill or you want to change something, find people who are changing that thing, embracing that skill or furthering it in a way and submerse yourself in environments where those people exist. So I just think that to me is one of the most powerful ways to begin, is to really- if you sort of look around at your friends and family and you really want to be more intentional and you start to see, okay, there’s not that many people in my circle who are on a path towards intention, or then you might want to try to broaden who you are connecting with.

You might want to just sort of in your day, just sort of develop an awareness at work or wherever you are of people who seem more evolved or who are trying to evolve. And maybe there are ways to then get closer to them and have more conversations with them. Because I think then that starts to rub off on you. You start to be inspired, start to become curious. And I don’t know, to me that’s the most powerful path. That’s one of the lowest bar, easiest-access routes to engaging intentionality- is to just even finding one person who is trying to do that, who you can spend more time with. And if you can’t find that person, I think there’s ways- like going on podcasts, like your podcast for example, or other people’s podcasts and sort of looking for things that are just sort of these glimmers of inspiration.

Because sometimes I feel like just looking at something through a different lens- for example, quotes can be super powerful. They can actually change your whole life. They can change your day, your moment when you read it and you’re like, wait a moment, all of a sudden you feel into it, you experience it and it changes the direction of how you think or how you act. Those are other ways that I think that we can sort of engage in this. And I feel, one last thing I’ll say is that kind of going back to the “Do New” tool in LIT, it’s- you want to tap into your ability to change something. Once you tap into something that you can change something and it doesn’t matter what it is, then you start realizing you can change everything. And so to me, that’s also another access point is just sort of in your world just figuring out, okay, what’s a pattern that you could just intercept and change and then make a tiny tweak on it and then realize, wait a moment, I just changed that. I feel it. I’m experiencing this thing differently. And now it’s like, okay, you want to be on a path to intentionality that’s going to help you start to get that ball rolling down the hill.

Shay And I know I’ve heard you share that asking high-impact questions has been one of the driving forces in your life, and that you had a tutor when you were young who asked you a question that basically changed the rest of your life from that point forward because it got you thinking about how you think and the processes and then how there are steps to each thought process. And so I’d be curious to hear right now in your life, what are some of the biggest questions that you’re challenging yourself to ask yourself?

Jeff Yeah. Wow. Well, going back to that tutor that it was one of these things where in the second grade, that teacher wanted to hold me back actually to repeat the second grade. And my parents negotiated that if I spent the summer catching up with tutors, I could go on to the third grade and all my classmates went on vacation. And here I am in summer school, and I’d go in every day and they would- this thing called the Gallup Learning Center. And they would ask me- they would read stuff and ask me questions. I would give answers, never really sure whether I was giving the right answers or not. They were very encouraging. And then one day they asked this question, which changed my life, which is- they read a passage, they asked some questions, I gave an answer, and then they looked at me in the eye and they asked, how did you think about that?

And it was almost like it was a little invasive. I remember I was like, whoa, what’s happening? I don’t know how to answer that question, because I’d never really thought that I could think about thinking, per se. I was a very rambunctious, spontaneous child that just did whatever set came into my mind. I just said it. And I got in a lot of trouble for that too. But being able to think about thinking- that access metacognition, I had undiagnosed learning differences, ADHD and other things. And this allowed me- I kind of felt like an alien back then- and this allowed me to really see the world differently. It allowed me to observe the world in a way where I could think I could observe how other people were acting and what they were saying in different situations. And then I could try that on, essentially.

I didn’t know how to act around friends. I didn’t know how, what the teacher was asking, I always found every question vague that I was being asked. There could be multiple answers. And so I started to tap into this idea that asking questions is how I learned. I couldn’t just sit in a classroom and be taught to- I had to ask the question. Whenever I asked a question, it would literally illuminate my mind. And whatever was said in the first few seconds, it would imprint and I could connect it to other things I knew. And so I quickly, after I was asked this question, how did you think about that? I clued into the fact that questioning is how I learn. That’s my main mode of learning. And so I would stay after school with teachers and professors and all this stuff, whoever would do that.

And that’s how I started to learn. And so going back to your question about what are some of these high-value questions that we’re asking, one of the questions I’ve learned to ask in my laboratory, which is really simple, yet super profound, and I think has helped us to advance a lot of technologies forward towards patients, is- it’s kind of the so-what question. And it’s so easy in research or other areas of work to just do incremental work and not really move the needle or create value for the world. And so the question that I like to ask is really, what’s the bar that we need to exceed to get people excited? So it’s like, what’s the best that anyone has ever done in this area of research or in this medical technology? How long has this drug for this type of cancer? How long does it extend the life of the patient?

