Hi, and welcome to the In the Cortex podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Paloma Garcia. And I am Dani Pericone. And we're the founders of In the Cortex, an online community with programs that show people the tools that they need to change their lives through brain reorganization. No medication, just movement. When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life. And now on to today's episode. Hello and welcome back to our season two. This is episode five. It is the last day of January, 2024. And we are bringing in the concepts of alignment that we've been talking about all month here at In the Cortex and our favorite, well, one of my favorite books ever, which is The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller.
And so we're going to merge the concepts of alignment and the awakened brain and bringing it together in today's podcast. So let's dive into it. Let's dive in. I mean, we talked about alignment already on social media and on our first episode of the season of the year. But a lot of alignment has to do with really getting to know yourself and your own values.
And so as we talked about in the last one, or in the first one, I should say, of this year, it's hard to know yourself very well and hard to really understand your values if you're in survival mode. And I think that that's a lot of the ego that comes in and a lot of the just disconnection that comes in when we don't really know who we are. We're not really connected with our bodies and our brains.
And we think we want things or we think we align with certain things that we later turn out not to align with. So many people, like including you and me, but so many people that do the program are like so many things have changed about who I am, what I like, what I prioritize. And it's like they're not they are changing, but they're changing back into what they were all always meant to be. Right. They were always supposed to be, so to speak.
And I think that's a really big piece of like understanding that it's also okay to be out of alignment. But knowing the tools to get you into it is going to be a huge deal.
Right. And so kind of I think we wanted to talk about that today and a lot about the way that it overlaps with this book and with the concept of having a community because you and I were talking the other day and we're like, one of the biggest shifts that we made at ITC was to really create a community and to put ourselves back into the program, do the program. You've heard us talk about it a million times on the podcast, but really like creating a sense of like this is a space for you.
Bring your questions, bring yourself, you know, share everything that's going on with you. And I think that's really a good start for anybody. Right. It's just find somebody who can listen to you. I love that. And to go back to your point about finding who you really are, it's because so many things that we do as humans is we're all just trying to get needs met. And in that process where we have behaviors that, like Paloma said, aren't the real version of us.
And as you organize your brain, you realize that those behaviors were rooted in your brain just getting a need met. And it wasn't an effective and efficient way to get that need met. And so the big part here when you start to organize your brain is you gain awareness and it's just it becomes natural to start having that self reflection, self discovery and really sometimes that existential question of like, what is your purpose? Like, why are you here on this planet?
And so in this process of becoming more aligned with who we are, like I know I've been doing a lot of sifting and sorting in my life, especially having two small kids and wanting them to be connected to community. And then as I dive more into the brain work and then trying to find the community and then we read this book and we're like, oh, here's all the science behind it. Because we know we always have the people who need the science, right?
Paloma and I are very like Paloma is probably more science rooted than me. I'm more of like, I feel it. And I'm like, oh, that feels good. I want to keep going there. But then once we find the science, I'm like, there's studies that have been done on the two different forms of having awareness. And that's really cool.
Like there's and that's why we love this book because she takes these big giant concepts of just like oneness and brings in the science and says, here's the studies that show this, this and this. And we all know it's not that easy to get studies done. So Dr. Lisa, I know you're listening to this. We love all the work you've done. We appreciate you.
So yeah, talking about the two different forms of awareness and they have in the book here the two modes of awareness available to us at all times are achieving awareness and awakened awareness. And I'm going to read to you what achieving awareness is. You have that sense of what it is. It is the perception that our purpose is to organize and control our lives. When we live through achieving awareness, our foundational concern is how can I get and keep what I want?
This mode of awareness is useful and often necessary. It gives us the focus, attention and commitment necessary to attain goals and enables us to direct our attention and energy into a particular task to study for an exam, complete a project, get some place on time, practice a skill. It allows us a focused drive and undistracted execution we need to implement and achieve our goals. It's highly necessary and help in a helpful form of perception.
