Hey, it's friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
There's been a topic that's been coming up a lot in my life lately.
And it's not exactly the lightest topic, so I was thinking, should we even talk about this?
But the theme just keeps coming up.
So I decided to pay attention to it and lean in because everything that happens to you in your life is teaching you something, your relationships, your mistakes, your wins, the things that trigger you and just get just so mad.
All teachers and perhaps one of the most impactful teachers is death.
It's a natural part of life and lately it's been everywhere.
I mean, just yesterday my daughter was at a funeral for somebody who died so suddenly.
Just a few days ago I was talking to our other daughter who lives out in Los Angeles and she was mentioning all these natural disasters in California that have been in the news and how much it's scarier and I said, why is it scaring you?
And she said, well, what happens if something happens and I die?
My mother-in-law, she's been coughing a lot, like a lot and it's been going on for almost two years and she keeps saying, oh, it's nothing.
We all want her to get a scan.
Why? Because we're afraid.
We're afraid she might have something that's undiagnosed and might be dying.
And in just a few hours, I'm hopping on a plane to fly to Nashville and give a speech and it's one of those little planes.
As much as I love flying, I don't know about you, but I can never get on a plane and not have the thought of my death across my mind.
And I'm not afraid of dying anymore because I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm so proud of all the things that I've accomplished and changed in my life and I'm also so proud of the person that I've worked so hard to become the amends that I've made.
And whenever I do think about death, I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness because I just don't want to miss out on more of my life.
And so as it just kind of keeps coming up, I thought, well, why don't you and I lean into this and talk about it together.
And so I've reached out to a world renowned expert who is so incredibly wise and comforting and profound.
He also happens to be a triple board certified medical doctor who has spent a lot of his career with people at the end of their lives.
And he is here today to share the wisdom and the lessons from what he calls the science of the soul, which is how to let death, the fear and regrets of people dying near death experiences profoundly shape your life.
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Member, SIPC. Hey, it's your friend Mel and I am so glad that you are here with me today so that you and I can spend some time together.
It is always an honor to spend time with you.
And I just want to acknowledge you for choosing to listen to something that will truly change your life.
And if you're a new listener, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family.
I am so glad you're here.
And today, I am absolutely thrilled for you and I to have an incredibly meaningful and profound conversation with Dr.
Zach Bush, who is joining you and me on the podcast today.
Dr. Zach is a triple board certified physician specializing in hospice care, internal medicine and endocrinology.
He is one of the most compelling medical minds currently working to improve our understanding of human and environmental health.
He did his residency in internal medicine at the University of Virginia, where he was also the chief resident along with a fellowship in endocrinology there.
He completed his hospice training at the hospice of Piedmont, a community based hospice center in Virginia, where he also became the associate director.
He is the founder of the serific group where he focuses on root cause solutions for human and ecological health.
Dr. Zach is known for his work both in gut health and the microbiome and for his profound work with hospice and how you can learn from his extensive experience working with people near the end of their lives.
From the regrets and the fears of people dying and from near death experiences and more importantly, how you can use these profound life lessons to live a more meaningful life.
Please help me welcome Dr.
Zach to the Mel Robbins podcast.
It's a pleasure. Can you tell the person listening what they might experience in terms of their life changing if they take to heart everything that you're about to share with them today.
It's going to change absolutely everything in your life and that's going to be everything that is expressed through your being which might be relationships might be jobs it might be your different roles you're playing in your communities and might be your spiritual practices your religious world view.
And I think that that'll be an addition place to go on the podcast perhaps as we start thinking about death and dying.
It's the only place we actually experienced it oftentimes in that last few breaths for or so they like.
Oh my gosh, there's the whole thing was not a chase at all.
I all of a sudden felt this tremendous sense of sadness.
Yeah. To think that the biggest realization for those people is that the deathbed is that the deathbed over and over.
