The Neuroscience of Trauma & Recovery: Rewiring the Brain and Achieving Lasting Change

Dr. Brian Pennie joins Abdullah Boulad on Living a Life in Balance to share an inspiring story of recovery, awareness, and transformation.

After more than fifteen years of heroin addiction, Brian reached a point of complete collapse — a moment that marked the beginning of his awakening. In this conversation, he opens up about his childhood trauma, the cycle of addiction, and the neuroscience of change.

Together, they explore the connection between the brain, body, and behavior, touching on the biology of trauma, the power of acceptance, and the science of happiness, resilience, and human connection.

🔗 Tune in for a powerful reminder that even in our darkest moments, transformation is possible.

About Dr Pennie: Brian is a neuroscientist and resilience specialist, and also works as an advisor and business coach to some of Ireland’s leading CEOs. Through a combination of his own inspiring story alongside the application of proven tools and techniques, he is determined to identify and unleash the hidden potential in others.

For further mental health information and support, visit The Balance RehabClinic website: https://balancerehabclinic.com/

Follow Abdullah Boulad:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdullahboulad/

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Follow Dr Brian Pennie:

https://brianpennie.com/

https://www.instagram.com/brianpennie78

You can order Abdullah’s book, ‘Living A Life In Balance’, here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/...

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Transcript

Brian Pennie 00:00:00  I struggled massively with trauma. I just never felt safe. Anxiety was my Kryptonite. It was my Achilles heel. When I was 16, I took heroin for the first time. When I took drugs, it took me away from how I felt. And I remember just saying to myself, I can't do this anymore. I had nothing left to give. Why did I suffer so badly? And then why all of a sudden was there this joy? It's that light bulb moment, that waking up moment. I wasn't my feelings. I wasn't my thoughts. I wasn't my bodily sensations. They come and they go. That gave me the power to detach from the thing that crippled me. There's some really new, fascinating research that's exploring the neurobiology of social isolation. If you're stressed, anxious, paranoid, and aggressive, you are going to socially isolate yourself even more. Life's challenges, the inevitable challenges of life can be difficult to learn and grow.

Abdullah Boulad 00:01:03  Welcome to the Living a Life and balanced podcast. My name is Abdullah Bullard and I'm the founder and CEO of the Balanced Rehab Clinic.

Abdullah Boulad 00:01:11  My guest today is Doctor Brian Penny, neuroscientist, author of Bonus Time and one of Ireland's Most Powerful Voices in Addiction recovery and Mental Resilience. In this episode, Brian shares his journey from a traumatic childhood surgery and years of anxiety to a 15 year heroin addiction. He opens up about the moment he surrendered, detoxed, and how that pain became a turning point that led him to neuroscience, healing and purpose. We explored the neuroscience of trauma and how addiction isn't a moral failing, but a coping mechanism rooted in disconnection. Brian explains why dopamine is often misunderstood how we can rewire our brains and what neuroscience can teach us about happiness. He also speaks to the mental health crisis we face today, from isolation to digital overload, and why he believes that connection and inner safety are the foundations of transformation. I hope you will enjoy, Brian. What motivated you to do what you do today?

Brian Pennie 00:02:25  The biggest motivation to get me to do what I do today is it's based on something that happened to myself for me when I went from addiction into joy, I would say there was a lightbulb moment and I wanted to share.

Brian Pennie 00:02:45  I was so fascinated. Why did I suffer so badly emotionally and mentally? And then why all of a sudden was there this joy? Because it did feel kind of instant. So it's that light bulb moment, that waking up moment. And when I deliver talks or speak with people and share my experiences and my knowledge and the light bulb goes off, it just does something to me on the inside and just drives me to share what I do with more and more people. So there's something in that in terms of sharing my experience to give happiness and freedom and space for other people to to feel how I feel.

Abdullah Boulad 00:03:26  So it's based on what happened to you earlier? Yeah. What was that? Can you share that with us?

Brian Pennie 00:03:31  So I, I struggled massively with trauma. I came into the world with a condition known as intestinal mal rotation. So basically all of my intestines were twisted and I was getting very little nutrition into my body. A really challenging time as a baby. I had to have an operation.

Brian Pennie 00:03:51  And what many people don't know is that prior to 1985. Infants did not get a general anaesthetic when they went under the knife for surgery. Wow. So quite a shocking thing. And it was based on weak neurological evidence from the 1940s, where the medical practice believed that infants don't feel pain like normal adults. They believed that an anaesthetic was too dangerous, and they believed that the baby is not going to remember the operation anyway. But what we know today from trauma research, and every time I tell this story, like I feel a little bit of an urge still to rub the scar on my belly. 45 years later, the body keeps the score absolute. So I believe it was that traumatic experience that shaped me into a hyper vigilant, sensitive kid, full of anxiety, full of panic, and I just never felt safe in my own, in our body. And there was alcoholism in my family, with my parents. So I think it was compounding traumas just left me in a space where I wanted to escape my own reality.

Abdullah Boulad 00:05:04  So it was a combination of this, of this child childhood, surgery and and home environment. Yes. when did you realize that this was the problem or the issue.

Brian Pennie 00:05:19  I only raised? I realized, so I, I got into addiction at a young age. I was about 14 when I started taking drugs. I started taking I was chronically addicted from the age of 18, and I was a heroin addict until I was 25 years of age. So I found I found recovery. I had a near-death experience at 25 that completely reshaped my my my Tink. In my world, it was a spiritual shift. I do believe it was a spiritual shift, but it was another five years before I realized where the addiction came from, that it came from the traumas that I experienced. And it was only when I was writing my book bonus time that I had. I thought I was doing research on trauma, I was doing research, I was speaking to my mom and my dad, and the blocks just came together and all of a sudden they start making sense.

Brian Pennie 00:06:22  So I was 40 years of age before I really started realizing that addiction wasn't the problem. It was a symptom of an underlying problem, which was trauma, anxiety, and panic attacks.

Abdullah Boulad 00:06:33  Yes, that's an incredible story. You were you were suffering for 20 years or. Yeah, approximately with with addiction back and forward. Yeah. How so? You mentioned heroin. What else? And how was. Have you started with that or what led you to. To get more?

Brian Pennie 00:06:55  Yeah. So we I, I always remember for me the gateway drug was cigarettes. Smoke and cigarettes because I, I was, I was I was good in skill. I was good at football for me when I was taught in FA then I seen myself. I was going to have a great life. I had a lot of self-belief. I was gonna have and go and have a good life. But I remember we were sitting on the top of the football dressing rooms, me and a gang of my friends, and one of them said I had no interest in smoking cigarettes.

Brian Pennie 00:07:27  I thought anyone that smoked was stupid. It's bad for your health, but one of them said you get a great head buzz when you smoke a cigarette. And I think I was at the age where I was curious and I says, oh, I'll try a cigarette for the head buzz. And I got a nice little head buzz. And within weeks, that taunted the smoking hash. Within months that turned into taking tablets like sleeping tablets. Ecstasy tablets back in that time, and I just quickly realized subconsciously that when I took drugs, it took me away from how I felt. It took me away from the anxiety. It took me away from the intense bodily agitation. I often describe my anxiety. It lived in my chest and in my forehead. It was a tightness in my chest and my forehead, and I was constantly worrying and constantly just hyper vigilant. But when I took drugs, it just settled everything down. But when I was six, then I took heroin for the first time and I often laughed.

Brian Pennie 00:08:29  We were big into Jim Morrison and The Doors, and every Friday in my friend's house, we'd all smoke, hash and cannabis and think we were philosophers like Jim Morrison and poets. And Jim Morrison had a saying you should experience It's everything once. So I remember we said, okay, we'll try heroin once, and I tried heroin at 16, and I'll never forget my first time doing heroin. It was like my whole body went quiet. My mind went quiet. It went soft. Everything was calm. Everything just drifted away into a nothingness. And I just felt peace for the first time. And I often say it quickly. It brought me to heaven. But I didn't realize how quickly it was going to bring me to hell. Like I thought. I found the solution. I found the anaesthetic I never got as a baby, but obviously it brought me to a very, very bad place.

Abdullah Boulad 00:09:28  That's incredible. At the age of 16, getting into heroin. So am I understanding this correctly that you felt like a release to function better also at that time?

Brian Pennie 00:09:41  Yeah, definitely.

Brian Pennie 00:09:42  Because I think I think people think of heroin addiction as being asleep and lethargic and lying on the ground. But it actually helped me to function like I. I held down a job during most of my addiction to heroin. So it just took like in the early days, I would get the euphoric effects of heroin, but it just became something that allowed me to live in the world and manage anxiety. So I was able to manage my anxiety while I was taking heroin. So for me, it was just a medication to take heroin. But then obviously it escalated. You will always want more, to feel better, to feel. I suppose it's just chasing that high and then over time it just it just got out of control.

Abdullah Boulad 00:10:34  What did go out of control?

Brian Pennie 00:10:38  Well, one thing I always tried to do, I lived in two worlds I. I often said like I had my inner world of anxiety, my inner world of pain. And I never shared that with anyone. I didn't share that with my friends.

Brian Pennie 00:10:52  I never spoke to a therapist. I didn't share that with my family. So I had this inner turmoil on this world of heroin that I kept to myself. It was a secret. And then on the outside I worked. I had a car, I went on holidays. So I had a world and a mask that I showed to everyone else. And then I had this internal world. But I also, delusional, believed that I had a secret that people didn't know, oh, you can do heroin and still function in the world. So I was waving at this spiral of self-deception and this narrative and this story that would help me to keep taking heroin, even though everything was falling apart. And I was like, two worlds collide in my inner world and my outer world. And over time, as heroin just tightened its grip and I needed more drugs and it stopped medicating me, it was making my anxiety worse, not better, that everything just fell apart. And yeah, I lost my job.

Brian Pennie 00:11:57  I went into the depths of addiction and I was destroyed.

Abdullah Boulad 00:12:01  How old were you when this tipping point?

Brian Pennie 00:12:04  That tipping point I would have. I was like, I done that for a long time, and I was about early 20s when it really started falling apart. So for ten years I managed a functional addiction to heroin, holding down a full time job, ironically, design and methadone and anti-anxiety medication for a farmer company. So an ironic part of my journey. But everything started falling apart when I was in my 20s early 30s.

Abdullah Boulad 00:12:32  What helped you to get out of it?

Brian Pennie 00:12:35  It's not. It's not a simple answer In. When I was 25, I lost my job. I lost my health, my mind. My mind was in a very bad place, and even my loved ones had to pull away my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters, because anyone that came into my orbit of addiction got burned in the latter stages of my addiction. So when I was 25, I didn't think I could live in a world without drugs.

Brian Pennie 00:13:03  I didn't think I could survive anxiety without drugs, but I knew I had to try to break free somehow. So I went to the clinic where I was a registered addict for many of those years. So I was on the methadone program as well, and I says I have to try to break free. What do I do? So my plan was to go to detox and come back into the world and do drugs in a smarter way, because I knew what I believed. I needed to take drugs, but I went to do a benzo detox in Ireland and there was no beds available, so I was told I'd have to do a benzodiazepine detox first, and when the benzos were out of my system I could go and do a heroin detox, but there was no beds available for the benzo detox. So I decided to do a benzo detox at home on my own. Obviously very dangerous. I wouldn't advise anyone to do that, and it did nearly kill me. But two nights into that detox was not only the most painful night in my life, it was the most important night in my life, and I had what's known as a grand mal convulsive seizure.

