145 The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery (with Dr. Lee Warren)

What if you have more power over how you experience your life than you think? What if you could learn how to change the patterns that are keeping you stuck? What if there is a life-changing art of self-brain surgery?

Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw interview neurosurgeon, trauma survivor, and author Dr. Lee Warren about the shift from feeling like a helpless “patient” to acting with agency like a “doctor.” Drawing from bereavement after his son’s death and the breakthroughs of functional MRI observations, he shows us how the mind can transform the brain.

Find out more about Dr. Lee Warren here.

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Transcript

Geoff Holsclaw: What if you have more power over your experiences of life than you think? What if you could learn how to change the patterns that are keeping you stuck? What if there was a life-changing art of self-brain surgery? People say that, "At least it's not brain surgery," or, "It's not rocket science."

we're on the brain surgery side of things today. This is the Attaching to God podcast with Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw, produced by the Center for Embodied Faith, and we are so glad to have back with us Dr. Lee Warren. He is a practicing neurosurgeon, a trauma survivor, war veteran, and an award-winning writer.

His goal is to help people discover how changing your mind can change your life, and he has just released this new book, The Life-Changing [00:01:00] Art of Self-Brain Surgery. Dr. Warren, thank you so much for being

Dr. Lee Warren: Geoff, Cyd, it's great to be back with you, my friends. Thank you.

Geoff Holsclaw: we have, a lot of questions, and we wanna, kinda have it be personal and not just about the book. But could you, just talk just really briefly about this story of the Antarctic expedition where someone had this injury, and it kinda g- it kinda goes along with the whole kinda vision of what you're trying to

Dr. Lee Warren: Yeah, so 1961, a guy named Leonid Rogozov was a, general surgeon from Russia who was deployed with the 13th Soviet Antarctic Expedition to do research in the South Pole. And, somebody smart thought about that group of people that were gonna go down there, all these scientists and truck drivers and mechanics and cooks and people, and somebody was smart enough to say, "Wait a minute.

They're gonna get down there and then the winter's gonna come, and the ocean's gonna freeze over, and the weather's gonna get really bad, and they'll be stuck there, that nobody can get in or out [00:02:00] until the springtime comes. So we better send a doctor with them, in case somebody gets sick." And so Rogozov is the team doctor, so to speak, and he gets down there and, he's a really good scientist, so he keeps a journal of everything that's going on, and that journal has been preserved by his family, and it's online now.

You can read it. It's really cool. but nobody thought about what happens if the doctor gets sick. And Rogozov gets down there, and he starts running a fever and gets a- abdominal pain, and he pretty quickly figures out that he's got appendicitis. All right? And he's stuck in the South Pole with the ocean frozen.

Nobody can get to him or get out of there, and he's the only medical provider. And so he starts getting really morbid in his journal like, "Oh, boy," "I'm in trouble here 'cause my appendix ruptures, and I'm gonna die. I'll never see my wife or kids again." And it was really- hearing and thinking and feeling all this stuff that was true objectively.

like there was nobody else who could help him, and he was hopeless. and, so he starts despairing. And, then he did this sort of remarkable thing. you and I, the three of us have talked before [00:03:00] about metacognition, about this idea that we don't have to just think our thoughts and feel our feelings, but humans can think about the situation and, evaluate what we're thinking and feeling.

And Rogozov did that, really brilliantly. He said, "Wait a minute, people with appendicitis, they need a surgeon, and I'm a surgeon. And, people who have appendicitis, they need a, they need somebody to remove their appendix, and I know how to do that." And so he, made this mental switch from this hopeless, helpless patient who nobody was coming to save, to this trained, wise, compassionate surgeon who could help the patient.

And so he had to see himself switch roles from, patient to doctor. And then he trained a mechanic to pass him instruments and said, "Hey, if I pass out, slap me, okay? Wake me back up." And he trained another guy to hold a mirror for him, and Leonid Rogozov removed his own appendix and saved his own life.

And this really happened. it, this is a remarkable story. But I started the book with that story just to say that it wasn't because [00:04:00] Rogozov was a surgeon that allowed him to do that. It was because he got out of his thoughts and feelings, and he observed the situation from a different perspective, and he was willing to switch roles.

to stop saying, "Okay, somebody's gotta come and fix what's wrong with me," because there wasn't anybody else. And he had to say, "I actually have the tools and the training and the capacity to do this thing. I just have to think about the problem from a different perspective." So that... that's why I started there.

Cyd Holsclaw: a great story, and I'm so grateful for him that it was something that he could operate on the front side of his body, right? And not something that was on back. that would've been a very different story, I imagine. Yeah. As you talk about that, what's coming to my mind, 'cause in Landscapes of the Soul, when we talk about atta-attachment, we talk a lot about how one of the default, questions we're all asking is, "What do I do with my agency?"

And different people in different landscapes have a different sense of how much [00:05:00] agency we have in the world. And so as you say that, I'm hearing this switch of, "I have no agency. I'm in this, I'm in this passive position where I'm gonna die because no one can help me," to taking his agency into his own hands and saying, "Actually, I have what I need, and I'm not a passive participant.