You have spent so much time in your work with people who are either at the end of their life or who are dying or who pass on you have witnessed countless near death experiences and you have so much wisdom to teach us.
Have you ever had a near death experience?
I have to take off near death just because I was actually unharmed.
I think I didn't have an injury per se but I.
This was in 2010 said been an academia for all my trainings and practices and ultimately faculty and all that at the University of Virginia after my training at the University of Colorado.
So 17 years of just this very inside the box, Western mind said, you know, here's the drugs that are to save the world, here's the disease, here's the drug, all that paradigm.
I was developing chemotherapy and I was using vitamin A compounds to kill cancer.
And so that was my world and I found myself very depressed during those last few years as I started to watch the pharmaceutical companies placing blocking patents to keep these drugs from getting to market.
And that was the beginning of a journey into kind of the unfortunate reality that we actually have a health care system that's really dominated by the need to manage disease instead of cure or heal.
And so that was a pretty dark situation.
I was in a couple hundred thousand dollars of school dead.
My kids were, you know, heading towards college seeing I had no money, no saving account.
I was working paycheck to paycheck.
I was getting paid $70,000 a year in the university setting as faculty member doctor, two sports specialties.
And so I was just like trapped.
I was financially trapped.
I was energetically emotionally trapped.
And in that depression, I started just calling out, you know, for help, I think to the universe to like show me the other path because this is a dead end.
And I can't figure out my way out of here.
I work too long to become the expert that I can't imagine what I would do next.
I can't spend, you know, any more money.
I need to start making money.
But I don't know how to make one day came where the universe answered.
And I just got this huge amount of information into my experience of like all this huge path that I was here to embark on.
And I felt amazing. I was like plugged into the universe for the first time in my adult life, I think.
And I just felt all of this clarity and all this thing is in and went home.
And a couple of weeks later, we had a large of snowstorm in Virginia.
And I've never told this story on podcast.
I'm not sure how this could be.
We had a huge snowstorm.
And I heat my home that I built with my family and kids.
It's a log home in the woods of Virginia.
I keep it by firewood and say went out to chop a bunch of firewood in the morning before I went to the hospital.
And so I was working in the dark like five in the morning and chopping wood carrying an armful of wood.
I slipped and fell in a piece of wood separated my ribs on the left, which is kind of a tearing of all the muscles between the ribs.
So it's just a lot of chest pain.
It wasn't nothing was broken, but it was just pain.
And so I finished working and and get all that wood in there and then I come back to the vehicle, which had borrowed my brothers for all drive because this massive snowstorm had been forecast.
And so we had 22 inches of snow.
I grew up in Boulder, Colorado.
I used to drive in snow, no problem.
But snow is half an inch in Virginia.
Nobody drives. But you've also now got a hair between two ribs.
Thanks to the firewood that like just basically launched itself into your side.
Yeah, it was an unfortunate slip.
You didn't just you're not like you don't have like a wedge or I don't know.
It was it was internal. What's happened is it's now sending a lot of visceral chest pain through my body, which sets you up for the event that's about to happen.
So I'm having that chest pain and I jump in the vehicle and brush it off cursory because I'm starting to run late to get to the hospital and you had to be one of the few doctors there.
So, I'm interested to get there.
And so I drive slowly for the six miles to get to the highway and you're driving over just pristine untouched snow.
It's just like driving on marshmallows.
It gets the highway. It's been plowed.
So I call my wife. So yeah, I'm fine.
I'm made the highways plowed.
Totally empty highways.
So I zip up to the six miles an hour and I start to relax and the heaters are on defrosse.
Here's my body, tempered shifts and I've got this left side chest pain.
And I suddenly do have something called a base of a gold event where all my blood vessels suddenly dilate through me relaxing.
Change of temperature, the chest pain, all that and I passed out instantly and I woke up in a river with no evidence that there was any civilization around and I felt amazing.
I felt like I felt like an outmoment.
There was just this this bliss state.
And I thought I had disappeared into a different universe or a different timeline of humanity.