And then she says, but if it's overused or exclusively used, achieving awareness overrides and changes the structure of our brains, carving pathways of depression, anxiety, stress and craving. When out of balance, achieving awareness is narrowly focused, unguided by the bigger picture, obsessed with the same track or idea, never satisfied, often lonely and isolated. So that's pretty interesting.
I mean, that for us, we describe as like survival mode sometimes, like you're getting things done but it's frantic, it's isolated. Yeah. I mean, it's, and I think what she, I like that she's like, it is necessary sometimes because it is, you have to do things. You have to be like in that activation mode and act in alignment with your values and who you are.
But so many people, and I think I used to be that way, like I think a lot of us get stuck in that so easily nowadays in like, you know, the way that the world works, you're just focused on a lot of like material things and a lot of the things that are like, kind of like you were saying, you don't follow like, or you don't listen to like science or seek out the science as much as I do.
I was very much like that person is like, this is the thing that you have to do and this is the way it has to be done. It's been proven to be this way. So just do it, you know, before I was able to like listen to, okay, maybe some stuff isn't proven yet. You know what I mean, it can still be real. And I think that it's kind of like the way that capitalism works in a way, right? Like lots of different social structures that we have.
It's like, well, yeah, go for what's been proven, what you're supposed to do, what's expected of you, what's expected. Society's expectation. That's the truth. Because that's, you know, it's, it's, it removes like, I guess it kind of like removes questioning from things, you know, like you're just doing the things. And it gets you in this loop, right?
And if you're not in contact with your like more awakened self, where you're listening to your intuition, listening to different things, understanding concepts in a different way, then you kind of do get stuck in that like achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, right? And it also, so then the next paragraph here in this book, the awakened brain, she says, when you're in that state of achieving awareness all the time, it doesn't help you face undesirable
outcomes. Because if you're always in that achieving awareness, then you're frustrated or you're distressed when things don't turn out as you hoped or plan for. And we all know that feeling, right? Like I really, really need this. And I was actually just talking to my 17 year old stepdaughter who like really wants something new. She wants a dirt bike and she's like obsessed about it. She hasn't even sold her quad yet. She's like, I just need the dirt bike. Oh my gosh, all of them are sold.
Now there's no more left. And we're like, you need to step out. And this is when people say they want to manifest, right? And they want that thing so badly and they become hyper focused on it. Then they cannot tap in. And I'm going to read what awakened awareness is next into that state of allowing and trusting you're being guided by something.
And that in this book also, she taps into how that is an innate sense of who we like, it's an innate in us of being guided and trusting a higher something within us is a part of it.
We talked about that in our last episode about the spirituality stuff and we know that maybe never not everyone's there, but there is now science for anyone who maybe doesn't have that sense in them that proves that our humans, we, and even all of like the animal kingdom and just all of nature in general, it all is rooted in what is the alpha brain state. And when you're in that state, you are connected to other people and you have a sense of how to have empathy and compassion.
And this is where like we'd like to try to break it down. So it's very like you're in that state of achieving awareness. Yes, it's great. But if you're only there, that looks like survival mode, that looks like dysregulation. And then you're that person who's always feeling like you're trying to hold onto and control life too much. And then nothing's ever working out for you. And you're always falling short.
So Dr. Lisa just brings a different lens to it of like, it's actually because your brain is just operating here and now you're stuck there. And she gives you know, the typical things of how do you get out of it? How do you move yourself into an awakened awareness, which is like meditation or prayer or breathing. And we throw in creeping and crawling, brain work, primitive reflex integration, because for us that is from the bottom up, you don't have to think your way through it.
And there's nothing wrong with all the other modalities. We actually enjoy them on top of the brain work. We always say the brain work has to come first because it's the automatic primal part of the brain getting what it needs. So awakened awareness. In her book, she writes, we make use of different parts of our brain and we literally see more integrating information for multiple sources of perception.
Instead of seeing ourselves as independent makers on our path, we perceive ourselves as seekers on our path. We look across a vast landscape and ask, what is life showing me now? This awakened awareness allows us to perceive more choices and opportunities available to us feel more connected with others, understand the relationships between events in our lives, be more open to creative leaps and insights and feel more in tune with our life's purpose and meaning.