Instead, I'm gonna take the active role of using my agency to actually do what I can to save my own

Dr. Lee Warren: That's right. He was able to switch his locus of control, right? He, was able to say, "Hey, wait, it's, not outside, it's inside. I, can do this thing." and I think agency is the right word there. this, belief that there is something that could be done about the problem that you have, and then opportunity is the other piece that turns it into hope, right?

Is this, that I actually can do this thing. And so he was like, "Okay, there is something that can be done. I could have an appendectomy, and I actually know how to do that, so good for me. I can do it." And so that, that gave him hope, which then allowed him to have the drive to, to get it [00:06:00] done.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: you brought up locus of control. So there's been a lot of studies that both show that an internal locus of control, where I have, this agency, is, a marker of positive mental health and that, too, much of an external locus of control would be more, negative mental health. And then there's also studies have shown that our internal locus of control has, as a society, drastically gone down.

And so, you brought this up. It's not my fault. But, you, do talk about th- this goes into, I think, what you talk about the, patient-doctor switch, which you just mentioned with, this story. But could you go into that? and I don't know if you wanna go big picture, just about, like, why is it that so many of us feel stuck, more as patients and we don't take the responsibility to be doctors?

Or how do you make that switch? you take it wherever you wanna go.

Dr. Lee Warren: speaking to mental health professionals, I'll be-- [00:07:00] I don't wanna drop a bomb here, but, that part of it is that, so since 1954, since Watson and Crick gave us the structure of DNA There's been this heavy societal push towards what's called genetic determinism, and this idea that, you are the product of the genes from which you were made, and that the family system that you're raised in and the set of adverse childhood experiences and the traumas and things that you go through sort of form your brain into what it is, and that produces who you are and what you can be.

And this idea of materialism from hard science that everybody is... That everything and everybody are just the product of the stuff from which they're made, right? The neurons in your brain are what makes you and gives you the capabilities and skills and all that you have. And then that sort of led to this sort of learned helplessness in our society where you- people are taught essentially to, believe that, the way you are is how [00:08:00] you are and it's who you are, which then becomes identity, and that identity needs to be protected and b- build community around.

And that's why we put in our I- Instagram bios what our Enneagram scores are and what our ADHD is and what our personality type is and all that, so that other people will know how they're supposed to treat us because of how we are, so we're not triggered and hurt and offended and all that stuff. And so that's one reality, and the other one is that our educational system and our social systems have evolved to focus on what you feel and think and honor it as your truth, is to believe it.

And so then I think that means that, most people have come to believe that their lives and their quality of lives are about managing this identity thing that they think they have, that they're stuck with because of how their brains are. But then 21st century neuroscience comes along, [00:09:00] real scientific research comes along and says, "Wait a minute.

It turns out the more you focus on what you feel and think, the bigger those things get." the more you focus on your brokenness, the more broken you become. the more you, spend time paying attention to a particular thing from a particular perspective, the more real that thing gets, and the harder it is to detach yourself from a sense that's who you really are.

And so it played out for me i- in the, I'm a practicing neurosurgeon, right? So I'm trained in neuroscience, and I'm, was raised in that materialistic neuroscience standpoint. But as a Christian, I also had never really thought about the fact that Christians already don't believe that we're just the product of our brain activity.

Because when you die and your brain dies, you believe that there's still some part of you that's alive, right? so this, the Bible calls it heart, mind, soul, this kind of conflated things. that aren't brain, because when you die and your brain dies and rots in the grave or [00:10:00] somebody cremates it, you still are this thing that's made in God's image.

It's just, it's a part of you that's made in God's image. It's not your brain, it's your mind. And so it played out for us where, we talked last time I was on the show about our son dying. In 2013, our son Mitch was killed. And I'm a practicing neurosurgeon, materialist neuroscience, but a Christian, and I never thought about the fact that those two things are not compatible.

It's a belief that I'm just my brain and the fact that my brain isn't who I am. But then we had this amazing experience where our office at the time, Lisa, my wife, ran our practice and, our office was on a building in Auburn University in Alabama, and we did, functional brain imaging research in that building on the first floor.

And we got invited a month or so after Mitch died, and we were grieving and broken and angry and all the things that you are when you lose a child, and we got invited to some, to go witness this functional MRI research. and functional MRI is different than normal MRI, where you put somebody in a scanner and you [00:11:00] can see what their brain looks like.

That's normal imaging. Functional imaging is where you can see what the brain is doing when somebody's thinking or moving, or you can see what parts of the brain are lighting up and what, parts are active and what neurochemical things are happening and all that stuff. And so we got invited to watch this research, and they put this woman in the scanner, and they said, "Hey, Mrs.

Johnson, th- think about the worst thing you've ever felt in your life. Now think about the hardest day you've ever had." And I was-- I knew exactly what that was for me, so I was feeling it. And we watched her sort of call this thing to mind, and then we watched her brain react to what she was thinking about.

Her amygdala lit up, the fear center in her limbic system got really active on the screen. We could see it lighting up. And then shortly after that, we saw her body react to that. Sort of blood pressure and her heart rate went up, and all her physiological symptoms, or systems, came online in a fight or flight type reaction.