I don't know what happened, but I was on highway now suddenly it's just river.
And it's an ecosystem. I've not seen in this area before.
It just looks different and there's 20 inches of snow.
And my first thought was like, wow, I just didn't picture snow in heaven.
Like that's a lot of shoveling for eternity.
It seems like so I was just having this funny moment of like not what a picture, you know, but it was beautiful sun was filtering through and it was just overwhelming white and peaceful.
And you were it just you no car, no nothing.
I'm in the car in a river.
Yeah, I looked down in my lap and my cell phone sitting there and I am time sitting right on it.
I pulled up my last calls.
It'd been seven minutes that I've been out, which is a very long time for a Vaisalvegal event.
It's usually a couple seconds and so I don't know what happened during that time.
And it's not very important.
But I experienced for a moment what I'd seen my patients do, which is experience myself felt myself for the first time as an adult or as a young child.
I haven't probably been in that state since I was you know to or a little bit before the lack of fear guilt shame the lack of any sense of I'm incomplete to the sense of I am here in this new universe.
And I'm I've landed somewhere in space time and I've led into this thing in nature is dazzling me and I feel amazing.
My body was like I was not experiencing that chest pain and I was in an ecstatic state and so again, whether it's just passed out I have no idea, but the the state of being was I think what said into motion my next few years from there I actually left the university months after that and started to realize all the companies and dreams that have been shown to me a couple weeks
earlier. And in that journey I got a third subspecial in hospice and how I have care.
And so I was running a nutrition center for a version chronic disease through food has my like kind of part of realizing my dream.
But to pay the bills because I wasn't making money in clinic I was working as a part time medical director for a hospice and in that I was admitting 80 patients a week to die and you do that for four years that adds up to a lot of death and dying.
And I had this new anchor point if I remember what it feels like to be without fear guilt and shame at my body I remember the elation of being whole for a moment and I remember how fast I fell out of it to as the day unfolded and what had happened as I passed out on the highway and I climbed out of the river.
I was soaking wet in my doctor's outfit and I'll climb up to all the snow and thought I was like in a wilderness and then suddenly got up to the top of the some bait man and highway 20 and I was right there.
There's no cars on it just empty and then there's a man standing right in the middle of the lane.
A man man and he's a state trooper state trooper hat the whole thing no car inside.
So then I was like oh my gosh my this is the gates of heaven or something and this is obviously say Peter and of course I would make him a state trooper in my mind.
And so I'm like having this complete existential experience and it starts to get really ridiculous in the next few minutes because if he looks at me so confused like with my blood.
Very earnest you never cracks a smile he's looking at me climbing over this bank and I've got my doctor badge on and I'm in loafers and dress shirt and everything else I'm like.
Crawling out of the woods.
He's staring at me and he's like son how did you get here and so then I'm like oh shoot this is my resume like this is I got to get into heaven here like I got to figure out what it what about demos.
I started literally going through my life like well I grew up in this little church in Boulder Colorado and I'm older so three kids and I was a great big brother and I was this.
So I did this and missions work in the Philippines and birth babies and I'm a doctor I'm a great dad and my kids are in ballet and fencing and I'm doing this stuff and he's looking more and more concerned which makes me feel like I'm failing the test.
He's like this guy's on drugs at 7 o'clock in the morning driving to say or whatever is there any right long story short you finally stops me.
He says son how did you physically get here and so I just got really angry all of a sudden because I was at the end of my way to just like how the hell do you get here physically and he even to his credit that suddenly burst out loud he's like that probably looks confusing as well.
This is my patrol cars down around the corner of the highway I got a call on my radio that somebody got off the highway knows looking for you and how did you get here and I said well my vehicle is down that river I don't know how I got there like well let me show you what I just saw and so he takes me back around the corner of the highway and you can see where my vehicle drifted
off the highway two miles an hour jumped a six foot embankment of snow that it plowed over the guardrails and the vehicle had dropped about 30 feet off this cliff side and landed on two wheels and drove for about maybe 30 meters and then settle on the four wheels on this deep embankment drives nearly a quarter mile around the corner on this embankment finds the only
break in the trees takes 90 return drives down the river without touching a tree.