Brian Pennie 00:14:12  So every neuron on my brain fired at the same time I had a violent seizure. I bit my tongue, splitting it in the middle. I ended up in hospital thinking I was brain damaged. I remember having an experience lying in the hospital looking at this red fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and I didn't know what it was, and I remember having this bizarre sensation or feeling that my brain was broken. I couldn't label this object that I knew I should have known. And I remember looking around the rest of the room, panicking that I couldn't label my environment. It was like I'd lost my cognitive sciences. And I remember having this tour. Oh my God, that's brain damage. Game over. There is no coming back from this. And I remember just saying to myself, I can't do this anymore. I can't fight this anymore. I had nothing left to give everything. The fight was gone out of me. And I remember lying back down on a trolley. I was in a room on my own, on a trolley in the hospital, and I was waiting to be overwhelmed by panic, fear, anxiety, all of my old foes.

Brian Pennie 00:15:28  But instead, I felt the sense of peace that I had never felt in my life before that moment, and I didn't have the language at the time. But what I've retrospectively realized that that was the fourth time in my life I stopped fighting anxiety. I stopped fighting with my own mind. I stopped resisting the reality of what I was. I was surrender. It was. It was a surrender. And I believe that was the moment that completely transformed the rest of my life.

Abdullah Boulad 00:15:57  Yeah, that's very intense. and what happens in the brain when you. When you have a seizure? And why why do someone get a seizure?

Brian Pennie 00:16:10  What actually happens in the brain? There's variations of seizures to happen. So you can have, like, a minor seizure. And I'm not to say I'm not minimizing the fact to say it's a minor seizure, but it's only part of the brain seizes. And really what's happening? Neurons are firing. And it's a cascade effect where one neuron activates another neuron that activates another neuron.

Brian Pennie 00:16:32  So a sort of it's it's in a way it's like electroconvulsive therapy at a more natural level. So it's misfiring neurons. So if you've been taking certain drugs like alcohol can make people have seizures, a benzodiazepine can make people have seizures. So the core neurotransmitter activated by benzodiazepine is known as Gaba. So we're basically quieting the neuronal activation within the brain. So then all of a sudden when that drug is taken away it's an amplification of the neurons in the brain. And sometimes it can create this cascading effect. And that's a grand mal convulsive seizure. So every ligament, muscle, tendon, every part of your body just goes into duress and stress. So it's really that's what's happening within the brain with the seizure.

Abdullah Boulad 00:17:25  And what happened to you. Was it luck to get out of it. And how dangerous can a seizure be?

Brian Pennie 00:17:33  So seizures. Seizures can kill. They can kill people. So they often say about a heroin detox. A heroin detox can't kill you. I don't I don't think anyone I know of has died from a heroin detox.

Brian Pennie 00:17:46  Even cold turkey. But alcohol and benzodiazepine because of seizures can actually kill. So I think for some people, it can be put on lithium, or you can be weaned off the drugs just to minimize that risk going forward. But at the same time, I think the pain of that experience was what gave me, I don't like to say rock bottom moment. It gave me a pain point that broke me down so much that I think for me, it helped me to get up and walk again. I think that had to happen for me, I don't know, but I think it was important for for my journey. And it's really interesting as well. Abdullah, because the one of the biggest philosophies in my life today is that life's challenges, the inevitable challenges of life, can be the fuel to learn and grow. Like anxiety was my Kryptonite. It was my Achilles heel. I could not live in a world where anxiety, but today true anxiety. I've changed. My relationship with anxiety has become my friend.

Brian Pennie 00:18:55  It's become my teacher. It has learned me that the challenges of life can become the fuel for growth. If I have a challenge in relationship, it's an opportunity to practice boundaries. It provides a way and a method to change.

Abdullah Boulad 00:19:12  That's something we learn in life much later. We cannot in the early days at the young age, to know. Yeah, it's, it's something powerful for you to learn out from. So the experiences in life will teach us. Yeah. So your rock bottom, as you mentioned. Let then to what next level in life.

Brian Pennie 00:19:35  So this this is, this is really interesting because I when I went to the detox facility, I done my benzo detox. I had the seizure and something shifted profoundly inside of me. So when I went to do a second detox to get opiates out of my system, there was this unquenchable thirst to learn about the human mind. I wanted to know why was I so broken mentally and emotionally? Now why do I feel so good emotionally and mentally? It's strange to say I felt good.

Brian Pennie 00:20:16  I was in the midst of a heroin detox. I was feeling fever in my bones. Emotionally, I was. I wouldn't say I was struggling emotionally, but I was distorted emotionally. But there was a presence and an aliveness in me that I wish I could go back to and feel and experience again. So I think it was spiritual. Something really shifted. But within that I started reading books about eastern philosophy, self-awareness, psychology. I started meditating for the first time in my life. I started talking about my feelings for the first time in my life, and there was a whisper in my mind, you might have a life again. And this absolutely blew me away. And I remember just wanting to learn about the human mind, and nearly in an addictive way, like there was an obsessive, addictive quality which could have been dangerous, but it was like I put my dopamine hooks from drugs into education and learning, and it just took me in a completely different trajectory, and we chatted a little bit beforehand about this, and I remember when I went to a treatment center after detox and I was so full of life, I wanted to go out and take a big bite of the world.

Brian Pennie 00:21:33  I couldn't believe I was given this second chance of life. But the counselors and the in the treatment center, I don't know whether they had experienced people like me, but I think they thought I was floating in this fake world, the pink fluffy cloud as they call it. And they were worried about me, but I think they should have embraced. And that energy and that joy. And luckily I didn't really listen to them. I really followed my own heart. There was a knowingness inside of me that this was real. There was something really real in this, and I really resonated with spiritual texts and traditions. And like, I love Daoism. And what they say in the Dao is that those who know don't say. Those who say. Don't know. And I couldn't say it. I couldn't describe it verbally. But I just knew it was real. So I journaled a lot during that time, and I journaled about following my heart. My family wanted me to get a normal job, but I just said no, I need to go back to college.

Brian Pennie 00:22:41  Education just lit me up. And I just followed that read and I haven't looked back since.

Abdullah Boulad 00:22:47  That's that's exceptional. So. So you had your detox, and from there on, no other relapses.

Brian Pennie 00:22:55  No no no no. Funnily enough, there was a minor a minor relapse in in two years later. Because and I say this, I think this is really important because I, I was given a gift, I believe I was that life gave me a gift of spirituality, perspective shift. Just this feeling of I felt so at one so present. I felt connected to the world and everything just got out. I think that's the only way I can describe it. The world glowed. Everything seemed brighter. Everything sounded sweeter. I was looking at objects like strawberries and everything was just I was. I was spellbound by things I'd seen before. And I remember when I went back to college, I. My newfound obsession with learning took a direction of I wanted to do really well, and I had an opportunity to get a scholarship for a PhD.

Brian Pennie 00:23:55  So it was very competitive to get the scholarship, and I knew I needed to finish top of the class. So this created a bit of a challenge where I was probably studying too much. I was working 40 hours a week delivering food to fund me to get through college, so I was born in the candle at both ends in terms of working and studying, and I remember slowly losing that gift I was given where I wasn't as aware, I wasn't as present. I was getting back in the rat race of life with studying and pressure and stress, and I remember having a cold, a bit of a flu at one stage when I was delivering the field around Dublin, and I says, oh, I'll get some medication for that. And I didn't get Panadol or paracetamol. I went to a chemist and I got zolpidem. And as a former heroin addict, I was very aware that it was cold in and salted in. And I took a couple of salt put in, and I remember getting that little feeling that you get from zolpidem.

Brian Pennie 00:24:59  And there was a couple of weeks where I was taking Norah Fan and Salt put in. But I remember in the college where I was in university, it's a beautiful college complex in Kildare in Ireland, beautiful, massive giant trees that you have in the college. And I remember looking at one of the trees one day and I was like, everything just hit me all at once. I was like, wow, I am not seeing those trees like I did one year ago, two years ago, and I had this sudden realization that I had lost that beautiful gift that life had gave me. And I was in that moment. I was like, I was taking somebody, and that's crazy for a little bit of a flew. And in that moment, I remember deciding to double down on my spiritual and emotional health. And I was there that I began designing a program to help me to navigate my own life. And I've never looked back since. And for me, whether it's business, whatever I have gone on in my life, my emotional, mental, social health, my connection with other human beings and my family that comes forth above all else.

Brian Pennie 00:26:07  And I've never I've never come close. I don't even consider myself really in recovery. I consider myself recovered because there is nothing. There's no law, there's no want. And I just feel a joy in my life today that I tried to give to other people.

Abdullah Boulad 00:26:22  Yeah, but you don't give it also a chance to to to take anything or to try anything again. So. Yeah. this, this term recovered. it's, it's interesting because in the, in the addiction world, you consider. Yeah. You have to be long term in recovery. Yeah. What's your opinion about that?

Brian Pennie 00:26:44  Yeah I think I think everybody has their own entry point into addiction and everybody has their own entry point into recovery or recovered. And I think I'm really fascinated by the etymology of words and the negative self-talk, the beliefs that we give ourselves. And my core belief was I can't cope with anxiety. And what I've learned. Part of my race in my PhD research was exploring the relationship between language, self-talk and emotions, and I think the research is really powerful.

Brian Pennie 00:27:18  Like language is a vehicle for emotion. And I think the Persian poet Hafiz captures it beautifully. The words you speak become the house you live in. So today I enjoy anxiety. Adversity doesn't stop me. It gives me the fuel to learn and grow. So the narrative has switched. So for me, if I'm in recovery and I've written against 12 step programs, I think they work for a lot of people. But for me to go into a meeting and say, I'm Brian, I'm an addict. It doesn't really resonate with me because I'm not an addict. I am someone who used drugs because of anxiety and panic attacks. But now I've changed my relationship with anxiety. I laugh at anxiety. It does not. It's information. It's data. I still get anxious, but I have a toolbox to cope. So I struggle to say I'm an alcoholic or an addict because that's not who I am anymore. So it's really recovery works for some people. And I think I think trauma really comes into it as well.

Brian Pennie 00:28:15  Like I've really dealt with my trauma. But if someone has unprocessed trauma, well, maybe there's sometimes in certain contexts there's a want for them to escape that reality. So recovery is a better term for them. So they can remember to be closer to the tools of recovery in case they go back. So I think it really does depend on where you are on your journey.

Abdullah Boulad 00:28:38  Yeah. No, I love that because it, it shows people they can change and they can have a different life. And in your case, you found the spark in, in, in going a new direction and motivation. And I think that's what, what what shows people. Yeah. You can you can find something you you can have new motivation in life. And what I understand is in, in your situation the, the the the all the substances you have been using Made all this motivational partnership in one or the other way.

Brian Pennie 00:29:12  Yeah, yeah. That's so that's so true. And even more than that, I. I found a mentor of mine when I went to do my primary psychology degree, I was fascinated because I had an experience when I was in detox, when I, when I left detox, I went to treatment and I was doing a meditation in the treatment center, and the meditation was saying, thoughts will come in and thoughts will go out.

Brian Pennie 00:29:40  And I had this realization, oh wow, my mind is really quiet and still and I knew it wasn't before. It was very loud and noisy. And I said, is that why I feel so good? So I was fascinated with this idea of the link between words and emotions. Maybe because my mind was quiet, I felt better and I met this mentor called Doctor Yvonne Barnes Holmes, who was a world World's best in academia exploring it. It's a scientific theory called relational frame theory that explores the nature of language and emotions. And that was that was really important in the context, because when I worked with Ivan, she made me realize that not only was the drugs, like you say, numbing my motivations and my drive, it was making me not be seen in the world because addiction put me in a hole in a place where I didn't want to be seen, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. She thinks one of my basic needs is visibility to be seen in the world.

Brian Pennie 00:30:45  And I think she says so. My basic needs were met in many, in many ways. And now I love to speak. I love to share my story. So I'm getting seen. I'm getting heard. And now I found a spark that motivates me to learn and be curious and aligns with the values, the true values of who I am. So it was really interesting. The drugs just numbed me in so many ways and took me so far away from the person I really was. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:31:14  I also believe, at the core level, we all want to be recognized and to be useful in some or the other way. And in your case, also drugs took that away, you know, it isolated you. what I'm wondering, because you you were consuming at an early age, the brain hasn't been developed fully. Yeah. what what does what does. Consuming substances for so long at that young age due to your brain. And has it a long term effect on the brain?