And so we saw this really clear sequence from mental activity to brain activity to body activity. And then they said, "Okay, Mrs. Johnson, now [00:12:00] stop thinking about that and start thinking about the best day you've ever had, your favorite memory, your happiest thought, whatever it is." And we saw her think of something different than she was thinking, and then we saw her brain change again.

Her fear center calmed down, her frontal lobes came online, insular cortex came online, anterior cingulate gyrus came online. All these different parts of the brain lit up, and the amygdala calmed down. And then her blood pressure and her heart rate and her, breathing c- calmed down, too.

So we saw, again, this sequence of mind to brain to body- And my wife said, "Hey, that reminds me of Philippians 4." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And she said, " it says don't be anxious, be grateful, and you'll feel better, like that God'll give you peace. If you think about this thing and not that thing, it'll change what your brain's doing."

And I was like, "Wow, that- that's really insightful." I'm the supposed to be the neuroscientist. and but then it dawned on me, God revealed to me in that moment hey, you're not just your brain. your mind is in charge of your brain. your mind can make your brain something different than what it was.

And this concept is [00:13:00] that what was happening... 'Cause if you think about it, in order for a different part of your brain to activate, and in order for neurotransmitters to change in your brain, genes have to get switched on and off. proteins have to get transcribed. stuff is happening in your brain that's not metaphorical or metaphysical.

It's mechanical. there's things happening in the brain in response to what the mind is doing, which means there's, some connection between the immaterial mind and the material physical brain that changes the structure of the brain. And so then the revelation to me was, okay, when I perform brain surgery, I am- I'm intentionally making a structural change in somebody's brain for the purpose of improving their life, and that's exactly what happens when you change what you're thinking about.

It changes the structure of your brain. So when it comes back around to agency, that's a long answer to your short question, I'm sorry. but the answer is

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, I love it.

Dr. Lee Warren: if you're wondering why you feel stuck, and you're wondering why nothing ever changes, we have good research that says that [00:14:00] most of us, a- about 90% of the things that we think about from day to day is the same set of things that we thought about the day before.

So we think over and over pretty much the same stuff every day. And if you don't believe that, just write three, three things down tonight that you thought about all day and then do it again tomorrow. Do it for five or six days. It'll be the same stuff. It's just true. Y- Most of the time you're thinking about the same set of stuff.

And we know from really good research that, that something like two-thirds to 80% of the things that we automatically think and feel aren't really true, that they're negatively biased or they're, slanted from a different angle, or they're just frankly lies or, just untrue things. So a large amount of the things that we automatically think and feel aren't actual facts.

And then you couple that with the neuroscience finding that says that the brain doesn't actually know the difference between something that's really happening and something you're just imagining or worrying about, and you take those three things, and then you apply neuroplasticity, which I know y'all have talked about before, this idea that the brain structurally changes itself in response to the things that we think about.

[00:15:00] Then you can start to see why. If, I feel stuck, it's because my brain changes in response to what I'm thinking about. I think about the same stuff all the time, and a large percentage of the stuff I'm thinking about isn't true. And so then I start to think that, because my brain is making me think all this stuff, that's who I really am.

But the reality is it's just that I'm not operating this system from a top-down sort of doctor down- standpoint. And so if we build a society around the idea that your feelings are true, and you're supposed to honor them, and you're supposed to live your truth and all that stuff, and that when something hurts you, you're supposed to nurture it and camp out on it and get people to come around you and support you in it and all that.

And I'm not, saying you shouldn't be supported, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do, the work to deal with it and all that, but if you orient your life back towards the wound and not forward towards the healing, then your brain will progressively rewire itself to magnify the pain or the, response you've had to the pain [00:16:00] and keep you in that place.

So what we learn then, and what I learned as a bereaved parent, is that, that when you focus on what is God saying he'll do with me forward from here, how can he help me manage this and heal from it, rather than this is just who I am now. 'Cause I'll tell you, once your kid dies, your brain tells you all kinds of stuff.

"It's never gonna feel better than it feels right now." "My future family is in serious trouble because I'm not gonna be able to be present with them 'cause I'm hurting so bad." Like I'm, I know the statistics on what happens to marriages when, they lose a child. I, know all that stuff, and your brain starts telling you, "Dude, this is it, man."

"This is the end for you," right? And but then God comes along and says, "Wait a minute." Like when w- in Romans 5:3-5, he says, "Hey, suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." so how do you get from suffering to hope? It's like you gotta go through it, you gotta endure it, and then you gotta become the kind of person who can endure it and [00:17:00] knows they can endure it, and then you become this hopeful person to say, the next time something hurts me, I've worked through that before."

And then you find again, neuroscience comes along and says, "Hey, the anterior cingulate gyrus is the part of your brain that's related to emotional transition," like moving from this emotional state to that emotional state, gets stuck in people who are in complex grief. It just turns off, basically. And there's all this research that shows that it, that, it's the same part of your brain that's involved in resilience and grit and willpower.

And so if you can, make yourself do something hard that you don't wanna do, make the bed w- when you lose your child and you get out of bed and put your pants on and make the bed that day, you didn't want to, then your cingulate gyrus gets the message, "Hey, I'm, the kind of person who can do something hard that I don't wanna do."