And that's where I woke up and so when you show me that you know I started to get this overwhelming experience of like I just had an experience that was outside of my physical plane or something happened to me.
That can't be logic to you know and I was extremely logical human being like I I wanted to understand everything I was seeing all of the time that's what maybe a great scientist and doctor and everything else and this was just something that was so outside of the mental constructs that I could put nothing together for this and it was exactly what I needed to do.
And I was exactly what I needed an experience that was so radically outside of my my human mind that that would lead to a deeper state of strider to my to my path whatever was going to happen next I love that the trooper showed you.
The accident and here's why when you described your car drifting off jumping a 30 foot embankment landing on two wheels then driving a quarter of a mile then taking a 90 degree turn through to two trees that it missed and ending up in a river and you are largely unscathed but left with a profound near death experience that changed your entire life and use do strike me
as somebody who is extremely strong.
And somebody who is extraordinarily smart and logical that you needed the universe to deliver something unexplainable to wake you up to the reality that there's something bigger going on and you're going to be the one to figure it out.
I wish I could say I was that easy to teach but the universe was about to see how stubborn my human mind was and so they actually managed to lift that vehicle out of the river by its back bumper with with two toe trucks on different sides of the river and so the vehicle was suspended 100 feet in the air and and came across back onto the to the highway and set down on his front
bumper the state trooper pushed on the roof just slightly and it just like started to tip down onto its wheels they loaded down onto the four.
I got in started up wasn't a scratch on the car and I was scratching you drove to the hospital to drive to the hospital again this is a situation where nothing is running in the town so it would be more time and by this time it been 45 minutes and I needed to get the hospital quick and I was fine I was like on farm feeling actually amazing in my body in my spirit.
And so I drove and worked at the 12 hour day solve 700 patients that day just like we only had like six doctors running the entire medicine floors and so it was a busy busy day got home that night and by that night I had already gotten disconnected from the experience and so I was already back in my mind because I thrust myself right back in you know got to do everything got
to save the world. Do you do you responsibility that's what makes me valuable as a human being as I can go and work my ass off in a hospital and so by the end of the day I'd already lost touch with him so here's probably one of the most important events in my life and only took 12 hours in the hospital just connect me from that event so I went home that night.
I hadn't told my wife much of what it got on August didn't want her to worry so got home told her that night and.
I'm like this must be the next yes or yeah this is that bush is like we need you in Haiti port of Prince Bay in six hours and play by way wait wait who are you.
I'm a lady and we're sending the ship comfort into the bear right now we need you on that ship to run a hospital ward I was like I'm on the Navy I'm not this but I had trained a couple years earlier and deployed a large group for emergency relief for Katrina which had happened to no New Orleans so that it ended me up on some Navy list somehow.
Six hours later I was in port of Prince Bay being dropped on the Navy ship and so that all happened in the 30th period and so that's that's how starboard I think my mind was as I needed even a deeper skid and break from my reality at the hospital.
And I worked on that Navy ship for a couple weeks and to care of some 180 women that have been crushed in that earthquake that became quite famous and I needed to see all of that and so the universe in a very short period time took me out of my mental constructs and challenged me with a whole bunch of new realities that again to some once I came back from that I couldn't reintegrate
into my previous belief systems.
Dr. Zach that story is incredible and you know I know there's someone in your life who needs to hear this so we're going to take a minute to hear a word from our amazing sponsors who allow me to bring you this conversation and world renowned experts at zero cost and while you're listening to them please share this episode with someone you love and we'll be right back
waiting for you after a short break.