Brian Pennie 00:31:55  I'll answer that in two ways.

Brian Pennie 00:31:57  The first way is kind of a funny kind of way, you might say. Like, I think one of the one of the superpowers of my recovery is that I will be quite playful. I suppose you could call it childish, nearly like I. I don't take the world life too seriously, and even even even hard things in life and serious things in life. I think you have to hold them lightly. I don't take myself seriously. I love playing with kids. I love playing with dogs. And I think maybe, maybe it's under development from from drugs at an early age, I don't know. And I say that in a, in a playful way, nearly. But what we do know from developmental psychology, like it's nearly 20 for for a man as well, it's nearly 25 years of age before the brain has fully developed. And there's a thing where our brains as well called, like our brains develop in a certain way. But there's a thing called synaptic pruning where it cuts off certain things that haven't been harnessed as you're growing up.

Brian Pennie 00:32:56  So there's definitely been challenges and different ways Where's my brain developed? But it's not so much that it developed in the wrong way per se. I suppose our brains are plastic. They're malleable. That's why we call it neuroplasticity. And what we say is, whatever, wherever you rest your mind upon your brain will take that shape. Mine was a finely tuned anxiety machine, constantly scanning the world for future threats and danger. So I think that would take precedence over anything else that I just became hardwired to avoid pain and chase pleasure as well. Because I think it's really important for people to recognize, like at our core, our brains do not care, does not care about happiness. Happiness doesn't come into they come into the equation. It's an evolutionary perspective. It's about self-preservation. And self-preservation means chasing pleasure and avoiding pain. So my brain became finely tuned at looking for them, pleasures and avoiding that pain. But in the world we live in today does this. Evolutionary mismatch where our biology developed in a world where we came up in tribes, where today and then in the blink of an eye? From an evolutionary perspective, we have so many temptations, so many lures with technology fueled alcohol and drugs.

Brian Pennie 00:34:17  So it's not so much how we brain developed. It's how it developed in terms of the evolutionary mismatch we we live in today, where we have computer scientists and field scientists and these industries tapping into our evolutionary quirks and challenges to to hook me in. And I think that's where the real challenge came from.

Abdullah Boulad 00:34:37  I like what you said about neuroplasticity. And this also, again, gives hope to to many people that their brain can rewire or can balance things out, which hasn't underdeveloped in the past.

Brian Pennie 00:34:50  Yeah. Oh yeah. I have a scan of my brain, actually. Abdulah. So when I was in detox in 2014, two days before my first day, drug free, and I, a professor, Johanna Ivers, came into the detox center and she was doing a brain study on people with long term opioid use. So I was part of that brain study. So I got to have a scan of my brain when I was in the depths of addiction, and we done a machine learning analysis of my brain six years later.

Brian Pennie 00:35:19  And you can see structures in my brain have literally changed. The density of the gray matter of my brain has changed, and I actually changed the predictive edge of my brain by six years. So it was like my brain was younger. So not only have I changed my relationship with anxiety at a psychological and emotional level, it's changed at a physical level as well.

Abdullah Boulad 00:35:41  That gives me hope.

Brian Pennie 00:35:42  Yeah, that gives us all hope.

Abdullah Boulad 00:35:46  When you look back at that time, it was in Ireland. Yes. And was there the environment supporting supporting your. Your addictive behavior as well. And how how do you see the development in Ireland and and the relationship with addiction.

Brian Pennie 00:36:08  Oh it's it's it's a it's a troubling one. what I, what I would say personally for me, and this is where I feel so lucky, I really do feel so lucky that I had family who were so unconditionally supportive of me. They were so unconditionally supportive of me, and I knew they would have my back no matter what.

Brian Pennie 00:36:30  That I nearly missed how how important they were and nearly tore out. I'm doing this myself, but they create the foundations for me to be able to have that emotional support that I needed no matter what. So I was very personally very lucky to have my family, my mom, dad, my brothers and sisters were not. Everyone in the addiction has that support, especially if if they if their addiction has caused a lot of problems. So family support I think are really, really important. And that's why if those family supports aren't there, you need services, you need addiction centers. And I think there's a lot of incredible work being done in Ireland. A very good friend of mine, Senator Lynn Rowan in Ireland, she's doing incredible work. She has her own story of trauma, and she's bringing a lot of legislation in to help people, not only to create drug centres, to help people, but to change the challenges that create these problems, like poverty and inequalities as well. So there's lots of great work being done, but it's changing slowly and there's not enough beds, there's not enough recovery centres, there's not enough detox centres.

Brian Pennie 00:37:37  Like when I looked for a benzo detox, 12 years ago, I had to wait three months. I would have had to wait three months. That's why I I've done the detox, the benzo detox at home on my own. And I was doing a talk in Cork in Ireland recently, and I heard that time has gone up to a year in Cork. Wow. To get a bed for detox. So the facilities are not there.

Abdullah Boulad 00:38:01  I mean, imagine if you are now in this severe distress situation. Maybe you cannot afford anymore the substances, the risk of seizures and and cold turkey detox is very high. You are in need right now. What? What do these people do?

Brian Pennie 00:38:19  The biggest challenge in Ireland right now is that there's a big homeless situation in Ireland right now. Lots of people homeless. And what you'll find is that the people that are homeless are having mental health challenges and are having addiction challenges. But then for some people that get into addiction services, when they go through treatment, detox and treatment, they go back out into the world and they still have nowhere to live.

Brian Pennie 00:38:43  So it's circular. If you've nowhere to live and your reality is so painful, you will probably end up back in addiction because that provides some kind of a relief from the pain you're living. So it's it's it's it's multi-variable in terms of we need to get more housing. We need to get more facilities because people are just in circles going through the process again and again and again.

Abdullah Boulad 00:39:09  Do you have hope that this is getting better?

Brian Pennie 00:39:13  To be honest, to be. I don't have hope at a government level. I don't think the way and it's not about the people. I think it's the way the systems are set up that it just doesn't work and benefit the people that are most vulnerable. So I remember, like, I love the work of Eckhart Hall and a lot of sort of spiritual and spiritual people out there, but there was something that Eckhart Tolle said that really resonates with me and part of the world. The ego, the societal ego wants more power once more money wants more stuff in the world to, to to to fulfill the ego.

Brian Pennie 00:39:54  Whereas and that's grown. That's getting bigger. When you see some of the challenges, some of the wars in the world, but at the same time there's more people becoming more conscious, there's more people waking up. So there's like a race of the ego and a race of consciousness and what's going to win, I don't know. So I have hope for people at a global level become more conscious. And what does that mean? That people become a more kind, more empathetic, more compassionate, nicer people caring about other people. So I've hope for the world to wake up and win, but there's no guarantee. You know.

Abdullah Boulad 00:40:30  I still have.

Brian Pennie 00:40:31  Hope. Yeah, there's I was hoping and like.

Abdullah Boulad 00:40:34  Like you and like myself, we are doing the work. We talk about it. We we we try to help people get the awareness and and how to help themselves also. So to empower them and not just to rely on government or or what? What is available out there? There are tools.

Abdullah Boulad 00:40:54  There are possibilities. And and I believe in that.

Brian Pennie 00:40:58  Yeah. And it's the work you're doing after all the work I'm doing as well. It's that work. It's helping people to wake up. And for me, like awareness is the catalyst for change. Like, I remember there was a priest in the it was an amazing priest in the treatment center where I was in. And they didn't like it. He it was an addiction center. They called it an addiction center, but he called it an awareness center. And he didn't like him calling it. But he says once people wake up because I knew drugs were bad for me. But when I had that moment of awareness, it was like, oh my God, what was I doing? It was so different. So it's helping people to wake up. And that's the that's the goal.

Abdullah Boulad 00:41:37  Do you think someone has to go through a difficult time to get an awareness?

Brian Pennie 00:41:42  I think it helps. I think it helps. I have seen people. I'm.

Brian Pennie 00:41:47  I'm endlessly in awe of people that reach such high levels of awareness just through life and learning, without having to go through that experience because I was so far away from her. So I don't I don't think it's necessary. I think it's a, it's a it's a great way to for people to reach that. But the problem is that I've met so many people and I've friends that have gone through challenges like my own, but they didn't get that awareness, so it doesn't. Not everyone wakes up, obviously, but, I think it can be reached in other ways, like true spiritual practices. And some people I think are just born with it. Some people are born with this level of awareness and level of empathy and compassion that's there. So I think there's multiple ways of getting there. But for people in pain, I think sometimes there's a crisis point that helps them to reach that.

Abdullah Boulad 00:42:40  It can be an amplifier.

Brian Pennie 00:42:42  Yeah. An amplifier. It's a nice way of pointing.

Abdullah Boulad 00:42:44  Because I can. I can reflect on my life also what happens to me.

Abdullah Boulad 00:42:47  I was more focusing on business and success and environment until life happens. And then then I started reflect. And then. Funny. You mentioned Eckhart Tolle was one of the first books I read, The Power of.

Brian Pennie 00:43:03  Yeah, what a book.

Abdullah Boulad 00:43:04  Where I, I started to reflect and then go deeper, and I read books and but this was like my my starting point. And then, which, which awakened my interest to to dig deeper in health, mental health awareness, mindfulness and all the field and what, what has created what what I do today.

Brian Pennie 00:43:26  Amazing. And it's a constant process as well. And I often find the world is constantly trying to pull us off course. And like Mooney, having a good time, there's so many lures and Temptations, and I think it's something that I've tried to develop in my own life. It's like another it's like I call it my navigational system for life, my true north. So I need to know what's important to me because, again, our brain doesn't care about happiness.

Brian Pennie 00:43:55  Our brain cares about chase and pleasure and avoiding pain. So it's this dichotomy between values based decisions versus feelings based decisions that guides my life. Like even this morning, I woke up and I felt like staying in bed and hitting the snooze button. But I valued my health. So I got up and went for a run. And there's many times in my life where I'll have a difficult conversation I have to have. I value the relationship, I value honesty and integrity, but I feel like avoiding that difficult conversation. But they will make a values based decision or a feelings based decision. So it's something I always try to think about is right. What do I value? What's important to me and make sure I'm making decisions that align with that Because the brain will try to trick you in the other direction. Do it. Do what's right, not what's easy.

Abdullah Boulad 00:44:46  Yeah, that's important, but you need to get to the point in life where you can define what are your own values. because often probably we, we follow this limited belief system.

Abdullah Boulad 00:45:02  What the parents give us, what society give us, what what we learn at school, what we should be, what we should do, what we should value. But never listen to ourselves. What is it really we want to value and what we want to stand for? And this drives us further. And then we can put boundaries and limitations and and our health in as priority.

Brian Pennie 00:45:27  Yeah, I love that.

Abdullah Boulad 00:45:29  You mentioned now a couple times happiness.

Brian Pennie 00:45:31  Happiness.

Abdullah Boulad 00:45:32  What is happiness from a neuroscience perspective? Oh.

Brian Pennie 00:45:36  So this is actually quite interesting. And I nearly used the word happiness because I suppose people know what happiness is at that level a little bit better. But if you look at happiness, what's the opposite of happiness? It's sadness. What's the opposite of love? It's hate. And I think there's polarised viewpoints can be really tricky because what you really want is joy and inner peace. And I suppose inner peace does have an opposite. I suppose it's chaos. So it doesn't really have an opposite.