And then the next time you need to, it's, more robust. It rewires and neuroplasticity kicks in and makes it stronger, and it's easier to do the next hard thing. And so then you find yourself moving forward a little bit in less of a strain to do so each day. And then you find Romans 5 all of a sudden starts making sense neurologically.

hey, [00:18:00] suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. So like I'm actually never was stuck. I just wasn't operating in the position of like I'm, designed to, to heal from this. I'm not designed to stay stuck in it.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah. So much of what you-- I have so many things that are, like, just spinning in my brain that I wanna talk about. I'm hearing, first of all, we talk... So if I'm just translating, to the people that are, usually listening to Geoff and I, and listening to our conversations, they hear us talk a lot about practicing joy.

And so I'm hearing that in what you're saying, right? The brain doesn't know the difference between what you're remembering and what you're currently experiencing, and, like what you said in that MRI, in the functional MRI scan. And when we're practicing remembering times of joy, when everything was good and right in the world, and dwelling on and savoring goodness, that's actually doing that good work in our brain, 'cause it's then having an impact in our bodies as well.

And so I'm thinking about that, and then [00:19:00] I'm also thinking about how, we talk a lot about attunement, and if you think of, Allan Schore and Dan Siegel talk about that experience of feeling felt by someone. And so I'm wondering, as you talk about this idea of not dwelling on the things that are hard or the things that may not even be real, but the things that feel true to us, where is the place for, even attuning to someone and saying, "I can understand why you think that way," or, "I can understand what that...

why you would feel that way," but then also being able to compassionately say, "And that's not true." Like, how, would you navigate that? Or how are you navigating that in your self brain surgery?

Dr. Lee Warren: that's a good question. y- one of the problems with, challenging somebody's deeply held belief is that they really believe it, right? th- they really believe it, and, especially in our culture. I heard a sitting United [00:20:00] States congressperson recently in an interview, so one of our governmental officials, I heard them say that felt experience is more important than objective truth.

That what you feel is more important than stuff that you can measure and test, that we shouldn't be so attached to objectivity. and that's great. you can think that, but the science doesn't back that up. it, it, doesn't back it up that if you want to be robust and healing and moving forward and have hope and, all those things, the path there doesn't go backwards, it goes forwards.

And that's not to say you don't figure out what's hurting, you don't deal with it, you don't address it, you don't understand it and unpack it, and all those things. You need to do those things. You need to heal, you need to grieve, you need to learn. But if you really believe that the things that you feel are as valid as things you can measure and test, then it's hard for somebody else to say that to you in a way that [00:21:00] doesn't either infuriate you or that you just are closed off to, right?

So, I think that first, that we can't be those people Unless you have a deep relationship and they trust you to be able to say those kinds of things. So I think therapists and counselors and, professionals and, those people have that kind of trust with their clients, they can say those things.

But if you're like talking to your friend or your sister or your husband or your wife, sometimes it's offensive when you say, "Hey, what you're saying, what you're feeling r- isn't really true." so then I think that's where being able to be, articulate about what the research actually says, 'cause at least most people are like, "Okay, I can put my head around this, peer-reviewed research from Penn shows that 600 people were scanned and they did this and it turned out to be that."

And th- I think people can wrap their heads around, "Okay, this-- I feel this, but the data doesn't support that." a- and so if you can say s- and I'm not saying everybody has to say what the neuroscience findings are, I'm just saying if you [00:22:00] have some way justify why you're saying to this person, "Hey, objectively, this isn't true.

Like, it's, hurting you to believe this thing that isn't true," right? Does that make sense?

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah, it does. I think I'm just, I'm, 'Cause I'm thinking, we do a lot with, like, how relational neuroscience, right? So we talk about, it's, through relationship that we're healed. And so I'm thinking about this concept of within myself, I don't know that I can always tell what's true and what's not, right?

Because I have these deep felt experiences that feel true to me. And we talk about how Jesus comes and meets us in the middle of that and understands that, right? Attunes to that, but then also wants to move us into reality that aligns with his kingdom, right? With the truth and the reality.

And so I'm just thinking about how, a lot of what you're saying is so powerful and well-researched, and what is the [00:23:00] role of sort of relationship within that, I think is the question 

Dr. Lee Warren: I talk about what I call the two-patient rule in the book, which is this idea that doing this work of understanding that you have incredible power and therefore agency and therefore hope to change what your brain does when you change what you think about. That, that the Bible is very clear about that, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, 2 Corinthians 10, all, these places where it's clear that mind and brain are not the same thing and that mind is in charge and that God has a plan to heal you and help you by using your mind to overcome your brain, transform your, renew your mind, the Bible says.

since we know that's true, the two-patient rule reflects this idea that when you change your brain and make it work better, a number of things happen that affect other people around you And so if you model this, like I am, taking my thoughts captive, I am renewing my mind, I am not just my brain, I have, a mind that can make my brain work better, then a number of things happen.

One of them is that your, [00:24:00] mirror neuron system will start to work in an effective way to other people. So mirror neurons are these parts of your parietal lobe that when you see somebody's facial expression, you mimic it before you think about it. if somebody's smiling, you smile too.

Somebody's frowning, you frown too. That so you're... it's just true that your brain picks up on other people's emotional states and begins to model them. And so if you're living this truth and it's really true and it's working for you and it's changing you and it's impacting the way you live, it's gonna lift your impact on other people neurologically around you non-verbally.