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Welcome back it's your friend Mel and you and I are here today with triple board certified doctor Zach Bush so doctor Zach what are some of the biggest takeaways and lessons that you've learned from being around so many near death experiences from having a very profound one which you just described from witnessing so many people that have died in two natural disasters
and as your work as a hospice doctor what are some of the biggest takeaways that you have that you wish people who are living anybody that can hear this would know you are the most beautiful thing you are the entire divine expression of your soul and that's where the near death experiences a gift is it can actually feel what a feel like to be whole it's not something to
be achieved you've always been whole you were whole of the being you will still be whole at the end of your life journey if there's only a perception that you are incomplete right now you are the most beautiful thing this is what happens in your del experiences if you can start to feel the universe you start to feel yourself you start to realize you can access information that never
entered your mind you know I just freaking love about both your story and and the way that you're explaining this is that you've defined a near death experience as a completely different thing I'll never look at that term the same way again like it literally is a moment where you escape your mind and you drop into deep connection and hold us so how does somebody listening
access the what you've learned from near death experiences and from witnessing so many people dying and caring for them as a hospice doctor how do you bring that wisdom or that experience into your day to day life you are right now cleaning everything around you out of fear that you're incomplete you're cleaning to your little rituals might be your morning cup of coffee
it might be the way what you packed the kids school lunch it might be the way in which you drive to school it might be the way in which you show up at work it might be the way in which you organize your email box you got all these rituals in your day this is the rituals you have developed anything that takes you out of that construct for a moment when a child says something you
get goosebumps or an elder speaks to you and you get goosebumps that's a that is a momentary near death experience that's why child's child speak is so deep and often give you goosebumps when a child drops a wisdom bomb on you lights you up in those goosebumps that's an experiential moment of a soul speaking if you get goosebumps from anybody speaking to you that's
one of their moments where they just came into alignment with their coherence their complete waveform of truth and a child is always speaking from that space to a certain age which is typically around age to they start to learn how to watch behaviors around them and this is when they start to get an idea they are different than others they're the kid and that's their
brother and so they're being trained to believe that they're separate from everything and that's the split that you're talking and that's the terrible to use in the threes and everything else that are so difficult for a child because they're going from a state of being complete to the terrifying reality of their incomplete and that's why I think two and three looks
so difficult on the psyche of a child and why they're so labile with their emotions and everything's overwhelming because they are starting to learn a reality of disconnected you know truths or disconnected to have truths you know what I just got is that if you consider what you're saying that any human being that comes into this world you're born that you are completely
intact in whole and basically an expression of pure love and connection and oneness with everyone around you and you can see that in a baby's eye that if you then jump all the way to the end of someone's life and if you've ever been with somebody as they are passing on the whole their whole and your ability to look at them in the eyes with love, forgiveness, all of it is the now
same experience and if I think about my own experience of my life there are those moments whether and you know I just cry I think like one that comes to mind is thinking about being at the bottom of the aisle of my wedding day and I looked straight down the aisle and Chris turned and he flashed this like huge smile and it was that same experience of fullness and there are other
periods of my life I think a lot of times like when I'm outside and you see like right now in Vermont the fireflies are going crazy and so when I take in a moment in nature like that and you have this like the lip of fullness that's what you're talking about that experience right there that's exactly I love where you're laying this out is that there's basically bookends
of being an experience that everybody's going to have they're going to come in whole and they're going to leave home and as I watch those happen over and over again I saw them a lot of them in the ICU you know I spent 10 years working in 10s hospital settings and in those years I got used to seeing these these moments of time where you really do see a soul showing up as it exits
exits the frailty of the human mind and then comes back in with new information to the mind but not to itself because at no point does it get surprised about its journey is never like I can't believe I just did this is simply says I went to this place I saw this and I'm bringing this back to this human mind so what you're basically saying is that in the ICU for example where you
would be the witness to all of these near death experiences and people would then wake up from a coma or they would come back to life there would be an absolute certainty and knowing this and lack of judgment about what they had experienced during that near death experience like they just came back like this is the truth this is where I was and that that almost like certainty