Brian Pennie 00:46:08  But what I really look for would be joy, contentment, and inner peace. So where? Happiness. Pleasure. Pain. Happy. Sad. Love. Hate. Those polars can be quite dangerous. So whereas happiness is funny in terms of how people think of happiness. For me, if you're happy, what goes up must come down. And I think in the brain, like I've. I've done work with Professor Anna Lemke. She's an amazing professor over at Stanford University, and she wrote an amazing book, Dopamine Nation, and how she describes a very beautifully that when we experienced joy, not joy, joy be different, happiness and pleasure. So dopamine is increased. We eat chocolate, we take drugs, and we get a dopamine hit. But when dopamine comes back down the baseline, it doesn't stop a baseline. It goes underneath baseline and goes to pain. So it's pleasure down in the pain. And that can be a spiral a spiral of addiction as well. Because if you're chasing the highest what goes up must come down and it goes even lower.

Brian Pennie 00:47:10  And if you feel low, you're going to want to get yourself back up. So that's the spiral of addiction, the ups and downs of addiction. So I think back to the day, the middle way there was and we need to stay in the middle. We need to stay in balance. Yes, we need to stay in balance. So we need to avoid the highs and the lows and find our inner joy. And I think that's where we we really need to stay. And I think if you look at it from a neuroscientific perspective where dopamine is the ups and downs. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that's really related to joy and inner peace. And it's no surprise to me that connection, human connection and gratitude are the practices that are best associated with serotonin and finding that inner peace in our joy. And that's really where I tried to be.

Abdullah Boulad 00:47:58  So we should avoid high pressure.

Brian Pennie 00:48:01  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:48:02  But also not to restrict ourselves to have pleasure in life. So where is the right balance?

Brian Pennie 00:48:09  Where's the balance? Yeah, I suppose I suppose the balance is like you've got to you've got to enjoy like I think let's say for example, because if you, if you starve yourself of pleasure, there's going to be you're going to look for it.

Brian Pennie 00:48:25  I think the human nature is going to look for it somewhere. And let's say for me, I don't really eat sugary foods, and for the time I was very disciplined and very rigid around that. And I feel better just the benefits of that, which is brilliant. But what I found was when I went on holidays with my partner, I missed that daughter dairy and desserts. And I remember on one holiday I'm like, I'm not having dessert. It's I don't feel good to have dessert. But I was nearly taken their joy away. I was taking their pleasure away. I wasn't joining in the collective experience. So for me, I think we needed to have flexibility. So it's okay to eat sugar now and then. It's okay. Look, for some people, not everyone becomes addicted to alcohol. Eckhart Tolle has a couple of points of beer he does. So if you haven't come from an addiction background, it's okay to enjoy ourselves from time to time. Go to parties. You've got to have that in life.

Brian Pennie 00:49:23  But I think it always comes back to awareness. It's to be aware of where your limitations are and when you're trying to push it too far. And while you're chasing that pleasure, I chase and pleasure to avoid pain. Or are you doing it in a more free, happy, happy way? So I think it does come back to that. But don't be too disciplined and too rigid, I think.

Abdullah Boulad 00:49:44  Yeah, it's all in moderation.

Brian Pennie 00:49:46  All in moderation. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:49:47  It's funny you mentioned also sugar or glucose. It has a similar, spike effect because if if it spikes up, it goes deep down. Deep down is this, is this also with other, biochemical processes in our body and brain?

Brian Pennie 00:50:06  Yeah. I think so many, so many processes in our bodies and brains are based on balance and homeostasis to so many homeostatic, pathways and mechanisms within our body. The dopamine pathway is one of those. There's some really fascinating research by Professor Katie again over in Stanford University, and it's called social homeostasis.

Brian Pennie 00:50:32  And what it finds is if you are socially isolated and you feel lonely, and some people can be lonely in a crowd full of people, especially in a city, you can be all alone in the city. But what will happen in the socio social homeostatic network is that dopamine is released, and people often think of dopamine as a pleasure neurotransmitter. It's more a motivational and driver neurotransmitter. So it releases pleasure. So you'll go and do it again. It gives you the motivation to do it again. So eat chocolate, get dopamine. You will go and eat chocolate again. And that's how the addictive behaviors can set. So hold. But the social homeostasis pathway if we are feeling socially isolated it will release dopamine to give you the motivation to go and seek connection with another human being. What if you are disconnected through the busyness of modern life, or just disconnected from your own body. You won't realize you're probably going need to hug your partner or your kids, or you need a social connection or chat with a friend.

Brian Pennie 00:51:36  You probably think you're hungry. You probably think you need a drink of alcohol. You probably think you'll feel the craving will manifest itself as something else. So again, socially, there's a balanced network within our brains, but it gets distorted and people don't know what they actually need.

Abdullah Boulad 00:51:53  This tells me we need. We need to be more aware and listen to what the body has to say. So if we get this feeling or urge, dopamine hits. And so what is it? Is it. Am I really hungry? Is my my body now? Hungry? Is it? Is it about to go and and grab something to eat, or what is it exactly? Is it the social connection it's craving for? And this is the listen to our body. How can we connect to our body and be more aware of listening to it.

Brian Pennie 00:52:28  Oh, that's and that's it's really difficult even for people that many would consider. Well like to be in tune to listen to that inner voice. Because the inner voice, even though we call it the inner voice, it's not really a voice.

Brian Pennie 00:52:41  Again, it's a knowing. It's a feeling, it's a sensation. And I think what really stops us, it's more it's not so much knowing how to listen to that inner voice. It's to try to avoid the challenges that stop us from hearing that inner voice. And there's a beautiful quote by Paulo Coelho that I love is that don't give in to fear, because if you do, you won't be able to listen to your heart. And I think fear is a part of that. And fear can manifest itself in many ways. It could be worrying or negative self-talk about the future, or it could be your inner critic saying you're not good enough. So we think that internal dialogue that we have for ourselves, if you are listening to that, that's so loud, you're not going to be able to listen to your heart. So fear, stressors, challenges negative influences around you. Like, surround yourself with people that want the best for you, rather than surrounding yourself around drama and the challenges and the stressors of life because you will not be able to listen to your body.

Brian Pennie 00:53:41  So I think the best way to listen to your body like it's yoga, it's breathwork, it's calming down your nervous system so you're not in fight or flight, so you can actually hear and feel what's going on inside of your body, rather than being hypervigilant and giving in to the stressors of life. And then again, back to the temptations and the laws that the world has to offer you. That's, of course, not going to bring you in a good place.

Abdullah Boulad 00:54:09  And the nervous system, when we calm down the nervous system, what does it do to our brain?

Brian Pennie 00:54:17  So when you think of the nervous system, like the nervous system really is, it's our brains and every nerve in our body and we think of the whole nervous system. You have we have the autonomic nervous system, and then we have the peripheral nervous system, the voluntary movements. But when it comes down, we think of the autonomic nervous system. And it's called autonomic so-called because it's automatic but it's not really automatic. It's we do have some control over that.

Brian Pennie 00:54:45  So I think what what we need, what we are really talking about there, there's two starter strands to the autonomic nervous system. And it's a bit wordy but one of them is called the sympathetic nervous system. And one of them is the parasympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system is around physiological arousal. And that can be good and bad. It can be excitement, but it can be fear and anxiety. So I think people often get confused and think stress and anxiety is bad. It's not really, it's just information. So again, it's that awareness of that. And then knowing that we have the tools that activate the parasympathetic nervous system through breathwork, through yoga, through walking in nature. Like to give us that sense of awe and wonder and connection with other human beings. So really, I think of the nervous system and the brain. Globally, I think what the brain does when we lower arousal of our physiological, the bodily nervous system, we calm the brain at the same time. But you can't really pull those things apart.

Brian Pennie 00:55:47  They're one of the same, really.

Abdullah Boulad 00:55:49  When I look now what someone can do. You mentioned yoga breastwork. How can we bio hack the happiness?

Brian Pennie 00:55:58  Bio hack the happiness. I don't think you can. And it's a butt bio hack. For me, it's nearly. The word hack is a funny word, isn't it? It's like. It's like a quick fix and there.

Speaker 3 00:56:10  Is no quick fixes.

Brian Pennie 00:56:11  There's no quick.

Speaker 3 00:56:12  Fixes in life. There really.

Brian Pennie 00:56:13  Isn't. And what I would say, do you know what you know what the greatest bio hack is. And again, there's no magic wand. There's just powerful tools we forget to use. But I think you could call it a hack in a way, because it does work immediately. And it's acceptance. It's accepting everything as it is because what is is it already is the case. So it's kind of like it's it's a form of madness to resist reality. So in the moment, if you can accept even the most difficult of circumstances, that can change things in the moment.

Brian Pennie 00:56:52  So I think that's the greatest hack there is out there. I wouldn't I wouldn't really call it a hack per se, but that level of acceptance and letting go of control and letting go of uncertainty, because I think our nervous systems as well, like we are primed for uncertainty because what does uncertainty create? From an evolutionary perspective? Uncertainty might be danger, a lack of safety, impending death. So all of a sudden we're on red alert looking out for that. But in the world we live in today, we need to accept that uncertainty. Except anxiety when it arises in us. And that can that in itself then can help help our bodies.

Abdullah Boulad 00:57:32  I fully agree. But to get to this state of acceptance, I believe you need to become kind of an observer also to to your life and life circumstances not to be identified with. Everything is happening so that.

Brian Pennie 00:57:50  That's funny. Funny you say that, Abdullah, because that was the biggest that was that was the biggest, probably and most important tool in my toolbox that I developed in the early days when I seen that I could be the observer of my thoughts, feelings, and particularly my bodily sensations.

Brian Pennie 00:58:10  Because that's where my anxiety, I say my anxiety, my royal anxiety that was worse than everyone else's anxiety. because that letter, by saying that allowed me to take more drugs because mine was worse. So but when I realized that that was a lie and that I could observe this instead of being attached to them, that created this space where I just became attached, detached from all of these things because what it really was, it was a conceptual sense of self. I wasn't my feelings, I wasn't my thoughts, I wasn't my bodily sensations. They come and they go and to observe them. That gave me the power to detach from the thing that crippled me. So it's it's funny, I forgot about that because I think I practiced that so much in the early days through mindful self observation that internalized the practice. And I think that's one thing that keeps me well on a continual basis, because I internalized that I always have one eye on my bodily sensations, my feelings and my thoughts, and having one eye on the inside without being attached to that just creates that sense of detachment when I ever need it.

Brian Pennie 00:59:23  And that's that's awareness of self in essence there. You know.

Abdullah Boulad 00:59:27  I, I also learned a lot about just watching my feelings, emotions, what happens to me, what comes up and and don't give it too much of attention. Really. Yeah. Just to okay this is another feeling happening. This is happening in me right now in this interaction, whether it's a lot of joy or but I can control it, I can I can decide what my actions are. What's the next step is and this keeps me in this balanced level state. But it's also information. It's knowledge. Like I, I look at anxiety, for example, as something protective it will protect me from dangers in life. I mean, this is historically, biologically, that's what anxiety or or being so detail oriented around my surroundings. So I'm not hunted by someone and I'm careful. So it's protecting me. Or it used to protect me. So today I'm safe. I, I don't allow anxiety to have this huge effect on me, but I, I know, okay, it's here to protect me.

Abdullah Boulad 01:00:45  And I look around. Am I am I in danger right now? No. This is how I find safety.

Brian Pennie 01:00:52  Yeah, I love that. And trauma plays the same role. I find that quite interesting because trauma from an evolutionary perspective, if something really bad happened to you, that's your body saying, oh, this could happen again. We need to be on red alert to make sure this doesn't happen again. So it's serving a purpose. But in the modern world we live in. It doesn't really serve a purpose anymore. So like trauma, anxiety, I love that because if you look at it as information, then you can begin the healing process from it. It's it's it's a it's a great way to look at it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:01:27  Do you think someone can recover from trauma?

Brian Pennie 01:01:30  I think there is trauma that is so severe that maybe they can't fully recover from it. I'd like to say I'd love to be able to say that anyone can recover from trauma, but I just don't think they can. And I remember, like when I practice mindfulness, I can practice mindfulness.