And then there's this idea of what we call heart math. You may be familiar with the heart math, people. This is electromagnetic field that our brains and hearts put out that goes up to 10 or 15 meters around us that, that affects other people's physiology. Their vital signs change in response to ours.

This is probably the basis of that Debbie Downer effect. when somebody walks in the room and they're in a really bad mood, your blood pressure goes up. Like it's... They don't have to say anything. You just, you're being changed by their body [00:25:00] because they're putting off an electromagnetic field that's harming yours or helping yours.

And so I think coming alongside somebody when you're in align- you're in a physiologically and neurologically aligned state where you're living in a reality where you're operating your brain in this way that's changing the reality on the ground for you, your ability to discern your thoughts and feelings is getting better, your neuroplasticity is working in a way that helps you and doesn't hurt you, then when you say to someone else, "Hey, this thing you're feeling isn't really true, and if you would just orient towards something that's more true, I think you'll taste and see that it's gonna work better for you 'cause it's working for me," right?

And then the third one is this, idea of what we call quantum entanglement, which is a really weird concept that the quantum physicists figured out where particles connect to each other in a way where once they're entangled, that one changes, the other one changes too, no matter how far apart they are.

And this is the basis for how, [00:26:00] Cyd, you'll be at work and you'll just know that Geoff needs you to call him, and you'll call him, and he'll say, "Hell, I was just thinking about you. I, just needed to talk to you really bad. Thanks for calling." Like it's not magic. It's quantum entanglement.

It's, God, the Holy Spirit nudging you to do that, but because you're entangled. So if you get yourself entangled in the right way with other people where they feel that when you communicate with them, you're telling them something that's true Then I think that impact is so much higher, right?

than just auditing other people's things that they say and saying, "Oh, I don't... That's not true. You need to, shape up, buddy." "That's not true what you're feeling." I think it's more like you're living this for yourself, and you're authentically mapping it onto your own nervous system, and they're gonna feel that.

And so when you then speak into their reality, it's gonna be more credible. Does that make sense?

Cyd Holsclaw: It absolutely makes sense. Yeah, so then that also begs another question, right? So I know that you've, you speak, to Christians, and you say, "Hey, Christians, if you can learn how your bodies [00:27:00] are made, it will, it learn, it'll-- you'll see that God has a good design." knowing our neuroscience is great for our faith as well.

But I'm also thinking, now you've just named quantum entanglement and heart math and, the way that our brains mirror each other. And so what is the role of faith then for someone who might say, I can do all of this from just a scientific perspective. Everything you're telling me is I can do self-brain surgery.

What would I need God for?" So how is it that the, role of faith is still an important piece in all of

Dr. Lee Warren: That's a great,

Cyd Holsclaw: or rather the

Dr. Lee Warren: that's a great question. y'all are hitting notes that I haven't been hit in many of the other interviews that I've done, so thank you. I think the, I think-- I tried to, give you this idea in the book that there's, different levels of how you can operate your nervous system and how you can operate your life.

And we know that, the Bible says, Jesus says, hey, that God causes the sun to fall on the just and the [00:28:00] unjust and the rain on the just and the unjust. there's this general grace where He gave you lungs that'll breathe whether you believe in Him or not, and He gave you bones that'll allow you to walk around and hold up your body whether you believe in Him or not, and, a heart that will beat whether you have faith or not.

So, there's stuff that'll work for you whether or not you believe in the God who created it that way, right? So operating your nervous system is another one of those things. like it's designed in a particular way to do a particular thing and allow you to live your life in a controlled and hopeful way, and you can operate it that way.

And that's why people like Dan Harris have made millions of dollars with a book like "Ten Percent Happier." if you've read that book, he sold, I don't know, six or seven million copies of it, and his whole premise is, "Hey, I've noticed that people who meditate and pray, they're happier. And we can put them in a brain scanner and show their brains work different than ours.

But since we're all smart enough to know that there's really no God, we don't need that. Let's just figure out how to hack that for our own benefit, and it'll make us a little happier." And he even said, "It makes me about 10% happier when I meditate, right? And that's enough for me." My premise is [00:29:00] 10% is not enough if your son's stabbed to death.

if you're infinitely sadder than you were before, getting a little bit happier isn't enough to, make your life better. So I think the person who doesn't have faith Who's operating this system is gonna get to some place maybe i- if they have enough adverse experiences or they run into some walls.

There are some places where science can give you the, sort of what and the how of how things are operating, but it can't give you the answers to the questions like why and what next and those big sort of philosophical things that science just can't ... It's not designed and not capable of answering for you.

And so I think faith comes in there. so, if God says, "Hey, I give you the mind of Christ," right? If you're saved, I'm not gonna just leave you alone with this nervous system that you can figure out how to hack and use it to your advantage. I'm gonna give, l- literally gonna put Christ's mind in you as in the form of the Holy Spirit, and I'm [00:30:00] literally gonna give you the same power, Paul says in Ephesians, that I used to raise Christ from the dead.

I'm gonna give you that kind of transforming power in your own life, in your own brain to where you can say like Jesus was dead in the ground for three days, his body, which means his neurons were offline, his blood was coagulated, his, sinews were getting rigor mortis and all that.