started to strike you that's exactly right does it always have to be with another person like when you are out in nature and you are just struck with awe and you have no thoughts it's just a pure experience is that from at least like a biological standpoint a near death experience because you are back all and connected in the moment to yourself and to the world around
you again yeah maybe you have an experience of a wild animal suddenly come in and interaction with you just actually the other day we were walking down the back drive we have a logging road on the mountain that we live on and we have the dogs and about 100 yards down the dirt path a black bear walk across and so we of course stopped and thank god the dogs didn't see her and I
assume it's a her because the cover of the born recently see a lot of them running around where we live in southern Vermont but there is a moment where she stopped and turned and looked and we made eye contact and it's as if sound and time disappeared and then all of a sudden I don't know how long I stood there and then the thought came in oh my god the dogs and then she turned
and walked away and it was over and that's an example of what you're describing is this ability that you have in your life now to come into these moments and drop in to connection and presence in your life because it's true if like if you really think about people that are dying I mean you have experienced more experiences than I do but I mean I'm married to somebody who's
a death doula and a hospice volunteer who sits with people who are dying and supports people who are near the end of their life and I always wonder are people scared are they afraid and Chris talks a lot about how no people actually seem to be more a piece I mean is that what you found you find that people are like when they're approaching death they're not as afraid because I
I think it's normal to be afraid of dying isn't it there's great terror in the end of something because to die and complete is suggest that there's a brokenness that didn't heal so the reason we develop fear of death I believe is because we can feel this in the state of incompleteness that we perceived know that there's something deep that needs to heal we can feel it
all the time that is so profound and this feels like a good time to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors and while you listen to the sponsors I am sure there is someone that has come to mind as you've been listening to Dr.
Zach share this episode with them I know the person that I'm thinking about right now is my husband Chris he is going to love this conversation and so you go do that take a listen to the sponsors and Dr.
Zach and I will be waiting for you after a short break stay with us this back to school season spend less on your kids with Amazon you know I remember this time of year when school was about to start back up again and the kids got their back to school lists holy cow is it just me or did the list get longer and more expensive every single year whether it was because Oakley's
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with the new and I'm spending time today learning from the amazing doctor Zach bush so doctor Zach I was talking with one of our daughters the other day and she was out in southern California and I remember when I was in my mid 20s I was terrified of dying terrified of getting on plane terrified of something might happen and there was something in the news I don't know
what about something going on in California and she's getting herself all worked up what would happen if there's a national disaster and something happened to me and I said well you would die and she said yeah but I don't want to and I said but once you're dead doesn't matter and worrying like I was very pragmatic about it and I realized upon reflection doctor Zach
that I was terrified of dying probably up until about six years ago what happened well what happened is I got my shit together yeah and I worked on myself and I went to therapy and I started pursuing work that was meaningful and I worked very hard to get reconnected to myself so that I was proud of the person and that I am and how I was acting and I felt a sense of meaning in the way
that I was spending my time and I had faced a lot of the things from my past or cleaned up behaviors or made amends along the way of doing work for five to ten years I'm just trying to be a happier person trying to not hate myself so much that I was on a plane one day I'll never forget this I remember the moment like it was yesterday because I used to be terrified of flying I had
so many rituals before I would get on a plane to make sure it would not go down I would literally get to the airport and I would be on edge the whole time and when I got to the waiting area I'd be scanning the area looking out because there are baby getting on the plane okay good is there anybody in the military okay good is there anybody that is a person of you know like spiritual
okay good oh do that to the I let's have the military style haircuts okay great because I would then say oh all these people if they're getting on the plane God the universe not going to let this sucker go down and then I would get on the plane and then I would start bargaining with myself as if I have any control about what's going on right or once the seatbelt goes in you
can start breathing then when we take off and we get past that point where they then ding the belt like all of this active crazy making in my brain over something I can't control and that was my life and a number of years ago I was sitting I was on the right side of the plane I was right up against the window because I remember looking out the window and it dawned on me I hadn't
done any of that stuff before I got on this plane and it dawned on me that I wasn't nervous at all and then it dawned on me well it's because I'm actually not afraid of dying and the reason why I'm not afraid is that I feel like I have done the work that I needed to do to be connected back to myself and that I was proud of how I had changed my life I was proud of how I was showing up