And she says, in awakened awareness, we don't lose or forsake our goals, but we take off the blinders. We surrender our tight grip on a goal. We understand that life is a dynamic force and we can attune to and interact with. It's no longer me against the world or me treading upon the world, but me hearing what life has to say. Aware that life is meeting me where I am. And I still have wishes and desires and goals.
I still experience disappointment and hurt, but I lean into the flow of life, paying attention to where doors open and close. That's cortex mode. That's cool. That's cortex mode. That's cortex mode, especially when you align it with the achievement, achieving awareness in the way, like when they're both enmeshed, you know what I mean? Because we do need both all the time.
And you can't, I also believe you can't only be in awakened awareness all the time because then you're going to lose your grasp on reality. And at the end of the day, there is a fourth dimensional world that we're living in today. You can't live inside of that. And I think that's easy to, I think that happens sometimes when people go too far into certain things about certain spiritual practices. We've all seen it. We've all heard of cults, right?
Like, I think that's where it is, is that they're losing the tether to the truth, which is we do have this four dimensional world that we're in, you know what I mean? No matter what you believe in outside of that. And if you don't, then you know this better than anybody. Like this is where we are. We have this human experience and we do have to acknowledge it, right? And I think it's just easy. It's easy to get stuck in one or the other and it's hard to find the balance.
And the balance is where the alignment comes in, right? Because that's where you truly understand where does this awakened peace in my, my achieving peace, where do they overlap and how do I make them overlap more? Yes. And so we call it alignment and Dr. Lisa Miller calls it quest. Like the questing brain is integrating achieving and awakened awareness together in harmony, right? And it's being able to discern and it's being able to use your community to bounce ideas off of.
And we were just talking about this before the podcast is when you're in a community, you often like kind of like throw out ideas and I, you know, Hey, this came through me. What do you think of this? And then your community can help guide, right? And kind of help you align with here's how we see it, right? So it's great to feel like you're safe to ask those questions and safe to explore. The problem is, are you receptive to the response and what comes back?
And then how do you just, it's constantly just discerning information, looking at all the cues of what a human is doing and presenting to you, filtering out that's their stuff. That's not mine. But then picking up, Ooh, they just said that to me. And that hit a core wound in me of like, Ooh, why did that hurt so much? So it's so many layers and nuanced, but this is why finding a community that can support this is huge.
And that's why we feel like our, in the cortex community really sees it as, Hey, we're all just working on this quest of like aligning to our most authentic version of ourselves. And the process in the beginning is really hard for a lot of people because it does, like you said in the beginning, isolating in the sense because you're realizing a lot of the things you were doing in the past weren't actually who you were.
You were just going through some emotions and the programming that was handed down to you. And so this also carries over into our big thing of when parents begin to go on this quest of going between the awakened and achieving awareness brain, we call it like, you know, being in your cortex and regulated is when you're able to finally start parenting from a different lens. And this next month coming up is all about parenting.
We're really hitting the parenting ground hard because it's very near and dear to my heart because I am a parent and we're connected to an amazing neuroscientist who's bringing in the science behind the nurturing of parenting. And so this is where, Oh man, community needs to also support the views on how you see parenting, which is also a fun one. That's a whole nother layer. That's a whole nother layer. Yeah. And I feel like that's something that can be pretty divisive.
Like I see it in my community of like my friends and just people that have been friends for so many years and align on so many things. And then they're like, yeah, that one thing, you know, the parenting, whatever, let's say like spanking or something like that. And they're just on totally opposite sides of the fence. And that's where the judgment starts to come in a little bit of like, Oh, I don't want to hang out with that person.
And that's where, that's where like, if you feel like any sort of resistance in your community, that's when you know, you might not be aligning with them anymore. Right. And it's not about every single thing, 100% being always on the same page. But if you feel like you don't want to talk to them about certain subjects, if you don't want to, you know, be yourself around them and you feel like you're not being 100% honest, that's when you know that you're not fully aligning.