Brian Pennie 01:01:50  I put a breathwork boot will be my preferable practice, but mindfulness for me will never be 100% comfortable and blissful and peaceful. And I can find a sometimes I wouldn't say aversive, but just it's not a not comfortable place to be. And that's the practice. I understand that, but I remember hearing that somebody and I think it came from the Dalai Lama based practice, that somebody who has experienced severe trauma would never be able to get to the state of the Dalai Lama to contemplate of medicine. So because the nervous system will always have that memory. Our brains never, never forget there's always an imprint of that there. So I think if somebody has suffered an extreme trauma in their lives, the brain and how it's built and why it's so clever in survival will always remember. So I don't think they can fully recover, but I think they can massively recover to a certain extent. But it's a tricky situation, and I think for some people, depending on the level of work that are willing to put in, it really does depend how much they can recover and.

Abdullah Boulad 01:02:55  How severe and.

Brian Pennie 01:02:56  How severe. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:02:57  How severe I've broken my leg or hurt my knee can recover or it may have some scars. Yeah. Where does trauma manifest in our body, emotionally brain.

Brian Pennie 01:03:11  So if you if you look at trauma, there's a part of our brains and bodies really called the reflex system. And really it's it's it's it's specifically speaking, there's this area of the body and the brain called the HPA axis, and it's the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. It's the stress response system. But what actually happens if you have something that's such a bad born. It is so traumatic. One bad born can literally change the biology of this system. And this happens in real time. There's a cascading effect of receptors on neurons that say, this is so bad, and it changes that biological makeup to leave you hypervigilant. So it's like the long tail of a stress response. It changes the biology. Just alleviate hypervigilant enough so you're always on red alert. So it's true that the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is like a relay center of the brain that goes down to a gland called the pituitary gland, which releases cortisol and adrenaline throughout the body through the adrenal glands on the kidney.

Brian Pennie 01:04:20  So there's a hormonal signal sent down. And that then floods the body where body weight changes. So that, in essence, is the stress response. But when you think of the stress response as well, like we also call it the fight and flight response. But again, from an evolutionary perspective, if you have to fight or flee, what does your body need? Well, your muscles need energy. So for your muscles to get energy, what has to happen? Your heart rate has to increase the pump oxygen, pump glucose around the body into the muscles to give it that energy. And for that you need that adrenaline and cortisol response. But from a woman bad born traumatic experience and you're left hypervigilant Well, you will start to have a low level chronic inflammatory and chronic stress response that's keeping you in that state where the body thinks it's protecting itself. But you're probably safe. For some people, it could be safe for some people. For some people, the trauma response works because maybe it's more beneficial if they're in a very dangerous area.

Brian Pennie 01:05:24  Maybe they need to be hyper vigilant to survive as a, as a, as a, as an entity in the world. Yeah. So again, sometimes it's serving a purpose. But for somebody who has gotten into a safe place, the body leaves a signature that is causing them problems in the world today. But it really is in that HPA axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis of where it lives. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:05:50  This is clearly a body reaction. Yeah. To to a trauma traumatic experience. Yes. when I, when I listen to government, for example, who defines trauma as something? What happens in you? Yeah. As a reaction. What happens to you? Yeah. how is this in line? because in any case, any experience in life will have a body effect. Yeah. When does it really stick into this? in our body. so it becomes traumatic.

Brian Pennie 01:06:25  I think it's it's really to do with the severity, the severity of it. So if you really, when Gabor talks about it going into the body, like I think some people would say colloquially, I suppose it goes into the every fiber of your being, but where it really lives is, is triggered a hormonal process.

Brian Pennie 01:06:44  And that neuro, that neuronal process as well. It is in the, the HPA axis because it literally changes the biology of the axis. It leaves an imprint on your body brain amount. So that's the component that Gabor would be talking about as well and obviously as well, like because it's all it's all global at the end of the day. Because if you have an adrenal response like that, well, that tenses your muscles, it tenses other elements of your body as well. So that would be the initial biological and neuronal response. But then as a result of that, there will be further changes down the pathway down the line that make you tense up. And then if you're so tense for a long time, that creates anxiety. If you're anxious, that can create the mind body connect. So your thoughts will get implicated in that as well. So it can just feed off all of their systems. When it just becomes global, the trauma is just within you. And then as Gabor's work so brilliantly puts it, the body nearly starts attacking itself.

Brian Pennie 01:07:47  So the trauma, you're so tense, you're so caught up in yourself that the body can attack itself with an anti-inflammatory response. So the body thinks it's defending invaders when the body is trying to. It's actually trying to defend itself. So I think the body can turn on itself as well. And that's where I think Gabor talks about many of these medical conditions that come as a result of trauma, because the body has just gone into a space where it doesn't know what it's doing.

Abdullah Boulad 01:08:12  Yes. And the body's response from a homeostasis perspective doesn't is not enough anymore. Yeah. we certainly know body work is is helpful in this case. What else would you consider as helpful to to be to be treating people with traumatic experiencing.

Brian Pennie 01:08:33  Yeah. Well, I think at the end of the day when you think of a trauma, it is a conditioned response. So this really traumatic experience has occurred as a result of what has happened to you. So you are programmed in a certain way. So what we need to do is we we need to recondition that response.

Brian Pennie 01:08:53  And if you look at yoga practices or therapeutic practices are in a much safer space where you're feeling like even even therapy in a way. Like if you had a traumatic, traumatic experience and you're constantly replaying in your mind, and every time you replay it at the moment you're flooded with those experiences, you're probably going to feel that traumatic experience you're going to give away. You're going to give it energy. What if you are talking to a skilled therapist in a room, and you were in a safe space and you felt calm and relaxed, and you keep on talking about that traumatic experience. What we're nearly doing, in a way, is we're trying to make a bar. And so you retell the event again and again and again. And when you're in that safe space, you're reconditioning that fearful response with a much safer experience. And when you recall the event again, you will be remembering flavors of that newer conditioning. So that's really what's happening over time. And I think there's some great work where eMDR as well.

Brian Pennie 01:09:55  So eye movements and desensitization. I forget the is a oh movement rapid decentralization process. We'll just call it eMDR. But I think with eMDR, like at its core, it seems really bizarre that moving your eyes left and right while retelling the event can be beneficial because it doesn't really make sense, and I suppose that exploring mechanisms around that. But the really important part of the eMDR therapy is retelling the event and reconditioning that response. And what eMDR appears to be doing is that it gets back into that hypothalamic adrenal axis response, because that is really, really important, because that's where the reflex is, and that's where the amplification of the the fear response lives. So we are reconditioning that in a way that when we recall the event. The amplification of that response is reduced as a result. So I think that's a really powerful therapy. But the research shows that with eMDR it's nearly one bad. Born traumas work better. It's like a car crash or an assault, like one really bad experience where it's if it's bullying or a domestic abuse trauma that has happened over a long period of time, it doesn't work as well, which is it's not as effective, unfortunately.

Brian Pennie 01:11:19  Yes. Yeah. But I also think as well that anything that anything that comes the nervous system is going to play a role. So breathwork nature connection with humans. It's all of the above simplified.

Abdullah Boulad 01:11:34  It's about safety. It's safety has been taken away from our body from our mind state. And and the question is how can we find that balance of safety? How can we feel, safe in our body, in our environment and connection? You mentioned is is can be key whether this is the therapist who I feel comfortable with can co regulate in one way or the. The system I'm I'm with other people. The opposite of it is isolation. What does isolation do with us. Not just on a trauma or trauma level, but in general because isolation I, I see is is a big topic around the world and it affects so many people, also young people. And since Covid this has been amplified in the last years.

Brian Pennie 01:12:26  I think you've really tapped the nail on the head. There were safety like there say like there's safety in numbers.

Brian Pennie 01:12:34  It's a cliche, but it's so true. And if we think from years of of evolving in tribes, like we were in the tribe, we were in the group, we done things together. And for the first time in the history of humans, there are so many groups of people but were isolated within the group and it's really interesting. I think social media plays a role in that as well. So the isolation piece can make us anxious just at the level of not feeling safe. But there's some really new, fascinating research that's exploring the neurobiology of social isolation as well. And I talked about Professor Katie's work with social homeostasis. But there's other work that they're doing, and there's a lot of animal studies and some human studies as well. But there's this molecule called Taki Kanan that researches this new form of research. And what I've shown with Hakkinen is that true animal studies and some human studies as well, that if organisms are socially isolated, there's a release of this molecule in the metabolite called Taki Konin, which robustly predicts stress, anxiety, paranoia, aggression.

Brian Pennie 01:13:48  And that's quite interesting because if you're stressed, anxious, paranoid and aggressive, you regard to socially isolate yourself even more. So it can be very challenging in a way that if you become socially isolated on a continual basis, it's even harder to find your way back to the tribe, which is it's really challenging. Yeah. At that level.

Abdullah Boulad 01:14:14  It sounds to me like, isolation is a sort of a fake feeling of safety which spirals down. Yeah.

Brian Pennie 01:14:25  Because even like, social anxiety, like, what are you going to do if you're socially anxious, you're going to isolate. And in the short term, the quick fix is you feel safer, but in the long term you are going to feel isolated, disconnected. And it's not not a good space to be.

Abdullah Boulad 01:14:44  You're a neuroscientist. You know the brain maybe better than a lot of people in the world. What can someone do for for his own brain health?

Brian Pennie 01:14:54  One of the most important things we can do for our brain health is obviously connection, as we talked about, is absolutely key.

Brian Pennie 01:15:06  Keeping physiological arousal, especially in terms of stress and anxiety at a low level, is crucial as well. But I think when you think of field, it's really, really important. What are you actually putting into your body? Like alcohol itself crosses the blood brain barrier really quickly. Like when it comes to the brain, we have the blood brain barrier that stops certain things from infringing on our brains. So it's really important to think about what you are putting into your body. Alcohol. Like we say, we're getting drunk. You could say you're poisoning your brain. It's the same thing, different language. That's what you're actually doing. You're poisoning your brain. If you were are eating copious amounts of sugars and ultra processed foods, you are going to be poisoning your body and this is going to infiltrate the brain as well. But one of the most powerful things we can do is get some movement into our lives, like the research around exercise and movement compared to what the layperson knows and what the policies say are miles apart.

Brian Pennie 01:16:07  Look, if exercise was a drug, we would say it's too good to be true. It makes us happier and makes our reaction times better. It's better from our memories. It actually makes us smarter. Like when we exercise. Like when I say exercise makes you smarter when we exercise, and especially when we get our heart rate up, it releases what's called brain derived neurotrophic factors. These are growth factors that are released within the brain that promote dendritic growth, promote neuroplasticity. But not only does it make our brains healthier in terms of learning. It actually protects our brains from neurological disorders as well. Like if you think of the Four Horsemen of Death, the four biggest killers in the world is cardiovascular health, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. And exercise is massively beneficial for all of those, but specifically for neurodegenerative diseases. Connection is one of the biggest predictors people that have great social connection in their lives. It's one of the biggest predictors for and helping people with neurodegenerative diseases. But there was this beautiful study done in Sweden, and it was a 40 year study as far as I remember, a longitudinal study with thousands of participants.

Brian Pennie 01:17:26  And what they found was they were studying the impact of Alzheimer's and dementia in comparison to exercise. And what they found was that many of these people got dementia, got Alzheimer's disease, but the ones that exercised on a regular basis and sort of prevented the symptoms of the disease by up to 11 years. And again, this is truly is growth factors that promote this growth within the brain. So to say exercise is beneficial to our brains is an absolute understatement. And there's another really interesting pathway. Again, it's new research as well. And it's called a pathway called the neuron pathway because we have many different pathways within our brain. One of the pathways within our brain is to create serotonin within our brains, which as we mentioned, is related to good mood, joy and inner contentment. But for us to get serotonin, it's got to come from somewhere. And serotonin the precursor for serotonin. The only way we can create serotonin within our brains is, is an essential amino acid called tryptophan. So tryptophan turns into serotonin.