in relationships I was definitely as I sat there and thought about it very sad about the idea of missing out and not being alive you know when my kids get married or when they have kids or just you know living a much longer life because I was actually really enjoying it and so I feel like I understand what you say when you say most of us are afraid of dying because we have not taken
the time to do what we can do while we are alive to feel more connected to ourselves and to feel more of those moments of fullness whether you're staring at a bird or you are looking at somebody in the eyes or you are staring into the eyes of the baby and instead I think the sadness I would imagine witnessing so many people dying is just knowing that they had it in the beginning
and didn't experience it really again till the end yeah I think there's there's levels of the sadness but back to that realization that onus never left you whatever happened your life it looked like a good life looked like a bad life that's the beauty of near the experiences you suddenly realize it was all perfect like the whole thing was perfect it was exactly what I
needed to learn the things I learned to become the one I became and ultimately to realize I was holding entire time any perception of a completeness was incorrect I put myself on a human journey so that I would feel everything and I wanted to feel heartbreak I wanted to feel you know deep depression I wanted to feel the elation of coming out of depression I wanted to
feel you know a cup of coffee in the morning I wanted to feel sex I wanted to feel these things in my life and so I got to do all that and I have that experience that that's beautiful but I would say that one thing for us to get excited about is that what you just describe the journey of getting out of fear of flying was one possible you have a description of a reality that allowed
that to occur as you were moving from the previous state of trying to make everybody else proud of you to a state of being just proud of yourself so that was that's what I would call maybe like one of the most fundamental shifts the human can have and so it's a relief when no longer are you trying to perform for everybody else and I think that is a big thing to celebrate when we
finally reach that state of like you know what I'm just going to perform for me today and if I'm happy with the day and my value systems line with my behaviors then I'm proud of myself but the deeper opportunity than lies next is are we willing to go to the point where there is no pride because there was nothing to do or achieve there was in fact the release of all that believed
because you were valuable before you did anything to be proud of and if you can approach that space we can move into it for moments you mentioned a few of them breath work I think is a powerful way to do this I think your husband Chris is training and whole tropic breath work brain offers death dual stuff probably been super potent thing many many traditions coming out
of India Africa South America North American original people all of the world's had some form of breath work and there was some sort of chance dance storytelling at the fire all these things putting people into wholeness and so we we act as we do because we lost these mechanisms of their death experiences moment by moment day by day reminding you of who you are before
before you do anything yes for anything is performed for yourself or for others before pride can enter the equation because you realize you were you were the whole beauty of the divine the moment you took your first breath and your whole at that moment and you will be the same at the end of life when you've been in a coma for six months and you've done nothing and yet the divine
state there is hold it's encouraging in some ways in surprising to hear you you as a hospice doctor doctor that talk about that state as being divine and whole when somebody is in a coma or somebody is in a near death experience or somebody is about to die and I guess the reason why I'm realizing is because we project our own pain and suffering onto that situation as we
observe it we're observing a rebirth event and you can imagine what it looks like maybe to a twin who's in the womb and suddenly watches the disappearance of the only other soul that is ever physically been around in this life time and that thing suddenly just disappears down the dark tunnel and is gone you know there'd be sorrow and disappointment everything else
but the reality is that thing just went down dark tunnel in this entered a world that is so beautiful you can't even describe it and that second twins then goes down the journey of the tube and minutes later and is born into this extraordinary environment we are all twins in a womb right now watching each other pass down a birth canal we call it death and we think it's
horrible because we have human mind is always a rebirth you cannot destroy or create energy is first love thermodynamics and physics and so that's the soul that allows you to self-organize in your mother's womb is still a soul that's self-organizing that entity into its next expression as it comes out the birth canal in the other hand I love that you just said that because when people
always ask when people ask me you know so what do you think happens when you die I always say I think about it like birth like when you were in the womb you had no knowledge of the world you were about to be born into and the fact that you had no knowledge of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist and I believe the same thing that there is this whole world you're about to be born into
when you die and just because you're not quite sure what it is doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You know I see a lot online about like the regrets of the dying and I know there's been a lot of research and books written about this but in your work doctor's act are there kind of top things that people regret that we can use in our lives now to live a better life.