That body was dead, It wasn't some trick. It wasn't curare that made him paralyzed, that he was really dead. And so when his, immortal mind went back into that tomb and said, "Hey, wake up. It's time to get up," that means his neurons came back to life because the immaterial mind has controlling power over the material brain and, that means that the mind of Christ was literally speaking into the dead brain of the former body of Christ in a reanimating way.

And he says, "Hey, you've got that same power in you." like I'm not saying you can resurrect yourself from the dead, but I'm saying you've got that kind of resurrecting power when your [00:31:00] life is dead because you've been in that John 10:10 place where Jesus says, "The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy," and, stuff's been stolen from you, and your peace of mind has been destroyed, and, your, child died, and you feel like you did, too, and you can reanimate that.

th- there's a path. I've given you the juice to do this, and I'll work with you to do it. And Romans says, "Hey, I'll give you the ... When, you're hopeless and hurting and you don't even have the energy to think you can do it, I'll give you the will to do it. I'll give you the will to do and to act in a way that pleases me."

He... So I'll give you the power. and then Peter comes along in 2 Peter 1:3 and says, "Hey, his divine power has given you everything you need for life." people hear me say that, and they say, "Yeah, but you don't know how much trauma I've been through. You don't know how anxious I am. You don't know what all I, what my dad said to me when I was seven and how it's redefined my whole life.

you don't know." And I'll say, "Hey, fair enough. I don't know. But I do know that the scripture doesn't say that his divine power has given us some of us part of what we need for our lives. It says, 'I've given you everything [00:32:00] you need.'" And so then I think the role of faith, to, to answer your question Is to say there's a level at which you can operate your nervous system that works better than when you just use science to do it, when you just use psychology, when you just use therapy, when you just use, motivation and willpower and Tony Robbins.

Th- there's a level that works better than 10% happier, and it works because God then becomes, I think in the right hemisphere of your brain is where it happens. Geoff will light up when I say that. Like, I I think this, immaterial to material thing happens in a way that, that allows us to drive the processes that God gave us in a more powerful way when we add faith and the co-working of the Holy Spirit with us.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: I love that. All right. This, for my own sake, maybe for some listeners, I'm gonna, to summarize what I was hearing, and then I wanna throw in, Romans 8. But then I have another kind of [00:33:00] meta question. But so the title of your book is "The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery," and what I was hearing was is, the brain surgery is what the mind is doing, right?

The mind is doing surgery on the brain. But it's not us in our own power with our own truths, with our own insights into how our brain might, should be organized. But it's rather, you were saying the mind of Christ is given to us, which is the true mind, fully God, fully human. The mind of Christ has been given to us to guide that process.

And so that is that process of being renewed and repaired the way God wants us. And so that self-brain surgery is the mind over the brain, but it's really the mind of Christ given to us in the Spirit. And just to tie that up with scripture, 'cause I know you love scripture, we love scripture. So Romans, 8:6, it says, "The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace."

And that's what we want, right? So when you go through that tragedy, when you have this trauma, [00:34:00] 10% happier i- isn't gonna bring that life and peace that we're all longing for, right? But we need that spirit, that mind governed by the Spirit of Christ, which is the mind of Christ. So just wanted to throw that in there.

You brought up the nervous system. Now, I think nervous system regulation, talking about dysregulation, we could talk about polyvagal system, Stephen Porges. This, it feels, I don't wanna say a fad, but it feels very popular at the moment. "Let's be kind to our nervous systems. Let's be aware of how our nervous systems are interacting."

I hear, in certain realms, a lot of kind of talk like that. and this idea of, felt safety, or security or something like that. And I was wondering, how is what you're talking about, how does that kind of fit into maybe this other larger kind of cultural conversation about, being kind to nervous

Dr. Lee Warren: Yeah, I'm probably not very popular with some of my, friends who are writers in that space. 

Geoff Holsclaw: if I was leading you [00:35:00] into, something,

Dr. Lee Warren: it's a

Geoff Holsclaw: But, we wanna have honest conversations. W- we want, we're talking about spiritual formation, we're talking about the gospel,

Dr. Lee Warren: We have

Geoff Holsclaw: how our bodies are made, and I think it's really important to kinda have a

Dr. Lee Warren: You're right, and we need to be accurate. We need to be accurate with the things we say. And just as a... You said get meta. I'm, just, as a broader thing before I dive into the, specifics here, if we are gonna be Christians who are operating in the mental health space, whether we're a brain surgeon or a therapist or a psychiatrist or whatever we are, theologian, if we're gonna write and work in the space that, that commingles neuroscience and, scripture, right? Then I think we have a burden to never try to bend scripture into the context of what we think we know from science or to never try to metaphorize, if that's a word, to turn, neuroscience into some sort of metaphor for [00:36:00] what scripture... To, make scripture seem to say something it doesn't really say scientifically.

Geoff Holsclaw: Right.

Dr. Lee Warren: that, that science and scripture are both supposedly, systems of uncovering truth over time or revealing truth or pointing at truth. Except to say that scripture has been pointing straight at it the whole time, and science by design, by, by, definition, is a process of progressively becoming less wrong as time pr- goes on and getting more correct.