Brian Pennie 01:18:42  But the research shows that if you have stress and inflammation within your body, that tryptophan is needed to be converted into a molecule called Q-learning. So when that is converted into learning, there is less of that tryptophan getting converted into serotonin. So as a result, stress and inflammation, which many people have in today's world we have less serotonin because it's been converted into learning to fight that inflammation. But as a result of that concern, and then further down the pathway that gets converted into either one thing that's called that's neurotoxic. It's called quinoline like acid or something that's neuroprotective called generic acid. And what is it that helps you to create neuroprotective uric acid versus Atlantic acid exercise. And if you exercise as well, you fight inflammation at a more natural level and you increase the uptake of serotonin within the brain. So not only does exercise make you stronger, make you smarter, or increase your reaction times, it helps you to create more serotonin. And it creates neuroprotective factors rather than neurotoxins that are bad for your brain, which was one of the reasons why I went for a run this morning rather than staying in bed.

Abdullah Boulad 01:20:04  That's beautiful. That's beautiful. And to have this as a routine. Yeah, there are so many topics in what you just explained. it certainly to start with, you mentioned alcohol consumption. Yes. it's all again in moderation. What is what is moderation here? Not to because our body can clean up, to a certain degree, but it all depends on the amount we of toxins we put into our body. What is the limitation you would see?

Brian Pennie 01:20:39  First of all, the variability within that is huge. So I think it's really difficult to say that. But I would also say that I don't know if everyone can moderate. And I think people with addictive tendencies struggle to moderate more. I remember I was a funny story when I met my partner because like, I have no problems with alcohol, I have no problems with drugs. They just don't come on my radar. But I enjoy foods and I can't moderate food. I always want more. And I remember when I met my partner, she took out a chocolate bar called a Caramello.

Brian Pennie 01:21:14  Do you know a Caramello? Yes. And she took out eight squares at two squares and put the rest back. And I was like, did I just witness a miracle? It was like a miracle. Just accord. Because not only would I eat the whole bar, I would want another bar. So I've only learned over the last few years, I think my body has gone back into homeostasis, like another homeostatic network within our body is like hunger. We release ghrelin. We release leptin to tell us when we're full, to tell us when we're hungry. And I think that was off balance in my body. So the last challenge I faced there with food seems to be coming back into balance. So I think if we're talking about individuals, about where is the level of moderation, it depends on the person. It depends on the substance or the food or the drug of what that is. And I think context even plays a role as well. So unfortunately there's not really a specific answer to that.

Brian Pennie 01:22:09  I think it comes back down to the awareness of awareness of previous conditions of where you were, but awareness of the feeling of that as well of, right, where's my limits with this as well? Because some people can metabolize alcohol much quicker and be okay. Some people just don't get drunk with alcohol. So we all metabolize at a different level. But the research is kind of pointing towards even 1 or 2 drinks a week is not good for the brain. Like, and I think I heard it. I don't know where there was a story or research that alcohol has permeated every fiber of our culture and really at this stage. But if it didn't exist and was only invented right now, the FDA would probably allow us a thimble a month of alcohol. So I don't know how true that is and where I'm pulling that from. But because it has been in our culture for so long, it's more tolerated. And I think that's the dangers of it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:04  Yeah, there are maybe some, some false results from, from research like, yes, if you drink a glass of wine a day is is healthy.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:15  Even so to promoting that these misconceptions probably.

Brian Pennie 01:23:20  I think the challenge is like you could look at any research study and you take out an academic article and if you actually read the full academic article in full, they'll point towards trends, they'll point towards ideas. But when you take even a paragraph out of that already abstract out of that, you're sort of distorting the reality. And certainly if you take one line out of that, you're definitely distorting the reality. But the modern world and people are people in the world haven't got time to go read an academic article. So they see a meme on Instagram, and that can be problematic then as well. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:54  That's too of a shortcut.

Brian Pennie 01:23:56  Too much of a shortcut.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:57  Yeah, yeah. sport. Definitely. the best thing someone can do. I believe in that. Yes. What's, what's your recommendation? What type of sport and how much?

Brian Pennie 01:24:11  I think sport, the same sport is better than exercise. Because I think when you say sport, you're playing sport.

Brian Pennie 01:24:17  I think play. We've got to play. Like, think about it. We play music, we play sport, we play with our kids, we play with our pets. We've got to play, you know? And even if we go to gigs, we watch people play in playing sports at the stadium. We watch people playing music like playing is so important in our lives, so I love the idea, he said. Play sport because we're doing it with our people. But I wouldn't get too caught up in the, the, the actual sport. What I would say is most beneficial for people is what do you enjoy? Because if you enjoy it, you're rewarded by it. And behavior that's rewarded is repeated. So the goal is what can you do that's going to be rewarded and repeated? I know paddle is making a big splash in the world right now. So it's that form of tennis, right. But I think the reason why it's easier to play. So you don't need this massive skill set.

Brian Pennie 01:25:10  It's easier than tennis. You play with four people and not two. So there's more people getting involved. So what's more community based? So that can be great. So what I would say to people is try out a few different things like get a rubber, like if have a fear, play a bit of paddle, play football. Play as many sports as you can and what resonates with you most? Hold that dearly. Hold up dear. I think that's important. Running clubs are easy. Like you don't need skills to run. Anyone can run. And then if you're if you're a little bit older or you're you're injured and stuff like that, there's always other other things you can do. You know.

Abdullah Boulad 01:25:49  What do you see the the right amount between, let's say muscle focused training and and cardio or sport playful activities.

Brian Pennie 01:26:01  Right. So so so if you're looking so for people getting into sports, what I would say is get any sport they actually enjoy. But if you're really looking to get the big benefits of exercise in terms of whether it's going to GM or whether it's cardiovascular exercise, I do think we need a mix of both.

Brian Pennie 01:26:18  So I would be, really interested in this arena. Like, I don't I don't my PhD in neuroscience, But if I could go back and do my PhD. I'd probably do it in metabolic health. I've been on a big rabbit hole in terms of metabolic health, and one of the reasons for that, I suppose, is that energy is one of my core values. Like, I like to have energy. The more energy you have, the more energy you can give to other people as well. So I'm pretty ruthless about protecting the energy and sort of enhancing my energy. And it taps into health and spirituality as well as spiritual energy, I suppose. But if we look at energy really at a biological basis, you're looking at your mitochondria and your mitochondria is the the battery pack of the cell. It's the ATP is the currency of energy of what that is. And I suppose when it comes to cardiovascular energy, it's your ability to actually get energy into those cells. So you can activate in the world.

Brian Pennie 01:27:22  And one of the biggest components of that. Like so there's a thing called VO2 max, which is basically measuring the amount of oxygen you can get into your muscles while you are doing exercise. And that's a great measure of, energy output. But it's also one of the best predictors of longevity and health span as well, being healthy as you get older as well. So that's really important for me as well. So I think what we need to do in terms of exercise is get a certain amount of I often look at it as a pyramid. So the top of the pyramid is the high intensity exercise where you really get your heart rate pump and you get into those high zones, get your heart rate up as much as you can. Spin classes are great for that. hit classes are great for that. Sprints are great for that. But we do need a level of training that sort of extends the base of the pyramid. So you're just going jogging, walk and golf, whatever that is for you.

Brian Pennie 01:28:17  So you're getting your cardiovascular system activated, but at a level where you can still have a conversation with someone as well. So whatever it is for you as well. So this can be quite scary for some people. They think, where am I going to get all of the time to get my zone two training in my high intensity training? Then to get your VO2 max up, which is the biggest predictor of health, and then you have to get your weight training in as well. So what I would say to people is like, all of that is not that's optimal. It's it's if you really want to get into that optimal level. But so what I would say to people is if you really wanted to get to that level, maybe an hour, a week of zone two, an hour and a half, if you could get that in half an hour, an hour maybe of zone four and five training where you really get the heart rate up. And then I would say maybe about two hours of muscle training and resistance training as well, because I think that's really, really important in terms of just having the strength as you get older, because there's basically as we get older, I think from the age of about 45 years of age.

Brian Pennie 01:29:22  Our muscles get smaller by up to 10% a decade, so you get muscle atrophy of 10% a decade. And your muscles are really important in terms of energy conversion, diabetes, insulin resistance and stuff like that as well. But you're simply making your bones stronger. So the stronger, the bigger the weights you lift. Your bones are basically saying, oh, we need to lift heavier weights. We need our bone structure to get more dense to hold this weight as well. So you're making your muscle stronger, you're making your bones stronger. So get some kind of resistance. Training into your life is really important, but it can be a bit scary for people because it's where do you get the hours of the day. So with those depend on your priorities. But that's where that's where I would be at that kind of train at the moment.

Abdullah Boulad 01:30:07  That's the ideal situation.

Brian Pennie 01:30:08  That's the ideal. That's optimal. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:30:10  Some people, they tend to do the extreme, you know, or the whole life is just around that.

Abdullah Boulad 01:30:16  Yes. And and forget just the joy of it. And maybe this this limits them in their environment.

Brian Pennie 01:30:23  Yeah, definitely. And I could have been prone. Prone to that for a while. I don't think I ever got into the extreme element of it. And I think luckily I had enough awareness to catch myself wanting to go there. And it's like, what are you getting out of that? It's probably an inflated sense of ego, like, why are you actually looking for within that? Because I think, I think if you peel it all back, like life is about living like life is about being joyful. So you've got to pull it all back to that. What's going to serve you to live a happy, joyful and connected life? What are human beings exactly? Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:30:57  Yes. And it's not it's not. That's a big topic of longevity. you can you can live a couple of years longer. But if it's not a joyful, happy life. Yeah. and healthy life.

Brian Pennie 01:31:09  Healthy life?

Abdullah Boulad 01:31:10  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:31:10  Physical perspective. Yeah. That's the other point. you know, when we we could be in a good routine of doing sports and and exercise activities and muscle training and and everything in a good. But then we may have an injury we get out of it life circumstance changes or when we get older, we have so much pain in certain areas we cannot do, exercise anymore. So what can these people do?

Brian Pennie 01:31:42  Yeah, it's it is a struggle, isn't it? And I know some people, I particularly know some influencers, if you want to use that word that their recovery from addiction is and their, their business now is grounded in exercise. And I often worry for them in a way says, wow, what if they can't run or do exercise anymore? Their identity will collapse. So I think the first thing you can do is to make sure your identity and your sense of self isn't wrapped up in that how you look, how strong you are, how fast you are? Because if you lose that you're in trouble.

Brian Pennie 01:32:19  You will lose your sense of self. So I think we're back to acceptance there. Like, I've often thought about that myself because exercise is such an integral part of my life. But I have got injuries over time. And I think if you just try to control what you can control and accept that fully, accept that radically accept that you can you can balance any of those changes, but then it might be a hole in your life somewhere. So maybe just try to replace it with something else in a in a healthier way as well. So it's just yeah, I think that's the key for me personally, I'd say I could start digging into more, more educational kind of resources and stuff like that. Like there's multiple things that can light you up, like exercise lights me up, going in and giving skill talks and prison talks. That lights me up. Spending time with my family that lights me up. So it's nearly multiple streams of joy. That's what you need.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:18  I fully agree. It's difficult if you haven't practiced this all your life already, and are at a higher age to be in this difficult situation than to start accepting.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:36  I've seen people, they were successful all their life. They have been identified themselves in their perfectionism, their body or their job. And finally they get to a situation where they feel like useless because of a stroke, because they cannot move right anymore. They cannot be the protector of the family anymore. This the serving person, and they rely on others, so they feel they lose their self-worth by doing so. And then to accept it in that stage is is quite a difficult step for them. But so starting with this self-talk maybe, and acceptance and and personal development work at the earlier stage would be important to do.