And it's also part of like the journey. Like this is something else we want to talk about today is like, you can have one community for your whole life, but you can have different ones throughout your whole life. That's the whole point of being a human. Like half of the people that are going to be meaningful in our lives, we haven't even met yet. How crazy is that? It's a really trippy to think about that. And on that note too of like, but here's another thing.
So like being able to understand that not everything is going to perfectly align and having grace and compassion. So for example, just because you brought up the topic of spanking, which we didn't even have on our notes today to talk about, but it's funny because this has really been coming up very, very prevalent. Lately in my world today. I thought of it.
Yeah. I do not, my personal belief is to not spank because I look at it as corporal punishment and I always am like, well, what are you teaching your child when you spank them? And I actually got into this debate with my fiance. It's actually really funny because we actually have this conversation with his daughters who are now teenagers and they can actually reflect on it. And he'd always be like, I never spanked with emotion attached. And I said that to them.
I was like, your dad thinks that he never spanked you with emotion attached. And they both looked at him and laughed and was like, yeah, right, bro. Like you are emotional when you're spanking because your child is not obeying you and doing what you want them to do. And it's frustrating to you because that's what's really happening. Right. And so then you have to use some sort of force that's bigger than that child to say, this is what I mean.
Right. And so anytime I'm not going to lie to you, when my kids get into that space and I'm like getting to that, my Pond is activated. I'm like, you just triggered every single button inside of me because you will not clean up what I've asked you to clean up. I'm dysregulated at that point. I already know it. I'm already like, and they can feel like the like the shift in energy and they like look at me with the wide eyes, like, oh, we push mom too far.
And there is a feeling in you that's like, okay, this energy is building up. What do I do with it? And then I just like, you know, hit or do something that's primal. Right. But what are we teaching our kids? And then we tell them, no, now you can't go hit your friends. They're like, but I don't understand. They did something I didn't want them to do. So I hit them. Yeah, I was. I was in the same. I was in the same mindset that you were in when you spanked me. I was frustrated with this person.
Why am I not allowed to thank them or them? You know? Yeah, totally. So I mean, we could go on and on about that. And here's the thing, we actually had this discussion after we shot our last podcast where we said no shame, no judgment. And when we say that, that also is very shamy and judgmental to say that. But we really mean like, if it's truly within you that spanking resonates with you, there is a lot of science out there that proves otherwise.
And if you're open to wanting to hear why hitting your children is not a good idea, we will provide you with all of that because it's rooted in brain science. It's like your brain shuts down. It goes into survival mode. It's an attack. It's a threat. I don't feel safe around my parents. They're dysregulated and now I can feel that. And that is literally another part in the book about entrainment is when you synchronize to your parent, you synchronize. That's like the whole quantum physics.
It's a real science that has been discovered of explaining energies and how certain things work. And that's why we are big believers in co-regulation, but from a state of a calm, regulated parent helping their child regulate calmly. Actually just did a post today on Instagram. And I couldn't get to that. I wanted to be the spanking parent before I had a regulated nervous system.
And then I shifted into a regulated parent and I was like, oh wait, I don't need to be, I had never actually made my kids, but I had the feeling, the urge. I'm not going to deny that. And then once I was regulated, I was like, oh, I just need to get down to their level, help them borrow my nervous system that's calm. And then they calm. And it just like, it's diffused immediately. Co-regulation, baby. It's amazing.
And so that's a big part of, we went on that tangent because there's going to be parts of your community that you don't always align with. And there's messages I hear. There's people who take our course and we might say something like self-love. You have to love yourself first before you can love everybody else. But if you're, let's say a Christian, for example, you don't have that same belief.
And what we're asking you to do is not just to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, okay, forget it. I'm not going to listen to anything else you guys say. I'm going to use my discernment and say, hey, that could be just one way of seeing the world. It doesn't mean it has to be. And that's what we're saying too. If you spank your children, that's one way that you see parenting. There are other options. Are you open to hearing about different ideas?