And how much further can we push that? We really want to push it as far as we can, but we want to be realistic. And then we set that as the goal. That’s what we’re trying to achieve. And I feel, again, it’s just a way of building intention in our lives. We can do that through the questions that we ask. And so by asking that question in every lab meeting and with every project, it creates a North Star that then drives us towards a meaningful outcome. And we don’t always get there, but at least we have a chance of getting there because we’ve defined this sort of- here’s what we’re really trying to achieve. And it’s amazing how that’s not taught and we have to figure that out and in a very torturous kind of way. But anybody can figure this out. We all have that power to step back and figure out, okay, how can we ask higher-value questions?

And some of the other questions that I would say, another question that I’m really embracing is really, how can I connect more deeply with the people around me? And I think that we all have these sort of ways that we behave. And just one example- the silliness of how we behaved as a child tends to go away as we become adults, but we still have that within us. And if we can embrace that, it really can- It’s just so liberating. It can make us feel alive. And so one of the things that I do is- so this is somewhat of a recent thing, but I take bubbles and I’ll carry them in my car. And then when I get to a traffic light, I just start blowing some bubbles out the window. And it’s just amazing how many people smile, or children will be there, and they’ll just like bubbles.

But some adults do that too. And this one lady stopped. She rolled her window down and she had bubbles as well. So we were both blowing bubbles at each other. To me it’s just like- and then the other thing about the bubbles, which is really cool, is that you’re breathing out, you’re exhaling. And so it’s actually calming to do that, which I really love. And then also just looking at the bubbles can give you a sense of wonder and awe- just the way they’re floating and the colors, and it’s just where they’re going and how they travel. And to think that your breath is inside of it, I don’t know. To me, it’s just super cool. So I feel like that’s one of the ways that I actually feel more connected to the other drivers when I’m blowing the bubbles out the window. And so that’s another question that I’m working on. How can I connect more deeply with people or just connect more with other people? And there’s all sorts of ways to do that when you start letting the silliness come back from when we were all kids.

Shay One of the ideas that I’ve heard you talk about is radical simplicity, and that actually, with most of the ideas and things that you’re working with, it’s a lot harder to figure out how to distill it, right? That to make a very complex process, one level of knowing and learning, but then the art of actually condensing that into the most primary, and can you even get it down to one step? I’ve heard you say that, right? Can you take something super complex and multifaceted? And in the work that I do, which is through Integrative Touch, it’s really about healing and helping people to heal. And one of the North star of the whole organization has been around, “What is healing?” And then at its core, that capacity to accompany and bring light into someone’s darkest moment. So that very often when we’re in a place where we need and want to heal, there’s a lot of human suffering because we’ve landed sometimes in the face of illness or different abilities.

And so there’s a path or place of struggle that can emerge from that. And so how do you support someone so that one, they’re not left alone, but two, that they actually then can with inside themselves, their inner intelligence can help to guide them to the next step on their journey that will enable an experience of healing- not only for themselves, but actually then it ripples out to everyone around them, in their family and in their community. And so we’ve spent a lot of time just honing in on what it means to heal. And I’d be very curious when you think about in your work and all the different kinds of diseases and medical things that you’re trying to approach, when you think of that idea of healing and what is healing, how would you define or describe what healing is in the context of your life and work?

Jeff Wow. I would say mean, I think in the context of my life, healing involves a lot of unlearning. I think for one, just these patterns and habits and just being told throughout my life that this is the way- these boxes that were being put into, that this is how things should be, or this is the way to behave, or this is what you should wear, or this is what you should say, and this is what you should not say, or I don’t know. To me, healing is, it’s almost like this idea of going back to this childhood wonder, this stage when we just were sort of free and liberated and it wasn’t necessarily total chaos because we had the elders, our parents, to guide us in certain ways and things like that. But I just feel like, to me, that is a big part of healing.

And I sort of mentioned the silliness. How can we be a little bit more silly in our lives? I think when we start incorporating that and we start living, that is- for me, that’s healing because it’s really reigniting something that’s within all of us. And I think that just being playful is just a big part of it. And I think also another big part of healing, I don’t know, for me, is also just realizing that there’s been a lot of things that have happened in my life and people I think had good intentions, but they caused things where I’m triggered today by certain things that people will say or certain situations that I get in. And so to me, part of my healing process is to kind of just develop more of an awareness of what happened in my life kind of early on. And just sort of acknowledging it and realizing that I am a different version of that person.