Brian Pennie 01:34:24  I think you really struck a chord with me there as well, Abdullah, because I believe through my experiences, I feel I can handle pretty much anything life could throw at me like. And I think I've developed like, I like to think of this idea of not being resilient, of being beyond resilience, using life's challenges as the fuel to learn and grow. But to something you said there that I think I could really struggle with.

Brian Pennie 01:34:50  And it's if I last if if I, if I lost my sense of usefulness, like if I had a stroke and all of a sudden I couldn't exercise, I couldn't go give talks. I wasn't earning money for the family, and I was relying on other people that that would be a difficult thing to accept. It really would. So I think it's really trying to recognize that the level of acceptance and the change that some people have to go through because your whole, yeah, your whole identity coming crashing around you must be one of the most challenging things to go through.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:25  It is. And and I come just to a conclusion out of that that the connection is so important. The society you live in because today's society, you you're put into a care home. Maybe you have a you have to live with people you don't know you. There are people who should be caring about you, maybe, not so compassionate and, without going much deeper into this, but that that's where these, these people lose, like the sense of, the motivation in life also often I've seen.

Brian Pennie 01:36:07  Yeah. A sense of just what's the point? Giving up? Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:36:12  But connection. So working early on connection is, is is so important. So you have your support network when you lose that.

Brian Pennie 01:36:22  Yeah. And I think what's really important is, is, is having having that connection and that support the support network but really fostering that support network because I think I think fundamentally. Watch it, watch it give away in life is what you get back like karma or whatever or whatever we want to call it. And I often find the more you give, the more you, the more you get back, you know? And it's not as if you're given to get. But if you are kind, if you're compassionate, if you are loving and you are there for other people and that's that's that it's putting the work into your support networks. And I think that's where it's really at the end of the day.

Abdullah Boulad 01:37:01  There is there is something you mentioned earlier which was language and self-talk Talk and, possibly also affirmations.

Abdullah Boulad 01:37:12  I, I grew up. or I was born in Lebanon or we were speaking Arabic. Then we moved at the age I was at the age of seven to Switzerland. So I was in a new world, started speaking German, Swiss, German, even a dialect. And later on, about six years ago, 6 or 7 years ago, I moved to Spain. Another language. Every time I've experienced identity changes. so the language I speak has, has, has had an effect on how I feel, the self esteem, my how I can connect with people. so how important is language? And, and part of language is also the language, not just what we talk to each other, to someone else, but also how we talk to ourselves, the self-talk.

Brian Pennie 01:38:07  It's fascinating. This this was a huge passion of mine when I first found recovery. And I was studying it, and it was a name for this. They call it linguistic linguistic relativity. I think it's called where it's. The words you speak determine how you think.

Brian Pennie 01:38:25  So like you could be a different person just by speaking a different language. And the great example of this is like the Inuits, the Eskimos, I think they have 20 different words for snow. I think that's been disproved. It's it's the example they use. So their relationship with snow and the North Pole is very different than as we would because their language is very different. So that's actually quite fascinating. But it's it is it is crazy. There was another thing I heard one time that, in Spain, it's a Spain. They don't have the war. They don't have a word for house. It's castle is a castle.

Abdullah Boulad 01:39:03  Casa. Casita?

Brian Pennie 01:39:04  Yeah, well, I think that means home more than house. Is it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:39:08  Yeah.

Brian Pennie 01:39:08  So it's like a home and a house are two very different things. A home is where you're connected and with family where the word house seems a bit more gray and dry. It's a shelter up where. Yeah, it's an object of where you stay. So I think the words we speak become the house we live in.

Brian Pennie 01:39:27  I think we, I truly do believe that. And a fundamental belief of mine is that we are the stories we tell ourselves and believe. So back to that internal self-talk. What are the stories that you are telling yourself? And that is really, really important because the research that I've done around relational frame theory and the power of language absolutely blew me away. And it's back to conditioning and trauma. It really taps into classical conditioning and operant conditioning and air conditioning in the world. And there was some beautiful studies on this idea called fear conditioning. So if I said a word to you, that's a nonsense word. Let's call it vec. Right. So that means nothing. I hope it means nothing in Lebanese or Dutch. Brilliant. So if I said to you, vec. And every time I said that to you, I gave you a little bit of an electric shock. VEC shock. VEC shock. If we've done that enough times. Like things happen in life, enough times. And later on the day I said to you vec, you would have a galvanic conditioned response, a fear response just to the word vec because of classical conditioning.

Brian Pennie 01:40:42  But the interesting thing is, if I repeat it to you again and again, the word let's say bok and other nonsense word noises. Bec is like bok. Bok is the same as vec, and that was conditioned with you just through language. Over time. If someone said the word bok to you, You would have a physiological response just to that. And that's just true language being associated with each other. So when we say language has power, it has physiological power. Like even the word cancer like that, that brings up a visceral response in people. Am I on my own? surgery I had as an infant. I developed a phobic fear of my heartbeat, my breath and my pulse. I was 24. It was 25 years. Up until 35 years of age. I couldn't go asleep without putting the telephone because if I heard my own heartbeat, I would feel anxious and panicked. So I had this fear of my heart. And your heart is supposed to be the center, your core, your safe space.

Brian Pennie 01:41:43  But I was terrified of my own heartbeat. And I remember when I was in recovery, I was doing a lot of trauma work. I was practicing mindfulness, I was practicing breathwork, and I was in a very Zen and safe place. So I was studying and life was good. and I remembered I was doing a meditation one day and I was feeling very calm, very blissful, very spiritual. Eagles going on. I'm so blissful and calm and spiritual or whatever. And I remember the meditator says, now go to your heart center. And just the word heart. I was feeling anxious. Just a word. I carried that amount of power because I'd been conditioned over time. So that reminded me that I needed to double down on that practice. And today I can put my hand on my heart. I can listen to me happy. But I had to unconditioned that response over time. So that's the power of words. So not only does the emotions travel through words, the psychological functions like value, like emotions, like physiological reactions, travels through words as well.

Brian Pennie 01:42:52  And that is our internal dialogue. That is external Arnold dialogue. That's why stigma and prejudice can be so powerful as well. So we've got to be really careful about the words we speak, especially when we talk to ourselves.

Abdullah Boulad 01:43:05  Yeah, I find it fascinating what language also has an effect. It has on on society, on cultures. I don't know what what effects what maybe over history they have they have balanced out each other. But if I, if I look at the language, the Arabic language in Lebanon, particularly right now, it is warm, it is accepting. It is, for example, if you would be asked how are you? You wouldn't jump into telling your story or say what's bad, but you say Alhamdulillah. It's it means like, I'm grateful for what I have. So this also reframes the situation of of negative talk to oneself, but also to to others. Growing up, it has also a lot of other elements within the language. Everyone I would see, or you would see or speak to over the phone or in person is like you would say, Habibi.

Abdullah Boulad 01:44:11  It's like Habibi has a different, different, meanings like, it can be told to a loved person, but also you care about someone, you're telling, I'm connected with you, I care about you. So that's that's kind of the meaning. And there are so many elements within the language which I come to believe that this shapes how the people interact also with each other. This more warm and welcoming and compassionate. Yeah. And this is how they have become the Lebanese people have become maybe also better communicator, better entrepreneurs dealing with people, people oriented services in a business context. Whereas when I look at the German language is very functional. It's more distant. It has the, the two different ways of, speaking to someone. It's not just you, it's the C and the you. It's more the formal and the informal way of talking. So this gives also distance structure. And you know, when I look then in Switzerland, Austria, Germany particularly how this has shaped society and, and cultures and business, it's more also people think more structured detail oriented.

Abdullah Boulad 01:45:38  I don't know, this is just something I've come to, to believe in what how language can shape.

Brian Pennie 01:45:47  Yeah. It's so true. I I'm going to remember that. So I'm grateful for what I have. What is the. What is the.

Abdullah Boulad 01:45:53  Word? Alhamdulillah.

Brian Pennie 01:45:54  Alhamdulillah. I love that, that's beautiful. I'm going to use that. I won't say Lebanese because you won't know it, but I'll say I'm grateful for what I have. That is beautiful. And what a reframe. So that language makes you become more grateful for what you actually have. You're reaffirming that to yourself and it does change cultures. Do not worry, Asian people would be more known to be better at maths. One of the reasons is to do with the language, because the language of numbers in English versus in Chinese, I think are Japanese. They have one less digit that makes maths easier and it's simply the language defines that. So the language describes the numbers differently and that has shaped the culture. So the language has a huge difference.

Brian Pennie 01:46:40  And I think when you think of collectivist versus individualistic societies in the West versus the East, the languages play a huge role.

Abdullah Boulad 01:46:47  And on the self-talk there is one self-talk, but there are for example, also possible affirmations or listening to affirmations has this on a subconscious level effect on our our body, on our brain and how we think.

Brian Pennie 01:47:03  Yeah, it certainly does. So I have a morning a morning routine. It's a practice that I do. It's non-negotiable every morning. And it's very simple. I it's a bag, a bag. And obviously I was in addiction for a long, long time. So I said I used to take a very different type of bag when I was in addiction. Today the bag is breathwork, affirmation, gratitude. It's one minute of breathwork. I literally four seconds in, six seconds out. I do that six times six breaths. Affirmation I'm strong. All right, I have I have lots of different affirmations, to be quite honest. And one of them I love is that I'm Brian.

Brian Pennie 01:47:44  I'm strong. I can cope by anything And again, that's an individualistic affirmation. But sometimes it could be. I'm connected. I'm loved. I'm in a supporting environment. So whatever that affirmation is and it seems a little bit weird. Well, it seems a little bit. Oh, it's just an affirmation. But when you look at the science of relational frame theory, which really goes into behavioral psychology, really principled and powerful, robust psychology, the words we speak become the, the, the, the house we live in. So the affirmations really land. But I think when you're describing the affirmations and even mantra, mantra is Sanskrit for free the mind. So you are freeing the mind of the shackles that are put on itself. So if somebody thinks I'm not good enough and the inner critic is saying I'm not good enough, well, you're freeing your mind. I'm Brian, I'm Abdullah, I'm strong, I can cope with anything. So there's a release in that as well. But the last part for me to bag the G is gratitude, and it's just really visualizing loved ones in my life that I love, and really going deep into a memory that was joyful and embodying that and feeling that and smell in that moment.

Brian Pennie 01:49:02  And basically that releases neurotransmitters within your brain from the raphe nucleus, releasing serotonin up the areas of your brain like the cortex. And you are it's like a biological injection, injection of positivity. And that's how I start my morning. So how can you not be happier? Like if you start your mornings by releasing positive neurotransmitters into your brain? Three minutes. That's all it takes for me. It's it's it's one of the most powerful practices in my life.

Abdullah Boulad 01:49:31  It's the morning, the best time. Or is the evening also something where it can be digested through the night?

Brian Pennie 01:49:41  Whatever works for the individual. Again, like what I would say to people. My advice to people. Because life is hard. Life is hard. Like it really is. So many people struggling out there. So what I would say is take baby steps. Take small little steps because then you can bring it into your life and do what works for you if it works in the morning. If gratitude sounds good for you for one minute and it works in the morning, hold dearly to that.

Brian Pennie 01:50:08  If you do it in the nighttime and it fits better into your schedule in the nighttime. Do it then. So I don't think the research isn't out when it's best to do it. And I would say it would depend on the people because there's so much variability in that. But whenever it feels best for you, that will be my advice for people on that.

Abdullah Boulad 01:50:27  But what comes to my mind is also it doesn't matter really, then if we experience something real or if it's a fake like media, or if we watch in the evening or during the day media or a horror movie or so. It's so important what we let into. Ourselves close to ourselves. What we read, what we watch. Particularly through the eyes. Maybe.