And so that means that, that of the two, scripture never deviates and science always deviates, 'cause what do we think is true now that we thought was true 400 years ago? Like nothing. All the smart kids in the room 30 years ago believed a bunch of stuff that we laugh at now, but, because we know better scientifically now.

But nobody has ever gone back in time and revised what scripture said because scripture's always true. So if we're gonna deal in both of these worlds, we have to make sure that scripture stays in its proper place as the authority, right? And so in that context, Romans 8:6 [00:37:00] says, in another translation, "The mind set on the flesh is death, and the mind set on the spirit is life and peace."

So that this goes into this, quantum observer effect that we learn from quantum physics. Like, literally the more you observe a system, the more the system stays stuck in that position. And scientifically and s- and psychologically, the more you observe an emotion, the bigger and more powerful it becomes.

The more you think about it, focus on it, dwell on it, the more real it becomes. so I think part of it is like understanding that scripture always points straight at the truth, and that when we use science, we have to make it fit in what scripture really says. that's super important. I had a, therapist who's a well-known author, and I love her, and she's brilliant.

But she was on my podcast to talk about one of her books a long time ago, and, there's been 50 of those people, so you won't guess which one it is, so I'm not throwing stones at anybody. But I said something about you can really tell your brain to regulate [00:38:00] and to change and structurally come online, and it will.

And she said, "Unless you're too dysregulated." like then you gotta ground, you gotta get the vagus nerve going and all that stuff. And, my pushback is, okay, just... Okay, you do need to get your vagus nerve to activate and calm your heart rate down and all that stuff. But in order to do that, what has to happen first?

You have to decide that you're going to take a deep breath or that you're going to ground yourself or that you're going to do five, four, three, two, one or that you're going to shift your attention away for a moment. You have to make a mental choice first, and it's the mind driving the brain to take that breath every time.

It's always cognitive first. Any sort of change has to start on the mind side first. So then another, person, that was on his podcast recently, he said, "Wait, how do you... Y- you, you really lock into the cognitive side of things. How do you counsel somebody who's more emotional or more tuned into the emotion?"

And I said, it's okay to be that way, but understand that the [00:39:00] only path, like literally the only thing that changes you, is when you make a mental decision that you're going to engage a process to help yourself change." So it, always have to start with mind. Always has to. So polyvagal theory, this idea that we're over- that our vagus nerves are underactive and, we need to get 'em more active.

Our frontal lobes are offline because of too much trauma and all that. That stuff changes instantly within seconds to minutes structurally in your brain. The changes that happen when you change from one thought to another thought are literal structure. They're not metaphors. The, the structure of how neurons connect to each other, they grow through little girders called microtubules, and those microtubules are broken down and repurposed within seconds of shifting your attention from one thing to another thing because your brain immediately says, "I need to reinforce this new thought process" via Hebb's law, which is this idea that neurons that fire together wire together, right?

So synaptic plasticity is what Donald Hebb actually wrote about, which is that n- your synapses that connect one neuron or groups of neuron to others are driven [00:40:00] by the things that you're thinking about and, those synapses are real structural things that change in real time. And so there's never actually a time when your frontal lobes are offline.

They're just waiting on you to tell 'em to do something, and so you have to mentally decide that first. So every one of those techniques that involves activating and regulating and all of that actually is a cognitive process.

Cyd Holsclaw: Which all comes back to agency

Dr. Lee Warren: You have choice in the matter, and you have power in the matter Thank

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: we're almost at our time, but Cyd, did you wanna jump into question number 10? We have just gone all-- We had a couple questions that we're, but we've been all over the place. This has been delightful. But Cyd, did you wanna, get to that one question? 'Cause I

Cyd Holsclaw: know how relevant it feels still, but I w- but I'll ask it anyway. something that happens for us a lot when we have conversations with people about the things that we talk about, we almost always get the conversation of, how does this apply to someone who's neurodivergent?[00:41:00] 

So someone who's on the autism spectrum or someone who has, extreme ADHD, those kinds of things. So I'll just ask you the same question.

Dr. Lee Warren: Yeah. Yeah, so cognitive behavioral therapy has a good body of research at showing that it is as effective or more effective than medications or other types of therapeutic techniques and psychotherapeutic techniques in obsessive compulsive disorder, in neurodivergence, in people with schizoaffective disorders.

Like, it-- CBT works as well as medicine does, as well as shock therapy does for lots of things. And that tells us again that the idea that mind is in charge of brain structurally by design is true. And, so if you have a neurodivergence that makes it harder for you to interact with other people in certain ways or socially awkward or whatever it is that your particular...

Cyd Holsclaw: Or to concentrate.

Dr. Lee Warren: if you're ADHD or what-whatever it is, the truth is that, your brain may have a [00:42:00] set of pre- all of us, e-everybody's brain has a set of predilections and baseline responses that we have wired in via Hebb's law over the course of our lifetime before we knew that we had agency and could change those things.

And those connections have become very robust, and they're very difficult to change and all of that. But because the system works in a particular way, it will work for you too if you persist in, working the process of re-automating better responses. And so if you think about it, if, there's a lamp on your desk and it's plugged into the wall and there's one power cord that's plugging it in, and I said, "Hey Geoff, that light's casting a weird shadow on your cameraman.