And that often the people in my life who were there and maybe said something or did something were not ill-intentioned. They weren’t trying to do something; they were just engaging in their own struggles and trying to do the best that they could. And I don’t know, sort of reconciling all of that has been really helpful for healing for me. And so that’s another part of it. And then I would even just say intention- being able to change things in my day and to set intentions and to just experience the expansiveness or things opening up I just think has been very, very healing for me. So yeah, so I think healing encompasses a lot for me. Yeah.

Shay That’s great. As you look towards the future, what are some of the values that you hope will guide and propel us into our future?

Jeff Oh, well, I think, yeah, actually before the retreat, there was this exercise they asked us to do about values, and it was kind of going through and you actually had to reach out to people and people- family members or friends, and sort of ask them about what are the core values or qualities that they see are within you, and then what are the ones that maybe they think that there’s room for- the ones that you’re challenged by, things like that. And then there was also what are some of the values that you want to set moving forward to the future. And I would say one of the ones that I’m really trying to live by is just leading more with love.

And to me that’s just as kind of coming back to connecting more deeply with people, connecting more just generally with other people. And really, I think it could be so powerful because there’s what- I feel like what people say often is not exactly how they feel, but it’s sort of like an interpretation. And so being able to see behind the words, into the feelings of what people really want, a lot of people will want connection, but what they say will push people apart. And to me that’s sort of- when you lead with love, you see that part of them that wants to love more, but they’re just not using the words to do that because they’ve been hurt they’ve had trauma or, so to me, I don’t know, leading with love I think is just something that I think the world could really benefit more from.

And when we start to- especially with all the polarization and everything out there, we might see people saying terrible things, but if we can see behind that and really feel into why that person is saying those things, and often it’s they’re looking for more connection themselves. They’re looking for deeper sense of belonging. They’re looking to be part of something greater than themselves, and they’re not necessarily believing the words that they’re saying, they’re just saying it because other people are saying it. And by saying it, it’s making them feel part of something. And to me, when you start to deconstruct all of that, you start to realize that everybody really wants the same thing.

And we’re just- these patterns and these algorithms are really holding us back. And so leading with love, I think, is a way to help see behind all of this and help us to disrupt the algorithms that can connect us more deeply and evolve towards a better world together.

Shay That’s great. Jeff, is there anything that we didn’t have a chance to talk about today that you feel like in parting would be important to bring forward?

Jeff Well, I mean there’s so many possibilities to answer that question, I would say, I mean, the only thing that comes to mind, and maybe this will be a little silly- but there’s two dogs sitting beside me right here. Ryder and Ginger, they’re Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. And I’ll tell you again, just sort thinking of the possibilities in life. I’ve learned so much from them. I feel like when I sort of give one attention and sort of share love, then that one will go and kiss the other. I just see the energy transfer around me, and it’s like when I infuse energy into another being, whether it’s the dogs or a person, it just creates such a ripple effect. And I see it so powerfully in the two dogs that are right here.

And I think that filters through into every being out there, whether it’s humans, or whether it’s animals, or whatever it is.

It’s just the more sort of positive, loving energy that we can give. We’re sort of charging that up in other beings, and then that gets disseminated to others and it creates this ripple domino, whatever effect. And so to me, that’s just something I think a lot about- is just like we’re just observing energy transfer and realizing how powerful that is. And one of the actually rituals or practices that I do, going back to that is when I’m walking the dogs around, let’s say multiple ponds and things, I walk them around. But what I like to do is I’d like to just say to people, “Good morning” or “Happy Tuesday,” or I just say some random things like that just to engage people. And not everybody, but a lot of people will look up and they’ll smile and there’s a transfer of energy that happens there. And I know when people have said that to me before, it can change my day. It can change my morning, it can change a looping thought that I’m in, it can break me out of that. And so we all have this incredible power to transfer energy to others, and it’s up to us to just experiment with ways to do that. And I’ve learned so much from the dogs just by observing that energy transfer, and now I’m trying to bring it to other areas of my life.

Shay Yeah, that’s great. I can’t think of a better way to end our conversation than talking about leading with love and being aware of the impact of the energy transfer that we make one human being to another and the ripple effect that that can create in the world around us. So, it’s been lovely having you as a guest on the show, and I really appreciate it.

Jeff Yeah, thank you so much for- yeah, wonderful conversation and yeah, it’s been really great.

Shay Great. Thank you so much, Jeffrey.

Jeff Thank you.

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