Brian Pennie 01:50:53  Yeah, definitely. It's. And it's a it's a real struggle. Like like junk. Like just like junk food will make you physically sick. Junk values, as I like to say, will make you mentally sick. Like in junk. Values for me are things that are not worthy of being valued.

Brian Pennie 01:51:08  Like for young kids it's Instagram or TikTok spending hours on that. I think for some people, like we do need to know what's going on in the world, but I know many people that they watch the 6:00 news, the 9:00 news, they read the newspapers. They are taking in all of this information. That's very overwhelming. And yet you need to know what's going on in the world to a certain extent. But if that's your if you are letting all of that seep into your being, that is going to be really, really problematic. So you've got to and that comes for people as well. If you have lots of people and lots of stressors in your life, or you're in an environment that's really challenging, that's coming into your life as well. So what we need to be very careful about what we're letting into our worlds, because that will have a big impact on how we how we are.

Abdullah Boulad 01:51:57  As an adult. You can make this conscious decision. What I worry about are children and and and teenagers also with and have fully developed brains yet and what social media and this overload of information happens to them.

Abdullah Boulad 01:52:14  Can you. What's your what's your take on that?

Brian Pennie 01:52:16  Oh, the genie is out of the ball with phones, with smartphones. So we're not we're not going to go away. And I think we're kids. It's really problematic, especially with that under the under developed brand as we spoke about. And I think it's got to be policy driven because I don't work. I done a documentary actually, last year on addiction in Ireland, and I went back to my old school where I done secondary school, and we were chatting with the young kids and we got them to take away their phones for a couple of days as part of a study. And I remember one of the kids said, I wish TikTok was never invented. And that really rang true for me because kids today, they don't they don't necessarily want the phone. They just don't want to be the only ones without the phone. Like it's fear of missing out, fear of what's actually going on and where kids are spending 4 or 5 or six hours screen time a day.

Brian Pennie 01:53:18  That's having a huge impact on their brands. The reward systems are being hijacked. Their attention systems, they're focused systems. They can't focus. They can't pay attention properly anymore. It's having a huge impact. But even more scary than that, what are they not doing in those 4 or 5 and six hours that we did when we were younger. They're not learning how to communicate, how to debate, how to argue, how to navigate challenges. And there's just so many cascading impacts of social media and the addiction that goes with that. There's a shallower level of connection. They're not connecting at a deeper level because they're not being intimate with each other in terms of play and connection to so many factors. Doctor Anna Lemke calls it the modern day hypodermic needle, and I think that's a really apt wording for, yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:54:08  The interpretation of the information. If we don't have the life experience, we cannot make the proper interpretation of it. And also we cannot we cannot properly make interpretation of expressions. And even if something is written, it can have multiple interpretation by, by the, by the reader.

Abdullah Boulad 01:54:26  Yeah. So I definitely see the difficulties in communication between each other and and not learning how we can regulate our emotions. They are just thrown at us.

Brian Pennie 01:54:39  Thrown at us. So I was doing a talk in a skill there last week, and the principal talked to me after the talk about social media. I was it was a talk around social media for young kids. And she told me that every practically every single kid in the school seeing the video of Charlie Kirk get shot in the neck because it was just going around the whole school. And I remember my social media feed. I don't really look at social media. It's more looking at it for content that I am sharing. But that came up on my social media feed and I don't look at anything like that. So that's what social media is doing. So that's a trauma response there, because these kids are trying to take in information of a very visceral and violent scene, and they should not be seeing that. So it's the dangers of the smartphones and inattention and brains getting hijacked.

Brian Pennie 01:55:34  But you're seeing this traumatic sense that they should not be watching. You know, it's scary.

Abdullah Boulad 01:55:41  As as with everything. Everything. you mentioned the genie is out of the bottle, so it has to go over a certain threshold. Yeah, and then it needs to be regulated at some point, at some level. I mean, schools without phones and. Yeah. And we know in Australia, for example, today they hired the age of, of of social media. but there is also now AI in the room. How how is the interaction with AI and our children and, and the effect on our brain and gen not just for children, but also with adults relying on information given instead of doing research and and checking multiple sources. what's what's your in know what would you say from a neurological logical perspective.

Brian Pennie 01:56:33  Yeah, there's a couple of points on that. one thing I heard recently, like for years it's been attention economics. So the tech companies are trying to grab people's attention spans, and people's attention spans have gone way down.

Brian Pennie 01:56:47  Like you look at like, YouTube shorts, reels. Everything is quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. We're looking for a dopamine hit. Dopamine hit, instant gratification. So our attention spans are nearly gone. And it was about attention economics. What I'm hearing about AI today is intimacy economics. So people are having relationships with AI like my parents are. We joke about us sometimes, but if I'm busy and I'm not doing something, she'll say, I'm going to talk to ChatGPT. He he he validates my emotions better than you. And it's it's done in a joking way. It's a bit of a laugh, but there are some people out there, like back to social isolation. If you're feeling lonely, you could start talking to ChatGPT and AI only gets to know you and you feel you have a relationship with that person. And that's only the starting point. Where is it actually going? So that's a danger in itself. But I think another big challenge with AI is the fact that we're not pushing ourselves anymore to learn.

Brian Pennie 01:57:49  We're taking shortcuts all the time. Like even in academia now, people are trying to skip writing articles and and if if to think, well, you need to write well. And I really do believe that because for me to really get to know a topic and a concept, well, it's only when I go to teach it and tell it to somebody else that I really know it, or I go to write an article I blogged for. But I was a blogger for the world writing articles, and I was only when I go to teach something or I go to write about something, that I really get to the depth of that learning. But now people aren't writing anymore because ChatGPT can write blogs, they can write stories, they can create PowerPoint slides. Yeah. So there's a lack of, of of mental friction going into the learning. And what I would suggest is a lack of deep learning is going in there as well. And it was a concept I heard recently that I think is quite troubling that we're going through a comfort crisis.

Brian Pennie 01:58:44  It's a phenomenal book I read by Michael Easter. Like people are going up escalators instead of going up the stairs. People are going on scooters instead of walking. People are getting food delivered to their homes. There's technology. They're creating all of these comforts in the world. Like, I got a new car recently and I have a heated steering wheel and it's nice, but I don't really need a heated steering wheel. It's all of these comforts coming into our lives, but I think ChatGPT really taps into that as well. There's no mental friction. We're taking shortcuts, and I think as a species we will stop, evolve, and we'll stop learning while at the same time. AI is getting smarter, so we're getting dumber. AI is getting smarter. And that's that's quite scary.

Abdullah Boulad 01:59:26  We lose the critical thinking?

Brian Pennie 01:59:28  Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:59:28  And by losing critical thinking, we lose our ability to be creative. And creativity is what we need in future with. With AI being smart in terms of providing information, everything is needed.

Abdullah Boulad 01:59:45  Yeah. So I think that's that's what we need to be aware of.

Brian Pennie 01:59:49  And I think it's very much like the phone, because smart phones are so damn useful that that's why it's it's so challenging. Like they're very useful in many different ways. So the problems are being accepted to a certain extent. And it's the same with ChatGPT. The long term consequences are the consequences are long term. And it's very useful in the short term. So again we're going for the quick fix the instant gratification. And it's yeah it's not going to it's not going to end well I don't think.

Abdullah Boulad 02:00:16  It's the beginning. And we will see we will see where this will lead. So we'll have another conversation about that maybe in a year or two. Yeah. when we. When we get to your own life. what do you do on a on a regular basis to stay in balance, except going in the morning for a run?

Brian Pennie 02:00:38  Yeah. Well, it's it's it's for me. I come back down to two, three, three powerful basics and it's bread.

Brian Pennie 02:00:48  Move. Connect. So the breathwork is my anchor. Like I have changed my relationship or anxiety on the back of breathwork. Because the heart rate, as I mentioned, is the core biological component of the stress response. And through the breathwork, through certain breathing techniques, I can influence my heart rate and as a result influence anxiety. So I think the breath is the space for me to navigate anxiety quieting my mind. it's the spiritual perspective, I suppose. It's the energetic perspective of the, I think the exercise is, as we discussed, it's movement. It's increasing the amount of serotonin. And it's it's making you smarter, which many people don't realize when exercise exercises the core components for me as well. And then the, the connection piece, what are people? So they be tree over arching themes that are constant in my life. But I think, I think the most important thing for keeping me in balance, especially today, I think we it was something I heard from a guy called Greg McKeon many years ago.

Brian Pennie 02:02:03  He's from the U.K. he wrote a brilliant book called essentialism, and I think I was on the start of my business journey and started the journey of creating the brand, I suppose, if that, if that's the correct word. And he said to me, you've got to be got to be careful with the paradox of success, because all of a sudden you're enthusiastic. You get excited about things and you'll get opportunities, and you'll want to say yes to everything as you're excited by them. And I did do that. I didn't listen to him. I didn't take his advice. And I said yes to a lot of things. And as a result, phenomenal opportunities have come into my life. Like I'm a huge fan. Gabor Mate was someone I just wanted to meet in my life. I had the opportunity to work with him on my own documentary last year, which was amazing. My business has really exploded. I was in Las Vegas working last year and going to New York and going around the world sharing my work at a corporate level in prisons and schools.

Brian Pennie 02:02:59  So loads of amazing opportunities in my life. But it created an imbalance in my life. So last year, the word now has become my best friend because I've got to say no to opportunities, even if they sound exciting and I'm enthusiastic about them because what I realized was if I were saying yes to that opportunity. I was saying no to my nephews or my stepdaughter or my partner, or to walk in the park with my mom and dad. So really, for me, today is to say no to certain things. So I'm saying yes to the things that fill my soul and help me to stay in balance. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 02:03:42  It comes back to your values and and where you set your priorities and boundaries.

Brian Pennie 02:03:47  Yeah, 100%. It always comes back to that. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 02:03:51  When you can now speak to everyone in the world and they are listening to our podcast today. what is your recommendation for them to do in their life?

Brian Pennie 02:04:01  I think the most important word in that sentence you just mentioned there, and the biggest struggle that many people face is the word do.

Brian Pennie 02:04:11  There's so much knowledge in the world today. So much knowledge and knowledge can be power, but it's not really power. Not anymore. Because if that was the case, Google is all powerful. And maybe it is, but knowledge is not where the game is played. The game is played in action. It's doing the breathwork, not knowing the breathwork. It's gone for the run, not knowing how to go for a run. It's practicing gratitude, not knowing that gratitude is good for you. It's connecting with your loved ones rather than spending 60 70 hours at work. So what I would say to people is what you know versus what you do. You've got to take a really good look at that. What you're doing is the hard part. And we are living, as we said, in this comfort crisis. There are so many laws, there's so many temptations. The world is pulling us, of course. So I'd say fundamentally ask yourself, what do you value, what's important to you and take action that is going to get you there.

Brian Pennie 02:05:10  Don't have the knowledge? Take the action. That's what will set you apart from having an incredible life.

Abdullah Boulad 02:05:17  I love that, I love that. It has to start with the information and the knowledge.

Brian Pennie 02:05:22  And the knowledge.

Abdullah Boulad 02:05:23  That putting it.

Brian Pennie 02:05:23  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 02:05:23  Don't forget. Yeah. Don't forget to put this in action.

Brian Pennie 02:05:27  Yeah, definitely.

Abdullah Boulad 02:05:28  So Brian, I enjoyed our conversation a lot. Thank you for taking the time. I know time is pressure, especially in your life at the moment. And that's the biggest gift you can give to someone. So thank you for that. Thank you also for writing your book, sharing your own story so people can can see themselves in it and can see the light, beyond where they are in their life. And also, thank you for all the work you are doing and, bringing knowledge and content out there. So thank you for being here.

Brian Pennie 02:06:10  Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure. I love the conversation. Thank you. Thank you.