Move that lamp." And you just unplug it and move it and plug it back in, it'd be easy, right? But if, you had that lamp for 30 years and every time you turned it on, the number of cables going into the wall doubled Like in, say after 30 years, there were 7,000 cables going into the wall, and I said, "Hey, go move that lamp."

You could do it, but you'd have to unplug 7,000 cables and [00:43:00] then move it and replug them all back in and, it would take a long time. And that's exactly how neuroplasticity works, right? The more you look at something from a particular point of view, the more you ponder something, the more you do the same thing with your brain over time, the more robust those connections become and the more automatic and less they drive, the re- the less they require of you mentally.

This is why you can drive to work without thinking about your drive to work after a while. You change jobs, you gotta think about it for a while, and then all of a sudden it's automated again, right? It's neuroplasticity. And there's, except instead of 7,000 cables, there's 300 million synapses that have connected this over the course of your lifetime, and, your divergence or your ADHD, your anxiety, whatever it is, has become really robust as part of your identity.

You believe that's who you are. Now you wanna change that. It's going to take some work and some time. That's when you might need a professional to help you to see these things, to persist in them, to give you tools and strategies. But you're still the doctor in that scenario. You're still doing the thing.

You're still the one [00:44:00] unplugging the wires. you're operating the system. And so I say it, does work for people who are neurodivergent. It does work for people who have chronic anxiety and chronic grief and all those things. It works, but it's not easy. that's why on my podcast we always call it hard and holy work.

this is honoring God's plan and design, and it's not easy, and Jesus never said it would be easy, but he said he would help you, and that's why the mind of Christ is there, to help you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I'm like, I just wanna keep talking for another 40 minutes and keep pelting you with questions. This has been really helpful. I'm sure it's been, extremely

helpful 

Cyd Holsclaw: wait. all Can we, just, do one more thing really quickly just for all of our listeners, right? Because I love the, out of your 10 commandments of ner- of brain surgery, the first commandment I think could be helpful for anybody who's listening. So if somebody's asking themselves this question, "I hear all of this, how would I start?"

What is your first commandment of [00:45:00] doing self-brain

Dr. Lee Warren: Thank you. Yeah, so the 10 Commandments are these 10 things that I drew from neuroscience and faith over the last 13 years since my son died that, that helped us keep guardrails from not dying, basically. and, they help you operate. and the first one, if I'm asking you to, switch from patient to doctor, right?

Then the first one is what happens on the first day of medical school, they make you take an oath that says you're not gonna commit malpractice against your patient, that I'm gonna relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. I'm gonna stop doing things that hurt me. And so if you're your patient and you're the doctor, and you know that particular thought processes or particular habits or particular reactions that you have are ultimately harmful to you, that every time I do this, I end up having to apologize.

I sleep on the couch 'cause my wife's mad at me or I- I drink myself to sleep every time I think about this." Whatever it is, and you know it's harming you, then you just relentlessly refuse to keep participating in your own demise. stop committing malpractice against [00:46:00] yourself. And if we all just eliminate the things that objectively are bad for us, that are making us worse instead of better, then we're operating out of things that are gonna help us get better instead.

And it's better is better than blaming and brokenness and bitterness and all that stuff. Like it's just better to get better. And to do that, you gotta stop committing malpractice against yourself.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah. I just really appreciate the way that you do that. if you are, the surgeon and you're the patient, and so to not... To do no harm, right? And so to make that... And if we're gonna talk again about going back to agency and about how it all begins with, in your mind, even just beginning as a first step of I, I'm going to choose to no longer perpetuate this harm upon myself.

And even if I fail, and even if I make a mistake, and even if I do it again, I choose again, right? each moment is a new choice. and so I just wanted to leave people with that as like a, what are the things in your life that you could choose to say, "I, this is something I don't wanna keep perpetuating.

I don't [00:47:00] wanna keep engaging in malpractice upon myself." Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. the book is The Life-Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery. If you're watching on YouTube or other places, you could see it there. the subtitle is Connecting Neuroscience and Faith to Radically Transform Your Life. Dr. Warren, I know that, you write a book, you submit it to the publisher, it takes a year before it comes out, and now it's out.

So you're probably onto... this happens to us, like you're probably onto different things. what are some of the things you're doing, and then how can people kinda connect with, what

Dr. Lee Warren: Yeah, so I have a podcast. You guys have been on it. and we had a great conversation there. it's the Dr. Lee Warren Podcast. It's heard in 150 countries every week, and it's easy to find. I have a website. I have a weekly Substack. th- and this is the stuff I write about all the time. So my, work really has become all about helping people leverage their neuroplasticity in a way that helps them.

[00:48:00] and, my work as a doctor, as a surgeon, and as a writer really has aligned around this idea of figuring out how to help people understand what's hurting them and what to do about it. And so if you're, dealing with something and you wanna use your brain to get it better, th- that's what I do.

And so drleewarren.com is the website, and I love to meet new people, so thank you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. thank you so much. we'll include all that into the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, and we're so blessed by your

Dr. Lee Warren: Good to see you both. God bless you. Thank you.