And so that's what my take on community is. There's definitely things that I go, ooh, I don't resonate with that. Ooh, that's not aligned with me, but I'm going to oversee the big picture and say, but I like the majority of other things. And then I can choose within me, how do I navigate my own children at home? I'm not going to just turn to spanking them because my community thinks that that's okay. You know what I mean? Exactly.
And it's also, that's the point of being a human is you get to choose what you align with and what you don't. And you get to go with what resonates with you and what doesn't. But once again, if you're not in connection with yourself, if you're still in survival mode, it's hard to know. It's hard to know what truly aligns with you. Oh my gosh. And that is basically, when you look at the community as a greater whole, we say this a lot too, is a lot of people are really lost right now.
They don't have a sense of oneness. And we can all agree that COVID divided so many people because it made- And isolated. And isolated. Did everything that community needs, it tore it apart. And we know that then all of a sudden people just blindly following certain things without asking questions and discerning, does this align with me? Do I actually like this? And there was a lot of division and there's still division on both sides of the political sphere of how you see issues.
And I'm like, and I'm all in, and that's every argument. You always look at every argument. Every argument has really three sides, right? Your side, the other side, and what really happened. Exactly. Every human interaction is like trying to discern and filter, but what are up with your filters? Are you coming from an awakened space where you're really able to take everything in, come from a space of being connected to somebody because there's that altruistic, I'm a part of a community.
I want the whole wellbeing to really grow and come to the next level. Or is this my ego coming through and my pain and my wounding? And I think I do that now on such a sub. I don't know if you do that, Paloma, where you're constantly in environments and I'm always like, okay, I can see why you both are arguing here. And I also can't pick a side because that's what we naturally want to do, but I don't do that anymore because I'm just like, I can see your points and I can see your points.
Let's figure it out and communicate through it. But when your brain's in an achieved awareness state, you're like, but I'm right and I must win this argument. And then that's where people dig their heels and then they can't shift. So. Yeah, that's I've seen. I mean, everybody has seen that happen a thousand times. And yeah, I think that the pandemic definitely exaggerated that in a big sense. And it created a way that I don't know that there's more kind of moralistic views of different things.
And so that made it, and that's happening all over the place. That's like canceling people and all that stuff, cancel culture, all that kind of stuff. It's just another way of finding something that you're going to fight against. Because at the same time, if you think about it, they are finding community, though, the people that are fighting in those things, they're finding their community as being on one side or the other.
So that just to show that we're constantly looking for it in whatever way. I mean, it's the most natural thing in the world for us because we are animals and we are social animals. So it is the most natural thing. And so I think that even with all this division, even with all this isolation, people are still trying. We're all still out there trying to find somebody that aligns with us in some way.
Isn't that the first thing you do when you find a group of people, somebody's wearing a t-shirt that you like and the band that you like or somebody mentions a book that you read that you really like or a TV show and you immediately they're like, oh, I love that blah, blah, blah. And so you start to try to align to create that bond, to create that community. It's the most natural thing. It's just let's try to do it on positive notes rather than, you know, fighting. Right.
Because we were talking about communities in the world. We're like, well, there are some communities that are definitely rooted in immoral beliefs. And we are not to say that, like, we're right and they're wrong. But there are there is a filter of like harming other people is not what we're talking about. It's never going to be OK. Yeah. It's never OK to harm people. And I think this is kind of cool where I think this is where I always say actually, this was at cost.
I started with my daughter and she was like hanging on the court cart and she was like swinging her hat around, like dancing her own world. And this amazing woman just like stopped and she's like, aren't kids just so great? They can just teach us how to like just be right with no no feelings of like, oh, am I am I doing something wrong? And they're just like three.
And we do want an element of like, oh, you know, harnessing it in and not having too much freedom with kids, like maybe wreaking havoc on things and like destroying property. But the ultimate the sense of a kid just being completely free is like so just liberating and so fun to watch. And as humans, we have packed on so much hurt into our lives that we can't even live in that state anymore. And you see it with animals, too. They just don't really care about things.