You know the number one regret is I was performing the whole time I never was actually being me and I was afraid to be me I didn't even know what it would feel like to be me but right now as I'm dying as I as that veil things I feel myself and I'm a beautiful being and I'm home.
And so really the regret is how if I just know that was hold the whole time and hadn't had to do all the performance and had been able to taste the cup of coffee for what it really is instead of perceive it for everything that it's not.
If you were to leave the person listening with one message what would it be.
The deep dysfunction of relationship that we have on the planet right now is we are trying to find somebody else that will make us feel good about ourselves and more than that we are looking to another person to help us feel complete.
And so we have this language is my better half this is you know this is my partner and you're going to cleave on to that thinking you're going to complete.
And you're going to go into these many relationships to try to create the sensation of fullness or wholeness we want to be seen so badly and it's why relationships struggle so much as we keep expecting that other human to see us and feel us they cannot it's not possible no human on the planet can see you.
But you're surrounded by a cosmos that has been seen you since before you were in the moon you are an energy field that has felt at a deeper level than any human sense you are a very unique vibration as a soul as a physical phenomenon and at this moment you've stepped into an experience of a human body.
And to get there to that wholeness before you die go out into nature lie down below a tree and look up to the branches of the tree and watch the way in which the leaves shape in a little bit of a breeze and those white clouds float by and let your body be seen.
For a while it's going to just be you being overwhelmed by the beauty of the tree and me being overwhelmed by the beauty and peace of the cloud floating over top and you're going to have to go through that field that is extremely important see the beauty of nature no question.
But the healing will really begin until you let the tree see you and you can only be seen by a tree by as the whole you because it doesn't have eyes that will convince that that you're everything that you're not only humans will do that.
And so this is our time to realize that our eyes are tricking us every being is full and there's no need for our performance.
Doctors act what are your parting words again hope every time I meet one human and so I would encourage all of you to meet yourself because you can ultimately be your own tree as well through breath work through the cold plunge three or.
Tracks outside in nature take yourself into those experiences and so I hope that one of you falls deeply in love with your state as a being that is whole at every step of life and as soon as you do we will all follow you into a very beautiful reality.
Amazing parting words.
Wow thank you. It's a pleasure.
Thank you and I want to make sure that I also thank you thank you for being here with me and doctor Zach and in case nobody else tells you I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you.
And I can tell doctor Zach does too.
You are in a very unique moment so you are here on purpose and you are equipped with everything you need for the journey to nothing for me you are already complete I hope that this whole thing was basically a tuning fork to remind you are unless you feel what it feels like to already be a complete symphony and of yourself we are tuned together on purpose and we all came
in play right now you got everything you need.
You heard him go play and I'll talk to you in a few days.
Wow we're going to get into that in just a minute right what to do and I'm almost afraid to ask.
I was going to be like you're not supposed to do anything.
Andro can all how those do I see.
And andro can andro can all and endocrinology doctor Zach push.
Boom that's how solid that's your information.
Do you go outside land or tree every day regularly.
I think near death has a branding problem.
We need to come up with a different word for it.
Reverse. There you go I'm going to have a rebirth experience.
Oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified professional.
Got it good. I'll see you in the next episode.
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