And I've always had the we have a big white dog and his name is Hank. And I'm always like, I just live like Hank. Like, yeah, my bark at a few people when they walk by. But ultimately, he just like has love in his heart and eyes. And he just wants to love and be connected to literally everything. He's the sweetest boy ever. So I think this is where we do have a lot to connect with kids and animals. And the thing about this is they're very much living in a state, a brainwave, the alpha brainwave.
And this is where there is. And this is why this book is so fascinating, because there's so many studies in here about just how alpha is connected to the earth and how it's literally the wavelength, the the hertz. It's between eight to 12 hertz that comes up from the earth's crust and about a mile up. And that is what like all animals operate on. You know how animals have just like this way of like connecting.
And you know, and so and kids, too, they are very good at like, you know, if a person walks in a room and they're like wavelengths or vibe, people call it is off like a kitten, an animal can immediately sense it. Right. And so it's because they're so connected to something that us adults, we lose that over time. So finding the way to get connected to your alpha state is important for being able to live in that state of, you know, aware, awakened awareness.
And this book will give you all the science in there, all the studies that have been done about all these amazing, like healing things that can happen when you live in this state. And basically, we're built to comfort and love and help each other heal. And so finding a community that can help you get there is so important for your human experience. And that's basically what we're here to share is that there's hope at every second of your life. Remember, now Paloma is 90. I know.
And that is a sign that like the brain can change at any age. Yes, it's harder as you get older. But there's hope for you. If you're listening right now, if you're like, I have been a parent that I didn't want to be or I'm a friend, I didn't want to be or I am in relationships. I don't know why I keep having. This is your sign. Yes, there is so much science that proves that you have the ability to find the truest version of you to find that awakened awareness.
And our ITC community supports that. And we allow all walks of life into our world. And we just hold that loving, compassionate space. And we hope you want to join it. Yes, join us. It's awesome. It's so fun to like we really do. We get silly, you know, that's what we do. We're a couple of silly things right here. And yeah, ultimately, it's all about helping, you know, each other find the way to align and be ourselves. Thank you for being here.
Remember to subscribe and to like and to rate and to share it with anybody that you think might like this podcast. Hopefully lots of lots and lots of people. But our make sure to follow us on social media. Our Instagram is in the cortex underscore US. Our tick tock is in underscore the underscore cortex. Our Facebook is in the cortex US. Our YouTube is in the cortex US. Our website is www.inthecortex.com. And our email is hello at in the cortex dot com.
If you ever have any questions, you're wondering if this for you, let us know to send us a little email. We're here. Yes. E in a spaniel. Oh, and in the cortex underscore ESP and Espanol. And we are we have two important announcements today. One is that we are participating in the nurture revolution retreat, which is not a physical retreat. It's a virtual retreat. It's happening from February 12th through 17th, 13th through 17th. Sorry.
And we participated with a really fun video called Neuro Reset for Parents. So it's kind of for any parents that are watching this is this whole summit is amazing. It's done by organized by Greer, Kershia Baum and one of her colleagues, Rocio. And they are both neuroscientists and they are studying everything to do with nurturing and parenting and why we should people should pay.
Not we because I'm not a parent yet, but we as a society should parent in a different way than we have for the past many, many, many years. And they have all all the scientific proof behind why we shouldn't focus on nurturing rather than punishing our children. And yeah, that's one thing. Please find the link that the link to sign up we can put in the show notes and at the link in bio. And then of course, as usual, if you've heard this before, you've probably used the promo code already.
But if today's the day that you're like, OK, now I'm going to sign up the promo code community. Yeah, I need the community. I want it. I'm seeking it. Then Brainiac. You know why? Because we're all Brainiacs and you're going to get $10 off the first payment of your program. And then it'll be super fun. You'll be on the WhatsApp group and we'll hang out on our cortex chats and it's going to be amazing. So use it there 100%. Thank you for being here and we look forward to more connections.
Exactly.